Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Minimax Iterative Dynamic Game: Application to Nonlinear Robot Control Tasks

Multistage decision policies provide useful control strategies in high-dimensional state spaces, particularly in complex control tasks. However, they exhibit weak performance guarantees in the presence of disturbance, model mismatch, or model uncertainties. This brittleness limits their use in high-risk scenarios. We present how to quantify the sensitivity of such policies in order to inform of their robustness capacity. We also propose a minimax iterative dynamic game framework for designing robust policies in the presence of disturbance/uncertainties. We test the quantification hypothesis on a carefully designed deep neural network policy; we then pose a minimax iterative dynamic game (iDG) framework for improving policy robustness in the presence of adversarial disturbances. We evaluate our iDG framework on a mecanum-wheeled robot, whose goal is to find a ocally robust optimal multistage policy that achieve a given goal-reaching task. The algorithm is simple and adaptable for designing meta-learning/deep policies that are robust against disturbances, model mismatch, or model uncertainties, up to a disturbance bound. Videos of the results are on the author's website: https://goo.gl/JhshTB, while the codes for reproducing our experiments are on github: https://goo.gl/3G2VBy. A self-contained environment for reproducing our results is on docker: https://goo.gllB07MB $\text{e}$.
Quantitative genetics of palmar dermatoglyphics.

FOR MANY BIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS, the use of quantitative traits is preferable to the use of qualitative ones, whenever the former prove to be sufficiently representative of the phenomenon or process analyzed. In the particular case of the palmar dermatoglyphics, it has been shown that the general aspect of the palmar configurations is determined by the courses of the main lines A, B, C, and D (Fig. 1), these courses being more or less oblique. For analyzing the degree of obliquity, it is convenient to assign a numerical expression to the trait. For this purpose the different segments around the periphery of the palm are numbered, so that the termination of each main line may be recorded. Thus in Fig. 1 main line D terminates at 11 and is scored as 11. As a quantitative expression of the degree of obliquity, we use the value resulting from the addition of the main-line indices for both hands (Cummins 1942; Cummins and Midlo 1943), which has the advantage of expressing the obliquity of the lines of the palm by means of a single quantity. This index makes use of lines A and D alone. It is not a proportion; it is the sum of the values attached to lines A and D. Values are assigned to the positions used in the scheme of formulating main lines (Fig. 1). For line A the original numerical symbols are adopted as values, with the single exception that value 6 is assigned to position 5", and for line D, values 1 through 8 are substituted for positions 6 through 13, respectively. Thus the progressively higher values of both lines indicate an equivalent approach to the transverse direction. For more details see the papers by Cummins. Concerning the distribution and degree of heritability of the palmar main lines, it should be remembered that the differentiation of the dermatoglyphics occurs during the third and fourth months of intrauterine life and that the lines remain constant after birth. Therefore, except in size, the dermal configurations do not vary with age and are practically independent of environmental effect. On the other hand, it is obvious that there is no assortative mating, such as happens, for example, with skeletal proportions and pigmentation.
Influence of loop diuretics and anions on passive potassium influx into human red cells.

Passive K influx into human red cells was measured with and without Cl ions, Na ions and loop diuretics. Ouabain and loop diuretics appear to inhibit specifically and respectively the Na pump and (Na+K) 'co‐transport'. Inhibitors of other pathways, e.g. 4,4'‐diisothiocyantostilbene‐2,2'‐disulphonic acid or amiloride did not inhibit passive K influx. Loop diuretics inhibited with high apparent affinity in Na‐containing media and with low apparent affinity in Na‐free media where there was a substantial Cl‐dependent component. The Cl concentration dependence was measured using six anion substitutions for Cl. With NO3, acetate and gluconate, the curves were sigmoidal and not fully saturable at 150 mM‐Cl; with iodide and thiocyanate, the curves were convex; with sulphate, there was saturation at 120 mM‐Cl. The half‐maximal K influx as a function of [Na]0 was 40 mM for the Cl‐dependent flux component and 12 mM for the diuretic‐sensitive flux.
The impact of albuminuria and cardiovascular risk factors on renal function Verhave

