Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epistemic democracy with defensible premises

The contemporary theory of epistemic democracy often draws on the Condorcet Jury Theorem to formally justify the (cid:145)wisdom of crowds(cid:146). But this theorem is inapplicable in its current form, since one of its premises (cid:150) voter independence (cid:150) is notoriously violated. This premise carries responsibility for the theorem(cid:146)s misleading conclusion that (cid:145)large crowds are infallible(cid:146). We prove a more useful jury theorem: under defensible premises, (cid:145)large crowds are fallible but better than small groups(cid:146). This theorem rehabilitates the importance of deliberation and education, which appear inessential in the classical jury framework. Our theorem is related to Ladha(cid:146)s (1993) seminal jury theorem for interchangeable ((cid:145)indistinguishable(cid:146)) voters based on de Finetti(cid:146)s Theorem. We prove a more general and simpler version of such a theorem.
ELEMENTAL ABUNDANCES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CHEMICAL ENRICHMENT OF THE BOÖTES I ULTRAFAINT GALAXY

We present a double-blind analysis of high-dispersion spectra of seven red giant members of the Boötes I ultrafaint dwarf spheroidal galaxy, complemented with re-analysis of a similar spectrum of an eighth-member star. The stars cover [Fe/H] from −3.7 to −1.9 and include a CEMP-no star with [Fe/H] = −3.33. We conclude from our chemical abundance data that Boötes I has evolved as a self-enriching star-forming system, from essentially primordial initial abundances. This allows us uniquely to investigate the place of CEMP-no stars in a chemically evolving system, in addition to limiting the timescale of star formation. The elemental abundances are formally consistent with a halo-like distribution, with enhanced mean [α/Fe] and small scatter about the mean. This is in accord with the high-mass stellar initial mass function in this low-stellar-density, low-metallicity system being indistinguishable from the present-day solar neighborhood value. There is a non-significant hint of a decline in [α/Fe] with [Fe/H]; together with the low scatter, this requires low star formation rates, allowing time for supernova ejecta to be mixed over the large spatial scales of interest. One star has very high [Ti/Fe], but we do not confirm a previously published high value of [Mg/Fe] for another star. We discuss the existence of CEMP-no stars, and the absence of any stars with lower CEMP-no enhancements at higher [Fe/H], a situation that is consistent with knowledge of CEMP-no stars in the Galactic field. We show that this observation requires there be two enrichment paths at very low metallicities: CEMP-no and “carbon-normal. ”
Are racial and gender inequalities emerging in the NFT artwork? A visual exploration of CryptoPunks

As a blockchain-based application, Non-Fungible Token (NFT) has received worldwide attention over the past few years. Digital artwork is the main form of NFT that can be stored on different blockchains. Although the NFT market is rapidly developing, potential ethical and racial fairness issues are arising in NFT artworks due to a lack of ethical guidelines or censorship. Therefore, in this research, we investigated the potential ethical issues of CryptoPunk, one of the most long-lasting NFT collections, and visualized its visual appearance’s genetic distribution, associations between selling prices, gender/skin tone factors, and transaction network. We further explored the ethical issues related to CryptoPunks from three aspects: design, trading transactions, and related topics on Twitter. We provided five visualization sections to highlight our findings about CryptoPunks’ ethics issues. From our data analysis and visualization interpretations, we found that (1) around 1.6 times more male punks were created in the initial design process than the female ones; (2) lighter-skinned punks tend to sell for higher prices; (3) the topic related to identity equality in NFTs is rarely mentioned on Twitter. These findings and visualizations from CryptoPunks example provide a preliminary understanding of the racial and gender inequity ethical problems, and also a potential approach for exploring future ethical-related
DKAF: KB Arbitration for Learning Task-Oriented Dialog Systems with Dialog-KB Inconsistencies

