Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Grade-Based Incentive Mechanism for Peer-to-Peer Networks

Free-riding is a desperate and a constant menace to many P2P systems, to violate the cooperation among peers. This study proposes a grade-based approach, which expeditiously maintains fairness in the network by encouraging the high contributed peers and altogether wiping out the free-riders. The Network Contribution Ratio determines the contribution of users globally. Besides, the proposed grading algorithm uses a point-based incentive mechanism which provides credit points to the users with respect to their grade and the transfer of users between each grade is instituted.
Functional measures of naming in aphasia: Word retrieval in confrontation naming versus connected speech

Background: Word-finding difficulties are central to aphasia and as such have received a great deal of attention in aphasia research. Although treatment for lexical retrieval impairments can be effective, studies often use measurement of single-word performance (e.g., confrontation naming) to support such claims. In contrast, what matters most to patients with aphasia and their families is the ability to converse. Few aphasia studies, however, have addressed word retrieval in connected speech. Furthermore, one could debate whether generating names for single pictured stimuli bears resemblance to the online, multifaceted retrieval required during conversation. Aims: The purpose of this study was to assess the adequacy of Percent Word Retrieval (%WR) as well as two supplementary analyses, Percent Substantive Verbs (%SV) and Percent Corrected Errors (%CERR), to depict word retrieval in connected and conversational speech with respect to lexical class (noun vs verb) and aphasia severity (mild vs moderate). Specifically, we examined: (1) the relationship between lexical retrieval in confrontation naming, composite description, and conversational samples; and (2) the clinical utility and feasibility of %WR, %SV, and %CERR in quantifying such data. Methods & Procedures: A total of 14 individuals with aphasia, divided into mild (n = 7) and moderate (n = 7) groups based on aphasia severity, participated. Word retrieval was tested in three different contexts: single-word confrontation naming, composite description, and conversational speech. Lexical retrieval was analysed in each context using the analyses described above (%WR, %SV, and %CERR). The effects of context, grammatical class, and measurement technique were explored using repeated measures ANOVA and correlational analyses. Outcomes & Results: Statistical analyses revealed a significant effect of context for both %WR and %CERR, with superior lexical retrieval and self-correction of errors in connected speech versus single-word naming tasks. Moreover, %SV in conjunction with %WR was sensitive to possible verb retrieval deficits undetected by %WR alone, particularly for mild patients. Confrontation naming scores were strongly related to aphasia severity classification (mild vs moderate), but were not significantly correlated with naming abilities in connected speaking tasks. Conclusions: These findings endorse the incorporation of discourse-level tasks into aphasia assessment and treatment protocols. Use of simple and easily quantifiable measures (e.g., %WR) may be an option to extend current methodology and reconcile issues of ecological validity and clinical feasibility.
Coordinating Agile Systems through the Model-based Execution of Temporal Plans

Agile autonomous systems are emerging, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), that must robustly perform tightly coordinated time-critical missions; for example, military surveillance or search-and-rescue scenarios. In the space domain, execution of temporally flexible plans has provided an enabler for achieving the desired coordination and robustness. We address the challenge of extending plan execution to underactuated systems that are controlled indirectly through the setting of continuous state variables. Our solution is a novel model-based executive that takes as input a temporally flexible state plan, specifying intended state evolutions, and dynamically generates a near-optimal control sequence. To achieve optimality and safety, the executive plans into the future, framing planning as a disjunctive programming problem. To achieve robustness to disturbances and tractability, planning is folded within a receding horizon, continuous planning framework. Key to performance is a problem reduction method based on constraint pruning. We benchmark performance through a suite of UAV scenarios using a hardware-in-the-loop testbed.
Dynamic instability of the intracellular pressure drives bleb-based motility

We have demonstrated that the two- and three-dimensional motility of the human pathogenic parasite Entamoeba histolytica (Eh) depends on sustained instability of the intracellular hydrostatic pressure. This instability drives the cyclic generation and healing of membrane blebs, with typical protrusion velocities of 10–20 μm/second over a few hundred milliseconds and healing times of 10 seconds. The use of a novel micro-electroporation method to control the intracellular pressure enabled us to develop a qualitative model with three parameters: the rate of the myosin-driven internal pressure increase; the critical disjunction stress of membrane–cytoskeleton bonds; and the turnover time of the F-actin cortex. Although blebs occur randomly in space and irregularly time, they can be forced to occur with a defined periodicity in confined geometries, thus confirming our model. Given the highly efficient bleb-based motility of Eh in vitro and in vivo, Eh cells represent a unique model for studying the physical and biological aspects of amoeboid versus mesenchymal motility in two- and three-dimensional environments.
Influences on Future UK Higher Education Students' Perceptions and Educational Choices across Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES)

