Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Architecture and design methodology of the RBF-DDA neural network

This paper presents a novel implementation of the RBF-DDA (Radial Basis Functions-Dynamic Decay Adjustment) neural network. We investigate the architectural design and the hardware implementation. The features of this design are the possibility of mapping the architecture on different standard cells libraries as well as FPGA's, and mainly its modularization. This is an example which reflects the new trend in design methodologies relying on re-use and IP blocks. Indeed, the architecture is implemented using intensively the module generator and macro-blocks concept. The design is thus readily reusable, flexible and upgradable. The architecture is parameterized in terms of the precision of the data processed by the network and in terms of the size of the network itself (number of neurons). The neural network is used in the classification of the image signatures which are extracted from gray-level images using the Gabor-Morlet wavelets and some data compression schemes. The RBF-DDA approach implements the Probabilistic Neural Network model. The activation function is a Gaussian which models the probability distribution of the categories to be differentiated. In the introduction we briefly describe the whole recognition system and we scan rapidly the hardware implementation experiences. The second section discusses the RBF-DDA algorithm and architecture. Then we present the architecture and the VLSI design methodology of the RBF network. Finally, we present some implementation results.
"Look at Me!": Self-Interruptions as Attention Booster?

In this paper we present results of an exploratory experiment investigating the effects of a contingently self-interrupting vs non-self-interrupting virtual agent who transmits information to a human interaction partner. In the experimental condition self-interruptions of the agent were triggered by an external event whereas in the control group the agent did not react to this event. We measured the effect of the agent's self-interruptions on human attention, memory performance and subjective ratings. In this paper we discuss the results with respect to the design of incremental human-agent dialogue modeling.
Cyclic AMP-stimulated chloride fluxes in dialyzed barnacle muscle fibers

Unidirectional chloride efflux and influx were studied in giant barnacle muscle fibers that were internally dialyzed. When cyclic 3'5'- adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) was included in the dialysis fluid, both unidirectional fluxes were stimulated by about the same amount. This stimulation was not associated with measurable changes either in membrane electrical conductance or with net movements of chloride. The stimulation required the trans-side presence of chloride. The stimulated flux was inhibited by the sulfonic acid stilbene derivatives 4-acetamido-4'-isothiocyanostilbene-2',2'-disulfonate (SITS) and 4,4'- diisothiocyanostilbene-2,2'-disulfonate (DIDS) or by furosemide. When cAMP was presented in high concentrations (10-5 M), the effect on chloride fluxes was characterized by a desensitization phenomenon. This desensitization was not the result of an increased amount of phosphodiesterase activity, but may be related to ATP and/or intracellular calcium levels. These results further support the hypothesis that the barnacle sarcolemma possesses a specialized chloride transport mechanism that largely engages in Cl-Cl exchange under conditions of normal intracellular pH.
Rock detection based on 2D maximum entropy thresholding segmentation and ellipse fitting

In order to make lunar lander autonomous safely on the moon, the potential hazard should be detected. Effective detection of rocks will also provide information for choosing a better landing region which is suitable for exploration. The 2D maximum entropy thresholding method is proposed to segment the shade area from the image, and then the ellipse fitting method is used to estimate the sizes and locations of the rocks. The simulation results demonstrate that these methods can effectively detect the rocks in an image.
Urban Children's Living Arrangements and Their Economic Status: New York City, 1993

This study uses survey data for New York City to describe children's detailed living arrangements, to explore the link between children's detailed living arrangements and their economic well-being (and the potential for racial/ethnic differences in this linkage), and to evaluate the relative importance of living arrangements as a predictor in the presence of controls for other correlates of children's economic well-being. Descriptive analyses showed that children's economic well-being generally was better predicted by household headship than by children's kinship ties to the householder, yet certain exceptions underscored the value of examining detailed living arrangements and their economic implications from the perspective of children. In particular, among black and white children in married-couple-headed households, those who were the own children of the householder were better off financially than children who were related to - but not the own child of - the householder, but no such difference existed among similar Hispanic children. While the results, in general, reiterated the conclusions of other studies that living arrangements and children's economic well-being are strongly related, the results of regression models revealed that the characteristics and activities of the adults with whom children live are far more important as determinants of children's economic well-being than are living arrangements. Furthermore, a regression standardization revealed that the householder's human capital characteristics constitute the most important factors underlying racial/ethnic differences in children's well-being. This finding indicates that family structure alone is not responsible for minority children's disproportionate level of economic disadvantage, but that greater emphasis needs to be placed on improving the earning power of the adults with whom black and Hispanic children live, and on providing better jobs and wages for these adults.
The Sensitivity of Ice Cloud Optical and Microphysical Passive Satellite Retrievals to Cloud Geometrical Thickness

