Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Sign Rule and Beyond: Boundary Effects, Flexibility, and Noise Correlations in Neural Population Codes

Over repeat presentations of the same stimulus, sensory neurons show variable responses. This “noise” is typically correlated between pairs of cells, and a question with rich history in neuroscience is how these noise correlations impact the population's ability to encode the stimulus. Here, we consider a very general setting for population coding, investigating how information varies as a function of noise correlations, with all other aspects of the problem – neural tuning curves, etc. – held fixed. This work yields unifying insights into the role of noise correlations. These are summarized in the form of theorems, and illustrated with numerical examples involving neurons with diverse tuning curves. Our main contributions are as follows. (1) We generalize previous results to prove a sign rule (SR) — if noise correlations between pairs of neurons have opposite signs vs. their signal correlations, then coding performance will improve compared to the independent case. This holds for three different metrics of coding performance, and for arbitrary tuning curves and levels of heterogeneity. This generality is true for our other results as well. (2) As also pointed out in the literature, the SR does not provide a necessary condition for good coding. We show that a diverse set of correlation structures can improve coding. Many of these violate the SR, as do experimentally observed correlations. There is structure to this diversity: we prove that the optimal correlation structures must lie on boundaries of the possible set of noise correlations. (3) We provide a novel set of necessary and sufficient conditions, under which the coding performance (in the presence of noise) will be as good as it would be if there were no noise present at all.
Exploring Social Justice, Design, and HCI

The aim of this one-day workshop is to share existing research, discuss common practices, and to develop new strategies and tools for designing for social justice in HCI. This workshop will bring together a set of HCI scholars, designers, and community members to discuss social justice perspectives on interaction design and technology. We will explore theoretical and methodological approaches in and around HCI that can help us generatively consider issues of power, privilege, and access in their complexity. We will discuss the challenges associated with taking a justice approach in HCI, looking toward existing practices we find both productive and problematic. This workshop will bridge current gaps in research and practice by developing concrete strategies for both designing and evaluating social change oriented work in HCI, where agendas are made clear and researchers are held accountable for the outcomes of their work by members of their field site and the research community.
Aspectos neurobiológicos de la adicción a internet y las redes sociales

In this work, the present knowledge about internet addiction and social networks is reviewed and analyzed. We pay special attention to the neurobiological correlates of this addiction, including data about the neurochemical and structural changes in the central nervous system as well as others from the field of molecular genetics, which have been obtained from people with this type of addiction. The data suggest that the affected brain areas in people with internet addiction are similar to those altered in people with substance addiction. Moreover, this work includes a brief description of the negative consequences that internet addiction could produce both psychological and physically, as well as a review of the therapeutic methods currently used for its treatment. Finally, we highlight the need to realize more studies on these new addictions and therefore to be able to obtain more information about a topic that is growing exponentially over the years.
Exasperating or Exceptional? Parents’ Interpretations of Their Child’s ADHD Behavior

Objective: Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a commonly diagnosed childhood disorder associated with parent—child conflict and parental stress. This investigation explored whether parents’ interpretation of symptomatic behavior predicted negative interactions with and perceptions of their child. Method: We recruited parents of 7-12 year old children who were diagnosed with ADHD (n = 41), were diagnosed with ADHD but whose parents construed symptomatic behavior positively (Indigo children; n = 36), and had no diagnosis (n = 26). Parents completed a questionnaire about their experiences with their child. Results: Relative to parents who used only the ADHD label for children’s behavior, parents who also perceived symptomatic behavior as a sign of positive characteristics reported less frequent negative experiences with their child and less intense negative emotions during those experiences. They also viewed their children as more self-efficacious and as more likely to have a positive future. Conclusion: Positive perceptions of child symptomatic behavior appeared to buffer the impact of ADHD symptoms on parents and parent-child relationships.
A New Pseudo Bayesian Model for Stock Returns In Financial Crisis

Barberis, Shleifer and Vishny (1998) and others have developed Bayesian models to explain investors' behavioral biases by using the conservatism heuristics and the representativeness heuristics in making decisions. To extend their work, Lam, Liu, and Wong (2010) have developed a model of weight assignments using a pseudo-Bayesian approach that reflects investors' behavioral biases. In this parsimonious model of investor sentiment, weights induced by investors' conservative and representative heuristics are assigned to observations of the earning shocks of stock prices. Such weight assignments enable us to provide a quantitative link between some market anomalies and investors' behavioral biases. This paper extends their work further by developing properties for the stock return during financial crisis and recovery from the crisis, which could then be used to study some market anomalies including short-term underreaction, long-term overreaction, and excess volatility during financial crisis. We also explain in details the linkage between these market anomalies and investors' behavioral biases during financial crisis.
Three Voting Protocols: ThreeBallot, VAV, and Twin