Literature on student perception is evaluated in relation to the evolution of perception of Geography, Earth and Environmental Science (GEES) through the school years. Four pervasive themes are identified. An ‘expectation framework’ generated by family and social class exerts a dominant influence on student choice, yet rarely is it addressed in studies of degree subject choices. Each student follows a ‘choice trajectory’ through the school years, which warrants further investigation in the context of GEES. ‘Interest’ is often cited as an influencing factor on educational choice, but rarely is it examined at any depth and in relation to GEES disciplines.
CMOS 3-T digital pixel sensor with in-pixel shared comparator

A CMOS digital pixel sensor (DPS) VLSI architecture with in-pixel one-bit quantization is presented. A single column-parallel comparator is shared by all pixels in the column. This results in a compact 3-T pixel implementation. By eliminating the in-pixel source follower the pixel effective power dissipation is reduced by over two orders of magnitude compared to a conventional 3-T pixel. A 64×64 DPS test prototype with 10μm pixel pitch has been fabricated in 0. 35μm standard CMOS and experimentally characterized.
Universal Semantic Parsing

Universal Dependencies (UD) offer a uniform cross-lingual syntactic representation, with the aim of advancing multilingual applications. Recent work shows that semantic parsing can be accomplished by transforming syntactic dependencies to logical forms. However, this work is limited to English, and cannot process dependency graphs, which allow handling complex phenomena such as control. In this work, we introduce UDepLambda, a semantic interface for UD, which maps natural language to logical forms in an almost language-independent fashion and can process dependency graphs. We perform experiments on question answering against Freebase and provide German and Spanish translations of the WebQuestions and GraphQuestions datasets to facilitate multilingual evaluation. Results show that UDepLambda outperforms strong baselines across languages and datasets. For English, it achieves a 4.9 F1 point improvement over the state-of-the-art on GraphQuestions.
Minmax dynamic optimization over a finite-time horizon for building demand control

In this paper, we present a real-time dynamic minmax optimization technique over finite-time horizon applied to the building "demand response" problem. The technique is suitable for peak minimization and other types of minmax problems that arise in robust control problems. As in MPC, the optimization algorithm is based on the minimization of a cost function whose minimization provides stability to the closed-loop system. This approach is applied to the peak power demand control problem where electricity consumption and peak power usage in a building has to be controlled in response to real-time pricing. We demonstrate application of this method to a supervisory control problem for building HVAC control that involves minimization of fixed horizon electric utility cost.
The acute effects of exposure to the electromagnetic field emitted by mobile phones on human attention

The aim of our study was to investigate the effects of acute mobile phone exposure on a range of tasks which tapped capacity and processing speed within the attentional system. Thirty-eight healthy volunteers were randomly assigned to either an experimental group which was exposed to a connected mobile phone or a control group in which the mobile phone was switched off. Subjects remained blind to mobile phone status throughout duration of study. The experimental group were exposed to an electromagnetic field emitted by a 900 MHz mobile phone for 30 min. Cognitive performance was assessed at three points (prior to mobile phone exposure, at 15 and 30 min post-exposure) using six cognitive neuropsychological tests (digit span and spatial span forwards and backwards, serial subtraction and verbal fluency). Significant differences between the two groups were evident after 5 min on two tests of attentional capacity (digit span forwards and spatial span backwards) and one of processing speed (serial subtraction). In all three instances, performance was facilitated following mobile phone exposure. No deficits were evident. These findings are discussed in terms of possible functional and neuroanatomical bases.
EachWiki: Facilitating Wiki Authoring by Annotation Suggestion

Wikipedia, one of the best-known wikis and the world’s largest free online encyclopedia, has embraced the power of collaborative editing to harness collective intelligence. However, using such a wiki to create high-quality articles is not as easy as people imagine, given for instance the difficulty of reusing knowledge already available in Wikipedia. As a result, the heavy burden of upbuilding and maintaining the ever-growing online encyclopedia still rests on a small group of people. In this article, we aim at facilitating wiki authoring by providing annotation recommendations, thus lightening the burden of both contributors and administrators. We leverage the collective wisdom of the users by exploiting Semantic Web technologies with Wikipedia data and adopt a unified algorithm to support link, category, and semantic relation recommendation. A prototype system named EachWiki is proposed and evaluated. The experimental results show that it has achieved considerable improvements in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and usability. The proposed approach can also be applied to other wiki-based collaborative editing systems.
Income differences in cardiovascular disease: is the contribution from work similar in prevalence versus mortality outcomes?