Task-oriented dialog (TOD) agents often ground their responses on external knowledge bases (KBs). These KBs can be dynamic and may be updated frequently. Existing approaches for learning TOD agents assume the KB snapshot contemporary to each individual dialog is available during training. However, in real-world scenarios, only the latest KB snapshot is available during training and as a result, the train dialogs may contain facts conflicting with the latest KB. These dialog-KB inconsistencies in the training data may potentially confuse the TOD agent learning algorithm. In this work, we define the novel problem of learning a TOD agent with dialog-KB inconsistencies in the training data. We propose a Dialog-KB Arbitration Framework (DKAF) which reduces the dialog-KB inconsistencies by predicting the contemporary KB snapshot for each train dialog. These predicted KB snapshots are then used for training downstream TOD agents. As there are no existing datasets with dialog-KB inconsistencies, we systematically introduce inconsistencies in two publicly available dialog datasets. We show that TOD agents trained with DKAF perform better than existing baselines on both these datasets
Echo-Attention: Attend Once and Get N Attentions for Free

This paper proposes echo-attention layers, an 001 efﬁcient method for improving the expressive-002 ness of the self-attention layers without in-003 curring signiﬁcant parameter or training time 004 costs. The key idea is to iteratively reﬁne 005 the attentional activations via stateful repeated 006 computation, i
Basement-Membrane-Related Gene Signature Predicts Prognosis in WHO Grade II/III Gliomas

Gliomas that are classified as grade II or grade III lesions by the World Health Organization (WHO) are highly aggressive, and some may develop into glioblastomas within a short period, thus portending the conferral of a poor prognosis for patients. Previous studies have implicated basement membrane (BM)-related genes in glioma development. In this study, we constructed a prognostic model for WHO grade II/III gliomas in accordance with the risk scores of BM-related genes. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the glioma samples relative to normal samples were screened from the GEO database, and five prognostically relevant BM-related genes, including NELL2, UNC5A, TNC, CSPG4, and SMOC1, were selected using Cox regression analyses for the risk score model. The median risk score was calculated, based on which high- and low-risk groups of patients were generated. The clinical information, pathological information, and risk group were combined to establish a prognostic nomogram. Both the nomogram and risk score model performed well in the independent CGGA cohort. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and immune profile, drug sensitivity, and tumor mutation burden (TMB) analyses were performed in the two risk groups. A significant enrichment of ‘Autophagy–other’, ‘Collecting duct acid secretion’, ‘Glycosphingolipid biosynthesis–lacto and neolacto series’, ‘Valine, leucine, and isoleucine degradation’, ‘Vibrio cholerae infection’, and other pathways were observed for patients with high risk. In addition, higher proportions of monocytes and resting CD4 memory T cells were observed in the low- and high-risk groups, respectively. In conclusion, the BM-related gene risk score model can guide the clinical management of WHO grade II and III gliomas.
Identifying and Manipulating the Psychological Personality Traits of Language Models

Psychology research has long explored aspects of human personality such as extroversion , agreeableness and emotional stability . Catego-rizations like the ‘Big Five’ personality traits are commonly used to assess and diagnose personality types. In this work, we explore the question of whether language models exhibit consistent personalities in their language generation. For example, is a language model such as GPT2 likely to respond in a consistent way if asked to go out to a party? We also investigate whether such personality traits can be controlled. We show that when provided different types of contexts (such as personality descriptions, or answers to diagnostic questions about personality traits), language models such as BERT and GPT2 can consistently identify and reﬂect personality markers in those contexts. This behavior illustrates an ability to be manipulated in a highly predictable way, and frames them as tools for identifying personality traits and controlling personas in applications such as dialog systems. We also contribute a crowd-sourced data-set of personality descriptions of human subjects paired with their ‘Big Five’ personality assessment data, and a data-set of personality descriptions collated from Reddit.
Anti-Inﬂammatory Characteristics of Local Anesthetics: Inhibition of TNF- α Secretion of Lipopolysaccharide-Stimulated Leucocytes in Human Blood Samples

