Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Climate Change Detection and Attribution: Beyond Mean Temperature Signals

Abstract A significant influence of anthropogenic forcing has been detected in global- and continental-scale surface temperature, temperature of the free atmosphere, and global ocean heat uptake. This paper reviews outstanding issues in the detection of climate change and attribution to causes. The detection of changes in variables other than temperature, on regional scales and in climate extremes, is important for evaluating model simulations of changes in societally relevant scales and variables. For example, sea level pressure changes are detectable but are significantly stronger in observations than the changes simulated in climate models, raising questions about simulated changes in climate dynamics. Application of detection and attribution methods to ocean data focusing not only on heat storage but also on the penetration of the anthropogenic signal into the ocean interior, and its effect on global water masses, helps to increase confidence in simulated large-scale changes in the ocean. To evaluate .
Prediction and Clustering of User Relationship in Social Network

Prediction and clustering are two fundamental and important problems in the analysis of social network. Most existing work are based on unsigned network which regards all the relationships as nonnegative proximity. However, employing these work directly on signed network is not obvious. In recent years, some approaches have been proposed for prediction and clustering of signed network. Based on those work, this paper presented a uniform framework to address both unsigned and signed network and predict relationships through mining in the latent feature space. In this paper, we first review the classical link prediction model, then propose our enhanced model which introduced embeddedness as parameters of objective loss function and the experiments yield higher accuracy. We then further employ the spectral analysis for clustering the signed network after link prediction is done. A serial of experiments which covered both functionality and performance was designed to test out model and the results show that out model improved both accuracy and performance.
Modeling Future Work in Crowdsourced Citizen Science

This paper analyzes trace data from a citizen science project to extract volunteer contributions during first-session work to determine the usefulness of regression models in make accurate predictions about future contribution. This research contributes to literature on measuring work in crowdsourcing communities where many volunteer contribute very little content and a few dedicated volunteers contribute the majority of work. We analyze the sessions of 143,074 registered volunteers in the Planet Hunters citizen science project. We collected data from server logs to describe how might volunteer’s behavior be indicative of future contribution intentions. The results provided in this paper suggest that there are differences in session activities for between returning and non-returning volunteers during a volunteer’s initial involvement that can contribute predictive capabilities of models. Our findings therefore can help online community managers, project scientist, and system developers consider new approaches to involving volunteers and predicting future contribution in the projects.
EFFECTS ON ALCOHOL CONSUMPI10N PATTERNS AND PROBLEMS IN WOMEN

We review evidence thaI generic factors play no less important a role in the etiology of alcoholism in women than in men. Potential mediators of this generic inflaence (differences in personality or alcohol sensitivity) exhibit equal heritability in men and women. Genetical1y determined ciifi=:enccs in alcohol preference (or consumption level). a phenotype widely used in animal models of alcoholism. have been neglected as a mechanism of alcoholism inheritance. Using data from the 1992-3 interView survey of the Australian twin panel (N=5995 twins). we have reexamined the mediating role of personality and alcohol consumption . -ariables. By comparing the non-alcoholic co-twins of alcoholic twins. and twins from coneotdant unaffected pairs (separately for MZ and DZ pairs). we have avoided the problem of obtaining consumption and personality assessments that are contaminated by history of alcoholism. In MZ pairs. in both genders. co-twin's heavy alcohol exposure (driDking 5+ drinks in one day) and co-twin's Novelty Seeking score. axe both predictive of alcoholism in the respondent. The effect of co-twin's heavy alcohol exposure remains significant even when the respondent's personality . ariables axe conaolled for, implying that there are genetic effects on alcoholism risk mectiated through consumption pattern that axe independent of those mediated through personality differences.
Mining The Web To Validate Answers To Natural Language Questions

Answer validation is the ability to automatically judge the relevance of a candidate answer with respect to a given question. This paper investigates answer validation following a data-driven approach that considers textual passages (i.e. snippets) retrieved from the Web as the main source of information. Snippets are then analyzed in order to maximize the density of relevant keywords belonging both to the question and to the answer. Results obtained on a corpus of human-judged factoid question-answer pairs submitted by participants at TREC-2001 show a satisfactory degree of success rate (i.e. 86Yo). In addition, the efficiency of the methodology (documents are not downloaded) makes the approach suitable to be integrated as a module in the architecture of a question answering system.
Skin melanocytes: biology and development