The objective of this research is to study the contribution of adverse working conditions to the association between income and cardiovascular disease (CVD), and to analyze differences across prevalence and mortality outcomes. Cross-sectional data from the Swedish Surveys of Living Conditions, 1996–1999 (N = 6,405), and longitudinal registry data for the period 1990–95 (10,916 CVD deaths) were used, including employed wage earners, aged 40–64. Working conditions were assessed through self-reports and imputed from a job exposure matrix, respectively. Multiple logistic and Poisson regressions were applied. There were strong associations between income and CVD. Those in the lowest income quartile had 3.6 (prevalence) and 2.1 (mortality) times higher risk of CVD, compared to those in the highest income quartile (with a gradient for the intermediate groups). In the survey, low job control and physical demands contributed 8–10% to the association between income and CVD prevalence. This contribution was 10% for low job control in the mortality follow-up. A small proportion of the association between income and the prevalence of or mortality from CVD is attributable to working conditions.
A Computational Model of Cognitive Maps

Why do some individuals pick up arms as opposed to others who live under the same conditions? Environmental and group theories fail to differentiate between these individuals. In response, we apply the cognitive mapping approach and model violence as decisions based on chains of beliefs about various types of factors, including state aggression, access to violent groups, religion, and personal characteristics. Based on a double-paired comparison, data are constructed from ethnographic interviews with Muslim and non-Muslim individuals engaging in violent and nonviolent activity in authoritarian and democratic states—Egypt and Germany. The analysis develops a computational model formalizing the cognitive maps into Bayesian networks. In 477,604 runs, the model (1) identifies the beliefs connected to decisions, (2) traces inference chains antecedent to decisions, and (3) explores counterfactuals. This suggests that both violent and nonviolent activities are responses to state aggression, and not to Islam, group access, or personal characteristics.
A Theoretical Basis for Emergent Pattern Discrimination in Neural Systems Through Slow Feature Extraction

Neurons in the brain are able to detect and discriminate salient spatiotemporal patterns in the firing activity of presynaptic neurons. It is open how they can learn to achieve this, especially without the help of a supervisor. We show that a well-known unsupervised learning algorithm for linear neurons, slow feature analysis (SFA), is able to acquire the discrimination capability of one of the best algorithms for supervised linear discrimination learning, the Fisher linear discriminant (FLD), given suitable input statistics. We demonstrate the power of this principle by showing that it enables readout neurons from simulated cortical microcircuits to learn without any supervision to discriminate between spoken digits and to detect repeated firing patterns that are embedded into a stream of noise spike trains with the same firing statistics. Both these computer simulations and our theoretical analysis show that slow feature extraction enables neurons to extract and collect information that is spread out over a trajectory of firing states that lasts several hundred ms. In addition, it enables neurons to learn without supervision to keep track of time (relative to a stimulus onset, or the initiation of a motor response). Hence, these results elucidate how the brain could compute with trajectories of firing states rather than only with fixed point attractors. It also provides a theoretical basis for understanding recent experimental results on the emergence of view- and position-invariant classification of visual objects in inferior temporal cortex.
“To Divorce Is to Die a Bit...”: A Longitudinal Study of Marital Disruption and Psychological Distress Among Swedish Women and Men

Data from the 1981 and 1991 Swedish Level of Living Surveys are used to analyze any impact of divorce on individuals' psychological well-being. The longitudinal structure of the data set makes it possible to follow respondents, and any change in their civil status, over time. The results reveal that divorcees, both female and male, reported a higher risk for psychological distress in 1991 than did their married and cohabiting or remarried counterparts. In general, this is only to a very limited extent because of divorcees having a lower well-being already before the divorce (in 1981), and the difference in well-being cannot be entirely explained by other factors (e.g., income or access to social support) either. An interesting gender difference is found as psychological distress precedes divorce among women, whereas, instead, it lasts longer following divorce among men.
Analysis of X-means and global k-means USING TUMOR classification

Clustering is an important data mining technique to extract useful information from various high dimensional datasets. A wide range of clustering algorithms is available in literature and still an open area for researcher. K-means algorithm is one of the basic and most simple partitioning clustering technique.is given by MacQueen in 1967 and aim of this clustering algorithm is to divide the dataset into disjoint clusters. After that many variations of k-means algorithm are given by different authors. Here in this paper we make analysis of two variant of k-means namely global k-means and x-means over colon dataset.
Convergence, Divergence and the Study of Organizations

It is often maintained that capitalist and socialist systems of organization are diametrically opposed. This paper uses convergence theory and the problem of divergence to attack this position. It is argued that socialist systems are economically integrated into the capitalist world economy, and further, that the ideology of divergence acts as a central dynamic in relations of production in the world economy. The world system perspective associated with neo-Marxist writers such as Wallerstein and Frank, is used to suggest an alternative framework for examining the organizational dynamics of 'capitalism' and 'socialism'.
A robust signal detection scheme

