Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the learnability of discrete distributions

We introduce and investigate a new model of learning probability distributions from independent draws. Our model is inspired by the popular Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) model for learning boolean functions from labeled examples [24], in the sense that we emphasize efficient and approximate learning, and we study the learnability of restricted classes of target distributions. The dist ribut ion classes we examine are often defined by some simple computational mechanism for transforming a truly random string of input bits (which is not visible to the learning algorithm) into the stochastic observation (output) seen by the learning algorithm. In this paper, we concentrate on discrete distributions over {O, I}n. The problem of inferring an approximation to an unknown probability distribution on the basis of independent draws has a long and complex history in the pattern recognition and statistics literature. For instance, the problem of estimating the parameters of a Gaussian density in highdimensional space is one of the most studied statistical problems. Distribution learning problems have often been investigated in the context of unsupervised learning, in which a linear mixture of two or more distributions is generating the observations, and the final goal is not to model the distributions themselves, but to predict from which distribution each observation was drawn. Data clustering methods are a common tool here. There is also a large literature on nonpararnetric density estimation, in which no assumptions are made on the unknown target density. Nearest-neighbor approaches to the unsupervised learning problem often arise in the nonparametric setting. While we obviously cannot do justice to these areas here, the books of Duda and Hart [9] and Vapnik [25] provide excellent overviews and introductions to the pattern recognition work, as well as many pointers for further reading. See also Izenman’s recent survey article [16]. Roughly speaking, our work departs from the traditional statistical and pattern recognition approaches in two ways. First, we place explicit emphasis on the comput ationrd complexity of distribution learning. It seems fair to say that while previous research has provided an excellent understanding of the information-theoretic issues involved in dis-
Sensory Integration and Chronic Schizophrenia: Past, Present and Future

This paper briefly outlines the therapy of sensory integration as developed by Dr. A. Jean Ayres, including a breakdown of the most prevalent types of dysfunction. In an extensive literature review which includes writings from 1811 through to the present day, the symptoms of schizophrenia which may be related to sensory integrative deficit are then examined. Finally, current research and treatment programs which utilize sensory integrative treatment with schizophrenics are reviewed, with emphasis on a program review conducted at Whitby Psychiatric Hospital in Ontario, 1981. Implications for future treatment and research are explored.
Simulation of the Hexapod Robot PTinto Walking on Irregular Surfaces

In this article we present our recent work on the simulation of a hexapod robot called PTinto. This robot is a prototype that has been designed to test the six legs locomotion system in the surrounding areas of the Tinto River (Huelva-Spain), which scientists have considered that could potentially have many similarities to the Mars surface. This kind of robots represents a great advance in the planetary research that overcomes the performance of the usual rover when operating in rocky and cumbersome areas. We are developing some of the software PTinto requires to autonomously control it and, in particular, the program that simulates its movements on any surface. Up to now we have a graphic computer program, developed in MATLAB, that represents the robot and allow us to check its movements in a lot of detail. We present in this paper all the elements and resources we use for the simulation and control of PTinto walking on irregular surfaces. Thanks to this simulation program, we could test different autonomous control strategies for the PTinto robot. (Received in October 2013, accepted in July 2014. This paper was with the authors 3 months for 1 revision.)
Evaluation of Recombinant SAG1, SAG2, and SAG3 Antigens for Serodiagnosis of Toxoplasmosis

Serologic tests are widely accepted for diagnosing Toxoplasma gondii but purification and standardization of antigen needs to be improved. Recently, surface tachyzoite and bradyzoite antigens have become more attractive for this purpose. In this study, diagnostic usefulness of 3 recombinant antigens (SAG1, SAG2, and SAG3) were evaluated, and their efficacy was compared with the available commercial ELISA. The recombinant plasmids were transformed to JM109 strain of Escherichia coli, and the recombinants were expressed and purified. Recombinant SAG1, SAG2, and SAG3 antigens were evaluated using different groups of sera in an ELISA system, and the results were compared to those of a commercial IgG and IgM ELISA kit. The sensitivity and specificity of recombinant surface antigens for detection of anti-Toxoplasma IgG in comparison with commercially available ELISA were as follows: SAG1 (93.6% and 92.9%), SAG2 (100.0% and 89.4%), and SAG3 (95.4% and 91.2%), respectively. A high degree of agreement (96.9%) was observed between recombinant SAG2 and commercial ELISA in terms of detecting IgG anti-Toxoplasma antibodies. P22 had the best performance in detecting anti-Toxoplasma IgM in comparison with the other 2 recombinant antigens. Recombinant SAG1, SAG2, and SAG3 could all be used for diagnosis of IgG-specific antibodies against T. gondii.
Visual search among items of different salience: removal of visual attention mimics a lesion in extrastriate area V4

