Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Personality-targeted design: theory, experimental procedure, and preliminary results

We introduce a framework for personality-targeted design. Much like a medical treatment applied to a person based on his specific genetic profile, we make the case for theory-driven personalized UI design, and argue that it can be more effective than design applied equally to the entire population. In particular, we show that users' conscientiousness levels determine their reactions to UI indicators of critical mass. We created a simulated social recommender system in which participants answer a short personality questionnaire and are subsequently presented with a picture of a pet that purports to be the "best match" for their personality. We then manipulated the UI by providing indicators of the existence and the lack of critical mass. We tested whether the interaction between personality and UI design affects users' participation. The findings validate our hypothesis, showing that manipulation of the critical mass indicators affect high-conscientiousness and low-conscientiousness participants in opposite directions.
The VLT-FLAMES survey of massive stars: wind properties and evolution of hot massive stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud

We have studied the optical spectra of a sample of 28 O- and early B-type stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 22 of which are associated with the young star forming region N11. Our observations sample the central associations of LH9 and LH10, and the surrounding regions. Stellar parameters are determined using an automated fitting method (Mokiem et al. 2005), which combines the stellar atmosphere code fastwind (Puls et al. 2005) with the genetic algorithm based optimisation routine pikaia (Charbonneau 1995). We derive an age of 7.0 ± 1.0 and 3.0 ± 1.0 Myr for LH9 and LH10, respectively. The age difference and relative distance of the associations are consistent with a sequential star formation scenario in which stellar activity in LH9 triggered the formation of LH10. Our sample contains four stars of spectral type O2. From helium and hydrogen line fitting we find the hottest three of these stars to be 49{-}54 kK (compared to 45{-}46 kK for O3 stars). Detailed determination of the helium mass fraction reveals that the masses of helium enriched dwarfs and giants derived in our spectroscopic analysis are systematically lower than those implied by non-rotating evolutionary tracks. We interpret this as evidence for efficient rotationally enhanced mixing leading to the surfacing of primary helium and to an increase of the stellar luminosity. This result is consistent with findings for SMC stars by Mokiem et al. (2006). For bright giants and supergiants no such mass discrepancy is found; these stars therefore appear to follow tracks of modestly or non-rotating objects. The set of programme stars was sufficiently large to establish the mass loss rates of OB stars in this Z Eœ 1/2 Zo environment sufficiently accurate to allow for a quantitative comparison with similar objects in the Galaxy and the SMC. The mass loss properties are found to be intermediate to massive stars in the Galaxy and SMC. Comparing the derived modified wind momenta D_mom as a function of luminosity with predictions for LMC metallicities by Vink et al. (2001) yields good agreement in the entire luminosity range that was investigated, i.e. 5.0 < log L/Lo< 6.1. Appendix A is only available in electronic form at http://www.aanda. org
Maximally improper interference in underlay cognitive radio networks

It is well-known that the use of improper signaling schemes can be beneficial in interference-limited networks. Here we consider an underlay cognitive radio scenario, where a multi-antenna primary user is protected by an interference temperature constraint that ensures a prescribed rate requirement. We study how the interference temperature threshold changes when the interference is constrained to be maximally improper. Since the spatial structure of the impropriety is an additional degree of freedom, we provide the maximum value of the interference threshold that ensures the rate requirement. We illustrate the potential payoffs of improper signaling with some numerical examples, which show that a secondary user can significantly improve its achievable rate with respect to the proper signaling case.
Emerging small-world referral networks in evolutionary labor markets

We model a labor market that includes referral networks using an agent-based simulation. Agents maximize their employment satisfaction by allocating resources to build friendship networks and to adjust search intensity. We use a local selection evolutionary algorithm, which maintains a diverse population of strategies, to study the adaptive graph topologies resulting from the model. The evolved networks display mixtures of regularity and randomness, as in small-world networks. A second characteristic emerges in our model as time progresses: the population loses efficiency due to over competition for job referral contacts in a way similar to social dilemmas such as the tragedy of the commons. Analysis reveals that the loss of global fitness is driven by an increase in individual robustness, which allows agents to live longer by surviving job losses. The behavior of our model suggests predictions for a number of policies.
Survival benefit with erlotinib maintenance therapy in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) according to response to first-line chemotherapy.