In the human skin, melanocytes are present in the epidermis and hair follicles. The basic features of these cells are the ability to melanin production and the origin from neural crest cells. This last element is important because there are other cells able to produce melanin but of different embryonic origin (pigmented epithelium of retina, some neurons, adipocytes). The life cycle of melanocyte consists of several steps including differentiation of melanocyte lineage/s from neural crest, migration and proliferation of melanoblasts, differentiation of melanoblasts into melanocytes, proliferation and maturation of melanocytes at the target places (activity of melanogenic enzymes, melanosome formation and transport to keratinocytes) and eventual cell death (hair melanocytes). Melanocytes of the epidermis and hair are cells sharing some common features but in general they form biologically different populations living in unique niches of the skin.
Mature BDNF, But Not proBDNF, Reduces Excitability of Fast-Spiking Interneurons in Mouse Dentate Gyrus

Mature BDNF and its precursor proBDNF may both be secreted to exert opposite effects on synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. However, it is unknown how proBDNF and mature BDNF affect the excitability of GABAergic interneurons and thereby regulate GABAergic inhibition. We made recordings of GABAergic spontaneous IPSCs (sIPSCs) in mouse dentate gyrus granule cells and found that chronic or acute BDNF reductions led to large increases in the sIPSC frequencies, which were TTX (tetrodotoxin) sensitive and therefore action-potential driven. Conversely, addition of mature BDNF, but not proBDNF, within minutes led to a decrease in the sIPSC frequency to 44%. Direct recordings from fast-spiking GABAergic interneurons revealed that mature BDNF reduced their excitability and depressed their action potential firing, whereas proBDNF had no effect. Using the TrkB inhibitor K-252a, or mice deficient for the common neurotrophin receptor p75NTR, the regulation of GABAergic activity was shown specifically to be mediated by BDNF binding to the neurotrophin receptor TrkB. In agreement, immunohistochemistry demonstrated that TrkB, but not p75NTR, was expressed in parvalbumin-positive interneurons. Our results suggest that mature BDNF decreases the excitability of GABAergic interneurons via activation of TrkB, while proBDNF does not impact on GABAergic activity. Thus, by affecting the firing of GABAergic interneurons, mature BDNF may play an important role in regulating network oscillations in the hippocampus.
A Monte Carlo Simulation of Observable Versus Latent Variable Structural Equation Modeling Techniques

In this study, three approaches commonly used by communication scientists to specify structural relationships using full-information maximum likelihood structural equation modeling are investigated. Specifically, a simulation study using Monte Carlo techniques was conducted to compare the structural paths generated by each of the three structural equation model types. Two of the three approaches utilized forms of latent variable modeling, and the third approach employed observed variables only. Of the three, the observed variable approach produced the most conservative structural path coefficients, whereas the hybrid latent variable approach generated the least attenuated coefficients. The appropriateness of each technique in modeling structural relationships is discussed and an argument is made for greater use of latent variable structural equation modeling in the field of communication.
Can robust pro-female policies be identified when the true model of the household is unknown?

This paper seeks to identify parameter changes which are robust in the sense that they benefit women relative to men in a wide range of household models. The models considered are unitary, Nash-bargaining and non-cooperative with and without cash transfers. Reductions in the relative price of ‘female’ consumer goods prices are robust; increases in relative wages are highly non-robust. Increases in the relative returns to domestic activities and transfers of financial, physical, and human assets to women are weakly robust in that they are unlikely to hurt women and benefit them in some cases though they make no difference in others.
“INVISIBLE” PARENT EXPERIENCES OF HOMELESSNESS AND SEPARATION FROM THEIR CHILDREN IN CANADA

Family homelessness includes a sub-group of individuals whose experiences remain largely hidden or “invisible” within Canadian homelessness systems: parents who have been separated from their children. Yet, to date, little research has focused on the experiences of “invisible” parents who have experienced homelessness, mental illness, and separation from their children in Canada. The purpose of this dissertation was to help fill this notable gap in the literature, as well as to inform community psychology and family homelessness theory, research, practice, and policy in Canada. The Canadian At Home/Chez Soi (AHCS) research demonstration project included a subset of parents with mental illness who had been separated from their children in the context of homelessness. Some of these parents (n = 61) participated in semi-structured, consumer narrative interviews when they entered the project at baseline, as well as 18-months following project entry. These data were analyzed for this dissertation in order to better understand the experiences of “invisible” parents experiencing homelessness, mental illness, and parent-child separation. This dissertation is comprised of three distinct manuscripts, which will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Each of the three manuscripts in this dissertation is distinct, yet utilized complementary reflexive, critical, qualitative research methodologies that built upon and informed each other. Through a qualitative, narrative approach to identity, the first manuscript explored the narrative identities of mothers who had been separated from their minor-aged children (n = 16) and compared them with the narrative identities of women who were not mothers to minor-aged children (“non-mothers”) (n = 8). Three themes differentiated the narrative identities of women who were mothers and separated from their minor children from women who were not mothers:
Bayesian analysis of two parameter Pareto mixture using censoring