We present three new paper-based voting methods with interesting security properties. Our goal is to achieve the same security properties as recently proposed cryptographic voting protocols, but using only paper ballots and no cryptography. From a security viewpoint we get reasonably close, particularly for short ballots. However, our proposals should probably be considered as more "academic" than "practical. " In these proposals, not only can each voter verify that her vote is recorded as intended, but she gets a "receipt" she can take home that can be used later to verify that her vote is actually included in the final tally. But her receipt does not allow her to prove to anyone else how she voted. All ballots cast are scanned and published in plaintext on a "public bulletin board" (web site), so anyone may correctly compute the election result. In ThreeBallot, each voter casts three paper ballots, with certain restrictions on how they may be filled out. These paper ballots are of course "voter-verifiable. " A voter receives a copy of one of her ballots as her "receipt", which she may take home. Only the voter knows which ballot she copied for her receipt. The voter is unable to use her receipt to prove how she voted or to sell her vote, as the receipt doesn't reveal how she voted. A voter can check that the web site contains a ballot matching her receipt. Deletion or modification of ballots is thus detectable; so the integrity of the election is verifiable. VAV is like ThreeBallot, except that the ballot-marking rules are different: one ballot may "cancel" another (VAV = Vote/Anti-Vote/Vote). VAV is better suited to - i.e. yields better security properties for - Plurality and preference (Borda, Condorcet, IRV) voting, while ThreeBallot is better suited for Approval and Range voting. Finally, we introduce "Floating Receipts," wherein voters may take home a copy of another voter's ballot. (She doesn't know whose ballot, though.) Floating Receipts are well-tuned to the security requirements of ThreeBallot-like schemes, and we examine protocols for achieving them. Our final voting system, Twin, is based almost entirely on Floating Receipts. Each voter casts a single ballot and takes home a single receipt. Twin is quite simple and close to being practical.
Design of Slot Cut Circularly Polarized Rectangular Microstrip Antenna

Circularly polarized slot cut rectangular microstrip antenna on thinner substrate is proposed. The dimensions of the slots are modified such that the resonance frequencies of the two orthogonal modes are close to each other to realize circular polarization. To improve upon the gain, three layer suspended configuration is proposed which yields VSWR and axial ratio BW of 40 and 9 MHz, respectively. The antenna yields gain of more than 3 dBi over the axial ratio bandwidth. Further the formulation in resonant length at two orthogonal modes for slot cut patch on non-suspended and suspended configurations is proposed. The frequencies calculated using them closely agrees with the simulated results. Using proposed formulations, the design procedure for notch cut circularly polarized antennas in 1000 to 4000 MHz frequency band, is presented. It gives circularly polarized response with formation of small loop (kink) inside VSWR = 2 circle in the smith chart. Thus the proposed formulation can be used to design circular polarized antenna at any given frequency.
[HIV infection and non-AIDS-defining malignancies: an outpatient clinic experience].

INTRODUCTION Human Immunodeficiency Virus infected patients have an increased risk for developing different types of cancer. After the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), and consequent increased survival, a shift has been seen in the spectrum and evolution of HIV infection related diseases, particularly oncological ones, with a tendency to increase non-AIDS-defining malignancies (NADM) as opposed to AIDS defining malignancies. MATERIAL AND METHODS Characterization of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus infected patients with a non-AIDS defining malignancy diagnosis, followed over 16 years at an outpatient clinic in Lisbon through the review of medical records and retrospective evaluation of demographic, epidemiological, clinical and laboratorial parameters, treatment and mortality. RESULTS Of the 1042 patients evaluated, there were 34 Non-AIDS defining malignancy cases identified, mostly in men (78%), with a median age of 55 years. The most common cancers were: lung (20.6%), bladder (17.6%), prostate (8.8%), and anal carcinoma (5.9%). The mean time between Human Immunodeficiency Virus infection and non-AIDS-defining malignancy diagnosis was 6.8 ± 4 years. At the time of non-AIDS- defining malignancy diagnosis the majority of patients (78.8%) was receiving HAART for a mean period of 5.7 ± 3 years, most of whom were immune and virologically controlled (64%). There were 45.5% deaths, mainly in patients with lung cancer (20%). CONCLUSION Given the risk of developing a non-AIDS-defining malignancy in Human Immunodeficiency Virus-infected patients, it is essential to continue to invest in prevention strategies, promote smoking cessation as well as vaccination programs, as well as applying screening protocols adjusted to this population.
Virtual machine consolidation for cloud data centers using parameter-based adaptive allocation

