Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechachal: Online Debates and Elections in Ethiopia - From Hate Speech to Engagement in Social Media

Anecdotal evidence suggests social media are used by individuals and groups wanting to incite hatred and violence, yet the empirical evidence we present in this report suggests the these extreme forms of speech are actually marginal. Building on a collaboration between the University of Oxford and Addis Ababa University we examined thousands of comments made by Ethiopians on Facebook during four months around the time of the country’s general election. Hate speech – defined as statements to incite others to discriminate or act against individuals or groups on grounds of their ethnicity, nationality, religion or gender – was found in just 0.7% of overall statements in the representative sample. These findings may have wide implications for the many countries trying to address growing concerns about the role played by social media in promoting radicalisation or violence. Ethiopia represented an exceptional case study because of its distinct languages, which allowed gaining a realistic sample of the overall online debates focused on one country. We analysed Facebook statements made by Ethiopians, both in their homeland and abroad, in the run-up to and just after the general election on 24 May 2015. We found that fans or followers rather than people with any real influence online are mainly responsible for the violent or aggressive speech that appeared on Facebook pages in the sample. These individuals appear to use Facebook to vent their anger against more powerful sections of society. Around 18% of total comments in the sample were written by fans or followers compared with 11% of comments made by highly influential speakers (the owners of web pages). One fifth (21.8%) of hostile comments were grounded in political differences, only slightly higher than the overall average of 21.4% of all conversations containing hostile comments. Religion and ethnicity provoked fewer hostile comments (10% and 14% of overall comments in sample respectively). The findings are based on the analysis of more than 13,000 statements posted on 1,055 Facebook pages between February and June 2015. They mapped Facebook profiles, pages, and groups that had 100 or more followers or likes or members, respectively. All content in the sample studied had to include an Ethiopian language and raise discussion topics about Ethiopia. We focused on popular spaces on Facebook, analysing such pages daily to map ongoing trends, but also included comments on some online random pages or pages capturing particular events, such as a protest or publicised speeches. Posts, status updates and comments were tracked over time.
TIME MANAGEMENT SITUATION ASSESSMENT (TMSA)

TMSA is a concept prototype developed to support NASA Test Directors (NTDs) in schedule execution monitoring during the later stages of a Shuttle countdown. The program detects qualitative and quantitative constraint violations in near real-time. The next version will support incremental rescheduling, and reason over a substantially larger number of scheduled events.
Fast RLS-type algorithm for unbiased equation-error adaptive IIR filtering based on approximate inverse-power iteration

In this paper, a fast approximate inverse-power (AIP) iteration is applied to compute recursively the total least squares (TLS) solution for unbiased equation-error adaptive infinite impulse response (IIR) filtering, which is established by approximating the well-known inverse-power iteration with Galerkin method. The AIP algorithm is based on an interesting modification of the inverse-power iteration in which the first entry of the parameter vector is constrained to the negative one. The distinctive feature of the proposed algorithm lies in its high computational efficiency, which is characterized by efficient computation of the fast gain vector (FGV), adaptation of the interesting modification of the inverse-power iteration, and rank-one update of the augmented correlation matrix. The shift structure of the input data vector is exploited to develop a fast algorithm for computing the gain vector. This FGV algorithm can be implemented at a numerical cost lower than the well-known fast Kalman algorithm. Since the first entry of the parameter vector has been fixed as the negative one and the weight vector is updated along the input data vector, a very efficient AIP algorithm is obtained by using the FGV algorithm. The proposed AIP algorithm is of computational complexity O(L) per iteration. Moreover, with no need to use the well-known matrix-inversion lemma, the AIP algorithm has another attractive feature of numerical stability. The proposed algorithm is shown to have global convergence. Simulation examples are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed AIP algorithm.
An Approach Based on Genetic Algorithms to Solve the Path Planning Problem of Mobile Robot in Static Environment

- In this paper, the concept of traditional genetic algorithm is used in a modified form so as to optimally solve the problem of path planning of a mobile robot where the obstacles are static and predefined. This approach covers various corner of this problem domain and seems to give fruitful results irrespective of the problem setup. This approach is analyzed qualitatively and gives approximately optimal results for most of the critical problem.
Flexibilidad, restricción y reconocimiento de causalidad de la conducta: una interpretación comparativa del concepto de “libertad”