BACKGROUND In the placebo-controlled phase III SATURN study, maintenance erlotinib after first-line chemotherapy demonstrated significantly prolonged progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in the overall study population of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). METHODS After four cycles of platinum-based doublet chemotherapy, patients without progressive disease (PD) were randomised to erlotinib (150 mg/day) or placebo until PD or unacceptable toxicity. In this pre-planned analysis, data are assessed according to response to first-line chemotherapy (complete/partial response [CR/PR] or stable disease [SD]). RESULTS Following first-line chemotherapy, 889 non-PD patients were included in the intention-to-treat population (55% SD; 44% CR/PR; <1% unknown response). Erlotinib maintenance therapy significantly prolonged PFS in both the SD (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.68; P < 0.0001) and CR/PR (HR = 0.74; P = 0.0059) groups, while OS was significantly prolonged in the SD group only (HR = 0.72; P = 0.0019). The erlotinib-related OS benefit in the SD group remained significant across subgroups, irrespective of tumour histology and/or EGFR mutation status. The incidence of adverse events was similar in the SD group and the overall population, and erlotinib treatment did not negatively impact quality of life. CONCLUSIONS Patients with advanced NSCLC and SD following first-line platinum-based doublet chemotherapy derive a significant OS benefit from maintenance erlotinib therapy.
Designing for Automatic Affect Inference in Learning Environments

Emotions play a significant role in healthy cognitive functioning; they impact memory, attention, decisionmaking and attitude; and are therefore influential in learning and achievement. Consequently, affective diagnoses constitute an important aspect of human teacher-learner interactions motivating efforts to incorporate skills of affect perception within computer-based learning. This paper provides a discussion of the motivational and methodological issues involved in automatic affect inference in learning technologies. It draws on the recent surge of interest in studying emotions in learning, highlights available techniques for measuring emotions, and surveys recent efforts to automatically measure emotional experience in learning environments. Based on previous studies, six categories of pertinent affect states are identified; the visual modality for affect modelling is selected given the requirements of a viable measurement technique; and a bottom-up analysis approach based on context-relevant data is adopted. Finally, a dynamic emotion inference system that uses state of the art facial feature point tracking technology to encode the spatial and temporal signature of these affect states is described.
Bioinformatics Applications Note Arrayqualitymetrics—a Bioconductor Package for Quality Assessment of Microarray Data

The assessment of data quality is a major concern in microarray analysis. arrayQualityMetrics is a Bioconductor package that provides a report with diagnostic plots for one or two colour microarray data. The quality metrics assess reproducibility, identify apparent outlier arrays and compute measures of signal-to-noise ratio. The tool handles most current microarray technologies and is amenable to use in automated analysis pipelines or for automatic report generation, as well as for use by individuals. The diagnosis of quality remains, in principle, a context-dependent judgement, but our tool provides powerful, automated, objective and comprehensive instruments on which to base a decision. Availability: arrayQualityMetrics is a free and open source package, under LGPL license, available from the Bioconductor project at www.bioconductor. org. A users guide and examples are provided with the package. Some examples of HTML reports generated by arrayQualityMetrics can be found at http://www.microarray-quality.org Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
First Integrals for Problems of Calculus of Variations on Locally Convex Spaces

The fundamental problem of calculus of variations is consid- ered when solutions are difierentiable curves on locally convex spaces. Such problems admit an extension of the Euler-Lagrange equations (Orlov, 2002) for continuously normally difierentiable Lagrangians. Here, we for- mulate a Legendre condition and an extension of the classical theorem of Emmy Noether, thus obtaining flrst integrals for problems of the calculus of variations on locally convex spaces.
Splicing diversity revealed by reduced spliceosomes in C. merolae and other organisms

Pre-mRNA splicing has been considered one of the hallmarks of eukaryotes, yet its diversity is astonishing: the number of substrate introns for splicing ranges from hundreds of thousands in humans to a mere handful in certain parasites. The catalytic machinery that carries out splicing, the spliceosome, is similarly diverse, with over 300 associated proteins in humans to a few tens in other organisms. In this Point of View, we discuss recent work characterizing the reduced spliceosome of the acidophilic red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae, which further highlights the diversity of splicing in that it does not possess the U1 snRNP that is characteristically responsible for 5′ splice site recognition. Comparisons to other organisms with reduced spliceosomes, such as microsporidia, trypanosomes, and Giardia, help to identify the most highly conserved splicing factors, pointing to the essential core of this complex machine. These observations argue for increased exploration of important biochemical processes through study of a wider ranger of organisms.
One-handed Keystroke Biometric Identification Competition

This work presents the results of the One-handed Keystroke Biometric Identification Competition (OhKBIC), an official competition of the 8th IAPR International Conference on Biometrics (ICB). A unique keystroke biometric dataset was collected that includes freely-typed long-text samples from 64 subjects. Samples were collected to simulate normal typing behavior and the severe handicap of only being able to type with one hand. Competition participants designed classification models trained on the normally-typed samples in an attempt to classify an unlabeled dataset that consists of normally-typed and one-handed samples. Participants competed against each other to obtain the highest classification accuracies and submitted classification results through an online system similar to Kaggle. The classification results and top performing strategies are described.
Peer to peer networks : sharing between peers