Most satellite-based ice cloud retrieval algorithms rely on precomputed lookup libraries for inferring the ice cloud optical thickness (tau) and effective particle size ( De). However, this retrieval methodology does not account for the case where cloud geometrical thickness may vary by several kilometers. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the ice cloud geometrical thickness on the retrieval of tau and De for algorithms using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer infrared (IR) bands at 8.5 and 11 mum (or 12 mum) or solar bands at 0.65 and 1.64 mum (or 2.13 mum). We use a rigorous radiative transfer package to simulate the IR brightness temperatures and solar reflectances, assuming that the ice cloud top height is fixed at 12 or 15 km with a variation of cloud geometrical thickness from 0.5 to 5 km. The simulated brightness temperatures and reflectances are then used to investigate the errors of cloud tau and De inferred from the precomputed lookup tables developed with a specific geometrical thickness. It is found that the retrieval errors in tau and De increase with increasing tau for the IR and solar methods. In both cases, cloud tau and De may be underestimated and overestimated, respectively, if the effect of the cloud geometrical thickness is not taken into account. The effect of the cloud geometrical thickness on the retrieval of cloud optical and microphysical properties is much larger for the IR algorithm than for the solar-band-based algorithm. This paper demonstrates that the inclusion of the information about the cloud geometrical thickness may improve the accuracy of the retrieval of the cloud properties on the basis of the precomputed lookup libraries
Attributional Style, Efficacy, and the Enhancement of Well-Being Among Housebound Older People

This study examines the effects of an intervention that involves the compilation of a book of wartime experiences on a group of housebound older people who live in the community with the support of social services. Using the theoretical framework of the Hopelessness Theory of Depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989), we examine the impact of attributional style (Abramson et al., 1989) and efficacy (Bandura, 1977; Houston, 1995) on changes in psychological well-being following the intervention. Prior to the intervention, participants completed a newly constructed Extended Attributional Style Scale for the Elderly and the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg & Hillier, 1979). Following the intervention there was a significant improvement in psychological well-being across the sample-those with depressogenic styles and low efficacy and those with high efficacy and nondepressogenic styles reported most improvement. The findings indicate that a relatively small-scale intervention can have a significant impact on the well-being of older people living alone in the community.
Storyteller: Visual Analytics of Perspectives on Rich Text Interpretations

Complexity of event data in texts makes it difficult to assess its content, especially when considering larger collections in which different sources report on the same or similar situations. We present a system that makes it possible to visually analyze complex event and emotion data extracted from texts. We show that we can abstract from different data models for events and emotions to a single data model that can show the complex relations in four dimensions. The visualization has been applied to analyze 1) dynamic developments in how people both conceive and express emotions in theater plays and 2) how stories are told from the perspectyive of their sources based on rich event data extracted from news or biographies.
Deciding the Future

This study examines the retirement planfulness of men and women in dual-earner couples using data from the Ecology of Careers Study and structural equation modeling. It assesses whether each spouse plans independently, whether this is a gendered division of labor, whether both spouses' plans mutually influence each other, or whether decision making about retirement is an individual process for each member of a couple. The authors find that spouses' levels of retirement planfulness are positively related but in different ways depending on gender, cohort, and family circumstances. Perceived control (mastery), income adequacy, and workload all predict both husbands' and wives' planfulness. And husbands' planfulness tends to shape their wives' planfulness in the full sample. However, age cohort and family stage both moderate dual-earner couples' decision making about retirement. Younger couples (those in the trailing edge baby boom cohort) make plans independently, and in this younger cohort, only wives' planfulness can be modeled.
Examining the Role of Gender in the Prevalence of Campus Victimization, Perceptions of Fear and Risk of Crime, and the Use of Constrained Behaviors among College Students Attending a Large Urban University

The incidence and the impact of crime on college campuses are important issues for students and administrators alike. This study examines experiences with victimization and perceptions of crime on campus with a convenience sample of 997 students attending an urban university in Colorado. Approximately 8% of the student respondents indicated they had been victimized by at least one type of crime since first enrolling at the university. Respondents indicated low‐to‐moderate levels of fear and perceived risk of victimization on campus and viewed the campus as being moderately safe. Male and female respondents did not significantly differ in victimization rates, although gender differences were found in levels of fear, perceived risk of victimization, constrained behavior, and perceptions of overall safety on campus. The results from this study are compared to findings from the work of Jennings, Gover, and Pudrzynska in 2007, which examined campus crime among students at a traditional university, published in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.
The Stigma against Dying and Suicidal Patients: A Replication of Richard Kalish's Study Twenty-Five Years Later

