Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inferential Complexity Control for Model-Based Abduction

We describe a technique for speeding up inference for model-based abduction tasks that trades off inference time and/or space for the fraction of queries correctly answered. We compile a knowledge base (for which inference may be intractable) into a set of rules that cover the most likely queries using simple criteria that do not entail extensive knowledge engineering effort, such as subset-minimal or most probable query-responses. We demonstrate this approach on the abduction task of model-based diagnosis, and show that this approach can predictably produce order-of-magnitude reductions in time and memory requirements for abductive tasks in which the queries have skewed distributions; for example, in diagnosis the faults are skewed towards being highly unlikely.
On Warranted Inference in Possibilistic Defeasible Logic Programming

Possibilistic Defeasible Logic Programming (P-DeLP) is a logic programming language which combines features from argumentation theory and logic programming, incorporating as well the treatment of possibilistic uncertainty and fuzzy knowledge at object-language level. Defeasible argumentation in general and P-DeLP in particular provide a way of modelling non-monotonic inference. From a logical viewpoint, capturing defeasible inference relationships for modelling argument and warrant is particularly important, as well as the study of their logical properties. This paper analyzes a non-monotonic operator for P-DeLP which models the expansion of a given program P by adding new weighed facts associated with warranted literals. Different logical properties are studied and contrasted with a traditional SLD-based Horn logic, providing useful comparison criteria that can be extended and applied to other argumentation frameworks.
Putting Text in Context: How to Estimate Better Left-Right Positions by Scaling Party Manifesto Data∗

Abstract Hand-coded party manifestos have formed the largest source of comparative, over-time data for estimating party policy positions and emphases, based on the fundamental assumption that left-right ideological positions can be measured by comparing the relative emphasis of predefined policy categories. We critically challenge this approach by showing that left-right ideology can be better measured from specific policy emphasis using an inductive approach, and by demonstrating that there is no single a priori definition of left-right policy that outperforms the inductive approach across contexts. To estimate party positions, we apply a Bayesian measurement model to category counts from coded party manifestos, treating treating the categories as “items” and policy positions as a latent variable. This approach also produces direct estimates of how each policy category relates to left-right ideology, without having to decide these relationships in advance based on political theory, exploratory analysis, or guesswork. We also demonstrate that the IRT approach can work even when the items are not specifically designed to measure ideological positions. A big advantage of our framework lies in its flexibility: here, we specifically show how two infer policy positions in two dimensions , but there are numerous extensions for future research, such as examining coder effects or adding covariates to predict the model parameters.
A Reducing Multi-Noise Contrast Enhancement Algorithm for Infrared Image

A kind of infrared image contrast enhancement algorithm based on discrete stationary wavelet transform (DSWT) and nonlinear gain operator is proposed. Having implemented DSWT to an infrared image, de-noising is done by the method proposed in the high frequency sub-bands which are in the better resolution levels and enhancement is implemented by combining de-noising method with incomplete Beta transform (IBT) in the high frequency sub-bands which are the worse resolution levels. According to experimental results, the new algorithm can reduce effectively the correlative noise (1/f noise), additive Gauss white noise (AGWN) and multiplied noise (MN) in the infrared image while it also enhances the contrast of infrared image well. In visual quality, the algorithm is better than the traditional unshaped mask method (USM), histogram equalization method (HIS)
A combination of differentiation and consolidation theory and risk-benefit analysis to examine decisions on mastitis prevention

Abstract Mastitis infections cause severe pain in dairy cows and are the most costly illness to farmers. This study combined differentiation and consolidation (Diff-Con) theory with risk-benefit analysis to explore how risky decisions are perceived and justified after a decision has been taken. More specifically, using survey data from 428 Swedish dairy farmers, their decisions about adopting preventive measures to control mastitis (mastitis control options, MCO) in dairy herds were examined. The analyses included group comparisons with non-parametric rank tests and use of both ordinary least squared regression and seemingly unrelated regression analysis to examine how prior adoption of MCO affects farmers’ attitudes to the MCO. The results showed that MCOs already adopted were rated higher in perceived riskiness (if not implemented) and in expected benefit (for illness prevention) than non-adopted MCOs. Having made the decision to implement a strategy increased the likelihood of that decision being perceived as more beneficial (reducing mastitis) and risky (in terms of disease increase if not implemented), irrespective of the combination of strategies used on the farm, during the post-consolidation stage. No difference in perceived illness prevalence could explain the farmers’ rating of the MCOs. These findings suggest that there may be a path dependency in farmers’ decision-making with respect to MCO. This implies that novel MCOs may have difficulty in achieving wider implementation. These results have implications for the development of strategies to communicate best practices for use of MCOs and for new research on MCOs and farmers’ decision-making.
How Exhausting is Exhaustive Search