In this literature survey we look at peer-to-peer networks. We first see how peer-to-peer networks distinguish themselves from the client/server service model. Then we go more into the detail on how searches are done in the two different forms of peer-to-peer networks – Hybrid and Pure peer-to-peer, and look at some experiments with different search algorithms. Another important factor is the amount of network resources used to transfer the data, the overhead involved in maintenance and the cost of searching the peer-to-peer network. At the end we round up with some important security issues with peerto-peer and some solutions to them.
Applying Quasi-Separability to Markovian Process Algebra

Stochastic process algebras have become an accepted part of performance modelling over recent years. Because of the advantages of compositionality and exibility they are increasingly being used to model larger and more complex systems. Therefore tools which support the evaluation of models expressed using stochastic process algebra must be able to utilise the full range of decomposition and solution techniques available. In this paper we study a class of models which do not give rise to a product form solution but can nevertheless be decomposed into their components without loss of generality. We also exemplify the use of the Markovian process algebra PEPA with the spectral expansion technique which enables a class of PEPA models with innnite state space to be solved numerically.
Linear and synchrosqueezed time-frequency representations revisited. Part II: Resolution, reconstruction and concentration

Having reviewed the aspects of the linear and synchrosqueezed time-frequency representations (TFRs) needed for their understanding and correct use in Part I of this review, we now consider three more subtle issues that are nonetheless of crucial importance for effective application of these methods. (i) What effect do the window/wavelet parameters have on the resultant TFR, and how can they most appropriately be chosen? (ii) What are the errors inherent in the two reconstruction methods (direct and ridge) and which of them is the better? (iii) What are the advantages and drawbacks associated with synchrosqueezing? To answer these questions, we perform a detailed numerical and theoretical study of the TFRs under consideration. We consider the relevant estimates in the presence of the complications that arise in practical applications including interference between components, amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, and noise. Taken together, the results provide an in-depth understanding of the issues in question.
The mechanism of increasing outflow facility during washout in the bovine eye.

PURPOSE To investigate the relationship between outflow facility and separation between the inner wall of the aqueous plexus and the juxtacanalicular connective tissue (JCT) during washout in the bovine eye. METHODS Facility was recorded during 3 hours of anterior chamber perfusion at 15 mm Hg in eight pairs of bovine eyes. One eye of each pair was then lowered to 0 mm Hg for 1 hour, whereas the fellow eye was kept at 15 mm Hg. After a brief perfusion at 15 mm Hg, both eyes were perfusion fixed and processed for electron microscopy. Micrographs of the inner wall were analyzed for separation from the JCT. To study the role of cellular adhesion between the inner wall and JCT, 12 additional pairs were perfused with integrin-binding peptide (RGD: Arg-Gly-Asp) or sham control peptide (RGE: Arg-Gly-Glu) at 2 micro M to 2 mM, before IOP was reduced. RESULTS During the first 3 hours, facility increased in both eyes because of "washout. " However, after 1 hour of 0 mm Hg, facility decreased by 13% (P < 0.006), whereas facility increased by 20% (P < 0.001) in the fellow eyes maintained at 15 mm Hg. Two types of separation were observed between the inner wall and JCT: cell-matrix separation between the endothelial cell and basal lamina and matrix-matrix separation between the basal lamina and JCT. A significant positive correlation (P = 0.042) was found between the degree of matrix-matrix separation and the change in outflow facility after 1 hour of 0 mm Hg. Compared with RGE control, RGD had no apparent effect on outflow facility (P > 0.35) or on the change in outflow facility after 1 hour at 0 mm Hg (P > 0.15). CONCLUSIONS The increase in outflow facility that occurs during washout in the bovine eye is reversible and correlates with the degree of separation between the basal lamina of the inner wall endothelium and the JCT. Therefore, adhesions tethering the inner wall to the JCT may be important ultrastructural features involved in the regulation of aqueous humor outflow resistance.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Modelling and New Techniques

Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Technology to be presented with due permission for public examination and debate in Auditorium F1 The supervisor of the work was Professor Toivo Katila; I am grateful for his invaluable support. I also want to thank the instructors, Docent Risto Ilmoniemi and Professor Ferdinando Grandori. During the years 1993−1998, I have worked for 3 years in the group of Ferdinando Grandori, who has given me excellent guidance since I was an undergraduate student. On the other hand, during the BioMag years I have enjoyed greatly the innovative and challenging atmosphere created by Risto Ilmoniemi. Team work made the topic of the thesis both " magnetic " and " stimulating ". Paolo Ravazzani deserves my warmest thanks for many discussions and friendship. I want to thank my co-workers in the TMS project:sor Guglielmo d'Inzeo for reviewing the manuscript of this thesis. I am very grateful for the love and support of my parents Ritva and Leo, my brother Jari and my dear Laura.
DualSync: Taming clock skew variation for synchronization in low-power wireless networks

