Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
International Trade and American Wages in the 1980s: Giant Sucking Sound or Small Hiccup?

THE AMERICAN DREAM IS THAT each generation should live twice as well as its predecessor. During the hundred years before 1973, real average hourly earnings rose by 1.9 percent a year. ' At that rate earnings doubled every thirty-six years, and the dream was realized. The dream no longer holds. Since 1973 the United States has failed to match its historic track record. In 1973 average real hourly earnings, measured in 1982 dollars by the consumer price index (CPI), were $8.55. By 1992 they had actually declined to $7.43-a level that had been achieved in the late 1960s. Had earnings increased at their pre-1973 pace, they would have risen by 40 percent to more than $12.00. Or consider average real hourly compensation. This is a more comprehensive measure of the payments to labor because it includes fringe benefits as well as earnings. Between 1973 and 1991, real hourly compensation rose by only 5 percent. However the growth of labor income is measured, it clearly has slumped since 1973. A second ominous development in the American economy has accompanied this slump: a dramatic increase in the inequality of earnings. In
Risk factors for terrorism: a comparison of family, childhood, and personality risk factors among Iraqi terrorists, murderers, and controls

ABSTRACT Terrorism represents a major threat to global security; however, psychosocial risk factors for terrorism are insufficiently explored in the literature. Using a cross-sectional design, we examined group differences in family, childhood, and personality factors, and attitudes towards terrorism among individuals convicted of terrorism (n = 160); those convicted of murder (n = 65); and a control group (n = 88). Using regression models, we consequently analyzed the risk factors for group membership, with a focus on terrorism. Compared to controls, terrorists had higher odds of persistent childhood disobedience, a conduct disorder factor, and endorsing statements on the causes of and justifications for terrorism, but lower odds of harsh treatment as a child. Murderers had greater odds of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), of endorsing statements on the causes of and justifications for terrorism, but lower odds of being easily provoked and harsh treatment before age 15. Compared to murderers, terrorists had higher odds of endorsing statements on the causes of and justifications for terrorism, but lower odds of ASPD, having a family member murdered, and being easily provoked. Although psychosocial risk factors for terrorism overlap significantly with violent criminal behaviors, certain factors may help distinguish terrorists from other groups. These factors merit further investigation.
Research of System Stability with Network Existing in Feedback and Forward Channel

This paper mainly studies the stability of the networked control system based on the state prediction. Considering the continuous linear control system that has the network not only between the sensor and controller, but also between the controller and actuator, the controller is designed to reduce the network bandwidth in condition of keeping the system in stability. We also do the research of system modeling, stability analysis, controller design and simulation of the state prediction based on networked control system. And simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller design methods.
Embodiment and sense-making in autism

In this article, I sketch an enactive account of autism. For the enactive approach to cognition, embodiment, experience, and social interaction are fundamental to understanding mind and subjectivity. Enaction defines cognition as sense-making: the way cognitive agents meaningfully connect with their world, based on their needs and goals as self-organizing, self-maintaining, embodied agents. In the social realm, the interactive coordination of embodied sense-making activities with others lets us participate in each other's sense-making (social understanding = participatory sense-making). The enactive approach provides new concepts to overcome the problems of traditional functionalist accounts of autism, which can only give a piecemeal and disintegrated view because they consider cognition, communication, and perception separately, do not take embodied into account, and are methodologically individualistic. Applying the concepts of enaction to autism, I show: How embodiment and sense-making connect, i.e., how autistic particularities of moving, perceiving, and emoting relate to how people with autism make sense of their world. For instance, restricted interests or preference for detail will have certain sensorimotor correlates, as well as specific meaning for autistic people. That reduced flexibility in interactional coordination correlates with difficulties in participatory sense-making. At the same time, seemingly irrelevant “autistic behaviors” can be quite attuned to the interactive context. I illustrate this complexity in the case of echolalia. An enactive account of autism starts from the embodiment, experience, and social interactions of autistic people. Enaction brings together the sensorimotor, cognitive, social, experiential, and affective aspects of autism in a coherent framework based on a complex non-linear multi-causality. This foundation allows to build new bridges between autistic people and their often non-autistic context, and to improve quality of life prospects.
A Framework for RDF User Profile Management

The present dual chamber sachet overcomes the problem of non-uniform dispensing when the sidewalls of the sachet are depressed. Through the use of a relatively thin intermediate divider wall, rounded corner edges at the lower end of each chamber of the sachet, tapered side edges up to the exit channel of each chamber of the sachet, and a relatively wide dispensing opening uniform dispensing can be achieved. This structure prevents the downward flow of substances in each chamber during dispensing. The substances are directed upwardly by the rounded lower corners of the sachet, the tapered upper walls and the wide dispensing opening. This relatively wide dispensing opening minimizes the back pressure caused by the substances flowing to a dispensing exit of a width less than that of the product chambers.
Collaborative Research: Assessing and Expanding the Impact of OpenDSA, an Open-Source, Interactive eTextbook for Data Structures and Algorithms Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) Due February 4, 2014

