Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning in the Machine: Random Backpropagation and the Learning Channel

Random backpropagation (RBP) is a variant of the backpropagation algorithm for training neural networks, where the transpose of the forward matrices are replaced by fixed random matrices in the calculation of the weight updates. It is remarkable both because of its effectiveness, in spite of using random matrices to communicate error information, and because it completely removes the taxing requirement of maintaining symmetric weights in a physical neural system. To better understand random backpropagation, we first connect it to the notions of local learning and the learning channel. Through this connection, we derive several alternatives to RBP, including skipped RBP (SRPB), adaptive RBP (ARBP), sparse RBP, and their combinations (e.g. ASRBP) and analyze their computational complexity. We then study their behavior through simulations using the MNIST and CIFAR-10 bechnmark datasets. These simulations show that most of these variants work robustly, almost as well as backpropagation, and that multiplication by the derivatives of the activation functions is important. As a follow-up, we study also the low-end of the number of bits required to communicate error information over the learning channel. We then provide partial intuitive explanations for some of the remarkable properties of RBP and its variations. Finally, we prove several mathematical results, including the convergence to fixed points of linear chains of arbitrary length, the convergence to fixed points of linear autoencoders with decorrelated data, the long-term existence of solutions for linear systems with a single hidden layer, and the convergence to fixed points of non-linear chains, when the derivative of the activation functions is included.
A 2.3-mW, 1-GHz, 8-Bit Fully Time-Based Two-Step ADC Using a High-Linearity Dynamic VTC

A novel fully time-based two-step analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is proposed. Two time-based ADCs (TB ADCs) are used for coarse ADC (CADC) and fine ADC (FADC), resulting in low-power operation. They are pipelined to increase the sampling frequency. A high-linearity voltage-to-time converter is also proposed to ensure that the CADC has a wide input range. It has a gain-control function to adjust the difference between the gains of the CADC and FADC due to variations in process, voltage and temperature. Moreover, an interpolation time-to-digital converter with a dynamic delayer enables low-power operation. The dynamic delayer is immediately reset when a STOP signal is activated to prevent waste-signal propagation. An 8-bit test chip fabricated with the 65-nm CMOS technology consumed 2.3 mW at 1 GS/s. It also had a sufficiently high signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) of 44.4 dB even at the Nyquist frequency. It had a Walden figure of merit of 16 fJ/conversion step.
An Initial Analysis of Leadership Competencies for Organization Development Intervention: A Case Study Of Educational QA Agency

This research is aims to determine the leadership competencies for organization development intervention; it is a case study on educational quality assessment (QA) agency in Thailand. The objectives consisted of first, to identify and compare the current and expected perception toward leadership competencies of employees and management, and second, to identify the most important leadership competency. The nature of this research work is research and development while employing the mixed method for data collection, analysis and interpretation. The eighty-one employees completed the questionnaires and ten of them were interviewed. The content validity on the instruments were reviewed by three experts prior to the realiability, Cronbach’s Alpha was tested. The result of reliability Cronbach indicated 0.968 on all questions in the questionniare. Key findings based on the survey showed that leaders “sometimes” demonstrated leading behaviors. Top three leadership competencies that are frequently perceived comprised professional knowledge, decision-making/problem-solving, and development of others. Statistically, there was significant difference between current and expected perception in every leadership competency component with the P value of 0.01. When comparing the perception between management and employee, it was found to have significant difference in driving result, strategic thinking and communication. When ranking all components of leadership competencies to determine the most important factors, the most important leadership competencies were professional knowledge, following with driving results, and strategic thinking. Qualitatively based on the interviews, employees recognized the needs for leadership competency to be develop with the emphasis on development of others, building a team, and supporting work performance. In conclusion, based on mixed methods data, the recommendations for leadership competency of the participating organization were that first, a roadmap to leadership competency development is essential, and second, customization on leadership competency in practices is to be done appropriately to minimize leadership competency gap among the management level.
Scalable Byzantine fault-tolerant storage

Byzantine fault-tolerance is costly, both in terms of increased latency and limited scalability. Most recent contributions in the area have addressed the latency aspect, leaving the throughput scalability problem largely untouched. We propose in this short paper to build scalable Byzantine fault-tolerant storage systems based on the concept of mini-transactions. To achieve this goal we propose a novel atomic commit protocol that tolerates malicious clients and servers.
Kansei Versus Extensional Reasoning: The Scientific Illusion of The Conjunction Fallacy in Probability Judgment

