Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Humor and well-being: A little less is quite enough

Abstract Paul McGhee, one of the most influential pioneers in the field of humor research has been engaged for decades in exploring how humor can be used for the maintenance or improvement of well-being in the face of adversity. The present paper reviews recent empirical research corroborating several of his propositions. Undeniably, the benefits of humor can be much greater when one generates his or her own humor compared to just passively consuming humor. The active use of humor can be a potent tool to successfully cope with and appropriately recover from stressful situations, especially if it becomes a habitual response to adverse circumstances. While the ice is thin with regard to any beneficial effects of humor on physical health, it certainly may enhance the quality of life of patients. The paper concludes with the general evaluation that the documented potential of humor for the maintenance of well-being is impressive, thereby rendering exaggerations and insufficiently substantiated claims of additional effects unnecessary. Paul McGhee, one of the most influential pioneers in the field of humor research, as well as of structured humor training, has been insisting for decades that using humor can have many benefits beyond being fun, and many followed his lead. Moreover, he had always taken care to systematically collect relevant empirical, scientific evidence and to expertly evaluate it. Not all of his followers took his lead on this matter.
The relationship between maladaptive appraisals and posttraumatic stress disorder: a meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Cognitive models of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest maladaptive appraisals play a central role in the aetiology of this disorder. The current meta-analysis sought to provide a comprehensive, quantitative examination of the relationship between maladaptive appraisals and PTSD. One-hundred and 35 studies met study inclusion criteria and were subject to random effects meta-analysis. A large effect size was found for the relationship between appraisals and PTSD (r = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.51–0.56, k = 147), albeit with significant heterogeneity. In studies using only the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory or Child Post-traumatic Cognitions Inventory, the effect size remained large (r = 0.56; k = 104). In adults, appraisals about the self had a large effect size (r = 0.61), appraisals about the world had a medium effect size (r = 0.46) and self-blame appraisals had a small effect size (r = 0.28). In child/adolescent studies, large effect sizes were found for both ‘fragile person in a scary world’ and ‘permanent and disturbing change’ appraisals (r = 0.54 and r = 0.60, respectively). The effect size remained large in prospective longitudinal studies up to one year after trauma. There was no moderation effect for civilian vs military populations, questionnaire vs interview measures of PTSD, single vs multiple trauma exposure, or intentional vs unintentional trauma. The main effect size estimate was robust to sensitivity analyses concerning statistics used, study quality and outliers. These findings are consistent with the strong role for maladaptive appraisals in the aetiology of PTSD proposed by cognitive models. In particular, the role of self-appraisals in adults was highlighted. Avenues for future research include more studies in child, multiple trauma and military populations and longer-term follow up studies. HIGHLIGHTS • We examined the strength of the relationship between maladaptive appraisals and symptoms of PTSD in trauma-exposed adult and child populations. • One-hundred and 47 independent effect sizes from 135 studies (N=29,812 participants) were included. • A large effect size was found (r=0.53, 95% CI = 0.51-0.56). • In adults, appraisals about the self were more strongly related to PTSD than appraisals about the world, or self-blame. • Trauma-related appraisals are comparatively under-studied in military populations. • The effect size remained large up to 6 months following trauma and was medium at 12 months.
Study habits, attitudes and academic achievement : comparing Grade 12 learners between two secondary schools

Cognitive factors such as intellectual ability are regarded as predictors of academic success. A myriad of research has examined the role of non-cognitive factors such as study skills, motivation, study habits and attitudes on academic achievement. The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in study habits, attitudes and academic achievement of Grade 12 learners between two schools in Vhembe District, Limpopo Province. The study employed a quantitative cross-sectional design. Simple random sampling was used to select 118 learners in the two schools. Study habits and attitudes of the learners were assessed through the Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA) questionnaire. The learners’ final Matric results were used as a measure of academic achievement. Data were analysed through IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)- version 22.The study found that the academic achievement of learners who obtained higher scores on study habits and attitudes was higher as compared to that of learners who obtained lower scores. The study concluded that appropriate study habits, and positive study attitudes may have a positive impact on academic achievement of learners. However, positive scores on study habits and attitudes were not likely to lead to success in matric examination.
Free-viewpoint scalable multi-view video coding using panoramic mosaic depth maps

In this paper, we propose an efficient scalable multi-view video coding with a novel algorithm to estimate panoramic mosaic depth maps. Multiple view-dependent depth maps are generated by applying a forward depth projection to decoded panoramic mosaic depth maps in the proposed codec. By using the generated depth maps, the proposed scheme not only improves view synthesis prediction performances, but also achieves free-viewpoint scalability and coarse granular SNR scalability. These functionalities will be important to support any kinds of 3D display by a single bitstream and to realize free-viewpoint television. Experiments show that the proposed scheme achieves about 7.4% bitrate reduction relative to the most popular multi-view video coding method and also achieves almost the same efficiency as the conventional scheme which supports neither free-viewpoint scalability nor SNR scalability. Compared to one of the simplest free-viewpoint scalable multi-view coding, up to 16.8% bitrate reduction is achieved by the proposed method.
Maximum mutual information estimation with unlabeled data for phonetic classification

