Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relating the performance of partial-order planning algorithms to domain features

The AI planning field has a long history of introducing yet another search algorithm that is believed to be the best in all domains. Some recent examples are NONLIN, TWEAK and SNLP. In this paper we show, by directly comparing the above three planners, that the quest for an overall winner is doomed to fail. We first argue that these three planners differ in a variety of ways, including methods for termination check, causal-link protection, and subgoal selection. These differences entail different search behaviors in terms of factors such as the branching factor, the search depth and the time spent by the algorithm on each search node. Furthermore, the search behavior is closely related to the characteristics of the problem domain in which a planner is operating. In this paper we identify one such domain feature, expressed as the ratio of the number of negative threats to the number of positive threats. We present an artificial domain where we can control this ratio and show that in fact the planners show radically different performance as the ratio is varied in this domain. The implication of this result for someone implementing a planning system is that the most appropriate algorithm will depend on the types of problems to be solved by the planner.
Differentially Private Decision Tree Learning from Distributed Data

The goal of privacy preserving data sharing is to share data for further analysis without revealing sensitive information. In this work, we propose a new Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) protocol using Differential Privacy (DP) to protect data privacy while applying decision tree algorithm to horizontally distributed data. Pure secure multiparty computation approaches (using cryptographic techniques) are not scalable when they are used to analyze big data. Therefore, more efficient solutions are needed. DP can achieve any desired level of privacy under appropriate measure. It does not need complex mathematical operations like cryptographic techniques so it is very efficient and it has been used in big data analysis [1, 2]. In this work, we investigate how to design a more efficient SMPC protocol in Privacy-Preserving Data Analysis (PPDA) using DP. PPDA approaches address different problems. In summary, they are classified into either non-interactive or interactive approaches. Non-interactive approaches aim to perturb data and then release data for further analysis, e.g., adding noise to data to guarantee ε-DP. While interactive protocols are executed between two or more parties and they address the problem in one the following scenarios: 1. A data owner owns the entire private data and a data miner will do computation on data in a private manner. 2. Data is distributed among mutually untrusted parties and they want to collaborate without sharing their actual data. Most of the current differential privacy techniques assume a central database with a single owner [3]. When the database is distributed or owned by different parties, the problem of statistical data sharing becomes the key bottleneck for collaborative analysis tasks. We investigate the possibility of using differential privacy in a distributed setting. Specifically, we focus on a scenario where multiple parties owning private data want to apply decision tree algorithm (as a case study) over the union of their data. Data could be distributed either vertically or horizontally. In the vertical mode, different attributes of the data are collected by different parties. In horizontal mode, diverse records of the data with the same attributes are collected by different parties. Our collaborative model is built over horizontally distributed data. II. OVERVIEW OF PROPOSED APPROACH
Missing energy in black hole production and decay at the Large Hadron Collider

Black holes could be produced at the Large Hadron Collider in TeV-scale gravity scenarios. We discuss missing energy mechanisms in black hole production and decay in large extra-dimensional models. In particular, we examine how graviton emission into the bulk could give the black hole enough recoil to leave the brane. Such a perturbation would cause an abrupt termination in Hawking emission and result in large missing-energy signatures.
B1a B Lymphocytes Are Atheroprotective by Secreting Natural IgM That Increases IgM Deposits and Reduces Necrotic Cores in Atherosclerotic Lesions

Rationale: Aggravated atherosclerosis in B lymphocyte-deficient chimeric mice and reduced atherosclerosis after transfer of unfractionated spleen B lymphocytes into splenectomized mice have led to the widely held notion that B lymphocytes are atheroprotective. However, B lymphocytes can be pathogenic, because their depletion by anti-CD20 antibody ameliorated atherosclerosis, and transfer of B2 lymphocytes aggravated atherosclerosis. These observations raise the question of the identity of the atheroprotective B-lymphocyte population. Objective: The purpose of the study was to identify an atheroprotective B-lymphocyte subset and mechanisms by which they confer atheroprotection. Methods and Results: Splenectomy of apolipoprotein E–deficient mice selectively reduced peritoneal B1a lymphocytes, plasma IgM, and oxidized low-density lipoprotein IgM levels and lesion IgM deposits. These reductions were accompanied by increased oil red O–stained atherosclerotic lesions and increased necrotic cores, oxidized low-density lipoproteins, and apoptotic cells in lesions. Plasma lipids, body weight, collagen, and smooth muscle content were unaffected. Transfer of B1a lymphocytes into splenectomized mice increased peritoneal B1a lymphocytes; restored plasma IgM, oxidized low-density lipoprotein IgM levels, and lesion IgM deposits; and potently attenuated atherosclerotic lesions, with reduced lesion necrotic cores, oxidized low-density lipoprotein, and apoptotic cells. In contrast, transfer of B1a lymphocytes that cannot secrete IgM failed to protect against atherosclerosis development in splenectomized mice despite reconstitution in the peritoneum. Conclusions: B1a lymphocytes are an atheroprotective B-lymphocyte population. Our data suggest that natural IgM secreted by these lymphocytes offers protection by depositing IgM in atherosclerotic lesions, which reduces the necrotic cores of lesions.
Further study of adaptive supervised learning decision (ASLD) network in stock market