Objectives We questioned which factors determine the risk for developing renal function impairment. Methods To that purpose we studied the incidence of newly diagnosed impaired renal function (GFR < 60 mL/min/1.73 m) in the PREVEND cohort (n= 8,592), which is enriched for the presence of albuminuria, and which was first studied in 1997/98. Results Of this cohort 6,894 subjects were studied again 4 years later. Subjects with known renal disease, GFR < 60 mL/min, missing GFR values or sediment abnormalities at the first screening were excluded from the present analysis (n= 872). We examined whether albuminuria is associated with the de novo development of an impaired renal function. GFR was 90.3 (SD 16.3) mL/min/1.73 m at baseline and 11.6% of the subjects had an albuminuria of more than 30 mg/day. After a follow up of 4 years, 253 subjects (4.2%) were found to have a GFR < 60 mL/min/1.73 m. The subjects with newly diagnosed impaired GFR were older, had a higher blood pressure, serum cholesterol, plasma glucose and urinary albumin excretion at the first examination, and had a lower GFR to start with than those with a GFR > 60 at the second evaluation. Subjects with de novo impaired GFR had a comparable BMI and smoked less frequently compared to subjects with GFR > 60. In multivariate analysis urinary albumin excretion was independently predictive for the risk to develop an impaired GFR (p= 0.001). Conclusions In the general population measurement of urinary albumin excretion may prove to be a valuable tool to detect subjects at risk for later development of renal failure, independent of the presence of other cardiovascular risk factors.
The Limits of Propaganda: Evidence from Chavez&Apos;S Venezuela

In this paper, we investigate viewer responses to changes in the ideological content of television programming using variation induced by cadenas, unannounced takeovers of the public television airwaves by the government in Venezuela. Using high-frequency ratings data, we find that, consistent with the predictions of our choice model, the drop-off in ratings during cadenas is concentrated among viewers of news programming on opposition private channels, as opposed to viewers of news on pro-government public channels. Also consistent with the predictions of our model, the drop-off in ratings for private channels with moderate ideology takes an intermediate value. In addition, the drop-off is stronger for viewers with access to cable channels, which are not required to air cadenas. Consistent with this result, we also show that viewership of an opposition cable channel rises during cadenas. Complementing this analysis, we then estimate the parameters of the theoretical model in a structural analysis. Using these parameter estimates, we consider counterfactual scenarios, allowing for an examination of the dynamic responses of viewers of differing ideology to cadenas and an analysis of the welfare consequences of cadenas.
On the impact of velocity on the train-to-earth MIMO propagation channel: Statistical observations and qualitative analysis

We provide measured data collected from 97 trains completing over 7000 journeys in Sweden showing that the throughput over LTE is impacted by train velocity. In order to explain these observations we assume that the underlying causes can be found in the implementation of the MIMO system into LTE Rel. 8 and the diffuse scattering of signals from ground reflections.
EXPLORING HUMAN MUSCLE AND REFLEX STIFFNESS MODULATION USING EMG BIOFEEDBACK TASKS 1

This study uses EMG biofeedback to explore muscular and reflex modulation of shoulder stiffness during postural maintenance experiments. The primary objective is to evaluate the influence of perturbation type (force vs. position) on these properties. Results employing EMG biofeedback indicated no influence of perturbation type and confirmed the expected influence of muscle activation on reflex modulation.
The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence

The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence brings together in one volume the leading experts and scholars from a variety of fields (e.g., education, communication, psychology, social work, health care, conflict studies, etc.) and from around the world who do work in intercultural competence (defined as appropriate and effective communication, as well as behavior, in intercultural situations). Given the current and future focus on global workforce development, and on globalization in general, this Handbook examines the skills, attitudes, and knowledge needed in our ever diverse world.
A genome-scale protein interaction profile of Drosophila p53 uncovers additional nodes of the human p53 network

The genome of the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster contains a single p53-like protein, phylogenetically related to the ancestor of the mammalian p53 family of tumor suppressors. We reasoned that a comprehensive map of the protein interaction profile of Drosophila p53 (Dmp53) might help identify conserved interactions of the entire p53 family in man. Using a genome-scale in vitro expression cloning approach, we identified 91 previously unreported Dmp53 interactors, considerably expanding the current Drosophila p53 interactome. Looking for evolutionary conservation of these interactions, we tested 41 mammalian orthologs and found that 37 bound to one or more p53-family members when overexpressed in human cells. An RNAi-based functional assay for modulation of the p53 pathway returned five positive hits, validating the biological relevance of these interactions. One p53 interactor is GTPBP4, a nucleolar protein involved in 60S ribosome biogenesis. We demonstrate that GTPBP4 knockdown induces p53 accumulation and activation in the absence of nucleolar disruption. In breast tumors with wild-type p53, increased expression of GTPBP4 correlates with reduced patient survival, emphasizing a potential relevance of this regulatory axis in cancer.
The Influence of Executive Functions on Phonemic Processing in Children Who Do and Do Not Stutter.

