Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Data Pruning

Could a training example be detrimental to learning? Contrary to the common belief that more training data is needed for better generalization, we show that the learning algorithm might be better off when some training examples are discarded. In other words, the quality of the examples matters. We explore a general approach to identify examples that are troublesome for learning with a given model and exclude them from the training set in order to achieve better generalization. We term this process ’data pruning’. The method is targeted as a pre-learning step in order to obtain better data to train on. The approach consists in creating multiple semi-independent learners from the dataset each of which is influenced differently by individual examples. The multiple learners’ opinions about which example is difficult are arbitrated by an inference mechanism. Although, without guarantees of optimality, data pruning is shown to decrease the generalization error in experiments on real-life data. It is not assumed that the data or the noise can be modeled or that additional training examples are available. Data pruning is applied for obtaining visual category data with little supervision. In this setting the object data is contaminated with non-object examples. We show that a mechanism for pruning noisy datasets prior to learning can be very successful especially in the presence of large amount of contamination or when the algorithm is sensitive to noise. Our experiments demonstrate that data pruning can be worth while even if the algorithm has regularization capabilities or mechanisms to cope with noise and has a potential to be a more refined method for regularization or model selection.
Electrocardiographic evidence of ventricular repolarization remodelling during atrial fibrillation.

AIMS Some atrial fibrillation (AF) patients develop excessive QTc prolongation and torsade de pointes when they take QTc-prolonging antiarrhythmic drugs (class IA/III) immediately after termination of AF. We hypothesized that this is caused by changes in ventricular repolarization during AF. We aimed to establish whether such 'ventricular repolarization remodelling' occurs. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied all patients who visited our cardiac emergency room with AF and converted to sinus rhythm (SR) in a 30 months' period. We defined four groups: (i) no antiarrhythmic drugs, electrical cardioversion (n = 30), (ii) no antiarrhythmic drugs, spontaneous AF termination (n = 19), (iii) antiarrhythmic drugs, electrical cardioversion (n = 29), and (iv) antiarrhythmic drugs, spontaneous AF termination (n = 9). We studied QTc duration at SR before AF (SR(baseline)), immediately after termination of AF (SR(postAF)), and at follow-up (SR(followup): > or =7 days after SR(postAF)). Moreover, we studied determinants of QTc prolongation at SR(postAF). We found that, in all groups, QTc at SR(postAF) was significantly and transiently prolonged compared with SR(baseline). Although of limited magnitude on average (approximately 5%), the increase was substantial (approximately 15%) in some individuals. The only independent predictor of the magnitude of QTc prolongation was QTc duration at SR(baseline); this relation had a negative correlation. CONCLUSION AF causes ventricular repolarization remodelling, resulting in QTc prolongation. QTc prolongation is substantial in some patients and may render these patients vulnerable to pro-arrhythmia from class IA/III antiarrhythmic drugs immediately after termination of AF.
FEASIBILITY DISCUSSION OF A COLLABORATIVE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT FINDING ALTERNATIVE WAYS FOR UNIVERSITY MEMBERS INTERACTION

The paper discusses the potential impact and roadmap for the creation of a Collaborative Virtual Environment. The actual university environment is presented to justify this evolution as feasible. As a particular use, the creation of a virtual incubator to simulate entrepreneurship bias in students, teachers and associates is presented. INTRODUCTION In 1995 University Fernando Pessoa set, as a requirement for admission, that every first year student should have a laptop computer. The University offers courses in areas such as social sciences, psychology, management, literature, advertising, and engineering, and wanted its students to acquire the basic skills to use, interact and survive in an information sea similar to the one that they will encounter in a information society environment. In fall 1997 figures, the University has about 2300 students and 40% of the staff with laptops, and a 400 " plug-in " network to support them. The total University population is 4500 students, and 250 teachers. The "laptop for all" initiative enters its third year. The existing infrastructure provides connection between different locations on campus (classrooms, library and social locations). The infrastructure offers an opportunity to develop an information system that generated a virtual organisation enhancing the University concept of a dialogue community: the so called NetLab (Gouveia, 1998). One technological research area that brings great expectations to support virtual communities A Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) uses distributed virtual reality technology to support group work. A CVE must have simultaneous multiuser access to a virtual reality system that actually supports cooperative work. Also, the CVE must support the needs of users who wish to work together; users are explicitly represented within a shared space where they interact between them and with information resources (Benford, 1997). This paper discusses the potential impact and roadmap for the creation of a Collaborative Virtual Environment where all university members can interact in novel ways. Some actual NetLab figures are presented to justify this evolution as feasible. A related project that uses the potential created by the " laptops for all " action is a virtual incubator to simulate entrepreneurship bias is presented. The main goal is to introduce new forms of educational situations where students and information play the major role. The learning materials are just one of the components and the system itself (NetLab), along with teachers represent the triangular area where the action takes place. The teachers will act as regulators. The underlying …
Editorial: Relevant, Practical, Interdisciplinary Research