This paper proposes a new training framework for mixed labeled and unlabeled data and evaluates it on the task of binary phonetic classification. Our training objective function combines Maximum Mutual Information (MMI) for labeled data and Maximum Likelihood (ML) for unlabeled data. Through the modified training objective, MMI estimates are smoothed with ML estimates obtained from unlabeled data. On the other hand, our training criterion can also help the existing model adapt to new speech characteristics from unlabeled speech. In our experiments of phonetic classification, there is a consistent reduction of error rate from MLE to MMIE with I-smoothing, and then to MMIE with unlabeled-smoothing. Error rates can be further reduced by transductive-MMIE. We also experimented with the gender-mismatched case, in which the best improvement shows MMIE with unlabeled data has a 9.3% absolute lower error rate than MLE and a 2.35% absolute lower error rate than MMIE with I-smoothing.
De Novo Emergence of Odor Category Representations in the Human Brain

Categorization allows organisms to efficiently extract relevant information from a diverse environment. Because of the multidimensional nature of odor space, this ability is particularly important for the olfactory system. However, categorization relies on experience, and the processes by which the human brain forms categorical representations about new odor percepts are currently unclear. Here we used olfactory psychophysics and multivariate fMRI techniques, in the context of a paired-associates learning task, to examine the emergence of novel odor category representations in the human brain. We found that learning between novel odors and visual category information induces a perceptual reorganization of those odors, in parallel with the emergence of odor category-specific ensemble patterns in perirhinal, orbitofrontal, piriform, and insular cortices. Critically, the learning-induced pattern effects in orbitofrontal and perirhinal cortex predicted the magnitude of categorical learning and perceptual plasticity. The formation of de novo category-specific representations in olfactory and limbic brain regions suggests that such ensemble patterns subserve the development of perceptual classes of information, and imply that these patterns are instrumental to the brain's capacity for odor categorization. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How the human brain assigns novel odors to perceptual classes and categories is poorly understood. We combined an olfactory-visual paired-associates task with multivariate pattern-based fMRI approaches to investigate the de novo formation of odor category representations within the human brain. The identification of emergent odor category codes within the perirhinal, piriform, orbitofrontal, and insular cortices suggests that these regions can integrate multimodal sensory input to shape category-specific olfactory representations for novel odors, and may ultimately play an important role in assembling each individual's semantic knowledge base of the olfactory world.
An Historical Analysis of Monetary Policy Rules

This paper examines several episodes in U.S. monetary history using the framework of an interest rate rule for monetary policy. The main finding is that a monetary policy rule in which the interest rate responds to inflation and real output more aggressively than it did in the 1960s and 1970s, or than during the time of the international gold standard, and more like the late 1980s and 1990s, is a good policy rule. Moreover, if one defines rule, then such mistakes have been associated with either high and prolonged inflation or drawn out periods of low capacity utilization.
Visual diversification of image search results

Due to the reliance on the textual information associated with an image, image search engines on the Web lack the discriminative power to deliver visually diverse search results. The textual descriptions are key to retrieve relevant results for a given user query, but at the same time provide little information about the rich image content. In this paper we investigate three methods for visual diversification of image search results. The methods deploy lightweight clustering techniques in combination with a dynamic weighting function of the visual features, to best capture the discriminative aspects of the resulting set of images that is retrieved. A representative image is selected from each cluster, which together form a diverse result set. Based on a performance evaluation we find that the outcome of the methods closely resembles human perception of diversity, which was established in an extensive clustering experiment carried out by human assessors.
Towards Strong Security in Embedded and Pervasive Systems: Energy and Area Optimized Serial Polynomial Multipliers in GF(2k)

In this paper we discuss a theoretical approach to do early assessment of the area and power consumption of hardware accelerators for elliptic curve cryptography. For evaluation we developed several different one clock multipliers as building block for the final serial multipliers. The former are evaluated concerning their efficiency in comparison to literature and the results of our assessment technique are compared with synthesis results. Since the application areas we are interested in are embedded systems, pervasive computing or wireless sensor networks we investigated serial multipliers in order to achieve reduced area and energy consumption compared to the single clock multipliers. Our evaluation clearly shows that our approach provides good hints to select well suited implementation candidates.
Triggering Risk Factors of the Burnout Syndrome in Ob/Gyn Physicians from a Reference Public University of Brazil