It is widely agreed that 56-bit keys, as offered by the DES standard [5], offer marginal protection against a committed adversary. Indeed, theoretical studies have been performed showing that it is possible to build a specialized “DES cracker” computer that could crack keys in mere hours by exhaustive search [9]. However, it is unknown whether any such machine has been built, and DES is still very widely used, in part because of its continued resistance to sophisticated cryptanalytic attacks.
SYSTEMIC MARKEDNESS AND PHONETIC DETAIL IN PHONOLOGY

0. Introduction In Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein 1989, 1990, et seq.), the grammar is assumed to operate on articulatory gestures, which are dynamically defined along both spatial and temporal dimensions and produce a constriction in the vocal tract. Bybee (2001) argues that a gestural analysis provides more insightful and coherent descriptions of most phonological phenomena than does an analysis based on features and segments. Many alternations that have previously been explained in discrete, phonological terms can be analyzed in terms of gestural overlap and/or reduction in casual speech. However, the status of gestural representations in the synchronic grammar remains controversial. Should gestures be phonological primitives as well as units of articulation, or is Articulatory Phonology better viewed as a model of phonetic implementation? If gestures are primitives, should they supplant segments or coexist with them? Should the temporal coordination of gestures be specified in underlying representation, or should it be determined by the grammar? This paper presents a case study of external sandhi in Spanish that bears directly upon these questions. Spanish has a contrast between a tap [R] and trill [r] between vocoids within the morpheme, which is neutralized in coda position. In the northern Peninsular Spanish varieties spoken in the Cantabrian province around Los Montes de Pas and Tudanca, infinitival –r is lost before a consonant-initial clitic pronoun or determiner but surfaces as [R] or [r] in other coda environments, depending on the dialect (Penny 1969, 1978). While [R] + consonant clusters exhibit an intrusive vowel between the two consonants,
Serendipitous Isolation of Non-Vibrio Bacterial Strains Carrying the Cholera Toxin Gene from Environmental Waters in Indonesia

We initially attempted to isolate a Vibrio cholerae O1 El Tor biotype that carries a novel variant of the cholera toxin gene (ctxAB) from environmental waters of Indonesia, where the seventh cholera pandemic by V. cholerae O1 El Tor biotype began. Nested PCR targeting the gene revealed that a total of eight strains were found to carry ctxAB. However, sequencing of the 16S rRNA genes of these isolates showed they were not V. cholerae but were either Klebsiella, Enterobacter, Pantoea, or Aeromonas. Subsequent nested PCR assays targeting all genes known to be encoded on the CTX phage (i.e., zot, ace, orfU, cep, rstB, rstA, and rstR) showed that one isolate belonged to the Enterobacter genus carried all the genes tested, while the other isolates lacked either 2, 3, or 5 of the genes. This evidence suggests that phages with ctxAB are genetically diverse and can infect not only V. cholerae and V. mimicus but also other species and genera in the form of a pseudolysogen.
Microbial pathways in colonic sulfur metabolism and links with health and disease

Sulfur is both crucial to life and a potential threat to health. While colonic sulfur metabolism mediated by eukaryotic cells is relatively well studied, much less is known about sulfur metabolism within gastrointestinal microbes. Sulfated compounds in the colon are either of inorganic (e.g., sulfates, sulfites) or organic (e.g., dietary amino acids and host mucins) origin. The most extensively studied of the microbes involved in colonic sulfur metabolism are the sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB), which are common colonic inhabitants. Many other microbial pathways are likely to shape colonic sulfur metabolism as well as the composition and availability of sulfated compounds, and these interactions need to be examined in more detail. Hydrogen sulfide is the sulfur derivative that has attracted the most attention in the context of colonic health, and the extent to which it is detrimental or beneficial remains in debate. Several lines of evidence point to SRB or exogenous hydrogen sulfide as potential players in the etiology of intestinal disorders, inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) and colorectal cancer in particular. Generation of hydrogen sulfide via pathways other than dissimilatory sulfate reduction may be as, or more, important than those involving the SRB. We suggest here that a novel axis of research is to assess the effects of hydrogen sulfide in shaping colonic microbiome structure. Clearly, in-depth characterization of the microbial pathways involved in colonic sulfur metabolism is necessary for a better understanding of its contribution to colonic disorders and development of therapeutic strategies.
CASE REPORT POST STROKE LAUGHTER – A CASE REPORT

