Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Operation ARIES!: Methods, Mystery, and Mixed Models: Discourse Features Predict Affect in a Serious Game

Operation ARIES! is an Intelligent Tutoring System that is designed to teach scientific methodology in a game-like atmosphere. A fundamental goal of this serious game is to engage students during learning through natural language tutorial conversations. A tight integration of cognition, discourse, motivation, and affect is desired to meet this goal. Forty-six undergraduate students from two separate colleges in Southern California interacted with Operation ARIES! while intermittently answering survey questions that tap specific affective and metacognitive states related to the game-like and instructional qualities of Operation ARIES! After performing a series of data mining explorations, we discovered two trends in the log files of cognitive-discourse events that predicted self-reported affective states. Students reporting positive affect tended to be more verbose during tutorial dialogues with the artificial agents. Conversely, students who reported negative emotions tended to produce lower quality conversational contributions with the agents. These findings support a valence-intensity theory of emotions and also the claim that cognitive-discourse features can predict emotional states over and above other game features embodied in ARIES.
Upright or inverted, entire or exploded: right-hemispheric superiority in face recognition withstands multiple spatial manipulations

Background. The ability to identify faces has been interpreted as a cerebral specialization based on the evolutionary importance of these social stimuli, and a number of studies have shown that this function is mainly lateralized in the right hemisphere. The aim of this study was to assess the right-hemispheric specialization in face recognition in unfamiliar circumstances. Methods. Using a divided visual field paradigm, we investigated hemispheric asymmetries in the matching of two subsequent faces, using two types of transformation hindering identity recognition, namely upside-down rotation and spatial “explosion” (female and male faces were fractured into parts so that their mutual spatial relations were left intact), as well as their combination. Results. We confirmed the right-hemispheric superiority in face processing. Moreover, we found a decrease of the identity recognition for more extreme “levels of explosion” and for faces presented upside-down (either as sample or target stimuli) than for faces presented upright, as well as an advantage in the matching of female compared to male faces. Discussion. We conclude that the right-hemispheric superiority for face processing is not an epiphenomenon of our expertise, because we are not often exposed to inverted and “exploded” faces, but rather a robust hemispheric lateralization. We speculate that these results could be attributable to the prevalence of right-handedness in humans and/or to early biases in social interactions.
Borderlines between Sarcopenia and Mild Late-Onset Muscle Disease

Numerous natural or disease-related alterations occur in different tissues of the body with advancing age. Sarcopenia is defined as age-related decrease of muscle mass and strength beginning in mid-adulthood and accelerating in people older than 60 years. Pathophysiology of sarcopenia involves both neural and muscle dependent mechanisms and is enhanced by multiple factors. Aged muscles show loss in fiber number, fiber atrophy, and gradual increase in the number of ragged red fibers and cytochrome c oxidase-negative fibers. Generalized loss of muscle tissue and increased amount of intramuscular fat are seen on muscle imaging. However, the degree of these changes varies greatly between individuals, and the distinction between normal age-related weakening of muscle strength and clinically significant muscle disease is not always obvious. Because some of the genetic myopathies can present at a very old age and be mild in severity, the correct diagnosis is easily missed. We highlight this difficult borderline zone between sarcopenia and muscle disease by two examples: LGMD1D and myotonic dystrophy type 2. Muscle magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a useful tool to help differentiate myopathies from sarcopenia and to reach the correct diagnosis also in the elderly.
Investigating the Use of pMatlab to Solve the Poisson Equation on the Cluster maya

Many physical phenomena can be described by partial dierential equations which can be discretized to form systems of linear equations. We apply the nite dierence method to the Poisson equation with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions, which yields a system of linear equations with a large sparse system matrix. We implement pMatlab code which utilizes the conjugate gradient method to solve this system. We do not recommend the use of pMatlab at this time as we nd that it is very limited, its implementation is highly complex and the results are inconsistent.
Fast Nearest-Neighbor Search Algorithms Based on High-Multidimensional Data

Similarity search in multimedia databases requires an efficient support of nearest-neighbor search on a large set of high-dimensional points as a basic operation for query processing. As recent theoretical results show, state of the art approaches to nearest-neighbor search are not efficient in higher dimensions. In our new approach, we therefore pre-compute the result of any nearest-neighbor search which corresponds to a computation of the voronoi cell of each data point. In the second step, we store the voronoi cells in an index structure efficient for high-dimensional data spaces. As a result, nearest neighbor search corresponds to a simple point query on the index structure. Although our technique is based on a precipitation of the solution space, it is dynamic, i.e. it supports insertions of new data points. An extensive experimental evaluation of our tech-unique demonstrates the high efficiency for uniformly distributed as well as real data. We obtained a significant reduction of the search time compared to nearest neighbor search in the X-tree.
Investigation of the Inhibiting Effect of Cerium Ions on the CorrosionBehavior of OC404 Stainless Steel in Sulfuric Acid Medium