Introduction Subsequent to the investigations of Tversky and Kahneman (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983) it is well known that judgments under uncertainty are often mediated by intuitive heuristics that are not bound by specific scientific natural laws. For example, according to the conjunction rule a conjunction can be more representative than one of its constituents, and instances of a specific category can be easier to imagine or to retrieve than instances of a more inclusive category. The so called Representativeness and Availability Heuristics (RAH) therefore can make a conjunction appear more probable than one of its constituents, which breaks the most basic qualitative law of probability conjunction rule: The probability of a conjunction, P(A&B), cannot exceed the probabilities of its constituents, P(A) and P(B), because the extension (or the possibility set) of the conjunction is included in the extension of its constituents. This phenomenon was regarded as cognitive illusion and demonstrated in a variety of contexts including estimation of word frequency, personality judgment, medical prognosis, decision under risk, suspicion of criminal acts, and political forecasting. The systematic character of violations of the conjunction rule makes it absolutely unclear why such inadequate behavior takes place and occurs so often? In accordance with common normative views it raises a number of reasonable questions: Why do people often fail to take the logical form of statements into account when comparing their probabilities? (Bonini, Tentori & Osherson, 2004) or: Why are we so disinclined to coordinate probability with logical structure? (Sides, et al., 2002). In the study of these questions and cognitive illusions much of the research has been conducted so as to compare intuitive inferences and probability judgments to specific fixed scientific results the rules of statistics and the laws of probability, which, in our view, are erroneously used as objective measure of the perceptual and cognitive processes. So far considerable research has been devoted to the problem of Conjuction Fallacy. There have been proposed various solutions connected with it. Tversky and Kahneman explained the fallacious behavior by RAH and their so-called judgemental heuristics, which were criticized heavily as being far too vague to count as explanations: studies have emphasized potential ambiguity surrounding the word “probability” and concerned about misleading pragmatic influences and uncertainty about the conjunctive reading of categories (Sides A., et al., 2002). There have also been advanced special probability models explaining the fallacious behavior, e.g. the so-called theory of hints (Brachinger & Monney, 2003) and others.
Physical Activity and Excess Weight in Pregnancy Have Independent and Unique Effects on Delivery and Perinatal Outcomes

Background This study examines the effect of low daily physical activity levels and overweight/obesity in pregnancy on delivery and perinatal outcomes. Methods A prospective cohort study combining manually collected postnatal notes with anonymised data linkage. A total of 466 women sampled from the Growing Up in Wales: Environments for Healthy Living study. Women completed a questionnaire and were included in the study if they had an available Body mass index (BMI) (collected at 12 weeks gestation from antenatal records) and/or a physical activity score during pregnancy (7-day Actigraph reading). The full statistical model included the following potential confounding factors: maternal age, parity and smoking status. Main outcome measures included induction rates, duration of labour, mode of delivery, infant health and duration of hospital stay. Findings Mothers with lower physical activity levels were more likely to have an instrumental delivery (including forceps, ventouse and elective and emergency caesarean) in comparison to mothers with higher activity levels (adjusted OR:1.72(95%CI: 1.05 to 2.9)). Overweight/obese mothers were more likely to require an induction (adjusted OR:1.93 (95%CI 1.14 to 3.26), have a macrosomic baby (adjusted OR:1.96 (95%CI 1.08 to 3.56) and a longer hospital stay after delivery (adjusted OR:2.69 (95%CI 1.11 to 6.47). Conclusions The type of delivery was associated with maternal physical activity level and not BMI. Perinatal outcomes (large for gestational age only) were determined by maternal BMI.
Human Embryonic Stem Cell Derived Hepatocyte-Like Cells as a Tool for In Vitro Hazard Assessment of Chemical Carcinogenicity

Hepatocyte-like cells derived from the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hES-Hep) have potential to provide a human relevant in vitro test system in which to evaluate the carcinogenic hazard of chemicals. In this study, we have investigated this potential using a panel of 15 chemicals classified as noncarcinogens, genotoxic carcinogens, and nongenotoxic carcinogens and measured whole-genome transcriptome responses with gene expression microarrays. We applied an ANOVA model that identified 592 genes highly discriminative for the panel of chemicals. Supervised classification with these genes achieved a cross-validation accuracy of > 95%. Moreover, the expression of the response genes in hES-Hep was strongly correlated with that in human primary hepatocytes cultured in vitro. In order to infer mechanistic information on the consequences of chemical exposure in hES-Hep, we developed a computational method that measures the responses of biochemical pathways to the panel of treatments and showed that these responses were discriminative for the three toxicity classes and linked to carcinogenesis through p53, mitogen-activated protein kinases, and apoptosis pathway modules. It could further be shown that the discrimination of toxicity classes was improved when analyzing the microarray data at the pathway level. In summary, our results demonstrate, for the first time, the potential of human embryonic stem cell--derived hepatic cells as an in vitro model for hazard assessment of chemical carcinogenesis, although it should be noted that more compounds are needed to test the robustness of the assay.
High-resolution cloud motion analysis with Meteosat-6 Rapid Scans, MISR and ASTER