Flexibility, restriction and recognition of the causality of conduct: a comparative interpretation of “liberty” as a concept The concept “liberty” has been revised in great depth by multiple authors from several disciplines. Since the XIX century, the modern evolutionary theory opens its study as an evolutionary capacity and a cognitive process. Its components can be identified in other species by understanding its behavioral or cognitive correlates, as it is often attempted for other complex phenomena (“empathy”, “love”, “intelligence”, and so on) that are similarly based on the interaction of a variety of processes at different levels of organization. Based on empirical evidence, this work analyses the degree by which three necessary components (while probably insufficient) of the de faculty referred to as “liberty” can be found in non-human organisms: (i) the degree of behavioral flexibility; (ii) the capacity for voluntary behaviolar restriction, and (iii) the capacity for recognition of responsibility.
Therapy: location-aware assessment and tasks

In this paper, we present a system that allows therapists to assess and engage patients' in activities triggered by specific stressing contexts. The system is composed by: 1) a web application that the therapist uses to specify the activities and its triggering conditions; and 2) a mobile app that measures physiologic characteristics and challenges the patient to perform the activities according to those conditions. This toolset is part of an extended cognitive behaviour therapy framework. The preliminary evaluation results are encouraging and indicate that the system can be of use and usable for direct application in therapy procedures.
Surface temperature of a magnetized neutron star and interpretation of the ROSAT data. 1: Dipole fields

We model the temperature distribution at the surface of a magnetized neutron star and study the effects on the observed X-ray spectra and light curves. Generalrelativistic effects, i.e., redshift and lensing, are fully taken into account. Atmospheric effects on the emitted spectral flux are not included: we consider only blackbody emission at the local effective temperature. In this first paper we restrict ourselves to dipole fields. General features are studied and compared with the ROSAT data from the pulsars 0833 - 45 (Vela), 0656 + 14, 0630 + 178 (Geminga), and 1055 - 52, the four cases for which there is strong evidence that thermal radiation from the stellar surface is detected. The composite spectra we obtain are not very different from a blackbody spectrum at the star's effective temperature. We conclude that, as far as blackbody spectra are considered, temperature estimates using single-temperature models give results practically identical to our composite models. The change of the (composite blackbody) spectrum with the star's rotational phase is also not very large and may be unobservable inmost cases. Gravitational lensing strongly suppresses the light curve pulsations. If a dipole field is assumed, pulsed fractions comparable to the observed ones can be obtained only with stellar radii larger than those which are predicted by current models of neutron star struture, or with low stellar masses. Moreover, the shapes of the theoretical light curves with dipole fields do not correspond to the observations. The use of magnetic spectra may raise the pulsed fraction sufficiently but will certainly make the discrepancy with the light curve shapes worse: dipole fields are not sufficient to interpret the data. Many neutron star models with a meson condensate or hypersons predict very small radii, and hence very strong lensing, which will require highly nondipolar fields to be able to reproduce the observed pulsed fractions, if possible at all: this may be a new tool to constrain the size of neutron stars. The pulsed fractions obtained in all our models increase with photon energy: the strong decrease observed in Geminga at energies 0.3-0.5 keV is definitely a genuine effect of the magnetic field on the spectrum in contradistinction to the magnetic effects on the surface temperature considered her. Thus, a detailed analysis of thermal emission from the four pulsars we consider will require both complex surface field configurations and the inclusion of magnetic effects in the atmosphere (i.e., on the emitted spectrum).
The Xcpu Cluster Management Framework

This paper describes the organization and implementation of the Xcpu cluster management framework currently in use at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Xcpu is used to start, monitor and control jobs on a variety of remote nodes in a cluster environment. Xcpu can be used for computation both on lightweight nodes with no local storage as well as full-blown installations of various operating systems. It is portable amongst all UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems. Xcpu has been optimized to scale to hundreds and thousands of nodes
Pachydictyols B and C: New Diterpenes from Dictyota dichotoma Hudson

Two new diterpenoids, pachydictyol B (1a/1b) and C (2), were isolated from the dichloromethane extract of the marine brown alga, Dictyota dichotoma, collected from the Red Sea coast of Egypt, along with the known metabolites, pachydictyol A (3a), dictyol E (4), cis-africanan-1α-ol (5a), fucosterol (6), tetrahydrothiophen-1,1-dioxide and poly-β-hydroxybutyric acid. GC-MS analysis of the nonpolar fractions also indicated the presence of β-bourbonene and nonanal, along with three hydrocarbons and five fatty acids or their simple derivatives, respectively. GC-MS analysis of the unsaponifiable algal petroleum ether extract revealed the presence of a further eight compounds, among them 2,2,6,7-tetramethyl-10-oxatricyclo[4.3. 0.1(1,7)]decan-5-one (7), N-(4-bromo-n-butyl)-piperidin-2-one (8) and tert-hexadecanethiol. Structures 1–6 were assigned by 1D and 2D NMR, mass spectra (EI, CI, HREI and HRESI) and by comparison with data from related structures. The crude algal extract was potently active against the breast carcinoma tumor cell line, MCF7 (IC50 = 0.6 µg mL−1); pachydictyol B (1a) and dictyol E (4) showed weak antimicrobial properties, and the other compounds were inactive. Pachydictyols B (1a) and C (2) demonstrated a weak and unselective cytotoxicity against twelve human tumor cell lines with a mean IC50 of >30.0 µM.
Intonation Patterns in Child-Directed Speech: Mother-Father Differences.