The inhibiting effect of Ce ions, introduced in the form of Ce(SO4)2, on the corrosion electrochemical behavior of stainless steel OC404, has been studied in sulfuric acid corrosion medium (0.05 M H2SO4). On the basis of the obtained data on the values of the density of the corrosion current (icorr), evaluated using the dependences E-lgi, both in inhibited and uninhibited corrosion medium, the degree of corrosion protection in the presence of the inhibitor was calculated, as well as the fraction of surface coverage (Q) the electrode surface with inhibitor. These studies were carried out with samples of non-treated thermally steel (SS) and thermally treated steel (SSt.t.). The cathodic reaction of reduction of the oxidative component of the medium Ce was found to be the basic driving force of the conjugated anodic process, leading to a transition of SSt.t. from active into passive state. Thereupon an option is created to form an efficient protective film of phase type on the SSt.t. surface reaching a degree of inhibition efficiency of about 98 %. In order to elucidate the nature of the inhibiting action of cerium ions the influence of the value of the equilibrium oxidation-reduction potential of the Ce/Ce ion pair was investigated as well as that of the exchange current of the oxidation-reduction process upon the processes of passivation of the studied steel. The obtained results give the reason to classify the cerium ions as cathode type of inhibitor having oxidative action.
Polymorphisms in Telomere Maintenance Genes and Risk of Lung Cancer

This study was conducted to comprehensively evaluate the associations between polymorphisms in telomere maintenance genes (TERT, TRF1, TNKS1, TRF2, RAP1, and POT1) and lung cancer risk. We captured 35 polymorphisms in the genes and determined their frequencies in 27 healthy Koreans. Ten haplotype-tagging polymorphisms were examined in a case-control study that consisted of 720 lung cancer patients and 720 healthy controls. The TERT rs2735940 g.C > T and rs2736098 g.G > A, and TNKS1 rs6985140 g.A > G were significantly associated with the risk of lung cancer. In the haplotype analysis, the TERT rs2735940T/rs2736098A haplotype (ht4) was associated with a significantly increased risk of lung cancer compared with the rs2735940C/rs2736098G haplotype (adjusted odds ratio, 1.26; 95% confidence interval, 1.07-1.50; P = 0.008). When the TERT ht4 and TNKS1 rs6985140G as risk alleles, the risk of lung cancer increased in a dose-dependent manner as the number of risk alleles increased (Ptrend < 0.001). Subjects with two to four risk alleles were at a significantly increased risk of lung cancer (adjusted odds ratio, 1.67; 95% confidence interval, 1.23-2.27; P = 0.001) compared with subjects with zero risk allele. These findings suggest that genetic variants in the TERT and TNKS1 genes contribute to genetic susceptibility to lung cancer. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(10):2773–81)
The End of Prejudice : An Experimental Study of Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation

This paper develops and tests a new model explaining under what conditions people from different ethnic groups cooperate and under what conditions they discriminate against an outgroup. It also uncovers what may be the true causal mechanism underlying the famous contact hypothesis. 402 subjects sampled from the slums of Mumbai, India, participated in a randomized experiment that tested the theory. The experiment showed that (1) people cooperate if they believe that their partner will reciprocate their cooperative behavior; (2) people use their partner's ethnicity as an information shortcut to predict how likely reciprocity is; and, most importantly, (3) observation of individuals' real behavior can change the stereotypical beliefs about groups. Once expectations of reciprocity were successfully manipulated, ethnically heterogeneous groups produced as much – or as little – public goods as the homogenous ones. The experiment demonstrated that it is in fact fairly easy to rationally update deep-rooted stereotypes of outgroups even by a short social interaction. Information updating led not only to more cooperation in public goods games, but also to a radical change in self-reported discriminatory attitudes towards the outgroup as a whole. For example, the number of Hindus who would never accept a Muslim as a neighbor dropped by 56%. Practical implications of the study can guide us in designing better institutions to prevent conflict and increase public goods provision in multiethnic societies. * This project was supported by a Columbia University GSAS International Traveling Fellowship. It greatly benefited from critical comments and suggestions made by Jack Snyder, Donald Green, Macartan Humphreys, and Neelanjan Sircar. I would like also to thank R.N. Sharma for his guidance during my field research in India and to my two tireless research assistants, Aditya Padwal and Priyesh Gohil, for being willing to work with me 12 hours a day. Other people that I am indebted to are (in an alphabetic order): Rikhil Bhavnani, Banasmita Bora, Rachel Brule, Jennifer Bussell, Basudeb Chaudhuri, Guy Grossman, Francesca R. Jensenius, Paul Kenny, Satendra Kumar, Alexander Lee, Sudha Mohan, Poulami Roychowdhury, Mark Schneider, Abdul Shaban, Vasundhara Sirnate, Divya Vaid, Gilles Verniers, Marie-Hélene Zerah. Finally, I also owe my thanks to the Columbia Global Center South Asia that hosted me during my research stay in Mumbai.
Intelligent Contracting Agents Language

