Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Abercrombie & Fitch Effect: The Impact of Physical Dominance on Male Customers' Status-Signaling Consumption

Consumer lay theory suggests that women will spend more money than men in the presence of a physically dominant male employee, whereas theories of intrasexual competition from evolutionary psychology predict the opposite outcome. A retail field study demonstrates that male customers spend more money and purchase more expensive products than their female counterparts in the presence (vs. absence) of a physically dominant male employee. This effect has a more powerful impact on male customers who lack bodily markers of dominance (shorter stature or measures linked to lower levels of testosterone). When confronted with other physically dominant (vs. nondominant) men, these male customers are particularly prone to signal status through price or logo size. Their elevated feelings of intrasexual (male-to-male) competitiveness drive them to spend more money on status-signaling, but not functional, products and to prefer and draw larger brand logos. Because pictorial exposure is sufficient for the effect to occur, these findings are not limited to in-store interactions with dominant male employees but have broad implications for marketing and advertising.
Challenging the Forward Shock Model with the 80 Ms Follow up of the X-ray Afterglow of Gamma-Ray Burst 130427A

GRB 130427A was the most luminous gamma-ray burst detected in the last 30 years. With an isotropic energy output of 8.5 × 10 53 erg and redshift of 0.34, it combined very high energetics with a relative proximity to Earth in an unprecedented way. Sensitive X-ray observatories such as XMM-Newton and Chandra have detected the afterglow of this event for a record-breaking baseline longer than 80 million seconds. The light curve displays a simple power-law over more than three decades in time. In this presentation, we explore the consequences of this result for a few models put forward so far to interpret GRB 130427A, and more in general the implication of this outcome in the context of the standard forward shock model.
Pilot Testing of It Skills of Preschool and Elementary Education Students by the It Fitness Test

Abstract The present paper reports on the testing of digital skills of students of the Faculty of Education, Univerity of Presov within their undergraduate training with the aim to estimate the level of digital skills in five defined domains. The IT Fitness test 2015 consisting of 25 items was used as the measure of the target skills. The sample comprised 532 students in bachelor and master study programs. The paper provides an interpretation of the selected research findings (mean total scores, mean scores for the given domains, discrimination power of items and domains). The results of digital skills testing point at the overall overestimation of Digital Natives Skills. With respect to the challenges brought by the educational practice itself by means of the implementation of digital technologies into pre-primary and primary education, it is necessary to modify the curricula of math- and iT-oriented subjects and include further activities allowing for the development of the lacking “Digital Skills”, since these are needed not only for students′ own study but also due to increasing demands related to the use of digital technologies in primary and pre-primary education.
The Effect of Calcium With or Without Calcitriol Supplementation on Renal Function in Patients With Hypovitaminosis D and Chronic Kidney Disease

Background: Hypovitaminosis D (serum 25-OHD < 30 ng/mL) is common in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Vitamin D is believed to involve in the regulation of renin-angiotensin system and may be renoprotective. Objectives: To compare the effects of calcium with or without calcitriol on renal function in patients with CKD. Patients and Methods: A prospective randomized trial was performed involving patients with stages 2-4 CKD and hypovitaminosis D. Baseline demographics data were taken at baseline. Patients were randomized equally into oral calcitriol plus calcium carbonate (calcitriol group) or calcium carbonate alone (non-calcitriol group). Serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD), 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25-(OH)2D), creatinine, calcium and urine protein creatinine index (uPCI) were measured at 6 and 12 weeks. Results: Fifty (21 Female: 29 Male) patients with CKD with a median age of 53 (22-65) years were recruited. Their median MDRD eGFR (modification of diet in renal disease, estimation of glomerular filtration rate) was 36.0 (15-89) mL/min/1.73 m2 with the CKD stage 2 (n = 8, 16%), stage 3 (n = 29, 58%), and stage 4 (n = 13, 26%) respectively. In both study groups serum 25-OHD levels were increased at 12 weeks (P = 0.001), in contrast to serum 1,25-(OH)2D levels which remained unchanged (P > 0.05), serum creatinine and uPCI were also remained unchanged until the end of study (P > 0.05 each). Patients with diabetes had higher serum creatinine (P = 0.01) and lower serum 1,25-(OH)2D (P = 0.02) at baseline. Regardless of the diabetics status, the serum 25-OHD was increased, and 1,25-(OH)2D remained unchanged at 12 weeks in both study groups. At 12 weeks, serum creatinine was decreased in patients with diabetes in the noncalcitriol group (P = 0.03) compared to stabilization of creatinine in the calcitriol group (P > 0.05). Serum calcium was increased, though it was still within the normal range in the calcitriol group (P < 0.001); whereas, in the noncalcitriol group, there was an initial reduction but increased back to baseline (P = 0.007). Urine PCI remained unchanged in both groups. Conclusions: We have demonstrated that calcitriol supplementation did not offer any additional benefit to reduce 25-OHD and 1,25-(OH)2D levels over calcium carbonate alone in patients with CKD in this short term study. Overall renal function remained unchanged. However, we found that calcitriol at 0.5 mg daily plus calcium carbonate 500 mg daily could be reno-protective in diabetic nephropathy regardless of their serum 25-OHD levels.
CCD photometry of late-type stars in the young open cluster IC 2602