Objective. To identify the risk factors to the development of Burnout Syndrome in Ob/Gyn Brazilian physicians in four dimensions: emotional exhaustion (EE), professional repression (PR), dehumanization (De), and emotional distancing (EmD). Methods. A prospective cross-sectional study was realized with 48 Ob/Gyn physicians (12 lecturers, 12 attending physicians, 12 medical residents, and 12 graduate students) from Department of Obstetrics, São Paulo Federal University (UNIFESP). We used a sociodemographic questionnaire focusing on the activities (administrative, educational, healthcare, and research). We applied a Burnout Syndrome Inventory (BSI) composed of two parts: triggering factors (ISB1) and the Burnout Syndrome (ISB2). The ISB1 is composed of two scales: positive organizational conditions (POC) and negative organizational conditions (NOC). The ISB2 is composed of four scales: EE, PR, De, and EmD. Results. We observed a rate below and above average to POC and NOC, respectively. The dimensions recorded a level above average to EE, an index at the upper limit of the average to De, a median index to EmD, and a median index to PR. Conclusions. The Ob/Gyn physicians are in an area of vulnerability for the development of Burnout Syndrome due to the high level of EE and De, associated with a median index of PR. The high rate of NOC contributes to the triggering of this scenery.
Interactive Trip Planning Using Activity Trajectories

We present an interactive trip planning system called @FINDER which uses an exemplar trajectory query to find the most related top-k spatial-textual trajectories. @FINDER is implemented to support various degrees of user information needs for trip planning. For users with zero knowledge about places to travel, @FINDER provides a heatmap of popular points of interest (POIs) as well as popular activities from a trajectory database. The system helps users quickly explore the places, and helps formulate an exemplar trajectory query, which specifies preferred places to go and activities of interest. Then @FINDER provides efficient query processing of the top-k related spatial-textual trajectories using a new approach to spatial-textual trajectory indexing recently developed at RMIT University. For each of the top-k results found in the form of a set of POIs and activities, @FINDER further computes the optimal route (in term of the travel time) covering all of the POIs, and returns an album to the user. Lastly, users can further interact with @FINDER by adding or deleting POIs/activities in the original exemplar query, and the system will update the results in a timely manner.
Cosmic rays and the magnetic field in the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253 - II. The magnetic field structure

Context. There are several edge-on galaxies with a known magnetic field structure in their halo. A vertical magnetic field significantly enhances the cosmic-ray transport from the disk into the halo. This could explain the existence of the observed radio halos. Aims. We observed NGC 253 that possesses one of the brightest radio halos discovered so far. Since this galaxy is not exactly edge-on ($i=78^\circ$) the disk magnetic field has to be modeled and subtracted from the observations in order to study the magnetic field in the halo. Methods. We used radio continuum polarimetry with the VLA in D-configuration and the Effelsberg 100-m telescope. NGC 253 has a very bright nuclear point-like source, so that we had to correct for instrumental polarization. We used appropriate Effelsberg beam patterns and developed a tailored polarization calibration to cope with the off-axis location of the nucleus in the VLA primary beams. Observations at $\lambda\lambda$6.2 cm and 3.6 cm were combined to calculate the RM distribution and to correct for Faraday rotation. Results. The large-scale magnetic field consists of a disk $(r,\phi)$ and a halo $(r,z)$ component. The disk component can be described as an axisymmetric spiral field pointing inwards with a pitch angle of $25^\circ \pm 5^\circ$ which is symmetric with respect to the plane (even parity). This field dominates in the disk, so that the observed magnetic field orientation is disk parallel at small distances from the midplane. The halo field shows a prominent X-shape centered on the nucleus similar to that of other edge-on galaxies. We propose a model where the halo field lines are along a cone with an opening angle of $90\degr \pm 30\degr$ and are pointing away from the disk in both the northern and southern halo (even parity). We can not exclude that the field points inwards in the northern halo (odd parity). The X-shaped halo field follows the lobes seen in H α and soft X-ray emission. Conclusions. Dynamo action and a disk wind can explain the X-shaped halo field. The nuclear starburst-driven superwind may further amplify and align the halo field by compression of the lobes of the expanding superbubbles. The disk wind is a promising candidate for the origin of the gas in the halo and for the expulsion of small-scale helical fields as requested for efficient dynamo action.
Human leukocyte antigen class II alleles associated with human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I infection and adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma in a Black population.

