Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A civilized cyberspace for geoprivacy

We argue that current technical and legal attempts aimed at protecting Geoprivacy are insufficient. We propose a novel 2-dimensional model of privacy, which we term "civilized cyberspace". On one dimension there are engineering, social and legal tools while on the other there are different kinds of interaction with information. We argue why such a civilized cyberspace protects privacy without sacrificing personal freedom on the one hand and opportunities for businesses on the other. We also discuss its realization and propose a technology stack including a permission service for geoprocessing.
What good are actions? Accelerating learning using learned action priors

The computational complexity of learning in sequential decision problems grows exponentially with the number of actions available to the agent at each state. We present a method for accelerating this process by learning action priors that express the usefulness of each action in each state. These are learned from a set of different optimal policies from many tasks in the same state space, and are used to bias exploration away from less useful actions. This is shown to improve performance for tasks in the same domain but with different goals. We extend our method to base action priors on perceptual cues rather than absolute states, allowing the transfer of these priors between tasks with differing state spaces and transition functions, and demonstrate experimentally the advantages of learning with action priors in a reinforcement learning context.
Editors’ Introduction: Introducing a Methodological Research Collection on Pressing Issues for LGBTQ Students

This special issue of Educational Researcher focuses on pressing issues for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) students from a variety of methodological perspectives. Here, we introduce the articles, which cover a broad range of topics, including homeless LGBTQ youth, student-led groups known as Gay-Straight Alliances, classification bias, power, and intersectionality. In addition to the overarching theme of pressing issues and methodology that all of the authors were expressly asked to address, we discuss two organically arising common themes across the papers: The first theme of “space” explores how LGBTQ youth navigate through educational spaces and create communal spaces while also acknowledging that not all LGBTQ youth may feel welcomed in these various spaces. The second theme of “categorization” problematizes the ways in which research defines groups for study—raising concerns about methodological preferences and biases within specific approaches—and challenges how we assess and describe heterogeneity of experiences within broader categories. In total, this special issue raises fundamental questions about the current state of educational contexts and supports for LGBTQ youth as well as the current state of research methods and the politics around methodology.
Securing the Backpressure Algorithm for Wireless Networks

The backpressure algorithm is known to provide throughput optimality in routing and scheduling decisions for multi-hop networks with dynamic traffic. The essential assumption in the backpressure algorithm is that all nodes are benign and obey the algorithm rules governing the information exchange and underlying optimization needs. Nonetheless, such an assumption does not always hold in realistic scenarios, especially in the presence of security attacks with intent to disrupt network operations. In this paper, we propose a novel mechanism, called virtual trust queuing, to protect backpressure algorithm based routing and scheduling protocols against various insider threats. Our objective is not to design yet another trust-based routing to heuristically bargain security and performance, but to develop a generic solution with strong guarantees of attack resilience and throughput performance in the backpressure algorithm. To this end, we quantify a node's algorithm-compliance behavior over time and construct a virtual trust queue that maintains deviations of a give node from expected algorithm outcomes. We show that by jointly stabilizing the virtual trust queue and the real packet queue, the backpressure algorithm not only achieves resilience, but also sustains the throughput performance under an extensive set of security attacks. Our proposed solution clears a major barrier for practical deployment of backpressure algorithm for secure wireless applications.
Frequency conversion of optical signals in p-i-n photodiodes

A planar InGaAsP/InGaAs/InGaAsP p-i-n photodiode has been fabricated and used for frequency conversion of two optical signals. Nonlinear properties of the photodiode have been investigated. It is shown that photodiode responsivity R(V) dependence on bias voltage can be characterized by a parameter of the nonlinearity A, which is equal to R(V)middotR'(V) and the maximal conversion efficiency is achieved at the bias voltage where the parameter A has the maximal value
Clustering of Mailing List Discussions for Information Retrieval

Recently, threaded discussion communities, such as web forums and mailing lists, have become increasingly popular with Internet users. Millions of registered members converse about leading-edge scientific issues or just about trivial matters of their every day life. This makes data bases of these communities a valuable source for information, but their colloquial texts are hard to search and summarize with traditional retrieval methods. For that reason, several attempts have been made to optimize established techniques of topic detection and tracking for use with casual language. If the underlying topics could be made visible to information retrieval systems and to human users alike, it would enable greater benefits from the huge amount of hardly structured data. This work proposes a general approach to make up data from mailing list community archives. It utilizes techniques from traditional topic detection and tracking and optimizes them for texts, written in casual language. Another particular focus has been on the proper labeling of generated clusters with comprehensible names to enable user interaction with the structured data. Further, the effect of searching a mailing list by topic in contrast to common retrieval on a document basis is analyzed. Finally, experiments on a prototype implementation show, that developed enhancements in fact increase the quality of topic recognition as well as grouping threaded discussions by their implicit subject can improve information retrieval, especially for human users.
Effects of Insulin Therapy on Myocardial Lipid Content and Cardiac Geometry in Patients with Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus

Aims/Hypothesis Recent evidence suggests a link between myocardial steatosis and diabetic cardiomyopathy. Insulin, as a lipogenic and growth-promoting hormone, might stimulate intramyocardial lipid (MYCL) deposition and hypertrophy. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the short-term effects of insulin therapy (IT) on myocardial lipid content and morphology in patients with T2DM. Methods Eighteen patients with T2DM were recruited (age 56±2 years; HbA1c: 10.5±0.4%). In 10 patients with insufficient glucose control under oral medication IT was initiated due to secondary failure of oral glucose lowering therapy (IT-group), while 8 individuals did not require additional insulin substitution (OT-group). In order to assess MYCL and intrahepatic lipid (IHLC) content as well as cardiac geometry and function magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and imaging (MRI) examinations were performed at baseline (IT and OT) and 10 days after initiation of IT. Follow up measurements took place 181±49 days after IT. Results Interestingly, basal MYCLs were 50% lower in IT- compared to OT-group (0.41±0.12 vs. 0.80±0.11% of water signal; p = 0.034). After 10 days of IT, an acute 80%-rise in MYCL (p = 0.008) was observed, while IHLC did not change. Likewise, myocardial mass (+13%; p = 0.004), wall thickness in end-diastole (+13%; p = 0.030) and concentricity, an index of cardiac remodeling, increased (+28%; p = 0.026). In the long-term MYCL returned to baseline, while IHCL significantly decreased (−31%; p = 0.000). No acute changes in systolic left ventricular function were observed. Conclusions/Interpretation The initiation of IT in patients with T2DM was followed by an acute rise in MYCL concentration and myocardial mass.
The Effects of Guilt-Appeal Intensity on Persuasive and Emotional Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Sponsor Motive

ABSTRACT Studies examining the persuasive effects of guilt appeals have yielded mixed results. The current study hypothesizes that source motive (profit versus not for profit) is a key moderating variable underlying these inconsistences. A controlled experiment tested the moderating role of sponsor motive on the relationship between guilt-appeal intensity and persuasiveness of the appeal and ad liking. Findings confirmed the notion that sponsor motive moderates the effects of guilt appeals: When guilt appeals are commercially oriented there is a relative failure of high-intensity guilt appeals compared to moderate-intensity guilt appeals. Moderate-intensity guilt appeals cause more-positive brand attitudes than high-intensity appeals. Yet, when guilt appeals are nonprofit, increases in intensity of guilt communicated lead to positive results. As the guilt-intensity increased, ad liking and persuasiveness increased. It appears that guilt-appeal intensity did not have an effect on brand attitudes when the message was nonprofit.
Depression and Everyday Social Activity, Belonging, and Well-being Depression and Social Dysfunction

Dysfunctional social behavior has been implicated in the experience of depression. People with higher levels of depressive symptoms report more frequent negative social interactions and react more strongly to them. It remains unknown, however, whether reaction strength differs depending on whether social interactions are positive or negative. Drawing on socioevolutionary models of depression (N. B. Allen & P. B. T. Badcock, 2003), the authors propose that people with higher levels of depressive symptoms should react more strongly not only to negative social interactions but also to positive social interactions and a sense of belonging. Using nonclinical samples, 2 daily process studies examined the role of depression in people's reactivity to social interactions in natural, ongoing, social contexts. In Study 1, the number of positive and negative social events showed a stronger relation to well-being among people with higher levels of depressive symptoms. Study 2 extended this finding to perceptions of belonging in memorable social interactions, finding a stronger link between belonging and well-being among people with higher levels of depressive symptoms. Together these studies provide the first indication that depressive symptoms may sensitize people to everyday experiences of both social rejection and social acceptance. A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind. Humans have a profound need to connect with others and gain acceptance into social groups (i.e., belonging; Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Deci & Ryan, 2000). People form bonds readily and organize much of their behavior around establishing and maintaining those bonds. Further, people suffer when relationships deteriorate and social bonds are severed. Although feeling disconnected from others and experiencing a lack of belonging bothers everyone , depressed people may be particularly sensitive to these painful social experiences (Allen & Badcock, 2003). Because of the importance of social experiences to people's well-being (e.g., Diener, 2000), and to the etiology and maintenance of depression 1976b), it is vital to examine how depressed people's well-being is enhanced or eroded by positive and negative social interactions. The present research used two daily process studies to test the degree to which naturally occurring positive and negative social interactions interact with depressive symptoms to predict well-being. The motivational and affective profile associated with depression can be expected to influence people's ability to feel a sense of …
Object Detection based on Combination of Visible and Thermal Videos using A Joint Sample Consensus Background Model