We present the results of VRI photometry of the young open cluster IC 2602. Two 15 arcmin 15 arcmin elds were observed in February and May 1991 using the 1-m Swope telescope at Las Campanas. Using theoretical isochrones obtained from D'Antona & Mazzitelli (1994), and allowing for observational and other uncertainties, we identify 78 primary candidate members with 12 <V <18:5 from their positions on colour- magnitude diagrams. We compare the cluster eld with an oset eld of similar galactic latitude and estimate the contamination due to background stars to be large, 50%, as might be expected given its low galactic lat- itude. We also compare our photometry with that given for the X-ray detected stars of Randich et al. (1995). We present complimentary narrow band H photometry for a subset of the stars.
A splitting algorithm for directional regularization and sparsification

We present a new split-type algorithm for the minimization of a p-harmonic energy with added data fidelity term. The half-quadratic splitting reduces the original problem to two straightforward problems, that can be minimized efficiently. The minimizers to the two sub-problems can typically be computed pointwise and are easily implemented on massively parallel processors. Furthermore the splitting method allows for the computation of solutions to a large number of more advanced directional regularization problems. In particular we are able to handle robust, non-convex data terms, and to define a 0-harmonic regularization energy where we sparsify directions by means of an L0 norm.
Integer Matrix Diagonalization

We consider algorithms for computing the Smith normal form of integer matrices. A variety of different strategies have been proposed, primarily aimed at avoiding the major obstacle that occurs in such computations—explosive growth in size of intermediate entries. We present a new algorithm with excellent performance. We investigate the complexity of such computations, indicating relationships with NP-complete problems. We also describe new heuristics which perform well in practice. We present experimental evidence which shows our algorithm outperforming previous methods.
Long-term memory and response generalization in mushroom body extrinsic neurons in the honeybee Apis mellifera

SUMMARY Honeybees learn to associate an odor with sucrose reward under conditions that allow the monitoring of neural activity by imaging Ca2+ transients in morphologically identified neurons. Here we report such recordings from mushroom body extrinsic neurons – which belong to a recurrent tract connecting the output of the mushroom body with its input, potentially providing inhibitory feedback – and other extrinsic neurons. The neurons' responses to the learned odor and two novel control odors were measured 24 h after learning. We found that calcium responses to the learned odor and an odor that was strongly generalized with it were enhanced compared with responses to a weakly generalized control. Thus, the physiological responses measured in these extrinsic neurons accurately reflect what is observed in behavior. We conclude that the recorded recurrent neurons feed information back to the mushroom body about the features of learned odor stimuli. Other extrinsic neurons may signal information about learned odors to different brain regions.
17 Random Projections and Orthogonal Matching Pursuit

Again we will consider high-dimensional data P. Now we will consider the uses and effects of randomness. We will use it to simplify P (put it in a lower dimensional space) and to recover data after random noise has interfered with it. The first approach will be through random projections, and we will discuss the Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma, and the very simple algorithm implied by it. Then to discuss recovery, we need to model the problem a bit more carefully. So we will define the compressed sensing problem. Then we will discuss the simplest way to recover data orthogonal matching pursuit. Although this technique does not have the best possible bounds, it is an extremely general approach that can be used in many areas. We again start by considering a point set P ⊂ R d = {p 1 , p 2 ,. , p n } with n points. Often the dimension d can be quite large, and we want to find patterns that exist in much lower dimensional space. We will explore a curious phenomenon, that in some sense the " true " dimension of the data depends only on the number of points, not on the value d (we will see the " true " dimension is about ln n). In particular we want a mapping µ : R d → R k (with k d) so it compressed all of R d to R k. And in particular for any point set P ⊂ R d we want all distance preserved so that for all p, p ∈ P (1 − ε)p − p ≤ µ(p) − µ(p) ≤ (1 + ε)p − p. This is stricter that the requirements for PCA since we want all distance between pairs of points preserved, whereas PCA was asking for more of an average error to be small. This allowed some points to have large error as long as most did not. The idea to create µ is very simple: choose one at random! To create µ, we create k random unit vectors u 1 , u 2 ,. , u k , then project onto the subspace spanned by these vectors. Finally we need to re-normalize by d/k so the expected norm is preserved. Algorithm 17.1. 1 Random Projection for i = 1 to k do Let u i be random element from d-dimensional Gaussian (using d/2 Box-Mueller …
A study on precision of pseudorandom number generators using the logistic map