The Pareto distribution is a commonly used model for heavy tailed data. Pareto distribution is a useful modeling and predicting tool in a wide variety of socioeconomic contexts. In the present study, we model heterogeneous population by using two component mixture model and two parameter Pareto mixture is considered for this purpose. The expressions for Bayes estimators and their posterior risks (using squared error loss function and weighted loss function) are derived. System of non-linear equations that lead to obtain estimate for MLE’s along with component of Fisher information matrix, are also constructed. An extensive simulation at different parameter points using probabilistic mixing is carried out to get censored simulated data. These data are then used to obtain Bayes estimates for parameters of the Pareto mixture and their respective posterior risks. Bayes estimates are obtained by non-informative as well as informative prior. Posterior predictive distribution and predictive intervals are derived using Gamma prior to obtain hyper-parameters. Finally, Pareto mixture is fitted to a real data example which includes estimation and testing of parameters. Key words: Heavy tailed data, probabilistic mixing, predictive intervals, informative prior, hyper-parameters.
Distributive Power Control Algorithm for Multicarrier Interference Network Over Time-Varying Fading Channels—Tracking Performance Analysis and Optimization

Distributed power control over interference limited network has received an increasing intensity of interest over the past few years. Distributed solutions (like the iterative water-filling, gradient projection, etc.) have been intensively investigated under quasi-static channels. However, as such distributed solutions involve iterative updating and explicit message passing, it is unrealistic to assume that the wireless channel remains unchanged during the iterations. Unfortunately, the behavior of those distributed solutions under time-varying channels is in general unknown. In this paper, we shall investigate the distributed scaled gradient projection algorithm (DSGPA) in a K pairs multicarrier interference network under a finite-state Markov channel (FSMC) model. We shall analyze the convergence property as well as tracking performance of the proposed DSGPA. Our analysis shows that the proposed DSGPA converges to a limit region rather than a single point under the FSMC model. We also show that the order of growth of the tracking errors is given by O(1/N̅), where N̅ is the average sojourn time of the FSMC. Based on the analysis, we shall derive the tracking error optimal scaling matrices via Markov decision process modeling. We shall show that the tracking error optimal scaling matrices can be implemented distributively at each transmitter. The numerical results show the superior performance of the proposed DSGPA over three baseline schemes, such as the gradient projection algorithm with a constant stepsize.
Open Source and Human Computer Interaction Philosophies in Open Source Projects: Incompatible or Co-Existent?

The importance of introducing usability activities into open source software (OSS) development has been acknowledged in the research literature; however, there is a lack of research examining the compatibility and actual co-existence of the philosophies of OSS and Human Computer Interaction (HCI), guiding usability research and practice, in OSS projects. This paper fills in this gap through an empirical examination of two OSS projects into which usability activities were introduced. The results show that in these cases the usability specialists embraced aspects of both philosophies; hence, these philosophies coexisted. However, the usability specialists either 'became them' or 'were close while kept the distance'. In both cases the usability specialists aligned their work with the OSS philosophy. However, through this alignment, in the other case they become very immersed in the OSS project, encountering a risk of becoming misaligned with the core HCI philosophy. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Provoking Reflection Through Artistic Games

Steve Benford, Andy Crabtree, Martin Flintham, Duncan Rowland The Mixed Reality Laboratory, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham UK. {sdb, axc, mdf, dar}@cs.nott. ac.uk Bill Gaver Interaction Design Research Studio, The Royal College of Art, UK w.gaver@rca.ac.uk Matt Adams, Ju RowFarr, Nick Tandavanitj Blast Theory Unit 43a Regent Studios, 8 Andrews Road, London, UK. {matt, ju, nick}@blasttheory.co.uk Amanda Oldroyd, Jon Sutton BTexact Adastral Park, Martlesham, Ipswich,UK {amanda. oldroyd, jon.sutton}@bt.com
A Comparative Analysis of Hyperbolic Copulas Induced by a One Factor Lévy Model