A study of prejudice directed toward deviant and psychiatric groups as well as toward religious and ethnic groups replicated the results reported by Richard Kalish twenty-five years ago. The deviant and psychiatric groups, including people dying from cancer and who had attempted suicide, were the recipients of more prejudice than the religious and ethnic groups. In addition, it was found that extraversion was associated with less prejudice toward almost all of the groups.
An unfixed-position smartphone-based fall detection scheme

This paper presents a smartphone-based fall detection scheme that allows smarphones to be placed in various positions. The scheme makes no assumption of the placement of the smartphones because it is inconvenient and impractical to ask users to place their smartphones in some designated positions; therefore it does not require the users place their phones in certain fixed positions. It utilizes the built-in three-axis accelerometer in the smartphone and constantly calculates the changes of the three axes and the angels to detect fall events. Unlike other schemes that require the smartphone be placed in certain fixed positions, the proposed scheme can detect fall events when the smartphone is placed in various positions, including pockets and bags, with little misjudgment. The experiment shows the proposed scheme can achieve 91.5% in sensitivity and 97.5% in specificity.
Thirty Years after Helsinki: Proposals for OSCE’s Reform

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has recently released a report dealing with its operational and institutional reforms. Created in 1975 as a loose conference-style organisation, including Western and Eastern European states, it survived the end of the Cold War. It was based on political and moral commitments and was not created by a constitutional treaty. It has developed a wide range of activities based on a wide concept of international security. But its operational and institutional framework still lack solid legal bases. The report under consideration points out some issues that deserve further comment in the context of international security aspects of post-Cold War European cooperation. The legal aspects of the report and their possible implications are the main object of this comment.
Implementation of a Workflow Management System for Non-Expert Users

In the Danish CLARIN-DK infrastructure, chaining language technology (LT) tools into a workflow is easy even for a non-expert user, because she only needs to specify the input and the desired output of the workflow. With this information and the registered input and output profiles of the available tools, the CLARIN-DK workflow management system (WMS) computes combinations of tools that will give the desired result. This advanced functionality was originally not envisaged, but came within reach by writing the WMS partly in Java and partly in a programming language for symbolic computation, Bracmat. Handling LT tool profiles, including the computation of workflows, is easier with Bracmat’s language constructs for tree pattern matching and tree construction than with the language constructs offered by mainstream programming languages.
Regulation of HIV expression by viral genes and cytokines

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the causative agent of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a leading cause of death among young individuals. As a complex pathogenic retrovirus, HIV is characterized in vitro and in vivo by the ability to establish either a latent or productive infection of CD4+ T lymphocytes and mononuclear phagocytes (MPs). Viral latency and expression are under the control of both viral genes and several host‐related factors. Among these latter, several proinflammatory and immunoregulatory cytokines profoundly affect HIV replication in T lymphocytes and MPs in vitro. Because many of these cytokines have been found to be elevated in HIV‐infected individuals, it is likely that they act as regulators of viral expression in vivo. Both viral genes and cytokines regulate transcriptional and posttranscriptional steps in HIV replication. Thus, it is likely that common regulatory pathways between these two distinct classes of regulator molecules will be identified in the near future and will provide potential targets for pharmacologic intervention and treatment of HIV disease. J. Leukoc. Biol. 56: 328–334; 1994.
The htpG gene of Bacillus subtilis belongs to class III heat shock genes and is under negative control

We show that the htpG gene of Bacillus subtilis is induced by heat, as has been reported for the Escherichia coli homolog. Analysis of different mutants revealed that the htpG gene belongs to class III heat shock genes in B. subtilis. An about 10-fold induction after thermal upshock was found at the levels of both transcription and translation, and this induction resulted from enhanced synthesis of mRNA. By primer extension, we identified one potential transcription start site immediately downstream of a putative sigmaA-dependent promoter which became activated after thermal upshift. Northern blot analysis revealed that htpG is part of a monocistronic transcriptional unit. An operon fusion where the complete region between htpG and its upstream gene was fused to the bgaB reporter gene accurately reflected htpG expression. Analysis of this fusion revealed that, in contrast to other class III heat shock genes, htpG was not induced by osmotic upshock, by ethanol, or by oxygen limitation, suggesting that it belongs to a subgroup within class III. Deletion of the region upstream of the putative promoter resulted in an enhanced basal level of htpG expression, but the 10-fold induction was retained, suggesting that the upstream sequences are involved in the regulation of expression in the absence of heat shock.
Impact of radiation dose and iterative reconstruction on pulmonary nodule measurements at chest CT: a phantom study.