This paper further studies the recently proposed Adaptive Supervised Learning Decision (ASLD) network for trading and portfolio management [5] in two sets of stock market data. One is the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong markets. The other is a portfolio of indexes from six major markets in the world. Being different from the study on foreign exchange rates [5], we find that in generating the trading signals for training the neural network used in the ASLD system, the issue of volatility should be considered important in handling stock market data. Several heuristic strategies are investigated for taking volatility into the consideration in training the ASLD trading and portfolio system. Empirical results are given to show how well these strategies work.
Validation of the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) among mothers of Preschool children in Tehran

Introduction: Due to the influences of family instability in creation and development of behavioral and emotional disorder in children, researchers have urged to study stress as a significant factor in this field. Aim: The present study was Validation of the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) among mothers of preschool children in Tehran. Method: The study was a descriptive and correlation. The statistical population was the parents of children aged 4-6 years old in Tehran and 378 of them were selected. To determine the validity of this index, the CBCL questionnaire and the Blum Quist Growth Scale used. Software was used to analyze the data SPSS Result: The reliability coefficient for Stress Index was 89% and correlation coefficient between parenting stress scale with CBCL questionnaire and Bloom quist's questionnaires was 23%, 68%, respectively. All Correlation coefficients were significant at the 0.01 level Conclusion: Parenting stress index could be used as a reliable tool for the age of 4-6 in clinical and non-clinical studies.
Fine motor screening during conditioned play audiometry

: The objective of this study was to explore the feasibility of creating and administering a protocol to screen fine motor skills during conditioned play audiometry (CPA). It was administered successfully to 17 children from two to four years of age. The screening was accepted by the 6 managing audiologists. The screening was rapid (under four minutes) and easy to administer. The total cost for all toys necessary was approximately $60.
Retinoic Acid Increases Proliferation of Human Osteoclast Progenitors and Inhibits RANKL-Stimulated Osteoclast Differentiation by Suppressing RANK

It has been shown that high vitamin A intake is associated with bone fragility and fractures in both animals and humans. However, the mechanism by which vitamin A affects bones is unclear. In the present study, the direct effects of retinoic acid (RA) on human and murine osteoclastogenesis were evaluated using cultured peripheral blood CD14+ monocytes and RAW264.7 cells. Both the activity of the osteoclast marker tartrate resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) in culture supernatant and the expression of the genes involved in osteoclast differentiation together with bone resorption were measured. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the effects of RA on human osteoclast progenitors and mature osteoclasts have been studied in vitro. RA stimulated proliferation of osteoclast progenitors both from humans and mice. In contrast, RA inhibited differentiation of the receptor activator of nuclear factor κB ligand (RANKL)-induced osteoclastogenesis of human and murine osteoclast progenitors via retinoic acid receptors (RARs). We also show that the mRNA levels of receptor activator of nuclear factor κB (RANK), the key initiating factor and osteoclast associated receptor for RANKL, were potently suppressed by RA in osteoclast progenitors. More importantly, RA abolished the RANK protein in osteoclast progenitors. This inhibition could be partially reversed by a RAR pan-antagonist. Furthermore, RA treatment suppressed the expression of the transcription factor nuclear factor of activated T-cells cytoplasmic 1 (NFATc1) and increased the expression of interferon regulatory factor-8 (IRF-8) in osteoclast progenitors via RARs. Also, RA demonstrated differential effects depending on the material supporting the cell culture. RA did not affect TRAP activity in the culture supernatant in the bone slice culture system, but inhibited the release of TRAP activity if cells were cultured on plastic. In conclusion, our results suggest that retinoic acid increases proliferation of human osteoclast progenitors and that it inhibits RANK-stimulated osteoclast differentiation by suppressing RANK.
Simultaneous Tracking of Multiple Objects Using Fast Level Set-Like Algorithm