In the credit derivatives market, the observed default correlation smile, implied by the Gaussian copula, constitutes a major problem when we want to price bespoke CDO tranches. The industry standard approach for countering this dilemma is to use the concept of base correlation to try to estimate the ingoing default correlation parameters for non-standard tranche intervals. However, this approach is far from mathematically consistent and the method of interpolating between different points on the base correlation curve is all but accurate. In this paper, we generalize the Gaussian one factor model proposed by Vasicek (1987) to work with any underlying Levy process. Further, we show that our one Factor Levy model induces an infinite number of different copulas. Given this mathematical framework, we propose three different hyperbolic copulas, namely a normal inverse Gaussian copula, a variance gamma copula and a skewed Student t copula. In addition to calculate the loss distributions by FFT methods, we generalize the LHP approximation given by Vasicek (1991) to work with our Levy model. Finally, we show that the proposed alternative copulas give superior results and we give a comparative view on the different methods for calculating the loss distributions.
Tweeting Over The Border: An Empirical Study of Transnational Migration in San Diego and Tijuana

Sociological studies on transnational migration are often based on surveys or interviews, an expensive and time consuming approach. On the other hand, the pervasiveness of mobile phones and location aware social networks has introduced new ways to understand human mobility patterns at a national or global scale. In this work, we leverage geo located information obtained from Twitter as to understand transnational migration patterns between two border cities (San Diego, USA and Tijuana, Mexico). We obtained 10.9 million geo located tweets from December 2013 to January 2015. Our method infers human mobility by inspecting tweet submissions and user's home locations. Our results depict a trans national community structure that exhibits the formation of a functional metropolitan area that physically transcends international borders. These results show the potential for re analysing sociology phenomena from a technology based empirical perspective.
The Public Perception of Privacy Research and Analysis for open Data

With the development of big data in various fields, Open data is more and more important. Open data can help us to analyze and get knowledge for our life, social economy, and etc. However, there are some problems when using open data. One of these is how to keep users’ privacy. In our country, there is less to study in the privacy section. Thus, we focus on the privacy issue. In this paper, we explore open for privacy and cognitive information. The results are showed that there are currently 7 percent to open data person, agrees anonymous open data has 5 percent, feel anonymous privacy violations are still 4 percent, while in use under the premise inform open data, there are 40% the man agreed to a non-anonymous open. But regardless of the anonymous or non-anonymous, open data supporting measures will need to complete, especially in our country stage of development, the need for more attention to this aspect, otherwise it will cause open data hinder the future
Cortical Focus Drives Widespread Corticothalamic Networks during Spontaneous Absence Seizures in Rats

Absence seizures are the most pure form of generalized epilepsy. They are characterized in the electroencephalogram by widespread bilaterally synchronous spike-wave discharges (SWDs), which are the reflections of highly synchronized oscillations in thalamocortical networks. To reveal network mechanisms responsible for the initiation and generalization of the discharges, we studied the interrelationships between multisite cortical and thalamic field potentials recorded during spontaneous SWDs in the freely moving WAG/Rij rat, a genetic model of absence epilepsy. Nonlinear association analysis revealed a consistent cortical “focus” within the peri-oral region of the somatosensory cortex. The SWDs recorded at other cortical sites consistently lagged this focal site, with time delays that increased with electrode distance (corresponding to a mean propagation velocity of 1.4 m/sec). Intra-thalamic relationships were more complex and could not account for the observed cortical propagation pattern. Cortical and thalamic sites interacted bi-directionally, whereas the direction of this coupling could vary throughout one seizure. However, during the first 500 msec, the cortical focus was consistently found to lead the thalamus. These findings argue against the existence of one common subcortical pacemaker for the generation of generalized spike-wave discharges characteristic for absence seizures in the rat. Instead, the results suggest that a cortical focus is the dominant factor in initiating the paroxysmal oscillation within the corticothalamic loops, and that the large-scale synchronization is mediated by ways of an extremely fast intracortical spread of seizure activity. Analogous mechanisms may underlie the pathophysiology of human absence epilepsy.
A note on software tools and techniques for monitoring and prediction of cloud services

Senior Research Scientist and CSIRO Julius Fellow, CSIRO CCI Division, GPO Box 664, Canberra, ACT 2601 Director, Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Lab, Department of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Australia University of Zurich, Department of Informatics, Binzmuhlestrasse 14, CH-8050 Zurich, Switzerland Research Scientist, CSIRO CCI Division, GPO Box 664, Canberra, ACT 2601 Institute AIFB Building 11.40, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, D-76128 Karlsruhe