In the present paper, we show a design guide of a pseudorandom number generator using the logistic map with finite precision. First, we define three basic operations and two basic models of the pseudorandom number generator using an iterative map. Second, we implement two pseudorandom number generators employing their models with the logistic map with finite precision. Third, we estimate randomness of their pseudorandom numbers by the NIST statistical tests for the generators. Finally, we discuss precision passing the NIST tests and give the design guide of the pseudorandom number generator using the logistic map with finite precision.
When Power Adaptation is Useless or Harmful

We consider the design of optimal strategies for joint power adaptation, rate adaptation and scheduling in a multi-hop wireless network. Most existing strategies for ad-hoc networks control either power and scheduling, or rates and scheduling, but not the three together as we do. We assume the underlying physical layer allows fine-grained rate adaptation (like in 802.11a/g, HDR/CDMA, UWB). Our goal is to find properties of the power control in an optimal joint design. In the linear regime (i.e when the rate of a link can be approximated by a linear function of signal-to-noise ratio, SNR), we prove analytically that it is always optimal to use the simple 0-PMAX power control (when a node is sending it uses the maximum transmitting power allowed). This holds in both important networking scenarios: high rate networks where the goal is to maximize rates under power constraints, and low power networks where the goal is to minimize average consumed power while meeting minimum rate constraints. Moreover, we prove that, when maximizing rates, 0-PMAX is the only possible optimal power control strategy. Outside the linear regime, we do not know what the optimal power control is. We show that in the power minimization scenario, in some cases, rate adaptation and 0-PMAX power control performs much worse than power adaptation. Nevertheless, we conjecture, and we demonstrate numerically that when maximizing rates, even outside the linear regime, 0-PMAX is very close to the optimal power control, and the rate adaptation with 0-PMAX outperforms power adaptation with fixed link rates.
The demand for consistent web-based workflow editors

This paper identifies the high value to researchers in many disciplines of having web-based graphical editors for scientific workflows and draws attention to two technological transitions: good quality editors can now run in a browser and workflow enactment systems are emerging that manage multiple workflow languages and support multi-lingual workflows. We contend that this provides a unique opportunity to introduce multi-lingual graphical workflow editors which in turn would yield substantial benefits: workflow users would find it easier to share and combine methods encoded in multiple workflow languages, the common framework would stimulate conceptual convergence and increased workflow component sharing, and the many workflow communities could share a substantial part of the effort of delivering good quality graphical workflow editors in browsers. The paper examines whether such a common framework is feasible and presents an initial design for a web-based editor, tested with a preliminary prototype. It is not a fait accompli but rather an urgent rallying cry to explore collaboratively a generic web-based framework before investing in many divergent individual implementations.
Treatment of suicidal people around the world.

BACKGROUND Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide; however, little information is available about the treatment of suicidal people, or about barriers to treatment. AIMS To examine the receipt of mental health treatment and barriers to care among suicidal people around the world. METHOD Twenty-one nationally representative samples worldwide (n=55 302; age 18 years and over) from the World Health Organization's World Mental Health Surveys were interviewed regarding past-year suicidal behaviour and past-year healthcare use. Suicidal respondents who had not used services in the past year were asked why they had not sought care. RESULTS Two-fifths of the suicidal respondents had received treatment (from 17% in low-income countries to 56% in high-income countries), mostly from a general medical practitioner (22%), psychiatrist (15%) or non-psychiatrist (15%). Those who had actually attempted suicide were more likely to receive care. Low perceived need was the most important reason for not seeking help (58%), followed by attitudinal barriers such as the wish to handle the problem alone (40%) and structural barriers such as financial concerns (15%). Only 7% of respondents endorsed stigma as a reason for not seeking treatment. CONCLUSIONS Most people with suicide ideation, plans and attempts receive no treatment. This is a consistent and pervasive finding, especially in low-income countries. Improving the receipt of treatment worldwide will have to take into account culture-specific factors that may influence the process of help-seeking.
Billion-Gate Secure Computation with Malicious Adversaries

The goal of this paper is to assess the feasibility of two-party secure computation in the presence of a malicious adversary. Prior work has shown the feasibility of billion-gate circuits in the semi-honest model, but only the 35k-gate AES circuit in the malicious model, in part because security in the malicious model is much harder to achieve. We show that by incorporating the best known techniques and parallelizing almost all steps of the resulting protocol, evaluating billion-gate circuits is feasible in the malicious model. Our results are in the standard model (i.e., no common reference strings or PKIs) and, in contrast to prior work, we do not use the random oracle model which has well-established theoretical shortcomings.
Endometriosis, a disease of the macrophage