We consider the detection of a signal in the presence of both interferences that lie in a known subspace and white noise. The signal to be detected is the product of an unknown amplitude and a known signature-vector that is itself subject to additive white Gaussian noise. We develop the maximum likelihood estimates (MLE) of the problem in order to apply the generalized maximum likelihood test (GLRT) to our detection problem. The performances of the proposed detector are illustrated by means of numerical simulations and it is compared to the standard matched subspace detector.
Minimum dissipation rates in magnetohydrodynamics.

Minimum dissipation rate states are explored for a current-carrying channel of magnetofluid, supported by a dc magnetic field and driven by an applied electric field. The minimization is carried out subject to the constraints of constant axial (toroidal) magnetic flux and constant time-averaged rate of supply of magnetic helicity. The solutions of the resulting Euler-Lagrange equations are sensitive to boundary conditions on the current density j. One set of boundary conditions on j leads to the same consequences as Taylor's ``minimum-energy'' theory. A different set leads to significantly different consequences, including a departure from the ``force-free'' magnetic profile and a toroidal component of current density that does not reverse at the wall when the toroidal magnetic field reverses.
Section 1: Perception and Action

A question often on the minds of Cognitive Neuroscientists these days concerns the relation between perception and action. Those who are outside the field of perception may be excused for thinking that this must have always been so. What is perception for if not to inform the organism about the external world, so as to best guide its actions in the service of survival? Well, it is not much of an exaggeration to say that, with the exception of a few persistent "cranks" (e.g., James Gibson, Ulrich Neisser), most of what has passed for perception research in the past century has blithely ignored the interplay between perception and action. Most perception researchers were quite content to allow action to be studied by those in the related, but largely self-contained, specialities of human movement, motor performance, and kinetics. What perception researchers studied was the way the world appeared to someone sitting in an armchair, contemplating the information available in the visual array at their leisure. Something distinctly Canadian' changed all that in 1995, with the publication of a book by David Milner (St. Andrews, Scotland) and Mel Goodale (University of Western Ontario, Canada) entitled The Visual Brain in Action. That book laid out a theory and a research program that was at the same time elegant in its simplicity, broad in its scope, and revolutionary in its impact. The elegance lay in the clear presentation of yet another dichotomy (of which psychologists are so fond), this time between the visual maps that lie in the dorsal versus ventral regions of the cortex. What made this dichotomy so compelling was that it encompassed and gave organization to a number of earlier and smaller-scale dichotomies, including that of action-perception, unconscious-conscious, preattentive-attentive, bottom up-top down, and what-where. The breadth of its scope could be seen in the way the book moved effortlessly from simple animal models of perception, to human neuropsychological conditions, to the analysis of behaviour and brain imaging in psychology's favourite "normal" research participant, the college undergraduate. The impact of the book can now be seen everywhere, but especially at annual conferences in psychology, vision research, neuropsychology, and brain imaging, where the modal presentation begins with a slide depicting the proposed division of labour between dorsal and ventral visual streams. The four papers in this volume representing Canadian work in Perception and Action each have strong threads linking directly to the Milner and Goodale legacy. This section begins with a paper by Flanagan, King, Wolpert, and Johansson examining the role of long-term memories in participants' adaptation to a size-weight illusion. A guiding theoretical question in this work is whether sensory information is quickly lost or overwritten when it is used for action, as Milner and Goodale contend. …
Epicardial Ventricular Tachycardia Ablation in a Patient With Brugada ECG Pattern and Mutation of PKP2 and DSP Genes.

The Brugada syndrome (BS) and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) are currently seen as 2 distinct clinical entities. However, several genetic mutations linked to reduced sodium transmembrane flow and disrupted integrity of the desmosome with resulting fatty infiltration have been identified, corresponding to BS and ARVC, respectively.1 A 22-year-old male patient was admitted to our hospital with repeated discharges of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator caused by pleomorphic ventricular tachycardia. He had a previous history of survived sudden cardiac death and an implanted single-chamber implantable cardioverter defibrillator in 2010. No data on work-up of genetic arrhythmias had been available to date. On current clinical presentation in echocardiography, normal ejection fraction and heart diameter could be determined. Because of abnormal ECG pattern in a sense of an incomplete right bundle branch block with slightly elevated ST-segments and T-wave inversions in the right precordial leads, an ajmaline test was conducted (Figure A). This resulted in prominent coved-type Brugada ECG (Figure B). Figure. A , Baseline …