: Background. Local anesthetics (LAs) have potent anti-inﬂammatory properties. Inﬂammatory down-regulation is crucial in diseases with overactive immune reactions, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and chronic inﬂammation. We investigated the inﬂuence of four LAs, procaine, lidocaine, mepivacaine, and bupivacaine, on the reduction of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF- α ) secretion in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-activated human leucocytes. Methods. Blood samples of 28 individuals were stimulated with LPS. The reduction of TNF- α production by each of the four LAs added (0.5 mg/mL) was measured and correlated with biometric variables. A response was deﬁned as reduction to <85% of initial levels. Results. All four LAs down-regulated the TNF- α secretion in 44–61%: Bupivacaine (44.4%), lidocaine (61.5%), mepivacaine (44.4%), and procaine (50% of the individuals, “responders”). The TNF- α secretion was reduced to 67.4, 68.0, 63.6, and 67.1% of the initial values in responders. The effects in both patients and healthy persons were the same. Interindividual responses to LAs were not correlated with the duration or type of complaints, basal TNF- α serum level, sex, BMI, or age of responders. Conclusions. Four clinically relevant LAs (amid-LA and ester-LA) attenuate the inﬂammatory response provoked by LPS. They are potential candidates for drug repositioning in treating overactive immune reactions and chronic inﬂammation.
The quantized geometry of visual space: The coherent computation of depth, form, and lightness

Abstract A theory is presented of how global visual interactions between depth, length, lightness, and form percepts can occur. The theory suggests how quantized activity patterns which reflect these visual properties can coherently fill-in, or complete, visually ambiguous regions starting with visually informative data features. Phenomena such as the Cornsweet and Craik–O'Brien effects, phantoms and subjective contours, binocular brightness summation, the equidistance tendency, Emmert's law, allelotropia, multiple spatial frequency scaling and edge detection, figure-ground completion, coexistence of depth and binocular rivalry, reflectance rivalry, Fechner's paradox, decrease of threshold contrast with increased number of cycles in a grating pattern, hysteresis, adaptation level tuning, Weber law modulation, shift of sensitivity with background luminance, and the finite capacity of visual short term memory are discussed in terms of a small set of concepts and mechanisms. Limitations of alternative visual theories which depend upon Fourier analysis, Laplacians, zero-crossings, and cooperative depth planes are described. Relationships between monocular and binocular processing of the same visual patterns are noted, and a shift in emphasis from edge and disparity computations toward the characterization of resonant activity-scaling correlations across multiple spatial scales is recommended. This recommendation follows from the theory's distinction between the concept of a structural spatial scale, which is determined by local receptive field properties, and a functional spatial scale, which is defined by the interaction between global properties of a visual scene and the network as a whole. Functional spatial scales, but not structural spatial scales, embody the quantization of network activity that reflects a scene's global visual representation. A functional scale is generated by a filling-in resonant exchange, or FIRE, which can be ignited by an exchange of feedback signals among the binocular cells where monocular patterns are binocularly matched.
Detection of HF emission from the Orion Bar

Context. The clumpy density structure of photon-dominated regions is well established, but the physical properties of the clump s and of the surrounding interclump medium are only approximately known. Aims. The aim of this paper is to constrain the physical and chemical conditions in the Orion Bar, a prototypical nearby photondominated region. Methods. We present observations of the HF J=1‐0 line, which appears in emission toward the Orion Bar, and compare the brightness of the line to non-LTE radiative transfer calculations. Results. The large width of the HF line suggests an origin of the emission in the interclump gas, but collisional excitation by H 2 in the interclump gas underpredicts the observed line intensity by factors of 3‐5. In contrast, an origin of the line in the d ense clumps requires a density of∼10 9 cm −3 , 10‐100 times higher than previous estimates, which is unlikely. However, electron impact excitation reproduces our observations for T=100 K and ne=10 cm −3 , as expected for the interclump gas. Conclusions. We conclude that HF emission is a signpost of molecular gas with a high electron density. Similar conditions may apply to active galactic nuclei where HF also appears in emission.
Semi-Supervised Abdomen Extraction and Organ Segmentation in CT Images

State-of-the-art supervised deep learning models perform well in segmenting abdominal organs from CT scan images when the test dataset has a similar distribution to the training dataset. The lack of generalization of deep learning models means that one still needs to label new data and retrain the models for new datasets in a different environment. However, expert annotation of multiple organs in volumetric scans is time-consuming and often prohibitively expensive. Semi-supervised methods that can leverage unlabeled data together with few labeled data could be an attractive solution, but existing semi-supervised multiple organs semantic segmentation methods do not perform well. Moreover, CT scans containing abdominal organs come with a great variety in the real clinical world with diverse resolutions and fields of view ranging from only the abdominal region to the whole body CT scan. In this paper, we propose a two-stage approach where abdomen region segmentation extracts the abdominal region, which is then fed as input to the abdominal organs segmentation network; both stages use the UNet architecture-based network. To leverage unlabeled data, we use FixMatchSeg, which adapts the semi-supervised classification method, FixMatch, to segmentation tasks. FixMatchSeg uses standard supervised loss with labeled examples and an unsupervised loss with pseudo labeling and consistency regularization that can leverage unlabeled samples. Our model improved the mean dice score from 31.54% to 52.1% on the validation set when utilizing 2,000 unlabeled training images over the 50 labeled images.
The impact of exports on economic growth in Kosovo: An empirical investigation