Pathological laughing or crying (PLC) were recognized after the occurrence of stroke, with a prevalence of 15% to 18%. There is no apparent triggering stimulus, and is often misdiagnosed as a mood disorder as it is a disorder of emotional expression rather than a primary disturbance of feeling. We reported a case of a 32 year old lady, who presented with giddiness and altered consciousness progressing to fever and neck stiffness, who’s CT showed a massive left cerebellar infarct. No risk factors were identified. Psychiatrically, she developed sudden crying spells after one month and a diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder was made with subsequent commencement of anti-depressants. A week later, she developed continuous inappropriate laughter without the feeling of elation, which was beyond her control. There were no symptoms of mania or psychosis. Keyword: stroke, Post stroke depression, post stroke laughter
Text entry with KeyScretch

KeyScretch is a recently proposed text entry method which makes use of gestures to input frequent word chunks on a menu-augmented soft keyboard. Each gesture is initiated on a key and is driven by the key surrounding menu. In this paper we present the performance of an instance of the method with a 4-items menu, specifically designed for the Italian language. The study shows that the method is easy to learn and significantly outperforms the traditional tapping-based method on the QWERTY layout.
Human age estimation using multi-class SVM

Age estimation from face images has attracted attention because it is expected to have many application fields and growing interest. Human age estimation is very difficult tasks because a person has a different in appearance, which varies along with environment even same age. And also, pose, lighting condition or expression has an effect to estimate human age. Age estimation has challenged due to aforementioned problem even it has various potential application fields. In this paper, age estimation using Gabor feature and support vector machine as a classifier has proposed. Age-specific face images has saved in database, which has captured in real world environment. Age estimation result has applied to interact with sports simulator, which provides specialized information to each person, who wants to get individualized exercise model on sports simulator. We have evaluated age estimation performance on ETRI database, which has constructed during several months in real world environment.
Is SiGe the future of GaAs for RF applications?

With the advent of a manufacturable Silicon Germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology, does Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) have a future in today's high volume high frequency wireless communications marketplace? This paper describes the capabilities of IBM SiGe HBT technology as it compares to GaAs HBT and Field Effect Transistor (FET) technologies for radio frequency (RF) applications. Comparisons are made at the device, single function, and highly integrated RF integrated circuit (RFIC) level for performance and cost.
A reformulation of strain gradient plasticity

A class of phenomenological strain gradient plasticity theories is formulated to accommodate more than one material length parameter. The objective is a generalization of the classical J2 3ow theory of plasticity to account for strain gradient e4ects that emerge in deformation phenomena at the micron scale. A special case involves a single length parameter and is of similar form to that proposed by Aifantis and co-workers. Distinct computational advantages are associated with this class of theories that make them attractive for applications requiring the generation of numerical solutions. The higher-order nature of the theories is emphasized, involving both higher-order stresses and additional boundary conditions. Competing members in the class of theories will be examined in light of experimental data on wire torsion, sheet bending, indentation and other micron scale plasticity phenomena. The data strongly suggest that at least two distinct material length parameters must be introduced in any phenomenological gradient plasticity theory, one parameter characterizing problems for which stretch gradients are dominant and the other relevant to problems when rotation gradients (or shearing gradients) are controlling. Flow and deformation theory versions of the theory are highlighted that can accommodate multiple length parameters. Examination of several basic problems reveals that the new formulations predict quantitatively similar plastic behavior to the theory proposed earlier by the present authors. The new formulations improve on the earlier theory in the manner in which elastic and plastic strains are decomposed and in the representation of behavior in the elastic range. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
How robust is a neural circuit?

Design in engineering begins with the problem of robustness—by what factor should intrinsic capacity exceed normal demand? Here we consider robustness for a neural circuit that crosses the retina from cones to ganglion cells. The circuit's task is to represent the visual scene at many successive stages, each time by modulating a stream of stochastic events: photoisomerizations, then transmitter quanta, then spikes. At early stages, the event rates are high to achieve some critical signal-to-noise ratio and temporal bandwidth, which together set the information rate. Then neural circuits concentrate the information and repackage it, so that nearly the same total information can be represented by modulating far lower event rates. This is important for spiking because of its high metabolic cost. Considering various measurements at the outer and inner retina, we conclude that the “safety factors” are about 2–10, similar to other tissues.
Influenza Virus in a Natural Host, the Mallard: Experimental Infection Data