A topological flexibility of implicit active contours is of great benefit, since it allows simultaneous detection of several objects without any a priori knowledge about their number and shapes. However, in tracking applications it is often required to keep desired objects mutually separated as well as allow each object to evolve itself, i.e. different objects cannot be merged together, but each object can split into several regions that can be merged again later in time. The former can be achieved by applying topology-preserving constraints exploiting either various repelling forces or the simple point concept from digital geometry, which brings, however, an indispensable increase in the execution time and also prevent the latter. In this paper, we propose more efficient and more flexible topology-preserving constraint based on a region indication function, that can be easily integrated into a fast level set-like algorithm by Maska et al. (2010) in order to obtain a fast and robust algorithm for simultaneous tracking of multiple objects. The potential of the modified algorithm is demonstrated on both synthetic and real image data.
A Trifunctional Dextran-Based Nanovaccine Targets and Activates Murine Dendritic Cells, and Induces Potent Cellular and Humoral Immune Responses In Vivo

Dendritic cells (DCs) constitute an attractive target for specific delivery of nanovaccines for immunotherapeutic applications. Here we tested nano-sized dextran (DEX) particles to serve as a DC-addressing nanocarrier platform. Non-functionalized DEX particles had no immunomodulatory effect on bone marrow (BM)-derived murine DCs in vitro. However, when adsorbed with ovalbumine (OVA), DEX particles were efficiently engulfed by BM-DCs in a mannose receptor-dependent manner. A DEX-based nanovaccine containing OVA and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) as a DC stimulus induced strong OVA peptide-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell proliferation both in vitro and upon systemic application in mice, as well as a robust OVA-specific humoral immune response (IgG1>IgG2a) in vivo. Accordingly, this nanovaccine also raised both a more pronounced delayed-type hypersensitivity response and a stronger induction of cytotoxic CD8+ T cells than obtained upon administration of OVA and LPS in soluble form. Therefore, DEX-based nanoparticles constitute a potent, versatile and easy to prepare nanovaccine platform for immunotherapeutic approaches.
Re-interpreting the Modal -calculus

We reexamine the modal-calculus in the light of some classical theory of Boolean algebras and recent results on duality theory for a modal logic with xed points. We propose interpreting formulas into a eld of subsets of states instead of the full power set lattice used by Kozen. Under this interpretation we relate image compact modal frames with Scott continuity of the box modality, m-saturated transition systems and descriptive modal frames. Also, it is shown that the class of image compact modal frames satisses the Hennessy-Milner property. We conclude by showing that for descriptive modal-frames the standard interpretation coincides with the one we proposed.
Preference for 20-40 ms window duration in speech analysis

In speech processing the short-time magnitude spectrum is believed to contain most of the information about speech intelligibility and it is normally computed using the short-time Fourier transform over 20–40 ms window duration. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the analysis window duration on speech intelligibility in a systematic way. For this purpose, both subjective and objective experiments are conducted. The subjective experiment is in a form of a consonant recognition task by human listeners, whereas the objective experiment is in a form of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) task. In our experiments various analysis window durations are investigated. For the subjective experiment we construct speech stimuli based purely on the short-time magnitude information. The results of the subjective experiment show that the analysis window duration of 15–35 ms is the optimum choice when speech is reconstructed from the short-time magnitude spectrum. Similar conclusions were made based on the results of the objective (ASR) experiment. The ASR results were found to have statistically significant correlation with the subjective intelligibility results.
IZA DP No . 2640 Mother ’ s Education and Birth Weight

Mother’s Education and Birth Weight Low birth weight has considerable short and long-term consequences and leads to high costs to the individual and society even in a developed economy. Low birth weight is partially a consequence of choices made by the mother preand during pregnancy. Thus policies affecting these choices could have large returns. Using British data, maternal education is found to be positively correlated with birth weight. We identify a causal effect of education using the 1947 reform of the minimum school leaving age. Change in compulsory school leaving age has been previously used as an instrument, but has been criticised for mostly picking up time trends. Here, we demonstrate that the policy effects differ by social background and hence provide identification across cohorts but also within cohort. We find modest but heterogenous positive effects of maternal education on birth weight with an increase from the baseline weight ranging from 2% to 6%. JEL Classification: I12, I29
Position Control of an AC Servo Motor Using VHDL & FPGA

— In this paper, a new method of controlling position of AC Servomotor using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). FPGA controller is used to generate direction and the number of pulses required to rotate for a given angle. Pulses are sent as a square wave, the number of pulses determines the angle of rotation and frequency of square wave determines the speed of rotation. The proposed control scheme has been realized using XILINX FPGA SPARTAN XC3S400 and tested using MUMA012PIS model Alternating Current (AC) servomotor. Experimental results show that the position of the AC Servo motor can be controlled effectively.
Dynamic Topic Analysis : Classification Without Established Classes using Distance Thresholds