In uncontrolled video surveillance environments, performing efficient foreground segmentation is very challenging. In order to improve robustness and accuracy of object detection, we take advantage of spectral information of both visible and thermal videos. This paper presents a novel joint background model combining visible and thermal videos for foreground object detection in complex scenarios. Different from traditional methods that first detected moving objects in either domain respectively and then fused the detection results, we provide a joint sample consensus background model with four channels (red, green, blue and thermal) to accomplish the object detection and fusion of complementary information simultaneously, which lowers the computational cost of our method. Raw foreground segmentation is obtained in the thermal domain, making initial foreground more accurate. Meantime this can enhance the efficiency of further steps. Time out map (TOM) is utilized to deal with the problem that a newly exposed background is wrongly marked as foreground for a long time. In the updating phase, unlike most sample-based methods using first-in first-out policy, we intentionally employ a random update policy to reserve some older samples. That is, when a pixel is classified as background, we randomly pick up one of the background samples stored for the corresponding pixel to discard. In this manner, the backgrounds, occluded by slow moving foreground or temporally still foreground, can be recovered promptly when they reappear. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve accurate and precise detection results.
Kernels on Attributed Pointsets with Applications

This paper introduces kernels on attributed pointsets, which are sets of vectors embedded in an euclidean space. The embedding gives the notion of neighborhood, which is used to define positive semidefinite kernels on pointsets. Two novel kernels on neighborhoods are proposed, one evaluating the attribute similarity and the other evaluating shape similarity. Shape similarity function is motivated from spectral graph matching techniques. The kernels are tested on three real life applications: face recognition, photo album tagging, and shot annotation in video sequences, with encouraging results.
Effects of interphase and mitotic phosphorylation on the mobility and location of nucleolar protein B23

B23 (or nucleophosmin, NPM) is a multifunctional protein involved in ribosome biogenesis, control of centrosome duplication and in sensing cellular stress. It is phosphorylated during interphase by casein kinase 2 (CK2) and during mitosis by cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK). In this study we have addressed the role of these phosphorylation events in the dynamics and location of protein B23. Mutation of the CK2 phosphorylation site to alanine results in slower recovery of the mutant compared with the wild-type protein as measured by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP). Immunofluorescence studies using an antibody against phosphorylated Thr199 revealed that B23 is phosphorylated at this CDK1 site at the start of mitosis and is dephosphorylated during anaphase. The CDK1-type phosphorylation sites are in the nucleic acid binding region of B23 and may contribute to its dissociation from the nucleolus during mitosis. A Thr to Glu mutant of the CDK1-type sites as well as other members of the nucleoplasmin family that lack the C-terminal nucleic-acid-binding region showed a greater mobility and/or faster recovery than wild-type B23.1, the longer variant. These results provide evidence that phosphorylation at these sites reduces the affinity of B23 for nucleolar components and might be a factor in regulating its location during the cell cycle.
Passive Frontal Plane Stabilization in 3 D Walking