Wild waterfowl, particularly dabbling ducks such as mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), are considered the main reservoir of low-pathogenic avian influenza viruses (LPAIVs). They carry viruses that may evolve and become highly pathogenic for poultry or zoonotic. Understanding the ecology of LPAIVs in these natural hosts is therefore essential. We assessed the clinical response, viral shedding and antibody production of juvenile mallards after intra-esophageal inoculation of two LPAIV subtypes previously isolated from wild congeners. Six ducks, equipped with data loggers that continually monitored body temperature, heart rate and activity, were successively inoculated with an H7N7 LPAI isolate (day 0), the same H7N7 isolate again (day 21) and an H5N2 LPAI isolate (day 35). After the first H7N7 inoculation, the ducks remained alert with no modification of heart rate or activity. However, body temperature transiently increased in four individuals, suggesting that LPAIV strains may have minor clinical effects on their natural hosts. The excretion patterns observed after both re-inoculations differed strongly from those observed after the primary H7N7 inoculation, suggesting that not only homosubtypic but also heterosubtypic immunity exist. Our study suggests that LPAI infection has minor clinically measurable effects on mallards and that mallard ducks are able to mount immunological responses protective against heterologous infections. Because the transmission dynamics of LPAIVs in wild populations is greatly influenced by individual susceptibility and herd immunity, these findings are of high importance. Our study also shows the relevance of using telemetry to monitor disease in animals.
FIMSIM: A fault injection infrastructure for microarchitectural simulators

Fault injection is a widely used approach for experiment-based dependability evaluation. Injecting faults to microarchitectural simulators is particularly appealing for researchers, since it can be utilized at the early design stage of the processor. As such, it enables a preliminary analysis of the correlation between the criticality of processor-structure level faults and their impact on applications. In this study, we present FIMSIM, a compact fault injection infrastructure for microarchitectural simulators which is capable of injecting transient, permanent, intermittent and multi-bit faults. FIMSIM provides the opportunity to comprehensively evaluate the vulnerability of different microarchitectural structures against different fault models.
Magnetic dynamo due to turbulent helicity fluctuations

Using the large-scale or long-time averaged magnetic field diffusion equation, we show that the inhomogeneous distribution of the turbulent helicity fluctuations (more correctly, the fluctuations of theα-coefficient) gives rise to the large-scale enhancement of the mean magnetic field. This effect occurs even if the mean helicity is absent. This newly reported dynamo mechanism requires the differential rotation of an atmosphere and does not depend on the action of the Coriolis force. The estimations show that the α-coefficients due to helicity fluctuations have the same (or greater) magnitude compared to the usual α-coefficients, related to the action of the Coriolis force. However, this mechanism works in the regions of the convective zone where the inhomogeneity of the fluctuation distribution is most prominent. It is very anisotropic in character and is described by theαij-tensor. The possible effect of this mechanism in the Sun is discussed.
Stability of Amorphous Pharmaceutical Solids: Crystal Growth Mechanisms and Effect of Polymer Additives

We review recent progress toward understanding and enhancing the stability of amorphous pharmaceutical solids against crystallization. As organic liquids are cooled to become glasses, fast modes of crystal growth can emerge. One such growth mode, the glass-to-crystal or GC mode, occurs in the bulk, and another exists at the free surface, both leading to crystal growth much faster than predicted by theories that assume diffusion defines the kinetic barrier of crystallization. These phenomena have received different explanations, and we propose that GC growth is a solid-state transformation enabled by local mobility in glasses and that fast surface crystal growth is facilitated by surface molecular mobility. In the second part, we review recent findings concerning the effect of polymer additives on crystallization in organic glasses. Low-concentration polymer additives can strongly inhibit crystal growth in the bulk of organic glasses, while having weaker effect on surface crystal growth. Ultra-thin polymer coatings can inhibit surface crystallization. Recent work has shown the importance of molecular weight for crystallization inhibitors of organic glasses, besides “direct intermolecular interactions” such as hydrogen bonding. Relative to polyvinylpyrrolidone, the VP dimer is far less effective in inhibiting crystal growth in amorphous nifedipine. Further work is suggested for better understanding of crystallization of amorphous organic solids and the prediction of their stability.
Percepciones de alumnado y profesorado sobre una intervención de mobile learning en Inglés como Lengua Extranjera

Nowadays, the use of mobile technologies is widely extended. As a consequence, over the last few years there has been an increasing interest in including these elements in teaching as well as in highlighting its educational possibilities. However, there is still little research that has studied this aspect in secondary education. Thus, the aim of this study was to know the students’ and teachers’ perceptions of a Mobile Assisted Language Learning intervention. A case study design was used. 18 secondary school students and a teacher participated in the research. Different instruments were used to collect data: (1) teacher’s diary, (2) open-ended question and (c) semi-structured interviews. Atlas.ti 7 software was used to help with data management. All the participants’ answers were analysed via content analysis and constant comparison methods. Data analysis produced six categories: learning, novelty, cooperation, motivation, teaching approach, and friendship. The results showed that the intervention helped students to improve their linguistic competence, their motivation for learning English, to work in teams, and to improve their friendship links with their classmates. Likewise, the approach was considered as novel, far from the traditional approach based on the text book. In conclusion, these results reflect the educational benefits of mobile learning in english as a foreign language in secondary education