This paper presents ongoing work in the definition of a contracting language, which can be used not only to specify agreed behaviour in service-oriented architectures but also for agentmediated systems. The contract clauses are based in deontic notions such as obligations, permissions and prohibitions. The language not only covers the contract document itself but several layers of communication, including the messages and the protocols for contract handling. An example of usage is presented.
One-shot achievability via fidelity

This paper provides a universal framework for establishing one-shot achievability results for coordination and secrecy problems. The framework is built on our previous framework [Yassaee et al. 13] for proving one-shot achievability results in the context of source and channel coding problems. In the coordination and secrecy problems, one needs to compare an induced distribution by encoding/decoding with an ideal distribution (satisfying some desirable properties) using a suitable criterion. In this paper, we use fidelity as a criterion for measuring the closeness of induced distribution with the ideal distribution. The framework exploits the stochastic mutual information coders at the encoders and decoders and uses Jensen's inequality to find a lower bound on the expected fidelity. Moreover, the framework employs Cauchy-Schwarz inequality to simplify the relations prior to applying Jensen's inequality. We illustrate the framework via channel synthesis problem and wiretap channel. Furthermore, a novel one-shot generalization of multivariate covering lemma and soft covering lemma (cf. Cuff'13) is established.
Diagnosis of rotor asymmetries in wound rotor induction generators operating under varying load conditions via the Wigner-Ville Distribution

Fault diagnosis in wind generators is drawing increasing attention among the scientific community and maintenance companies, due to the crucial contribution of this renewable power source in the electric power generation map. These machines usually operate through variable load regimes, a fact that makes the application of most conventional diagnostic techniques not suitable, since they are adapted to analysis of stationary quantities. In this context, the application of modern transient-based methodologies becomes very appropriate. In this paper, a technique based on the application of Wigner-Ville Distribution is proposed to diagnose and quantify rotor asymmetries in induction generators. It relies on the Wigner-Ville analysis of the current produced by these machines while operating under speed varying conditions and on the further tracking of the characteristic evolutions of fault-related components in the resulting time-frequency maps. Preliminary experimental results show the validity of the approach as well as its potential to diagnose this type of failures in wind generators.
A 10 Gb/s Wide-Band Current-Mode Logic I/O Interface for High-Speed Interconnect in 0.18&#956;m CMOS Technology

A low power, area-efficient 10 Gb/s wide-band current-mode logic (CML) I/O interface for high-speed interconnect is presented in this paper. This interface consists of input equalizer, limiting amplifier, CML buffer and output voltage-peaking circuit. Several wide-band techniques for this work are adopted to broaden the bandwidth and realize the circuit in 10Gb/s operation. The techniques include PMOS active load inductive-peaking, active feedback and Cherry-Hooper topology. These techniques can reduce 80% of the circuit area compared to the circuit area with on-chip inductors. The integration of the input equalizer and output voltage-peaking is also verified in this paper to provide robust I/O interface for high-speed interconnect and compensate transmission signal attenuation in the backplane. This work has been implemented in a 0. 18μm CMOS technology. The total power consumption of the I/O interface is only 70mW. The area of input and output interface are 0.02mm2and 0.008mm2. The input interface can operate at 10Gb/s with 40dB input dynamic range and 4mV input sensitivity.
Some improvements to the spherical collapse model

I study the joint effect of dynamical friction, tidal torques and cosmological constant on clusters of galaxies formation. I show that within high-density environments, such as rich clusters of galaxies, both dynamical friction and tidal torques slows down the collapse of low- ν peaks producing an observable variation in the time of collapse of the perturbation and, as a consequence, a reduction in the mass bound to the collapsed perturbation. Moreover, the delay of the collapse produces a tendency for less dense regions to accrete less mass, with respect to a classical spherical model, inducing a biasing of over-dense regions toward higher mass. I show how the threshold of collapse is modified if dynamical friction, tidal torques and a non-zero cosmological constant are taken into account and I use the Extended Press Schecter (EPS) approach to calculate the effects on the mass function. Then, I compare the numerical mass function given in Reed et al. (2003) with the theoretical mass function obtained in the present paper. I show that the barrier obtained in the present paper gives rise to a better description of the mass function evolution with respect to other previous models (Sheth & Tormen 1999, MNRAS, 308, 119 (hereafter ST); Sheth & Tormen 2002, MNRAS, 329, 61 (hereafter ST1)).
A Schedulability Compatible Multiprocessor Resource Sharing Protocol -- MrsP