WARREN-LEUBECKER, AMYE, and BOHANNON, JOHN NEIL, III. Intonation Patterns in Child-directed Speech: Mother-Father Differences. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1379-1385. 16 mothers and 16 fathers were recorded in dyadic sessions with their children (8 5-years-olds, 8 2-year-olds; half boys, half girls) and with an adult. The noise-free questions and declaratives were analyzed separately by a real-time spectrum analyzer for fundamental frequency (pitch) and frequency range. Analysis revealed that mothers raised their pitch (from adult-addressed levels) equally for both ages of child listeners, but increased their ranges more when speaking to the younger children. Fathers increased their pitch and ranges even more than mothers, when addressing the younger children, but did not differentiate between 5-year-old and adult listeners. In adultaddressed speech, mothers used greater frequency ranges than fathers. These results suggest that both fundamental frequency and frequency range are significantly influenced by sex-role values. Furthermore, the hypothesis that mothers and fathers supply essentially redundant linguistic input to the language learning child was only partially supported.
Weight-Adaptive Interval Neighborhood Graph for Characterizing the Difference in Spatial Relationships Between Objects

The spatial relationships between two objects can be characterized by their interval relationship. The difference in spatial relationships can be determined by using an interval neighborhood graph. In this paper, we propose to adapt the weights in an interval neighborhood graph according to the significance of change in spatial relationships. We apply our proposed approach in the application of Chinese handwriting error detection. A Chinese character consists of many strokes that contain certain spatial relationships between them. By using our proposed weight-adaptive interval neighborhood graph, we can detect more handwriting errors with a higher accuracy
Robot Arena: An augmented reality platform for game development

Nowadays electronic games are of great importance to the economic sector, to computing, and to academic research, and not are limited to entertainment applications only. Augmented reality is one of the new frontiers to be explored in the search for innovation in gameplay and in interactive interfaces of electronic games. This article presents the research, development, and testing of an infrastructure, called Robot Arena, for the development of innovative games using the spatial augmented reality and new interfaces that this technology brings. Based on horizontal interfaces with elements of hardware and software, Robot ARena has a flexible architecture that enables different ways of interaction and visualization. Another aspect planned for this project is the control and communication of robots, which can be used as avatars in games. A Robot ARena prototype was implemented, tested, and used in the development of two game prototypes, FootBot ARena and TanSpace, which bring new challenges to the infrastructure, such as exploration of the influence of virtual objects on real objects and the application of tangible interfaces.
The global burden of selected occupational diseases and injury risks: Methodology and summary.

BACKGROUND Around the globe, work has a heavy impact on health. To better advise policy makers, we assessed the global burden of disease and injury due to selected occupational hazards. This article presents an overview, and describes the methodology employed in the companion studies. METHODS Using the World Health Organization (WHO) Comparative Risk Assessment methodology, we applied relative risk measures to the proportions of the population exposed to selected occupational hazards to estimate attributable fractions, deaths, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Numerous occupational risk factors had to be excluded due to inadequate global data. RESULTS In 2000, the selected risk factors were responsible worldwide for 37% of back pain, 16% of hearing loss, 13% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), 11% of asthma, 8% of injuries, 9% of lung cancer, and 2% of leukemia. These risks at work caused 850,000 deaths worldwide and resulted in the loss of about 24 million years of healthy life. Needlesticks accounted for about 40% of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C infections and 4.4% of HIV infections in health care workers. CONCLUSIONS Exposure to occupational hazards accounts for a significant proportion of the global burden of disease and injury, which could be substantially reduced through application of proven risk prevention strategies.
Distractive or Supportive -- How Warnings in the Head-up Display Affect Drivers' Gaze and Driving Behavior