OpenDSA is an open source project with international collaboration that has the potential to fundamentally change instruction in courses on Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) and Formal Languages and Automata (FLA). By combining textbook-quality content with visualization and a rich collection of automatically assessed interactive exercises, OpenDSA helps students better understand the behavior of algorithms and their effects over time on data structures. This project will scale up OpenDSA in a number of ways. The highly successful JFLAP software for interactive instruction on FLA will be redeployed within the OpenDSA framework using HTML5 standards, thereby increasing access. A wide range of colleges and universities will be involved in disseminating OpenDSA and assessing its impact on student learning, and OpenDSA's use in a number of innovative instructional settings will be explored. The OpenDSA infrastructure will be enriched, allowing instructors to tailor the materials to their specific classroom needs, and encouraging new content contributions from these instructors. A number of technical pedagogical experiments will be conducted, such as measuring the effects of augmenting content with audio narration in slideshows, and navigation through topics with concept maps. A study of how these materials can improve teaching in a range of courses for which relevant content was created. These efforts will have an impact on future active eTextbook projects by demonstrating successful ways to integrate content, interactivity, and assessment in an open-source, creative-commons environment SEARCH FUNDING AWARDS DISCOVERIES NEWS PUBLICATIONS STATISTICS ABOUT NSF FASTLANE
Alemtuzumab as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis strategy in a developing country: lower rate of acute GVHD, increased risk of cytomegalovirus reactivation

Acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) and cytomegalovirus reactivation are important complications after allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloHSCT). Here, we evaluated the impact of treatment with alemtuzumab on the occurrence of aGVHD, cytomegalovirus reactivation and survival after alloHSCT. This was a prospective cohort study conducted at the allo-HSCT unit of Hospital das Clínicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, from January 2009 to December 2011. Fifty-seven patients who underwent alloHSCT were included. Forty-five (79%) patients had a malignant disease. Alemtuzumab was administered before the conditioning regimen at a dose of 1 mg/kg in children and 30 mg/day for 2 days in adults or children weighing more than 40 kg (a total dose of 60 mg) with a non-malignant disease or patients with a malignant disease and high-risk for GVHD mortality. Alemtuzumab was used in 23 (40%) patients, of whom 17 received a reduced-intensity conditioning. Eleven patients presented aGVHD (grade 2–4) and only 1 of them received alemtuzumab. Cumulative incidence of aGVHD (grade 2–4) at day 100 after transplantation (D+100) was 4 for patients receiving alemtuzumab and 29% for patients not receiving alemtuzumab. Cumulative incidence of cytomegalovirus reactivation for patients receiving or not alemtuzumab was 62 and 38%, respectively. Sixteen patients died in the first 100 days after alloHSCT, most of them due to bacterial sepsis. Only 2 patients died of aGVHD until D+100. Overall survival was 50% without any impact of alemtuzumab. Alemtuzumab effectively controlled aGVHD but increased the risk of cytomegalovirus reactivation without improving survival.
Q-learning Based on Neural Network in Learning Action Selection of Mobile Robot

This paper focuses on the learning action selection in behavior-based autonomous mobile robot. Autonomous mobile robot needs a large space to store the state-action pair in the application of tabular Q-learning. Neural network has a good ability of generalization, so in this paper Q-learning based on neural network is developed which has a good ability to approximate to Q-function. The Q-learning based on neural network is applied to autonomous mobile robot for goal directed obstacle avoidance. Results of simulation show that the mobile robot can learn to select proper actions itself to accomplish the task autonomously.
Feature selection with nonparametric statistics

In this paper we discuss a general framework for feature selection based on nonparametric statistics. The three stage approach we propose is based on the assumption that the available data set is representative of a certain concept and aims at learning from the data the selection of a subset of descriptive features out of a large pool of measurements. The first stage requires the computation of a large number of image features. Simple significance tests and the maximum likelihood principle are at the basis of the second stage in which a saliency measure is used to reject the features which do not appear to be descriptive of the given data set. The third and final stage, by using the Spearman independence rank test, selects a maximal number of pairwise independent features. We report experiments on a face dataset (the MIT-CBCL database) which confirm the quality and the potential of the approach.
The effect of myosin RLC phosphorylation in normal and cardiomyopathic mouse hearts