The low-cost crystal oscillators embedded in wireless sensor nodes are prone to be affected by their working condition, leading to undesired variation of clock skew. To preserve synchronized clocks, nodes have to undergo frequent re-synchronization to cope with the time-varying clock skew, which in turn means excessive energy consumption. In this paper, we propose DualSync, a synchronization approach for low-power wireless networks under dynamic working condition. By utilizing time-stamp exchanges and local measurement of temperature and voltage, DualSync maintains an accurate clock model to closely trace the relationship between clock skew and the influencing factors. We further incorporate an error-driven mechanism to facilitate interplay between Inter-Sync and Self-Sync, so as to preserve high synchronization accuracy while minimizing communication cost. We evaluate the performance of DualSync across various scenarios and compare it with state-of-art approaches. The experimental results illustrate the superior performance of DualSync in terms of both accuracy and energy efficiency.
How a Part of the Brain Might or Might Not Work: A New Hierarchical Model of Object Recognition

The classical model of visual processing in cortex is a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated representations, extending in a natural way the model of simple to complex cells of Hubel and Wiesel. Somewhat surprisingly, little quantitative modeling has been done in the last 15 years to explore the biological feasibility of this class of models to explain higher level visual processing, such as object recognition in cluttered scenes. We describe a new hierarchical model, HMAX, that accounts well for this complex visual task, is consistent with several recent physiological experiments in inferotemporal cortex and makes testable predictions. Key to achieve invariance and robustness to clutter is a MAX-like response function of some model neurons which selects (an approximation to) the maximum activity over all the afferents, with interesting connections to “scanning” operations used in recent computer vision algorithms. We then turn to the question of object recognition in natural (“continuous”) object classes, such as faces, which recent physiological experiments have suggested are represented by a sparse distributed population code. We performed two psychophysical experiments in which subjects were trained to perform subordinate level discrimination in a continuous object class — images of computer-rendered cars — created using a 3D morphing system. By comparing the recognition performance of trained and untrained subjects we could estimate the effects of viewpoint-specific training and infer properties of the object class-specific representation learned as a result of training. We then compared the experimental findings to simulations in HMAX, to investigate the computational properties of a population-based object class representation. We find experimental evidence, supported by modeling results, that training builds a viewpointand class-specific representation that supplements a pre-existing representation with lower shape discriminability but greater viewpoint invariance. Finally, we show how HMAX can be extended in a straightforward fashion to perform object categorization and to support arbitrary class hierarchies. We demonstrate the capability of our scheme, called “Categorical Basis Functions” (CBF), with the example domain of cat/dog categorization, and apply it to study some recent findings in categorical perception. Thesis Supervisor: Tomaso Poggio Title: Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor
MANAGING THE CLIMATE RENT: HOW CAN REGULATORS IMPLEMENT INTERTEMPORALLY EFFICIENT MITIGATION POLICIES?

This paper provides a formal framework to analyze informational and commitment requirements of several intertemporal price and quantity instruments for mitigating global warming. We ask under what conditions and to what extend the regulator can shift the complex and daunting intertemporal optimization of fossil resource use to markets. Mitigation always generates an intertemporal climate rent which reflects the stock‐dependent damages and emerging scarcities of the atmospheric carbon deposit. In order to calculate and to manage this climate rent appropriately, common policy instruments like Pigouvian taxes or emissions trading presume perfect information about resource demand, extraction costs, reserve sizes, and damages for the entire planning horizon. To reduce these informational requirements we develop an alternative policy approach—a state dependent tax rule—that relies only on current observations of cumulative extraction (or atmospheric carbon concentration). Within a cost–benefit analysis, this instrument is capable to shift the complex intertemporal optimization problem completely to the resource sector when resource owners are homogeneous. Under a cost‐effective carbon budget approach, emissions trading with banking and borrowing can also unburden the regulator from solving the intertemporal social planner optimization problem. Additionally, we discuss which instruments can obtain an optimal allocation even if resource owners employ discount rate mark‐ups (i.e., due to imperfect commitment or insecure property rights). While an emissions trading scheme without banking and borrowing is robust against discount rate mark‐ups, resource taxes have to be modified in order to achieve an optimal allocation.