BACKGROUND Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) is linked to adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) and HTLV-I-associated myelopathy (HAM; also known as tropical spastic paraparesis [TSP]), a chronic neurodegenerative disorder. Worldwide, several million HTLV-I carriers are at risk for disease, with an estimated lifetime cumulative risk of 1%-5%. However, the determinants of disease progression are relatively unknown. We studied human leukocyte antigens (HLA class II) that have been implicated in the pathogenesis of HTLV-I-related diseases. METHODS We analyzed HLA class II alleles among asymptomatic HTLV-I carriers (n = 45), patients with ATL (n = 49) or HAM/TSP (n = 54), and HTLV-I seronegative control subjects (n = 51). All participants were of African descent and were enrolled in epidemiologic studies conducted at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. We used standard microlymphocytotoxicity assays for HLA antigen serotyping and polymerase chain reaction-based methods to examine HLA class II DRB1 and DQB1 alleles. RESULTS Two antigens determined by serotyping, DR15 and DQ1, occurred at significantly increased frequency among HTLV-I carriers compared with seronegative control subjects (42% versus 22% for DR15 [odds ratio [OR] = 2.7; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.0-7.2] and 78% versus 53% for DQ1 [OR = 3.1; 95% CI = 1.2-8.5]). Asymptomatic carriers were shown to have an HLA class II allele distribution similar to that of patients with ATL, and the frequencies of the alleles DRB1*1501, DRB1*1101, and DQB1*0602 were significantly greater in patients with ATL and asymptomatic carriers than in patients with HAM/TSP. In addition, haplotypes DRB1*1101-DQB1*0301 and DRB1*1501-DQB1*0602 were significantly increased among patients with ATL compared with patients with HAM/TSP. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that host genetic background is an important factor in determining whether HTLV-I carriers develop either ATL or HAM/TSP.
Time perception, phonological skills and executive function in children with dyslexia and/or ADHD symptoms

Background Deficits in time perception (the ability to judge the duration of time intervals) have been found in children with both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. This paper investigates time perception, phonological skills and executive functions in children with dyslexia and/or ADHD symptoms (AS). Method Children with dyslexia-only (n = 17), AS-only (n = 17), comorbid dyslexia+AS (n = 25), and typically developing controls (n = 42), matched for age and non-verbal ability, were assessed on measures of phonological skills, executive function and time perception (duration discrimination and time reproduction). Results Children with dyslexia were impaired on measures of phonological skill and duration discrimination compared to children without dyslexia (though problems on duration discrimination appeared to be attributable to mild symptoms of inattention in this group). In contrast, children with AS exhibited impairments on measures of both time perception and executive function compared to children without AS. Children with dyslexia+AS showed an additive combination of the deficits associated with dyslexia-only and AS-only. Conclusions Dyslexia and AS appear to be associated with distinct patterns of cognitive deficit, which are present in combination in children with dyslexia+AS.
Aciom: Application characteristics-aware disk and network I/O management on Android platform

The last several years have seen a rapid increase in smart phone use. Android offers an open-source software platform on smart phones, that includes a Linux-based kernel, Java applications, and middleware. The Android middleware provides system libraries and services to facilitate the development of performance-sensitive or device-specific functionalities, such as screen display, multimedia, and web browsing. Android keeps track of which applications make use of which system services for some pre-defined functionalities, and which application is running in the foreground attracting the user's attention. Such information is valuable in capturing application characteristics and can be useful for resource management tailored to application requirements. However, the Linux-based Android kernel does not utilize such information for I/O resource management. This paper is the first work, to the best of our knowledge, to attempt to understand application characteristics through Android architecture and to incorporate those characteristics into disk and network I/O management. Our proposed approach, Aciom (Application Characteristics-aware I/O Management), requires no modification to applications and characterizes application I/O requests as time-sensitive, bursty, or plain, depending on which system services are involved and which application receives the user's focus. Aciom then provides differentiated I/O management services for different types of I/O requests, supporting minimum bandwidth reservations for time-sensitive requests and placing maximum bandwidth limits on bursty requests. We present the design of Aciom and a prototype implementation on Android. Our experimental results show that Aciom is quite effective in handling disk and network I/O requests in support of time-sensitive applications in the presence of bursty I/O requests.
Governança no Agronegócio Leite no Município de Rolim de Moura-RO: Análise com Base na Teoria de Redes Sociais

Este estudo visa conhecer a governanca no agronegocio leite no Municipio de Rolim de MouraRO a partir de um levantamento parcial dos atores e suas relacoes no contexto deste segmento e foi realizado com auxilio de software para analise de redes sociais UCINET e NETDRAW para levantamento dos indices de centralidade e densidade. Adotou-se o metodo exploratorio descritivo, para a coleta de dados foi realizada entrevista baseada no metodo snowball. A fundamentacao teorica foi baseada nas obras de Wasserman e Faust, Provan e Jones, Hesterly e Borgatti. A teoria de redes sociais se apresenta como parte importante no processo de avaliacao entre atores permitindo que a implementacao do modelo de governanca em redes ocorra de forma que atenda as necessidades gerenciais dos interessados.