The International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology is a multispecialty international journal read by psychiatrists, psychologists, criminologists, sociologists, attorneys, investigators, and other informed researchers and practitioners. It is an ideal vehicle for publishing relevant, practical, and interdisciplinary research, and it does. But this is not always an easy goal to achieve. We have to try hard to ensure that not only do our articles encompass solid science, but also that the results are applicable to practitioners of different specialty areas. The process of understanding human nature through research is slow and painstaking; we can easily lose focus and get lost in detail. In fact, the renowned philosopher of science T. S. Kuhn (1962) noted that “scientific development becomes the piecemeal process by which . items have been added, singly and in combination, to the ever growing stockpile that constitutes scientific technique and knowledge” (p. 2). Most clinical practitioners—who are not researchers themselves, but consumers of research—really want to keep up with the latest thinking and findings in a particular area, such as criminal behavior. But clinicians, who are busy practicing, often get frustrated with the tedium of purely research-oriented articles; they often stop reading them entirely because of the lack of apparent applicability to their hands-on work. I cannot tell you the number of practitioners who have remarked to me that so many journals are filled with articles that are simply irrelevant to their needs. As a result, they often stop reading the periodicals entirely. Our journal is not of this type, and we have to remain committed that its contents remain relevant and practical. But not only must we strive to make sure our research findings remain relevant, we must also strive for interdisciplinary cooperation in carrying out the research itself. Unfortunately, there is a tendency for individuals of various professions to collaborate only with others in their own discipline. In fact, it has been only in the past 15 or so years that members of different professions have routinely collaborated on research and scholarship. In 1989, psychiatrist Eugene Revitch and I wrote Sex Murder and Sex Aggression. We asked Roy Hazelwood, a member of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, to write the foreword. His words were prescient:
Erősítik-e a társadalmi kirekesztést a smart cityk?

A fejlesztespolitikaban ma a „smart” cimkevel minden vonzobb, eladhatobb, a kifejezes sokszor a ’kornyezetbarat’ vagy ’fenntarthato’ szinonimajakent is hasznalatos. A varosfejlesztesben az utobbi idők egyik legfelkapottabb paradigmaja, globalis szintű versengest inditva mind a varosok, mind az erdekelt vallalatok kozott a kolcsonosen hasznosnak velt előnyok remenyeben. A szerzők egyreszt annak jartak utana, miert eppen most viragzott fel a smart city mint fejlesztesi paradigma, es milyen tenyezők indukaltak gyors előretoreset. Masreszt a nemzetkozi peldak bemutatasan keresztul arra a kerdesre keresik a valaszt, milyen tarsadalmi hatasokkal jarnak ezek a fejlesztesek, milyen kihivasokkal kell szembenezni a smart city fejlesztesek kapcsan, es vajon a jovőben a fejlesztesi szereplők kepesek lesznek-e tanulni hibaikbol, es tudatosan tervezni a hatasok osszessegevel. --- Do smart cities intensify social exclusion? In development policy everything seems to be more attractive and marketable when labelled ‘smart’; the expression is often used even as a synonym for ‘environmentally-friendly’ or ‘sustainable’. Considering urban development projects, smart city development is one of the most popular paradigms, triggering global competition between cities as well as the interested companies, both expecting mutual benefits from the co-operation. The article, on the one hand, tries to reveal, why the smart city paradigm has now started to thrive, and what factors played a part in its rapid development. On the other hand, through the presentation of international practices, the authors intend to answer what social impacts these developments have had, what challenges have the smart city developments met, and whether in the future the actors could learn from their mistakes and consciously take into account the complexity of impacts.
A greedy approach for coverage-based test suite reduction

Software testing is an activity to find maximum number of errors which have not been discovered yet with optimum time and effort. As the software evolves the size of the test suite and grows with new test cases being added to the test suite. However, due to time and resource constraints rerunning all the test cases in the test suite is not possible, every time the software is modified, in order to deal with these issues, the test suite size should be manageable. In this paper a novel approach is presented to select a subset of test cases that exercise the given set of requirements with for data flow testing. In order to, express the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, both the existing Harrold Gupta and Soffa (HGS) and Bi- Objective Greedy (BOG) algorithms were applied to the generated test suites. The results obtained from the proposed algorithm were compared with the state-of-art algorithms. The results of the performance evaluation, when compared to the existing approaches show that, the proposed algorithm selects near optimal test cases that satisfy maximum number of testing requirements without compromising on the coverage aspect.
Hidden Epidemic of Macrolide-resistant Pneumococci