Purpose The aim of the present study was to investigate dual-task performance in children who stutter (CWS) and those who do not to investigate if the groups differed in the ability to attend and allocate cognitive resources effectively during task performance. Method Participants were 24 children (12 CWS) in both groups matched for age and sex. For the primary task, participants performed a phoneme monitoring in a picture-written word interference task. For the secondary task, participants made pitch judgments on tones presented at varying (short, long) stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) from the onset of the picture. Results The CWS were comparable to the children who do not stutter in performing the monitoring task although the SOA-based performance differences in this task were more variable in the CWS. The CWS were also significantly slower in making tone decisions at the short SOA and showed a trend for making more errors in this task. Conclusions The findings are interpreted to suggest higher dual-task cost effects in CWS. A potential explanation for this finding requiring further testing and confirmation is that the CWS show reduced efficiency in attending to the tone stimuli while simultaneously prioritizing attention to the phoneme-monitoring task.
Eating Behavior and Obesity in Canada

Background: Although a growing body of research has examined the association between food prices and the availability of fast food restaurants on weight outcomes, there is limited empirical evidence on the direct effect of eating behavior on body weight. Objective: The effect of eating behavior on obesity prevalence among Canadians is examined. Methods: A nationally representative sample from the Canadian National Population Health Survey (2000-2008) with 29 722 observations is used. Obesity prevalence is estimated by a linear probability model using cross-sectional and panel estimation methods. Separate regressions are estimated for males and females. Results: Multivariate analyses suggest that eating behavior has a statistically significant effect on obesity prevalence. In particular, individuals who reported excellent, very good, and good eating behavior have a lower risk of obesity compared with those with fair or poor eating behavior. Although cross-sectional and panel data methods produce consistent results, the cross-sectional model overestimates the effect of eating behavior on the risk of obesity. This highlights the importance of controlling for unobserved individual factors that may affect how eating behavior is related to body weight. Conclusion: Evidence is found showing that eating behavior is an important determinant of obesity prevalence. The findings suggest that improving the eating behavior of individuals would help reduce excessive body weight and its induced health risks.
A self-monitoring and self-diagnosis strategy for semiconductor gas sensor systems

We developed a self-diagnostic strategy for intelligent gas measurement systems based on a single semiconductor gas sensor especially for safety and security applications. Selectivity is improved via temperature cycling and/or electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Comparing the redundant data obtained from both methods or from a separate sensor, i.e. a humidity sensor, allows detection of a system malfunction due to sensor damage, caused i.e. by sensor poisoning. If different results (gas type or alarm situation) are obtained a warning (pre-alarm) is given and a self-diagnosis routine is started to identify the cause, i.e. by using another T-cycle or a special signal evaluation. This self-diagnostic strategy improves the robustness of a sensor system and helps to avoid costly false alarms or downtimes. Finally, the acceptance of semiconductor gas sensor systems for safety and security applications will be enhanced with this strategy.
The Growth of Health-Related Meta-Analyses Published from 1980 to 2000

A MEDLINE search was conducted to estimate trends in the growth of health-related meta-analyses published during the past two decades. Employing a more specific than sensitive search strategy, and not supplementing these results with known sources of published meta-analyses or manual search strategies, 3,025 probable meta-analyses were selected from the 5,128 citations identified. The data showed a definitive upward (and generally linear) trend across time with no evidence for this genre of research either leveling off or decreasing.
Fuzzy Equalization of Musical Genres

In this article, we propose an audio equalizer of musical genres based on fuzzy logic. Widely used audio playback software, such as VLC or iTunes, propose genre-specific equalization curves to be applied for the whole duration of the music. These curves are the same for all songs belonging to a specific genre, and they do not take into account the specifics and diversity of each song. We propose a different strategy. Research in music information retrieval has revealed a significant number of audio descriptors that allow for the recognition and description of diverse musical genres. We use some of these descriptors to feed a fuzzy logic inference system, whose outputs are the required equalization levels for each frequency band. The rules of the system are derived from the analysis of a well known music database encompassing ten different musical genres. Our results indicate that our approach works for songs that exhibit multiple genre characteristics, that are difficult to classify into one category, or that mix genres.
β-Carotene 9′,10′ Oxygenase Modulates the Anticancer Activity of Dietary Tomato or Lycopene on Prostate Carcinogenesis in the TRAMP Model