PURPOSE We aimed to identify the impact of radiation dose and iterative reconstruction (IR) on measurement of pulmonary nodules by chest computed tomography (CT). METHODS CT scans were performed on a chest phantom containing various nodules (diameters of 3, 5, 8, 10, and 12 mm; +100, -630 and -800 HU for each diameter) at 80, 100, 120 kVp and 10, 20, 50, 100 mAs (a total of 12 radiation dose settings). Each CT was reconstructed using filtered back projection, iDose4, and iterative model reconstruction (IMR). Thereafter, two radiologists measured the diameter and attenuation of the nodules. Noise, contrast-to-noise ratio and signal-to-noise ratio of CT images were also obtained. Influence of radiation dose and reconstruction algorithm on measurement error and objective image quality metrics was analyzed using generalized estimating equations. RESULTS The 80 kVp, 10 mAs CT scan was not feasible for the measurement of 3 mm sized simulated ground-glass nodule (GGN); otherwise, diameter measurement error was not significantly influenced by radiation dose (P > 0.05). IR did not have a significant impact on diameter measurement error for simulated solid nodules (P > 0.05). However, for simulated GGNs, IMR was associated with significantly decreased relative diameter measurement error (P < 0.001). Attenuation measurement error was not significantly influenced by either radiation dose or reconstruction algorithm (P > 0.05). Objective image quality was significantly better with IMR (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION Nodule measurements were not affected by radiation dose except for 3 mm simulated GGN on 80 kVp, 10 mAs dose setting. However, for GGNs, IMR may help reduce diameter measurement error while improving image quality.
A Principal-Agent Approach to the Study of Media Organizations: Toward a Theory of the Media Firm

Media organizations are both political and economic actors They have the ability to influence public opinion voting behavior and government policy At the same time they tend to be motivated primarily by profit maximizing goals Agency theory also called the principal-agent approach has been useful for understanding the behavior of individuals in profit seeking organizations as well as individuals in political organizations such as legislatures and regulatory agencies Applying principles from the agency theory framework to the behav ior of individuals at various hierarchical levels of the mass media firm reveals important variables such as monitoring costs individual motivations and im plicit organizational control mechanisms that may significantly impact media content Focusing on these variables can help explain variability in media con tent across different media organizations
Governing Internet Expression: How Public and Private Regulation Shape Expression Governance

ABSTRACT Governing public expression has historically constituted a key element of public policy, and in the 20th and the 21st century has remained an important tool for both state and nonstate actors. The following article will look at two specific cases of expression governance—the content regulatory regimes in the U.S. and on Facebook—in order to understand how the process of content regulation plays out in public and private contexts. This institutional distinction between public and private, and the manner in which content regulatory practices traverse it, has important implications for both outcomes and process of content regulation.
Detecting communities around seed nodes in complex networks

The detection of communities (internally dense subgraphs) is a network analysis task with manifold applications. The special task of selective community detection is concerned with finding high-quality communities locally around seed nodes. Given the lack of conclusive experimental studies, we perform a systematic comparison of different previously published as well as novel methods. In particular we evaluate their performance on large complex networks, such as social networks. Algorithms are compared with respect to accuracy in detecting ground truth communities, community quality measures, size of communities and running time. We implement a generic greedy algorithm which subsumes several previous efforts in the field. Experimental evaluation of multiple objective functions and optimizations shows that the frequently proposed greedy approach is not adequate for large datasets. As a more scalable alternative, we propose selSCAN, our adaptation of a global, density-based community detection algorithm. In a novel combination with algebraic distances on graphs, query times can be strongly reduced through preprocessing. However, selSCAN is very sensitive to the choice of numeric parameters, limiting its practicality. The random-walk-based PageRankNibble emerges from the comparison as the most successful candidate.
Why Do U.S. Firms Hold so Much More Cash than They Used to?

The average cash to assets ratio for U.S. industrial firms increases by 129% from 1980 to 2004. Because of this increase in the average cash ratio, American firms at the end of the sample period can pay back their debt obligations with their cash holdings, so that the average firm has no leverage when leverage is measured by net debt. This change in cash ratios and net debt is the result of a secular trend rather than the outcome of the recent buildup in cash holdings of some large firms. It is concentrated among firms that do not pay dividends. The average cash ratio increases over the sample period because the cash flow of American firms has become riskier, these firms hold fewer inventories and accounts receivable, and the typical firm spends more on R&D. The precautionary motive for cash holdings appears to explain the increase in the average cash ratio.