In this study, coincident images of Meteosat-6, MISR (on EOS Terra) and ASTER (on EOS Terra) are used to analyze the cloud motion field in high temporal and spatial resolution. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) has nine cameras at different viewing angles, -70.5° (named DA), -60.0° (CA), -45.6° (BA), -26.1° (AA), 0.0° (AN), 26.1° (AF), 45.6° (BF), 60.0° (CF), and 70.5° (DF), and a spatial resolution of 275 m. The time delay between the MISR camera views is 40-55 s, resulting in a total time span of about 7 minutes between DF and DA. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) VNIR subsystem provides nadir and backward looking stereo images of channel 3 (870 nm), with a spatial resolution of 15 m. The stereo configuration is given with the setting angle of 27.6° between the nadir and the backward telescope. The ASTER nadir view (3N) is simultaneously acquired with the MISR AN view, while the backward view (3B) is taken about 55 s later. In the presented case study, the coincident images from the three sensors allow a precise characterization of the cloud motion field on different spatial scales. The stereo matching and tracking is done with a cloud-adapted leastsquares matching (LSM) algorithm, developed at our Institute. The retrieved cloud motion winds (CTW) from the Meteosat-6 10-minute Rapid Scans have an accuracy of 2 m/s in East-West direction and an accuracy of 3 m/s in North-South direction; the MISR CTWs have a cross-track accuracy of about 2 m/s and an acrosstrack accuracy of 5-6 m/s and the ASTER cross-track winds can be retrieved with an accuracy of 0.5 m/s. This study shows that the Meteosat-6 10-minute Rapid Scan Service is an important component for the comparison of cloud motion products from geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites; in the near future, the MSG 15-minute Scans will further increase the comparison and validation possibilities of cloud motion winds over Europe.
Relations of Biomarkers of Distinct Pathophysiological Pathways and Atrial Fibrillation Incidence in the Community

Background— Biomarkers of multiple pathophysiological pathways have been related to incident atrial fibrillation (AF), but their predictive ability remains controversial. Methods and Results— In 3120 Framingham cohort participants (mean age 58.4±9.7 years, 54% women), we related 10 biomarkers that represented inflammation (C-reactive protein and fibrinogen), neurohormonal activation (B-type natriuretic peptide [BNP] and N-terminal proatrial natriuretic peptide), oxidative stress (homocysteine), the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (renin and aldosterone), thrombosis and endothelial function (D-dimer and plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1), and microvascular damage (urinary albumin excretion; n=2673) to incident AF (n=209, 40% women) over a median follow-up of 9.7 years (range 0.05 to 12.8 years). In multivariable-adjusted analyses, the biomarker panel was associated with incident AF (P<0.0001). In stepwise-selection models (P<0.01 for entry and retention), log-transformed BNP (hazard ratio per SD 1.62, 95% confidence interval 1.41 to 1.85, P<0.0001) and C-reactive protein (hazard ratio 1.25, 95% confidence interval 1.07 to 1.45, P=0.004) were chosen. The addition of BNP to variables recently combined in a risk score for AF increased the C-statistic from 0.78 (95% confidence interval 0.75 to 0.81) to 0.80 (95% confidence interval 0.78 to 0.83) and showed an integrated discrimination improvement of 0.03 (95% confidence interval 0.02 to 0.04, P<0.0001), with 34.9% relative improvement in reclassification analysis. The combined analysis of BNP and C-reactive protein did not appreciably improve risk prediction over the model that incorporated BNP in addition to the risk factors. Conclusions— BNP is a predictor of incident AF and improves risk stratification based on well-established clinical risk factors. Whether knowledge of BNP concentrations may be used to target individuals at risk of AF for more intensive monitoring or primary prevention requires further investigation.
ThermoTouch: Design of a High Dynamic Temperature Range Thermal Haptic Display

We describe a novel thermal haptic output device, ThermoTouch, that provides a grid of thermal pixels. Unlike previous devices which mainly use Peltier elements for thermal output, ThermoTouch uses liquid cooling and electro-resistive heating to output thermal feedback at arbitrary grid locations. We describe the design of the prototype, highlight advantages and disadvantages of the technique and briefly discuss future improvements and research applications.
Antiemetic activity of corticosteroids in patients receiving cancer chemotherapy: dosing, efficacy, and tolerability analysis.

BACKGROUND Chemotherapy and radiotherapy remain the standards of treatment for many patients with cancer, but these modalities are often limited by distressing side-effects, most notably chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV). METHODS This paper considers the role of corticosteroids in CINV prophylaxis. Clinical trial results and treatment guidelines indicate that even with the emergence of new serotonin and neurokinin receptor antagonists, corticosteroids continue to play an important role in antiemesis for oncology patients. Numerous clinical trial results have demonstrated that both dexamethasone and methylprednisolone are effective as monotherapy and in combination with older and more recently developed antiemetic agents in patients receiving a wide range of chemotherapeutic regimens used for treatment of different cancers. CONCLUSIONS With the increasing number of antineoplastic regimens and factors specific to individual patients, it is important to frequently review antiemetic treatment options and continually monitor therapeutic progress to establish the optimal therapy for each patient.
A conceptual framework of leaders’ emotional labor: The role of authentic leadership and procedural justice.