This paper explores the use of a single passive design to stabilize frontal plane dynamics for 3D biped walking across a range of forward velocities and/or step lengths. Particular goals are to determine if design of sagittal plane control can be done independently from design of frontal plane stabilization mechanisms, and to explore how dynamic coupling between the two planned motions affects energetic efficiency of walking. Passive dynamic walkers have long utilized curved feet for low energy frontal plane stabilization in 3D walking, with the current design practice of matching the linearized resonance of the curvature to match a particular, steady-state walking gait to achieve stable coupled limit cycle in the 3D dynamics. However, practical legged walking systems should operate across a range of velocities and step widths. We examine aspects of the nonlinear dynamics that contribute to the energy efficiency and stability of the system through simulations. Specifically, we focus on the frontal plane dynamics and the resulting variability of time-of-return for frontal plane wobbles, as a function of impact velocity. Our decoupled analysis explains some aspects of the 3D motions; however, the actual effects on cost of transport demonstrate interesting phenomena we had not anticipated. Specifically, while a general trend of increasing cost of transport for 3D vs 2D gaits with stride time does hold in our simulations, the 3D gaits sometimes require less energy than their constrained 2D counterparts, which was a surprising and encouraging result. This work provides a promising direction for the development of practical methods to utilize control designed for planar 2D walking models on more sophisticated 3D dynamic models using little or no additional active control.
Reduced vasomotor reactivity in cerebral microangiopathy : a study with near-infrared spectroscopy and transcranial Doppler sonography.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Reduction of cerebral blood flow and vasomotor reactivity (VMR) are thought to play an important role in the pathogenesis of cerebral microangiopathy. The aim of our study was to determine whether near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) can detect a reduced VMR in patients with microangiopathy, whether NIRS reactivities correlate with VMR assessed by transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD), and whether the differing extents of patients' microangiopathy demonstrated on MRI or CT can be distinguished by both noninvasive techniques. METHODS We compared the VMR of 46 patients with cerebral microangiopathy with 13 age-matched control subjects. Patients were classified with the Erkinjuntti scale. We monitored cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) in both middle cerebral arteries by TCD, changes in concentration of oxyhemoglobin (HbO(2)), deoxyhemoglobin (Hb) and blood volume (HbT) by NIRS, mean arterial blood pressure, and end-tidal CO(2) (EtCO(2)) during normocapnia and hypercapnia. VMRs were calculated as percent change of CBFV (NCR) and as absolute change in concentration of HbO(2), Hb, and HbT per 1% increase in EtCO(2) (CR-HbO(2), CR-Hb, CR-HbT). RESULTS NCR and NIRS reactivities were significantly reduced in patients with cerebral microangiopathy. CR-HbO(2) and CR-Hb showed a close correlation with NCR, and NCR and NIRS reactivities were related to the severity of cerebral microangiopathy according to the Erkinjuntti scale. Validity of NCR and NIRS reactivities were similar. CONCLUSIONS VMR is reduced in patients with cerebral microangiopathy and can be noninvasively assessed in basal arteries (with TCD) and brain parenchyma (with NIRS). Reduction of CO(2)-induced VMR, as measured by NIRS and TCD, may indicate the severity of microangiopathy.
Counterpoint: Glucose phosphorylation is not a significant barrier to glucose uptake by the working muscle.

Glucose uptake in skeletal muscle may be increased more than 15- to 20-fold above basal level in response to stimulation with either insulin or muscle contractions (exercise; Refs. [1][1], [16][2]). This occurs concomitant with a translocation of the GLUT4 glucose transporter to the muscle plasma
So Close, Yet So Far: Predictors of Attrition in College Seniors.

The purpose of this study was to identify issues relevant to nontransfer college seniors who disenroll from their academic programs before graduating. Forty-two of these nonreturning seniors were interviewed by telephone, as were 48 returning seniors who served as a comparison group. The randomly selected sample was ethnically and racially diverse (52% White), gender balanced (51% female), and of traditional age for seniors (mean age = 22.5). Interview data indicated that college seniors offer a variety of reasons for disenrolling before graduating, including financial strain, transferring to another school, moving, starting or supporting a family, enhancing career development, personal problems, and needing a break from college. Quantitative analyses suggested that nonretention of seniors was best predicted by dissatisfaction with academic guidance, dissatisfaction with access to school-related information, and dissatisfaction with quality of education, as well as by feelings of institutional alienation. Implications of the results for retention of seniors and for future research are discussed. Few topics in higher education have received as much attention as those of student persistence and departure. Research in this area has spanned the large part of this century, and our understanding of student persistence has evolved from a simple listing of attributes associated with persistence to models that account for complex interactions between person and environment over time (Tinto, 1993). Studies have begun to incorporate important distinctions related to persistence, such as the difference between “dropouts” and “stopouts,” and the difference between departures due to academic dismissal and
ON SINUSOIDAL PARAMETER ESTIMATION

This paper contains a review of the issues surrounding sinusoidal parameter estimation which is a vital part of many audio manipulation algorithms. A number of algorithms which use the phase of the Fourier transform for estimation (e.g. [1]) are explored and shown to be identical. Their performance against a classical interpolation estimator [2] and comparison with the Cramer Rao Bound (CRB) is presented. Component detection is also considered and various methods of improving these algorithms are discussed.
Assessing Entrepreneurship Education Pedagogies in Three Federal Colleges of Education in Nigeria’s South-South Geo-Political Zone

The study examines teaching and assessment methods used by vocational technical education teachers in teaching and assessing entrepreneurship education learning outcomes in Colleges of Education in the South-South Geo-political Zone of Nigeria. The study used survey research design. A census of entrepreneurship teachers conducted in the three Federal Colleges of Education in the South-South Geo-political zone yielded a population of 30 teachers. Structured questionnaire was the research instrument. Data were analyzed using SPSS. The findings show that teachers routinely use ineffective traditional teaching and assessment methods in entrepreneurship education instruction. Pedagogies that maximize entrepreneurial learning outcomes for achieving the self-employment objective of entrepreneurship education in Colleges of Education were recommended.