Urban areas expose drivers to a lot of challenges (e.g., many kinds of distracting stimuli and road users) and critical situations, increasing the probability of driver errors. Therefore the accident rate in urban areas is quite high and driver assistance is needed. As part of the research project UR:BAN, this study investigates the effectiveness of four different types of driver warnings (+ control group), presented in a head-up display (HUD), to support drivers in a very critical urban scenario. The aim of these driver warnings was to alert drivers to a forthcoming pedestrian crossing the ego vehicle's road, eliciting a fast and strong response from the drivers like an emergency brake. The driver warnings varied in their strategy (attention vs. reaction oriented) and specificity (generic vs. specific). In a driving simulation the drivers' gaze and driving behavior were analyzed. A total of sixty drivers were tested in a between-subjects design (27 female, 33 male, M = 23.7 years, SD = 3.7 years). In general, all driver warnings affected the drivers' performance positively. Even though the number of collisions was not reduced, drivers showed a faster and stronger brake reaction when being warned, which nevertheless reduced the collision severity. While all drivers gazed at the safety-critical object, only about half of the drivers showed a HUD glance. When the drivers gazed at the HUD, the positive effect of the driver warnings on the brake reaction time was reduced. Thus, driver warnings which do not have to be fixated in order to be perceived are an interesting perspective for future research. Furthermore, the warning types differed little from each other in their effects on the drivers' performance. However, one warning, which was somewhat more unusual and difficult to understand, was least effective. This shows that a bad design of a warning can negate the potential benefits. Overall, the examined driver warnings can be recommended for very critical situations as they improved the drivers' performance and did not distract them. However, not all driver warnings are equally well suited.
Young adults’ conceptions of ‘good’ citizenship behaviours: a latent class analysis

ABSTRACT Democracies need an active civic society, and early adulthood is a significant period in life for becoming an engaged citizen. The research reported on here categorized young Australians according to their conceptions of good citizenship using latent class analysis. Half of the sample were characterized as either ‘engaged’ or ‘duty-based,’ suggesting that there is more to consider when talking about citizenship norms and value changes, as the other half comprised ‘enthusiastic’ and ‘subject’ citizens. Prior participation was almost unrelated to those citizenship norms. The findings provide implications for an active citizenry, and the discussion addresses limitations and directions for future research.
Feature Selection in k-Median Clustering

An effective method for selecting features in clustering unlabeled data is proposed based on changing the objective function of the standard k-median clustering algorithm. The change consists of perturbing the objective function by a term that drives the medians of each of the k clusters toward the (shifted) global median of zero for the entire dataset. As the perturbation parameter is increased, more and more features are driven automatically toward the global zero median and are eliminated from the problem until one last feature remains. An error curve for unlabeled data clustering as a function of the number of features used gives reducedfeature clustering error relative to the “gold standard” of the full-feature clustering. This clustering error curve parallels a classification error curve based on real data labels. This justifies the utility of the former error curve for unlabeled data as a means of choosing an appropriate number of reduced features in order to achieve a correctness comparable to that obtained by the full set of original features. For example, on the 3-class Wine dataset, clustering with 4 selected input space features is comparable to within 4% to clustering using the original 13 features of the problem.
Oxidized Phospholipids Alter Vascular Connexin Expression, Phosphorylation, and Heterocellular Communication

Objective—In endothelial cells (EC) and vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) from atherosclerotic mice, connexin (Cx) expression becomes distorted. Lipoprotein-derived phospholipid oxidation products (OxPAPC) play a critical role in atherosclerosis, and we hypothesized that they may act as trigger molecules causing the changes in connexin expression. Methods and Results—We applied OxPAPC to murine carotid arteries in vivo and vascular cell cocultures. OxPAPC applied to carotids induced an upregulation of both Cx37 and Cx43 in the VSMC. In EC, Cx43 was upregulated and Cx37 was downregulated, whereas Cx40 in EC remained constant. In the vascular cell coculture, OxPAPC caused similar changes in Cx37 and Cx43 but caused a decrease in Cx40 in EC and an elevation of Cx40 in VSMC. In the coculture model, OxPAPC treatment led to the selective disappearance of Cx40 at the myoendothelial junction. Biocytin dye transfer between EC and VSMC coupling was dramatically reduced by OxPAPC. The decrease in dye transfer after OxPAPC treatment was correlated with an increase in tyrosine 265 phosphorylation of Cx43, especially at the in vitro myoendothelial junction. Conclusions—We conclude that OxPAPC could be responsible for the changes in connexin expression previously reported in atherosclerosis.
Communicative Gestures Benefit Communicators

Gestures are an integral part of speaking. They allow expression of thoughts that are difficult to articulate. They promote fluency of speech. Can gestures also facilitate reasoning, problem solving, and other cognitive processes? In the present task, people assembled an object and then made a video explaining how to assemble, using speech and gesture or gesture alone. A control group merely reassembled. Explainers reassembled the object more accurately than controls, and gesturers more accurately than those who both spoke and gestured. This suggests that teaching is an effective way to learn and that gestures facilitate assembly performance, a finding attributable to the compatibility of gestures and assembly actions. Explainers decomposed the object into parts and exhibited or pointed to them. They broke the action into steps. The critical difference was that gesturers modeled action but speakers modeled structure. Action information is essential for assembly performance.