Emotional labor has become more and more the focus of leadership research, suggesting that leaders manage their emotions or its expressions in interactions with followers. This study seeks to examine the role of leaders’ emotional labor on followers’ perception of authentic leadership. Moreover, it takes into account gender as an antecedent of emotional labor in the special context of leadership. Using a sample of matched leader-follower data (N2 = 30 leaders; N1 = 73 followers) from China, we expected leaders’ surface acting to be negatively related to followers’ authentic leadership perception, while deep acting would be positively related to it. Moreover, we assumed female leaders to engage less strongly in surface acting and more strongly in deep acting. Results of HLM analysis indicate that leaders who frequently use surface acting are perceived as less authentic. The hypothesis on deep acting was confirmed for only male followers. Data revealed an interaction between leaders’ deep acting and followers’ gender in that male followers’ perceived their leaders as more authentic when they engaged in much deep acting. Regarding the use of the different emotional labor strategies, however, no differences were found with respect to leaders’ gender. We suggest implications for leadership practices.
Blink Perturbation Effects on Saccades Evoked by Microstimulation of the Superior Colliculus

Current knowledge of saccade-blink interactions suggests that blinks have paradoxical effects on saccade generation. Blinks suppress saccade generation by attenuating the oculomotor drive command in structures like the superior colliculus (SC), but they also disinhibit the saccadic system by removing the potent inhibition of pontine omnipause neurons (OPNs). To better characterize these effects, we evoked the trigeminal blink reflex by delivering an air puff to one eye as saccades were evoked by sub-optimal stimulation of the SC. For every stimulation site, the peak and average velocities of stimulation with blink movements (SwBMs) were lower than stimulation-only saccades (SoMs), supporting the notion that the oculomotor drive is weakened in the presence of a blink. In contrast, the duration of the SwBMs was longer, consistent with the hypothesis that the blink-induced inhibition of the OPNs could prolong the window of time available for oculomotor commands to drive an eye movement. The amplitude of the SwBM could also be larger than the SoM amplitude obtained from the same site, particularly for cases in which blink-associated eye movements exhibited the slowest kinematics. The results are interpreted in terms of neural signatures of saccade-blink interactions.
Aspects of Pain, Its Assessment and Evaluation from An Acupuncture Perspective

Pain is a major clinical problem that causes great suffering for the individual and incurs costs for society. Accurate assessment and evaluation of perceived pain is necessary for diagnosis, for choice of treatment, and for the evaluation of treatment efficacy. The assessment of an individual's pain is a challenge since pain is a subjective, multidimensional experience, and assessment is based on the person's own self-report. The results are often varied, possibly due to inter-individual variation, but also in relation to gender and aetiology. A gold standard for pain assessment is still lacking, but rating scales, questionnaires, and methods derived from psychophysical concepts, such as threshold assessments and perceptual matching, are used. In the evaluation of pain and associated variables, both systematic and individual variation should be taken into account, as should pain-associated symptoms. Recommendations for pain treatment should be based on the patient's specific needs. Therefore, it is important to assess the level of perceived pain taking individual variation into account. The methods used should preferably have proved to be useful in randomised controlled trials, and analysis of pain assessment should consider its non-metric properties. In the future, the use of studies with a naturalistic protocol together with individual assessment of individual pain responses could increase the internal and external validity.
Restricted Path Flooding Scheme in Distributed P2P Overlay Networks

In P2P overlay network, peers are able to directly share and exchange information without the help of a server. This results in a prompt and secure sharing of network resources and data handling. However, flooding algorithm that is used in distributed P2P network generated query message excessively. Our objective in this paper is to proposes a presents a restricted path flooding algorithm that can decrease query message's occurrence to solve P2P network's problems. It includes concepts as well as systematic procedures of the proposed scheme for fast path flooding in distributed P2P overlay networks.
A SOA Based Approach to User-Oriented System Migration

SOA migration is a complicated task. To ensure the migration performance, some directions on modeling migration approaches are needed. A user-oriented SOA migration model is proposed in this paper. The model is defined as a 6-tuple. The detailed descriptions on each tuple are addressed. Especially, the concrete algorithm on matching scheme and final SOA migration scheme are provided. The model can benefit the planning and deployment of a SOA migration project. A case study on the migration schemes of an internal management system for primary and secondary schools is provided to further depict this model. Through analyzing the results, we conclude that the performance of this model is promising.