Community-acquired respiratory tract infections (RTIs) account for a substantial proportion of outpatient antimicrobial drug prescriptions worldwide. Concern over the emergence of multidrug resistance in pneumococci has largely been focused on penicillin-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae. Macrolide antimicrobial drugs have been widely used to empirically treat community-acquired RTIs because of their efficacy in treating both common and atypical respiratory pathogens, including S. pneumoniae. However, increased macrolide use has been associated with a global increase in pneumococcal resistance, which is leading to concern over the continued clinical efficacy of the macrolides to treat community-acquired RTIs. We provide an overview of macrolide-resistant S. pneumoniae and assess the impact of this resistance on the empiric treatment of community-acquired RTIs.
Role of the pcm-tolCsm operon in the multidrug resistance of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia.

OBJECTIVES To elucidate the role of the pcm-tolCsm operon in the multidrug resistance of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. METHODS The presence of the pcm-tolCsm operon was verified by RT-PCR. The phylogenetic relationship between the outer membrane proteins known to be involved in functional tripartite efflux in Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and S. maltophilia was analysed. The contribution of TolCsm to resistance to a variety of compounds was investigated by susceptibility testing of the ΔtolCsm mutant. The role of pcm in the expression and function of tolCsm was assessed by quantitative real-time PCR and complementation assay. RESULTS The pcm and tolCsm genes formed an operon. TolCsm of S. maltophilia, OpmH of P. aeruginosa and TolC of E. coli formed a distinguishing phylogenetic TolC-like clade. TolCsm deletion increased the susceptibility of S. maltophilia KJ2 to several antimicrobial agents (aminoglycoside, macrolide, β-lactam, chloramphenicol, nalidixic acid, doxycycline and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole) and chemical compounds (acriflavine, carbonyl cyanide 3-chlorophenylhydrazone, crystal violet, fusaric acid, menadione, Paraquat, plumbagin, SDS and tetrachlorosalicylanilide). The in-frame deletion of pcm caused a polar effect on the expression of tolCsm, which compromised the resistance to amikacin and gentamicin. Nevertheless, the presence of the PCM protein made an insignificant contribution to the function of TolCsm in the resistance to amikacin and gentamicin. CONCLUSIONS The pcm-tolCsm operon makes a significant contribution to the multidrug resistance of S. maltophilia.
Interpreting prosodic cues in discourse context

Two visual-world experiments investigated whether and how quickly discourse-based expectations about the prosodic realisation of spoken words modulate interpretation of acoustic-prosodic cues. Experiment 1 replicated the effects of segmental lengthening on activation of onset-embedded words (e.g. pumpkin) using resynthetic manipulation of duration and fundamental frequency (F0). In Experiment 2, the same materials were preceded by instructions establishing information-structural differences between competing lexical alternatives (i.e. repeated vs. newly assigned thematic roles) in critical instructions. Eye movements generated upon hearing the critical target word revealed a significant interaction between information structure and target-word realisation: Segmental lengthening and pitch excursion elicited more fixations to the onset-embedded competitor when the target word remained in the same thematic role, but not when its thematic role changed. These results suggest that information structure modulates the interpretation of acoustic-prosodic cues by influencing expectations about fine-grained acoustic-phonetic properties of the unfolding utterance.
Optimal Policy for Stochastic Lot-Sizing Inventory Model with Deterioration and Partial Backlogging

A finite horizon inventory model for a single deteriorating product is studied. The system is under periodic review and there is a positive fixed order cost associated with any placed order. The demand in successive periods is independent and identically distributed. A constant fraction of any positive leftover stock is deteriorated at the end of each period. Any unsatisfied demand is partially backlogged and fulfilled immediately as a new order arrives. Previous research has proved that a (s, S) policy is optimal under complete backlogging and non-deterioration. This paper fulfills the vacancy of the current literature by considering the effects of deterioration and partial backlogging under stochastic demand. The conditions for optimality of (s, S) policy are successfully derived.
The Moderating Effect of Living with a Child Before Incarceration on Postrelease Outcomes Related to a Prison-Based Parent Management Training Program