Phosphorylation of the myosin regulatory light chain (RLC) by Ca2+‐calmodulin–activated myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) is known to be essential for the inotropic function of the heart. In this study, we have examined the effects of MLCK‐phosphorylation of transgenic (Tg) mouse cardiac muscle preparations expressing the D166V (aspartic acid to valine)–RLC mutation, identified to cause familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with malignant outcomes. Our previous work with Tg‐D166V mice demonstrated a large increase in the Ca2+ sensitivity of contraction, reduced maximal ATPase and force and a decreased level of endogenous RLC phosphorylation. Based on studies demonstrating the beneficial and/or protective effects of cardiac myosin phosphorylation for heart function, we hypothesized that an ex vivo phosphorylation of Tg‐D166V cardiac muscle may rescue the detrimental contractile phenotypes observed earlier at the level of single myosin molecules and in Tg‐D166V papillary muscle fibres. We showed that MLCK‐induced phosphorylation of Tg‐D166V cardiac myofibrils and muscle fibres was able to increase the reduced myofibrillar ATPase and reverse an abnormally increased Ca2+ sensitivity of force to the level observed for Tg‐wild‐type (WT) muscle. However, in contrast to Tg‐WT, which displayed a phosphorylation‐induced increase in steady‐state force, the maximal tension in Tg‐D166V papillary muscle fibres decreased upon phosphorylation. With the exception of force generation data, our results support the notion that RLC phosphorylation works as a rescue mechanism alleviating detrimental functional effects of a disease causing mutation. Further studies are necessary to elucidate the mechanism of this unexpected phosphorylation‐induced decrease in maximal tension in Tg‐D166V–skinned muscle fibres.
High bandwidth optical interconnection for densely integrated server

We developed optical interconnect technologies, i.e., an optical mid-plane, high-density connector, and a compact transceiver for future servers that enable high-bandwidth and dense integration. Using these technologies, 1500 optical connections and 37.5 Tb/s of bandwidth were built in a blade-server form factor.
A Study to Identify Effective Classroom Teaching Competencies for Community College Faculty.

ABSTRACT A study was conducted to determine the perceptions of community college,teachers in Kansas of the competencies required for effective teaching. Questionnaires were sent to a random sample of 225 full-time instructors at 19 Kansas community colleges soliciting faculty opinions of the importance of 70 teaching competencies, organized into categqries dealing with course content, instructional method, instructor behavior, and student behavior, and asking them to indicate the extent to which theyemployed these competencies in the classroom. Study findings, based on an evaluation of each competency on a scale ranging from "highly important" to "not important," revealed: (1) 16 competencies were rated as "highly important," including 7 related to instructor be.iavior, 6 to course content, and 3 to student behavior; (2) the top ranked competencies were communicating respect for each student, conveying interest in the subject and its importance, and informing students of expectations at the start of the semester; and (3) discrepancies were found in instructors' ratings of the importance of 32 items in contrast to their use of the items (which involved respect and concern for students, practice of verbal techniques, use of questioning techniques, and use of set and closure techniques in the classroom). The implications of the study and the questionnaire are included in
Capital Flows, Real Exchange Rates, and Capital Controls: What Is the Scope of Liberalization for Tunisia?

This paper deals with an important aspect of Tunisian economic and political decisions related to the opportunity for currency convertibility. Tunisia has established its current currency convertibility and has taken steps to achieve full convertibility of the dinar by gradually removing capital flow obstacles. Theoretical and empirical literature suggests that capital account liberalization generally leads to capital inflow in developing countries, generating an appreciation in the real exchange rate (RER) and thus a loss in competitiveness. However, preserving competitiveness is a key challenge for monetary authorities, who have to conciliate these two apparently conflicting purposes. To guide their decisions with respect to the prescribed procedure for capital liberalization, we need to evaluate the impact of each capital component flow on the RER. The question is addressed by analysing impulse response functions (IRF) resulting from a VAR model, covering 1970 to 2010 and gathering the RER, its fundamental determinants, monetary variables and an estimated capital control (CC) variable. Results show that a relaxation of CC over-appreciates the RER to its long-term level, and liberalizing portfolio investment is the most compromising for competitiveness.
Customer Loyalty Framework of Telecommunication Service Market