Cloud computing enables cloud providers to offer computing infrastructure as a service (IaaS) in the form of virtual machines (VMs). Cloud management platforms automate the allocation of VMs to physical machines (PMs). An adaptive VM allocation policy is required to handle changes in the cloud environment and utilize the PMs efficiently In the literature, adaptive VM allocation is typically performed using either reservation-based or demand-based allocation. In this work, we have developed a parameter-based VM consolidation solution that aims to mitigate the issues with the reservation-based and demand-based solutions. This parameter-based VM consolidation exploits the range between demand-based and reservation-based finding VM to PM allocations that strike a delicate balance according to cloud providers' goals. Experiments conducted using CloudSim show how the proposed parameter-based solution gives a cloud provider the flexibility to manage the trade-off between utilization and other requirements.
Distortion exponent in MIMO channels with feedback

The transmission of a Gaussian source over a block fading multiple antenna channel in the presence of a feedback link is considered. The feedback link is assumed to be an error and delay free link of capacity 1 bit per channel use. Under the short-term power constraint, the optimal exponential behavior of the end-to-end average distortion is characterized for all source-channel bandwidth ratios. It is shown that the optimal transmission strategy is successive refinement source coding followed by progressive transmission over the channel, in which the channel block is allocated dynamically among the layers based on the channel state using the feedback link as an instantaneous automatic repeat request (ARQ) signal.
Analytical Modeling of Ad Hoc Cognitive Radio Environment for Optimum Power Control

Radio is an emerging wireless technology that has grabbed the attention of researchers, academicians, and telecommunication industries worldwide. Recent survey reports show that unlicensed frequency bands have become overcrowded from past few years with widespread acceptance of diverse wireless technology applications whereas, licensed frequency bands are being used intermittently. To deal with the conflicts between unlicensed spectrum overuse and underutilization of licensed frequency band, Cognitive Radio technology has been evolved eventually. It allows unlicensed subscribers to access licensed subscriber frequency band with some power constraints such that minimum or no interference should be experienced by primary user and its quality of service should not be affected while sharing its spectrum with unlicensed secondary subscriber. In this paper, distance based power control scheme has been analyzed for overlay ad-hoc cognitive radio network. It is shown that algorithm provides optimum power control as long as the separation between cognitive transmitter and receiver is greater than or equals to maximum decodable radius of primary transmitter. Keywordscommunication commission (FCC), Primary user (PU), secondary User (SU), Quality of services (QoS), Cognitive Radio (CR).
Acute feedback control of astrocytic glycolysis by lactate

Neuronal activity is accompanied by a rapid increase in interstitial lactate, which is hypothesized to serve as a fuel for neurons and a signal for local vasodilation. Using FRET microscopy, we report here that the rate of glycolysis in cultured mice astrocytes can be acutely modulated by physiological changes in extracellular lactate. Glycolytic inhibition by lactate was not accompanied by detectable variations in intracellular pH or intracellular ATP and was not dependent of mitochondrial function. Pyruvate was also inhibitory, suggesting that the effect of lactate is not mediated by the NADH/NAD+ ratio. We propose that lactate serves as a fast negative feedback signal limiting its own production by astrocytes and therefore the amplitude of the lactate surge. The inhibition of glucose usage by lactate was much stronger in resting astrocytes than in K+‐stimulated astrocytes, which suggests that lactate may also help diverting glucose from resting to active zones. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A Department Professional Competence Evaluation System

The research develops an evaluation system to estimate a university student's department professional competences. In university the professional competences are generally proposed by a department that specifically describe the professional skills and targets their students will possess or achieve after graduation. Rather than using a score to represent a student's learning, the developed system is designed to evaluate a student how they have learned the competences after taking the courses and exams in a department. So this paper focuses on introducing how to evaluate a student's professional competences in a department through quantifying and building the relation among the course, assessment and competence. The feedbacks of this evaluation system help teachers not only understand a student's competences but also inspect whether their course design and learning activities are conforming to the entire department development.
Dendritic Cell Based Tumor Vaccination in Prostate and Renal Cell Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND More than 200 clinical trials have been performed using dendritic cells (DC) as cellular adjuvants in cancer. Yet the key question whether there is a link between immune and clinical response remains unanswered. Prostate and renal cell cancer (RCC) have been extensively studied for DC-based immunotherapeutic interventions and were therefore chosen to address the above question by means of a systematic review and meta-analysis. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Data was obtained after a systematic literature search from clinical trials that enrolled at least 6 patients. Individual patient data meta-analysis was performed by means of conditional logistic regression grouped by study. Twenty nine trials involving a total of 906 patients were identified in prostate cancer (17) and RCC (12). Objective response rates were 7.7% in prostate cancer and 12.7% in RCC. The combined percentages of objective responses and stable diseases (SD) amounted to a clinical benefit rate (CBR) of 54% in prostate cancer and 48% in RCC. Meta-analysis of individual patient data (n = 403) revealed the cellular immune response to have a significant influence on CBR, both in prostate cancer (OR 10.6, 95% CI 2.5-44.1) and in RCC (OR 8.4, 95% CI 1.3-53.0). Furthermore, DC dose was found to have a significant influence on CBR in both entities. Finally, for the larger cohort of prostate cancer patients, an influence of DC maturity and DC subtype (density enriched versus monocyte derived DC) as well as access to draining lymph nodes on clinical outcome could be demonstrated. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE As a 'proof of principle' a statistically significant effect of DC-mediated cellular immune response and of DC dose on CBR could be demonstrated. Further findings concerning vaccine composition, quality control, and the effect of DC maturation status are relevant for the immunological development of DC-based vaccines.
Adaptive Logic Networks in Bank Customer Modeling