Endometriosis, a common cause of pelvic pain and female infertility, depends on the growth of vascularized endometrial tissue at ectopic sites. Endometrial fragments reach the peritoneal cavity during the fertile years: local cues decide whether they yield endometriotic lesions. Macrophages are recruited at sites of hypoxia and tissue stress, where they clear cell debris and heme-iron and generate pro-life and pro-angiogenesis signals. Macrophages are abundant in endometriotic lesions, where are recruited and undergo alternative activation. In rodents macrophages are required for lesions to establish and to grow; bone marrow-derived Tie-2 expressing macrophages specifically contribute to lesions neovasculature, possibly because they concur to the recruitment of circulating endothelial progenitors, and sustain their survival and the integrity of the vessel wall. Macrophages sense cues (hypoxia, cell death, iron overload) in the lesions and react delivering signals to restore the local homeostasis: their action represents a necessary, non-redundant step in the natural history of the disease. Endometriosis may be due to a misperception of macrophages about ectopic endometrial tissue. They perceive it as a wound, they activate programs leading to ectopic cell survival and tissue vascularization. Clearing this misperception is a critical area for the development of novel medical treatments of endometriosis, an urgent and unmet medical need.
Theorizing materialism through the Institutional Analysis and Development framework

Materialism in Western societies has been examined at both individual and cultural levels. However, the underlying institutions that engender and perpetuate materialism as an orientation toward consumption are left unexamined. Therefore, the overall purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between institutions constituting the dominant social paradigm (DSP) (deep-rooted belief structures and practices) of societies and materialism. The model proposed to carry this out is the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. This article contributes to marketing theory by developing a conceptual model that explains and offers transformative implications pertaining to the relationship between materialism and the institutional elements of the DSP of Western industrial societies.
Communication in palliative care

Communication consists in an intentional exchange of verbal and non-verbal signs (symbols) undertaken in order to improve cooperation or share meanings among partners. The communication occurs on many levels, from the intrapersonal through interpersonal (involving a group), to the public level. In the context of palliative care, special importance is gained by the basic social behaviours, such as the ability to conduct a conversation. Communicativeness is a skill that is not only acquired through experience, but also through professional training. The interest of the interdisciplinary team requires improvement of the qualifications of its members in this respect. Only through full cooperation with the patient and the family, which will take into account the emotions and needs, can one negotiate common goals concerning care. Interdisciplinary team members should ensure proper communication in order to ensure the provision of optimal support to the patient and the family.
Spontaneous telomere to telomere fusions occur in unperturbed fission yeast cells

Telomeres protect eukaryotic chromosomes from illegitimate end-to-end fusions. When this function fails, dicentric chromosomes are formed, triggering breakage-fusion-bridge cycles and genome instability. How efficient is this protection mechanism in normal cells is not fully understood. We created a positive selection assay aimed at capturing chromosome-end fusions in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. We placed telomere sequences with a head to head arrangement in an intron of a selectable marker contained on a plasmid. By linearizing the plasmid between the telomere sequences, we generated a stable mini-chromosome that fails to express the reporter gene. Whenever the ends of the mini-chromosome join, the marker gene is reconstituted and fusions are captured by direct selection. Using telomerase mutants, we recovered several fusion events that lacked telomere sequences. The end-joining reaction involved specific homologous subtelomeric sequences capable of forming hairpins, suggestive of ssDNA stabilization prior to fusing. These events occurred via microhomology-mediated end-joining (MMEJ)/single-strand annealing (SSA) repair and also required MRN/Ctp1. Strikingly, we were able to capture spontaneous telomere-to-telomere fusions in unperturbed cells. Similar to disruption of the telomere regulator Taz1/TRF2, end-joining reactions occurred via non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) repair. Thus, telomeres undergo fusions prior to becoming critically short, possibly through transient deprotection. These dysfunction events induce chromosome instability and may underlie early tumourigenesis.
Decoupling and feedback linearization of robots with mixed rigid/elastic joints

We consider the theoretical aspects of the control problem for robots with rigid links which consist of some rigid joints and some non-negligible elastic joints. We start from the reduced model of robots with all elastic joints introduced by Spong, which is linearizable by static feedback (as for the rigid robot model). For the mixed rigid/elastic joints, we give the structural necessary and sufficient conditions for input-output decoupling and full state linearization via static state feedback. These turn out to be very restrictive. However, when a robot fails to satisfy these conditions, we show that a dynamic state feedback always guarantees the same result. This implies that, for the mixed rigid/elastic joint case, the role of dynamic feedback is essential. The explicit forms of the needed nonlinear controllers are provided in terms of the dynamic model elements.