This study investigates the relationship among customer satisfaction, customer trust, switching cost, and customer loyalty in mobile telecommunication service market of Pakistan. Built on the review of pertinent literature a research framework is developed based on the mediation of customer trust and moderation of switching cost on the relationship of customer satisfaction with customer loyalty. The data were collected from 515 customers in mobile telecommunication service market of Pakistan through convenience sampling. Correlation matrix and ordinary least squares regression analyses are used to determine the relationship among the variables. The findings confirm the framework that customer trust partially mediates the relationship of customer satisfaction with customer loyalty. Switching cost has no moderating effect in determining the relationship of customer satisfaction with customer trust and customer loyalty in mobile telecommunication service market of Pakistan. This study addresses the importance of customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer trust, and switching cost for the mobile telecommunication service firms. The findings suggest that the firms should enhance customer satisfaction in order to gain customer trust and customer loyalty. The significant relationships between the variables suggest that the research framework is applicable to the firms of mobile telecommunication service market of Pakistan. Further, this is probably among the first studies which look at mobile telecommunication service market of Pakistan in context of customer satisfaction, customer trust, customer loyalty, and switching cost. The most obvious finding to emerge from this study is that customer satisfaction and customer trust are the key determinants in predicting customer loyalty.
Enhanced room temperature oxidation in silicon and porous silicon under 10 keV x-ray irradiation

We report the observation of enhanced oxidation on silicon and porous silicon samples exposed in air ambient to high-dose-rate 10 keV x-ray radiation at room temperature. The evolution of the radiation-induced oxide growth is monitored by ellipsometry and interferometric reflectance spectroscopy. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy shows the emergence of Si–O–Si stretching modes and corresponding suppression of SiHx and Si–Si modes in the porous silicon samples. The radiation response depends strongly on initial native oxide thickness and Si–H surface species. The enhanced oxidation mechanism is attributed to photoinduced oxidation processes wherein energetic photons are used to dissociate molecular oxygen and promote the formation of more reactive oxygen species.
Social Interactions through the Eyes of Macaques and Humans

Group-living primates frequently interact with each other to maintain social bonds as well as to compete for valuable resources. Observing such social interactions between group members provides individuals with essential information (e.g. on the fighting ability or altruistic attitude of group companions) to guide their social tactics and choice of social partners. This process requires individuals to selectively attend to the most informative content within a social scene. It is unclear how non-human primates allocate attention to social interactions in different contexts, and whether they share similar patterns of social attention to humans. Here we compared the gaze behaviour of rhesus macaques and humans when free-viewing the same set of naturalistic images. The images contained positive or negative social interactions between two conspecifics of different phylogenetic distance from the observer; i.e. affiliation or aggression exchanged by two humans, rhesus macaques, Barbary macaques, baboons or lions. Monkeys directed a variable amount of gaze at the two conspecific individuals in the images according to their roles in the interaction (i.e. giver or receiver of affiliation/aggression). Their gaze distribution to non-conspecific individuals was systematically varied according to the viewed species and the nature of interactions, suggesting a contribution of both prior experience and innate bias in guiding social attention. Furthermore, the monkeys’ gaze behavior was qualitatively similar to that of humans, especially when viewing negative interactions. Detailed analysis revealed that both species directed more gaze at the face than the body region when inspecting individuals, and attended more to the body region in negative than in positive social interactions. Our study suggests that monkeys and humans share a similar pattern of role-sensitive, species- and context-dependent social attention, implying a homologous cognitive mechanism of social attention between rhesus macaques and humans.
Bounds on the number of samples needed for neural learning

The relationship between the number of hidden nodes in a neural network, the complexity of a multiclass discrimination problem, and the number of samples needed for effect learning are discussed. Bounds for the number of samples needed for effect learning are given. It is shown that Omega(min (d,n) M) boundary samples are required for successful classification of M clusters of samples using a two-hidden-layer neural network with d-dimensional inputs and n nodes in the first hidden layer.
A Sense Based Similarity Measure for Cross-Lingual Documents

As cross-lingual information retrieval attracts increasing attention, tools that measure cross-lingual document similarity become desirable. Since the way that people convey thoughts at the abstract concept level makes little, if any, difference in the languages they use, it is possible to measure semantic similarity between different lingual documents based on the concepts conveyed by the documents. In this paper, we use senses for document representation to alleviate the barrier of different languages and adopt fuzzy set functions to cope with the inherent fuzziness among senses and propose two document similarity measures- one based on Tversky's notion on similarity and the other on the much used information retrieval criterion. Their performances are compared experimentally. We only focus on documents in English and Chinese. But the proposed approach can be easily extended to process documents in other languages.
The Goals Grid : A Tool for Clarifying Goals and Objectives

Several years back, a meeting of the Operations Executive Council in my company was focused on the five-year corporate planning effort then getting underway. At this meeting I distributed a simple framework for classifying, organizing, and analyzing goals and objectives (see the Goals Grid in Figure 1 below). My colleagues saw this framework as very useful and so I was led to present it to a wider audience in a 1992 article. The Goals Grid continues to be used and highly regarded by those who use it. It is an integral part of the problem solving approach I call "Solution Engineering. "