The goal of EUNITE’s second annual competition was to classify bank customers as either active or non-active (binary response variable) based on 36 attributes, 30 of which were numerical, 6 of which were combinatorial, some having more than 50 possible values. The meanings of the variables were kept secret. Example data was made available, consisting of 12000 customer records, each featuring the 36 attributes together with the instantiated response variable. The implicit sub-goal was to develop a model through data-driven (e.g. machine learning) techniques. A further data set of 12000 records was provided, consisting of just the attributes, for assessment purposes. It would then be for the competition organizers to assess the correctness of results. Several types of algorithm were briefly investigated, out of which Adaptive Logic Networks (ALNs) appeared to perform best – provided care was taken with regard to selecting driver variables and optimizing learning parameters.
Lung Cancer Gene Signatures and Clinical Perspectives

Microarrays have been used for more than two decades in preclinical research. The tumor transcriptional profiles were analyzed to select cancer-associated genes for in-deep functional characterization, to stratify tumor subgroups according to the histopathology or diverse clinical courses, and to assess biological and cellular functions behind these gene sets. In lung cancer—the main type of cancer causing mortality worldwide—biomarker research focuses on different objectives: the early diagnosis of curable tumor diseases, the stratification of patients with prognostic unfavorable operable tumors to assess the need for further therapy regimens, or the selection of patients for the most efficient therapies at early and late stages. In non-small cell lung cancer, gene and miRNA signatures are valuable to differentiate between the two main subtypes’ squamous and non-squamous tumors, a discrimination which has further implications for therapeutic schemes. Further subclassification within adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma has been done to correlate histopathological phenotype with disease outcome. Those tumor subgroups were assigned by diverse transcriptional patterns including potential biomarkers and therapy targets for future diagnostic and clinical applications. In lung cancer, none of these signatures have entered clinical routine for testing so far. In this review, the status quo of lung cancer gene signatures in preclinical and clinical research will be presented in the context of future clinical perspectives.
Context-Driven Policy Enforcement and Reconciliation for Web Services

Security of Web services is a major factor to their successful integration into critical IT applications. An extensive research in this direction concentrates on low level aspects of security such as message secrecy, data integrity, and authentication. Thus, proposed solutions are mainly built upon the assumption that security mechanisms are static and predefined. However, the dynamic nature of the Internet and the continuously changing environments where Web services operate require innovative and adaptive security solutions. This paper presents our solution for securing Web services based on adaptive policies, where adaptability is satisfied using the contextual information of the Web services. The proposed solution includes a negotiation and reconciliation protocol for security policies.
Do self-reported concussions have cumulative or enduring effects on drivers’ anticipation of traffic hazards?

Abstract Aim: To investigate the cumulative effect of multiple self-reported concussions and the enduring effect of concussion on drivers’ hazard perception ability. It was hypothesized: (1) that individuals reporting multiple previous concussions would be slower to anticipate traffic hazards than individuals reporting either one previous concussion or none; and (2) that individuals reporting a concussion within the past 3 months would be slower to anticipate traffic hazards than individuals reporting either an earlier concussion or no prior concussion. Method: Two hundred and eighty-two predominantly young drivers (nconcussed = 68, Mage = 21.57 years, SDage = 6.99 years, 66% female) completed a validated hazard perception test (HPT) and measures of emotional, cognitive, health and driving status. Results: A one-way analysis of variance showed that there was no significant effect of concussion number on HPT response times. Similarly, pairwise comparisons showed no significant differences between the HPT response times of individuals reporting a concussion within the previous 3 months, individuals reporting an earlier concussion and the never concussed group. Conclusion: The findings suggest that previous concussions do not adversely affect young drivers’ ability to anticipate traffic hazards; however, due to reliance on self-reports of concussion history, further prospective longitudinal research is needed.