In more than one respect, visual search for the most salient or the least salient item in a display are different kinds of visual tasks. The present work investigated whether this difference is primarily one of perceptual difficulty, or whether it is more fundamental and relates to visual attention. Display items of different salience were produced by varying either size, contrast, color saturation, or pattern. Perceptual masking was employed and, on average, mask onset was delayed longer in search for the least salient item than in search for the most salient item. As a result, the two types of visual search presented comparable perceptual difficulty, as judged by psychophysical measures of performance, effective stimulus contrast, and stability of decision criterion. To investigate the role of attention in the two types of search, observers attempted to carry out a letter discrimination and a search task concurrently. To discriminate the letters, observers had to direct visual attention at the center of the display and, thus, leave unattended the periphery, which contained target and distractors of the search task. In this situation, visual search for the least salient item was severely impaired while visual search for the most salient item was only moderately affected, demonstrating a fundamental difference with respect to visual attention. A qualitatively identical pattern of results was encountered by Schiller and Lee (1991), who used similar visual search tasks to assess the effect of a lesion in extrastriate area V4 of the macaque.
Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better: Bias Awareness in Forensic Evaluators

ABSTRACT Psychologists and other mental health professionals are frequently called upon by the courts to provide professional opinions on a multitude of psycholegal issues in civil and criminal proceedings. With the expectation for sound, objective opinions and the regularity with which these forensic assessments occur, the crucial role of evaluators is undeniable; however, research has confirmed the presence of bias in some psychological evaluations (Murrie, Boccaccini, Guarnera, & Rufino, 2013; see Neal & Grisso, 2014 for a discussion). Investigations regarding bias awareness reveal that most individuals lack recognition of their own biases in comparison with their perceptions of bias in others—an issue known as the bias blind spot (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002)—but persist in believing introspection to be an effective technique for reducing bias (Neal & Brodsky, 2016; Zapf, Kukucka, Kassin, & Dror, 2017), despite research indicating that introspection is ineffective for reducing bias (Pronin & Kugler, 2007). The current study surveyed a sample of forensic mental health professionals (N = 80) to assess for a “bias blind spot” among forensic evaluators and to explore the effectiveness of an intervention to reduce reliance on introspection as a debiasing technique. There was evidence for a bias blind spot among evaluators and a high level of endorsement for the use of introspection. However, the intervention used to decrease reliance on introspection did not have an effect, indicating the need for additional research on effective strategies for reducing the bias blind spot and educating evaluators about those strategies.
Rho-dependent transcription termination is essential to prevent excessive genome-wide R-loops in Escherichia coli

Two pathways of transcription termination, factor-independent and -dependent, exist in bacteria. The latter pathway operates on nascent transcripts that are not simultaneously translated and requires factors Rho, NusG, and NusA, each of which is essential for viability of WT Escherichia coli. NusG and NusA are also involved in antitermination of transcription at the ribosomal RNA operons, as well as in regulating the rates of transcription elongation of all genes. We have used a bisulfite-sensitivity assay to demonstrate genome-wide increase in the occurrence of RNA-DNA hybrids (R-loops), including from antisense and read-through transcripts, in a nusG missense mutant defective for Rho-dependent termination. Lethality associated with complete deficiency of Rho and NusG (but not NusA) was rescued by ectopic expression of an R-loop-helicase UvsW, especially so on defined growth media. Our results suggest that factor-dependent transcription termination subserves a surveillance function to prevent translation-uncoupled transcription from generating R-loops, which would block replication fork progression and therefore be lethal, and that NusA performs additional essential functions as well in E. coli. Prevention of R-loop–mediated transcription-replication conflicts by cotranscriptional protein engagement of nascent RNA is emerging as a unifying theme among both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
Issues in the design of a scalable shared virtual environment for the Internet

Building a distributed virtual environment that scales to many participants in low bandwidth, high latency networks is a technical challenge. The key issues are maintaining acceptable performance in the face of high latency links, and maintaining consistency of shared world data between multiple participants. The paper describes the overall architecture that enables one to build such a wide area, shared virtual environment targeted to the Internet. The architecture relies on spatial partitioning of the shared scene to reduce communication, replication to hide latency, and group communications to maintain replica consistency. The paper discusses the generic architecture, the key issues that must be solved and then presents two implementations of that architecture and gives performance results from one of those implementations.
Midlife Hypertension and Late-Life Dementia