Lock-based resource sharing protocols for single processor systems are well understood and supported in programming languages and in Real-Time Operating Systems. In contrast, multiprocessor resource sharing protocols are less well developed with no agreed best practice. In this paper we propose a new multiprocessor variant of a protocol based on the single processor priority ceiling protocol. The distinctive nature of the new protocol is that tasks waiting to gain access to a resource must service the resource on behalf of other tasks that are waiting for the same resource (but have been preempted). The form of the protocol is motivated by the desire to link the protocol with effective schedulability analysis. The protocol is general purpose, but is developed in this paper for partitioned fixed priority systems with the sporadic task model. Two methods of supporting the protocol are described, as is a prototype `proof of concept' implementation for one of these schemes.
Land rental markets, investment and productivity under customary land tenure systems in Malawi

It is widely accepted that secure tenure on land induces investment. However, research in sub-Saharan African has also found high levels of investment by insecure tenure households. This study investigates under what circumstances insecure households have high investment incentives in tree planting. Data are taken from Malawi, where we find both matrilineal and patrilineal land inheritance systems. Under these systems, a household can reside in either a patrilocal, a matrilocal, or a neolocal location. Patrilocal residence households are more tenure secure than matrilocal and neolocal residence households. A random-effects instrumental-variable probit model (IVP) and a two-stage conditional maximum-likelihood model (2SCMLE) controlling for the endogeneity of tenure security were used to predict the probability and intensity of tree planting in the three residence locations. The probability of investing in trees is high in patrilocal residences and neolocal residences, but low in matrilocal residences. Although neolocal residents are insecure, they increase their tenure security with investment, while matrilocal residents do not have the ability to change their security. Therefore, it can be concluded that insecure households have higher investment incentives when they can increase their security with those investments.
GPU-accelerated Adaptively Sampled Distance Fields

Adaptively Sampled Distance Fields (ADFs) are volumetric shape representations that support a broad range of applications in the areas of computer graphics, computer vision and physics. ADFs are especially beneficial for representing shapes with features at very diverse scales. In this paper, we propose a strategy to represent and reconstruct ADFs on modern graphics hardware (GPUs). We employ a 3D hashing scheme to store the underlying data structure and try to balance the tradeoff between memory requirements and reconstruction efficiency. To render ADFs on GPU, we use a general-purpose ray-casting technique based on sphere tracing, which guarantees the reconstruction of fine details. We also present a way to overcome the Cl discontinuities inherent to ADFs and efficiently reconstruct smooth surface normals across cell boundaries. The effectiveness of our proposal is demonstrated for isosurface rendering and morphing.
Incorporating sustainability into tourism policy: A strategic agenda for Spain

Recent literature recognises that sustainability, as well as a shifting approach to responsibility in tourism production and consumption, may be a differentiator in the positioning of destinations in tourism markets, especially in the most demanding ones. Likewise, it is acknowledged that it will be difficult to make progress in tourism sustainability without a direct, clear and resolute involvement of policymakers in destinations management. Therefore, the incorporation of the paradigm of sustainability in tourism policy is a key issue. This paper proposes a methodology for incorporating sustainability into tourism policy. Using qualitative analysis techniques (Delphi and focus group), an assessment is carried out, leading to the subsequent design of a strategic agenda for incorporating sustainability into Spanish tourism policy. Spain has been chosen as one of the world’s top tourism destinations, which is also currently undergoing a restructuring process of its tourism model, too dependent on coastal tourism, which is considered exhausted, obsolete and lacking in competitiveness.
Incorporating robustness into web ranking evaluation

In many Web search engines, a ranking function is selected for deployment mainly by comparing the relevance measurements over candidates. Due to the dynamical nature of the Web, the ranking features and the query and URL distribution on which the ranking functions are built, may change dramatically over time. The actual relevance of the function may degrade, and thus the previous function selection conclusions become invalid. In this work we suggest to select Web ranking functions according to both their relevance and robustness to the changes that may lead to relevance degradation over time. We argue that the ranking robustness can be effectively measured by taking into account the ranking score distribution across search results. We then propose two alternatives to the NDCG metric that both incorporate ranking robustness into ranking function evaluation and selection. A machine learning approach is developed to learn the parameters that control the metric sensitivity to score turbulence, from human-judged preference data.