ABSTRACT With the rapid growth in incarceration in the United States over the past few decades came dramatic growth in the number of the incarcerated parents with at least one minor child. Parental incarceration places extra stresses and strains on families and children. Almost all of those incarcerated will eventually be released. However, the majority of those released from prison will be rearrested within a year. Finding interventions that can decrease the likelihood of returning to crime and to incarceration are of utmost importance. Using a social bond theory framework, the authors examine the moderating effect of living with a child before incarceration on program outcomes related to a prison-based parent management training program. A significant effect was found. Implications for these findings are discussed for future research and practice.
The application of materialization strategies on OLAP in column oriented database systems

Column stores have been widely applied in mass data processing for its great superiority compared to row stores, especially in the field of Online Analytical Processing(OLAP) which requires a significant response speed of query and meanwhile less storage space. Materialization strategies is a very practical query optimization technology used in column stores. In this paper, a detailed introduction to the concept of materialization strategies is made based on the research on storage character and data processing features. And then combining with the Star Schema Benchmark (SSB), two materialization strategies are applied on the complex query of OLAP which shows a remarkable improvement on response speed.
Poverty and Employment, and the Gulf between Them

In this paper we characterize the population of the poor in Israel, analyzing the main determinants of poverty as well as the changes in its incidence from 1987 to 2001. We pay particular attention to the factors that cause individuals to work and affect the level of their labor income, as these are the main reasons for a household being above or below the poverty line. We also analyze the effect of various policy instruments - particularly the system of transfers and changes in it over time, as well as the minimum wage - on the incidence of poverty. In addition, our investigation seeks to ascertain why certain groups have particularly high poverty rates. Our research indicates that it is possible to identify the non-employment (whether due to non-participation or unemployment) of the head of the household as the main determinant of poverty. The existence of more than one wage earner in a household is almost certain to guarantee that a family will not fall below the poverty line, however. In general, groups with high poverty rates have no or few wage earners. ‘Dealing with’ groups with no wage earner by providing transfers considerably reduces the incidence of poverty. Thus, for example, old-age pensions substantially reduce poverty among the elderly, and the income supplement cuts poverty among single-parent families; the extent to which these groups manage to emerge from poverty is closely connected with the size of transfers. Similarly, child allowances substantially diminish poverty in large families, but since in the long run family size is also endogenous, it is not clear whether this policy does in fact serve to reduce poverty in the long run. Our empirical analysis shows that the probability of not being employed (and of not participating in the labor force) is far greater among individuals whose families receive large transfers. Hence, in the short run the key to dealing with the problem of poverty rests with the correct mix of transfers and incentives to work - for those capable of working. Education plays an important role in reducing poverty, operating by increasing both wages and the employment rate. The relation between educational level and poverty has intensified with time. The strong negative correlation we found between education and the probability of being below the poverty line indicates that the education system is the key to solving the problem of poverty in the long run. Another finding is that there is a relatively high incidence of poverty among the Arab population in Israel, even when such factors as education, family size, and the number of wage earners are held constant. This implies that there is discrimination in the labor market, and possibly also that the quality of education provided for this group is inferior to that of the general population.
Hopping direction controllability for small body exploration robot

Hopping is effective mobility for exploration robot on small body. To explore small bodies, a mobile robot is required to move to target points. In case of exploration of microgravity environment by a hopping locomotion, hopping trajectories cannot be controlled after a robot hops. To move to target points, hopping direction and velocity should be controlled at takeoff. The authors proposed a, hopping robot, which consists of three masses, two linear actuators and a spring. This paper discusses how to control a hopping direction of the proposed robot in microgravity environment. When the robot hops, the friction force between the robot and the ground becomes larger. The simulation results show the controllability of a hopping direction even if there is a slip on a ground. The controllability is also confirmed by the free fall experiments.
A critical review on Image Mosaicing

Image Mosaicing is a method of combining two or more images into a single set of large image. Mosaic image is created from a partial views to obtain large view of a scene and it has many applications. This paper discusses a review on distinct algorithms of feature detectors and descriptors. Typically five phases are included in an Image Mosaicing. They are: Feature Extraction, Image Registration, Homography Computation, Image Warping and Blending. The Feature Extraction can be done by using multiple corner detector algorithms. Many feature Descriptors are discussed with necessary equations. Homography can be estimated by different methods, like RANSAC-Random Sample Consensus, LMS-Least median of squares and Hough Transform. Image Warping used for creative purposes and corrects the distort images. Image Blending is the technique to minimize artifacts of the mosaic image by modifying the image gray levels to appear rich vicinity of an output image.