The negative impact of hypertension on cognitive function was already hinted at in the 1960s in a study on psychomotor speed of air traffic controllers and pilots and has received extensive confirmation during the following decades. Thus, hypertension has been associated with a wide variety of cognitive deficits, including reduced abstract reasoning (executive dysfunction), impaired memory, attention deficit, and slowing of mental processing speed. Indeed, hypertension is a leading cause of vascular cognitive impairment, a term that includes all cognitive deficits attributable to vascular factors. The most extreme case of vascular cognitive impairment is vascular dementia, in which multiple cognitive domains are affected, with a negative impact on the activities of daily living. Increasing evidence also suggests that hypertension is a risk factor for Alzheimer disease (AD), highlighting its participation in all major causes of cognitive impairment. In the past 3 years (2011–2013), several articles published in Hypertension have provided new insight into the link between high blood pressure and dementia. These articles will be briefly discussed, highlighting their contribution to current concepts of pathobiology, prevention, and treatment of the end-organ damage to the brain inflicted by hypertension.
Managing Institutions Differently in the 21st Century for Efficacious Grounds: Making Schooling a Societal Exercise

Abstract The paper reports and discusses how practitioners in institutions aspire for space, variety and independence to be themselves. This is a 21st century phenomenon occurring in public secondary schools. The paper is conceptual and empirical in nature within the qualitative research paradigm. The question guiding the paper is to what extent is the desire to operate independently by practitioners in schools, leads to efficacious schooling? Literature study and interviewing technique were used to collect data. Out of the population of 543 schools across Limpopo Province’s districts, twelve schools were conveniently sampled. Findings reveal a desire by practitioners to be free to articulate their ideas on the management of themselves and their institutions currently and in future. Practitioners aspire to be valued and are susceptible to monotony. The researchers recommend that further studies regarding longing for space, a different leadership style and independence by the 21st century institutional incumbents, be undertaken.
Bounds on the Information Rate of Intersymbol Interference Channels Based on Mismatched Receivers

We consider the problem of bounding the information rate of intersymbol interference channels via simulation-based algorithms. The adopted approach, which is based on a general class of reduced-complexity receivers that includes several previously studied receivers as special cases, leads to provable upper and lower bounds on the information rate of interest. As a by-product of the information-theoretic investigations, novel insights on the design of efficient reduced-complexity receivers are also provided, since the proposed lower bounds are known to be achievable by practical receivers. In many scenarios, our novel approach significantly outperforms the existing ones, for all practical values of the signal-to-noise ratio.
Market Value Maximization through Strategic Delegation

In this paper, we develop a model of strategic delegation in which shareholders maintain an objective of market value maximization (MVM) of the firm's assets as measured by a capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Optimal delegation requires that managers maximize a linear combination of expected profits and firm values. An interesting feature of this model is that optimal delegation contracts of the MVM objective mitigate competition relative to standard price and quantity duopoly outcomes. In the MVM model, the delegation encourages managers to control systematic risk, which leads to greater market coordination, higher profits, and higher stock values. Impacts of degree of product differentiation on delegation under price and quantity competitions are also explored extensively. Our findings show that concerns about identifying the mode of competition are overstated in the literature.
Rigorous analysis of negative refractive index metamaterials using FDTD with embedded lumped elements

A methodology for the time-domain analysis of negative refractive index (NRI) media is proposed in this paper. Based on circuit models of NRI meta-materials and associated planar implementations that have been recently demonstrated, an extended FDTD approach is formulated, combining Maxwell's equations with lumped element voltage-current characteristics. Compared to previous FDTD modelling of NRI materials as negative dispersive index media, the proposed method presents the significant advantage of relying on simple and well-known mesh truncation method and not suffering from instabilities related to the Lorentz model poles. The analysis is accelerated by invoking periodic boundary conditions that allow for the simulation of a single unit cell as opposed to the whole grid. As a time-domain technique, the proposed one allows for the clarification of the transients involved with the evolution of backward waves and negative refraction in NRI meta-materials and the verification of the fact that causality is preserved throughout. Numerical results include validation against finite element analysis and converge studies that indicate the efficiency and computational speed of this method.
Implementing a Cocktail-party Processor via Time-frequency Masking

The ability of human auditory systems to focus on one signal and ignore other signals in an auditory scene where several auditory events are taking place, often referred to as cocktail-party effect, is a key to localization of sound sources. This ability is partly made possible by interaural cues – Interaural Time Differences (ITDs) and Interaural Level Differences (ILDs) – between the input ear signals that assist the estimation of source azimuth angles, and separation of the signal of the desired direction from signals of non-desire directions. In this paper, we investigate simplified techniques to source separation of sound sources based on inter-channel cues. Particular emphasis is put on the selection of time-frequency masks and its effects on the quality of source separation.
Law philosophy analysis: Application of medical instruments for direct reading and influence of the activities of cranial nerve