The hypothesis that dietary tomato consumption or the intake of the carotenoid lycopene inhibits prostate cancer arose from epidemiologic studies and is supported by preclinical rodent experiments and in vitro mechanistic studies. We hypothesize that variation in activity of carotenoid cleavage enzymes, such as β-carotene 9′,10′-oxygenase (BCO2), may alter the impact of dietary tomato and lycopene on prostate carcinogenesis and therefore examined this relationship in the TRAMP model. Starting at 3 weeks of age, TRAMP:Bco2+/+ and TRAMP:Bco2−/− mice were fed either AIN-93G control, or semipurified diets containing 10% tomato powder or 0.25% lycopene beadlets until 18 weeks of age. Both tomato- and lycopene-fed TRAMP:Bco2−/− mice had significantly greater serum concentrations of total, 5-cis, other cis, and all-trans lycopene than TRAMP:Bco2+/+ mice. Tomato- and lycopene-fed mice had a lower incidence of prostate cancer compared with the control-fed mice. Although Bco2 genotype alone did not significantly change prostate cancer outcome in the control AIN-93G-fed mice, the abilities of lycopene and tomato feeding to inhibit prostate carcinogenesis were significantly attenuated by the loss of Bco2 (Pinteraction = 0.0004 and 0.0383, respectively). Overall, dietary tomato and lycopene inhibited the progression of prostate cancer in TRAMP in a Bco2 genotype-specific manner, potentially implicating the anticancer activity of lycopene cleavage products. This study suggests that genetic variables impacting carotenoid metabolism and accumulation can impact anticancer activity and that future efforts devoted to understanding the interface between tomato carotenoid intake, host genetics, and metabolism will be necessary to clearly elucidate their interactive roles in human prostate carcinogenesis. Cancer Prev Res; 10(2); 161–9. ©2016 AACR.
Is in vivo amyloid distribution asymmetric in primary progressive aphasia?

We aimed to determine whether 18F‐florbetapir amyloid positron emission tomography imaging shows a clinically concordant, left‐hemisphere–dominant pattern of deposition in primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Elevated cortical amyloid (Aβ+) was found in 19 of 32 PPA patients. Hemispheric laterality of amyloid burden was compared between Aβ+ PPA and an Aβ+ amnestic dementia groups (n = 22). The parietal region showed significantly greater left lateralized amyloid uptake in the PPA group than the amnestic group (p < 0.007), consistent with the left lateralized pattern of neurodegeneration in PPA. These results suggest that the cortical distribution of amyloid may have a greater clinical concordance than previously reported. ANN NEUROL 2016;79:496–501
Critical behavior for correlated strongly coupled boson systems in 1+1 dimensions.

The natural integrable [ital correlated] strongly coupled boson system in 1+1 dimensions is the [ital q]-boson hopping model; we calculate its critical exponent [theta] and determine its correlation functions. For small couplings the [ital q]-boson model has natural connections with the Bose gas and the [ital XY] models of very large spin for which [theta]'s and correlators are reported. For large couplings the hopping model is a new phase of interacting bosons substantially different from the impenetrable Bose gas.
The role of dopamine in attentional and memory biases for emotional information.

OBJECTIVE Cognitive models suggest that biased processing of emotional information may play a role in the genesis and maintenance of psychotic symptoms. The role of dopamine and dopamine antagonists in the processing of such information remains unclear. The authors investigated the effect of a dopamine antagonist on perception of, and memory for, emotional information in healthy volunteers. METHOD Thirty-three healthy male volunteers were randomly assigned to a single-blind intervention of either a single dose of the dopamine D(2)/D(3) antagonist amisulpride or placebo. An attentional blink task and an emotional memory task were then administered to assess the affective modulation of attention and memory, respectively. RESULTS A significant interaction was observed between stimulus valence and drug on recognition memory accuracy; further contrasts revealed enhanced memory for aversive-arousing compared with neutral stimuli in the placebo but not the amisulpride group. No effect of amisulpride was observed on the perception of emotional stimuli. CONCLUSIONS Amisulpride abolished the enhanced memory for emotionally arousing stimuli seen in the placebo group but had no effect on the perception of such stimuli. These results suggests that dopamine plays a significant role in biasing memory toward emotionally salient information and that dopamine antagonists may act by attenuating this bias.
Hearing Loss in Older Persons

Objective: This study investigates whether the rate of decline in older persons’ hearing status is associated with the rate of decrease in their psychosocial health and explores moderation by baseline hearing status, health-related factors, and sociodemographic factors. Method: Multilevel analyses were applied to data of 1,178 older participants from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA), covering 3 to 7 years of follow-up. Results: Faster decrease in speech-in-noise recognition was significantly associated with more increase in loneliness for persons with a moderate baseline speech-in-noise recognition (emotional and social loneliness) and for persons who recently lost their partner (emotional loneliness). No relationship was found with depression. Discussion: The results indicate that faster hearing decline results in more increase in loneliness in specific subgroups of older persons: in persons with an already impaired hearing and in widow(er)s. Monitoring older persons’ hearing seems important and may be a relevant starting point for targeted loneliness prevention efforts.
OPTIMIZING CONTENT BASED IMAGE RETRIEVAL IN P2P SYSTEMS

Content Based image retrieval (CBIR) is next big thing on search market. Performing content based image retrieval on internet databases connected using P2P network is the scope of our work. In case of unstructured P2P network CBIR has many challenges in terms of routing, match making etc. Authors in [1] have proposed a P2P-CBIR search engine to provide scalable image retrieval which can adaptively control the query scope and progressively define the accuracy of query results. But the problem in this solution is that query search time is high. We take this problem and propose optimizations to work in [1], so that the image search time can be reduced.