Document classification has proven to be useful for problems where the target function range is defined for a fixed set of classes, but many problems require organization of documents where possible classes are not previously established. This paper describes an unsupervised text classification system that uses a variant of the k Nearest Neighbor (kNN) method for classification of document instances and a Zipf filter to limit the feature space dimension. The classifier is iterative, relying on training data only for feature selection and delaying class assignment until the query phase. Document instances presented during the query phase are either added to an existing, derived class or assigned to a newly created class. Using a conditional entropy measure to evaluate how well the method partitions document instances, it is shown that the performance of such a classifier can be improved by reducing the dimensionality of the feature space using Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).
On a covariant formulation of the Barbero–Immirzi connection

The Barbero–Immirzi (BI) connection, as usually introduced out of a spin connection, is a global object though it does not transform properly as a genuine connection with respect to generic spin transformations, unless quite specific and suitable gauges are imposed. Here we shall investigate whether, and under which global conditions, a (properly transforming and hence global) SU(2)-connection can be canonically defined in a gauge covariant way. Such an SU(2)-connection locally agrees with the usual BI connection and it can be defined on pretty general bundles; in particular, triviality is not assumed. As a by-product we shall also introduce a global covariant SU(2)-connection over the whole spacetime (while for technical reasons the BI connection in the standard formulation is just introduced on a space slice) which restricts to the usual BI connection on a space slice.
A lightweight method to investigate unknown social network structure

Information, rumors, infectious diseases, actions and influence propagate and diffuse through networks as probabilistic processes. Each piece of information appears in some nodes and spreads node by node over the underlying network. So, inferring network structures and analyzing information diffusion processes are required in various domains. In most cases the underlying network is hidden and we only observe the times in which nodes are infected by contagions. The vast majority of existing methods are parametric with the assumption that information diffusion patterns follow a particular distribution. In this paper, to tackle this problem, we propose a simple and non-parametric method that infers the networks topology given a set of cascades. We consider that there exists an unobserved network and we just observe the temporal diffusion events that occur over the edges of the network. First we extract all candidates edges in the network and after that we estimate weights and strength of these edges. In other words, we calculate the occurrence probability between each pair of nodes in all given cascades which is the pairwise transmission rate between that two nodes. The most dominant feature of our approach is having a very low time and computational complexity compared to the current approaches. In addition, as have not considered any assumptions on the information diffusion pattern, our proposed approach has the advantage of being more general and it can be used in various inferring network problems. In summary, experimental results show that not only our method can reach better or equal performance in comparison with baseline models but also it solves the problem in a simpler way with low time complexity.
Towards a computational case-based model for creative planning

This paper describes a computational case-based model for the creative planning process. Our approach is inspired in Wallas’ model for the creative process in that we consider that creativity involves a sequence of four stages: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. Preparation includes problem acquisition and assimilation of background knowledge, which is represented by cases, i.e., documented past experiences. With the aim of achieving a flexible knowledge representation, as a means to potentiate specific creative abilities like Fluency, Synthesis and Analysis, we structure each case as a network of hierarchically and temporally related case pieces. These case pieces can be considered individually, providing better recombinations of them. These recombinations, rather than made by chance, are guided by those hierarchical and temporal case piece relations (or explanations). We explain the role of opportunistic knowledge acquisition at the incubation stage. We sustain that illumination may comprise recursive calls of the sequence of the first three stages. This computational model is implemented in the system INSPIRER (ImagiNation taking as Source Past and Imperfectly RElated Reasonings). An application in musical composition domain is presented. We also show how a musical composition task may be cognitively modelled and treated as a planning task. We also present a short example illustrating how INSPIRER generates music.
Cancers of the lung, head and neck on the rise: perspectives on the genotoxicity of air pollution

Outdoor air pollution has been recently classified as a class I human carcinogen by the World Health Organization (WHO). Cumulative evidence from across the globe shows that polluted air is associated with increased risk of lung, head and neck, and nasopharyngeal cancers—all of which affect the upper aerodigestive tract. Importantly, these cancers have been previously linked to smoking. In this article, we review epidemiologic and experimental evidence of the genotoxic and mutagenic effects of air pollution on DNA, purportedly a key mechanism for cancer development. The alarming increase in cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract in Asia suggests a need to focus government efforts and research on reducing air pollution, promoting clean energy, and investigating the carcinogenic effects of air pollution on humans.