Application of medical instruments for direct reading and influence of the activities of cranial nerve is a great breakthrough to medical research; its development direction may be use of instruments to input information into brain, convert or control the thinking patterns of brain. Current and future development of such technology will make a great influence on law philosophy or cause a range of positive or negative issues in legislation area or the research of legal rationality or discipline and reform, or event cause our anxiety, thought and response to relevant negative legal issues or crisis.
Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development

PAPER REVIEW INFORMATION All scientific papers submitted to the Journal of Rehabilitation R&D are reviewed by at least three (and usually more) reviewers . These may be members of the Editorial Board, ad hoc reviewers, or from both categories. Results of reviews are communicated to the senior author without disclosing the identities of the reviewers . (Reviewers are not provided with names of the authors or their institutions, etc .) The editorial staff may also make suggestions and offer comments to authors.
Foreign Language Policies and Socio-Economic Development : An EU Perspective

The paper examines the role of foreign language policies in the social and economic development of the European Union. Starting with an analysis of the basic principles and objectives of EU policy on literacy and language-learning, aimed at strengthening the relationships between member countries, it highlights the target areas and outlines the long-term vision of a “knowledge-based”, plurilingual and pluricultural society. In particular, the paper analyzes the socio-economic implications of enhancing the communicative competence of EU citizens, focusing on the contribution of language learning to a lessening of regional disparities. Furthermore, it illustrates the benefits of plurilingualism at a personal and social level and suggests educational approaches and strategies to improve foreign language learning in the public and private sector. Linking the issue of education with language learning is a basic EU principle. It becomes crucial, therefore, to clarify the parameters governing foreign language policies, with a view to increasing mobility and employability in the era of globalization, as well as adopting the appropriate educational methods and actions that can effectively facilitate the implementation of these policies.
Functional implications of long non-coding RNAs in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans

Type-2 diabetes (T2D) is a complex disease characterized by insulin resistance in target tissues and impaired insulin release from pancreatic beta cells. As central tissue of glucose homeostasis, the pancreatic islet continues to be an important focus of research to understand the pathophysiology of the disease. The increased access to human pancreatic islets has resulted in improved knowledge of islet function, and together with advances in RNA sequencing and related technologies, revealed the transcriptional and epigenetic landscape of human islet cells. The discovery of thousands of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) transcripts highly enriched in the pancreatic islet and/or specifically expressed in the beta-cells, points to yet another layer of gene regulation of many hitherto unknown mechanistic principles governing islet cell functions. Here we review fundamental islet physiology and propose functional implications of the lncRNAs in islet development and endocrine cell functions. We also take into account important differences between rodent and human islets in terms of morphology and function, and suggest how species-specific lncRNAs may partly influence gene regulation to define the unique phenotypic identity of an organism and the functions of its constituent cells. The implication of primate-specific lncRNAs will be far-reaching in all aspects of diabetes research, but most importantly in the identification and development of novel targets to improve pancreatic islet cell functions as a therapeutic approach to treat T2D.
What is in our datasets?: describing a structure of datasets

In order to facilitate research based on datasets in empirical software engineering, the meaning of data must be able to be interpreted correctly. Datasets contain measurements that are associated with metrics and entities. In some datasets, it is not always clear which entities have been measured and exactly which metrics have been used. This means that measurements could be misinterpreted. The goal of this study is to determine a useful way to understand what datasets are actually intended to represent. We construct precise definitions of datasets and their potential elements. We develop a metamodel to describe the structure and concepts in a dataset, and the relationships between each concept. We apply the metamodel to a number of existing datasets from the PROMISE repository. We found that of the 70 existing datasets we studied, 61 datasets contained insufficient information to ensure correct interpretation for metrics and entities. Our metamodel can be used to identify such datasets and can be used to evaluate new datasets. It will also form the foundation for a framework to evaluate the quality of datasets.
Secure Key Distribution for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The central focus of this paper is mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and their security. Key distribution is a major challenge in this dynamic type of network. A novel mechanism called Direct Indirect Trust Distribution (DITD) is proposed to secure key distribution for an on-demand ad hoc routing protocol. The solution includes a trust evaluation and representation mechanism. A security evaluation metric is proposed that aggregates trust along a path based on a security metric and the path distance. The proposed solution is implemented on a modified AODV routing protocol, and simulated on the ns2 Network Simulator. Simulations are conducted in order to compare the performance of the AODV and DITD protocols. The simulation results show that the DITD model provides secure key distribution in the presence of adversary black