--- In this paper, analysis are carried with regard to exports and economic growth for the case of Kosovo. The analysis employ quarterly data over the period 2010 to 2021. Analysis are based on utilization of VAR, using 4 lags and the first difference (i.e. l(1) of integration of the variables. Finally, the analysis carry Granger Causality/Block exogeniety Wald tests. Results suggest there there is no long-run relationship between variables, given the fact that there is no cointegration of the variables. However, in the short-run results reveal bi-directional causal relationship, causality running from exports to GDP and vice versa, from GDP to exports.
CALCIUM-RICH GAP TRANSIENTS: SOLVING THE CALCIUM CONUNDRUM IN THE INTRACLUSTER MEDIUM

X-ray measurements suggest that the abundance of calcium in the intracluster medium is higher than can be explained using favored models for core-collapse and Type Ia supernovae alone. We investigate whether the “calcium conundrum” in the intracluster medium can be alleviated by including a contribution from the recently discovered subclass of supernovae known as calcium-rich gap transients. Although the calcium-rich gap transients make up only a small fraction of all supernovae events, we find that their high calcium yields are sufficient to reproduce the X-ray measurements found for nearby rich clusters. We find the χ2 goodness-of-fit metric improves from 84 to 2 by including this new class. Moreover, calcium-rich supernovae preferentially occur in the outskirts of galaxies making it easier for the nucleosynthesis products of these events to be incorporated in the intracluster medium via ram-pressure stripping. The discovery of calcium-rich gap transients in clusters and groups far from any individual galaxy suggests that supernovae associated with intracluster stars may play an important role in enriching the intracluster medium. Calcium-rich gap transients may also help explain anomalous calcium abundances in many other astrophysical systems including individual stars in the Milky Way, the halos of nearby galaxies, and the circumgalactic medium. Our work highlights the importance of considering the diversity of supernovae types and corresponding yields when modeling the abundance of the intracluster medium and other gas reservoirs.
Spectral methods in quantum field theory and quantum cosmology

We review the application of the spectral zeta function to the one-loop properties of quantum field theories on manifolds with boundary, with emphasis on Euclidean quantum gravity and quantum cosmology. As was shown in the literature some time ago, the only boundary conditions that are completely invariant under infinitesimal diffeomorphisms on metric perturbations suffer from a drawback, i.e. lack of strong ellipticity of the resulting boundary-value problem. Nevertheless, at least on the Euclidean 4-ball background, it remains possible to evaluate the ζ(0) value, which describes in this case a universe which, in the limit of small 3-geometry, has vanishing probability of approaching the cosmological singularity. An assessment of this result is performed here, discussing its physical and mathematical implications. This article is part of a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical in honour of Stuart Dowker’s 75th birthday devoted to ‘Applications of zeta functions and other spectral functions in mathematics and physics’.
Network biology: Recent advances and challenges

Biological networks have garnered widespread attention. The development of biological networks has spawned the birth of a new interdisciplinary field – network biology. Network biology involves the exploration of complex biological systems through biological networks for better understanding of biological functions. This paper reviews some of the recent development of network biology. On the one hand, various approaches to constructing different types of biological networks are reviewed, and the pros and cons of each approach are discussed; on the other hand, the recent advances of information mining in biological networks are reviewed. The principles of guilt-by-association and guilt-by-rewiring in network biology and their applications are discussed. Although great advances have been achieved in the field of network biology over the past decades, there are still many challenging issues. First, efficient and reliable network inference algorithms for high-dimensional and highly noisy omics data are still in great demand. Second, the research focus will be on multilayer biological network theory. This plays a critical role in the exploration of the multi-scale or dynamical characteristics of complex biomolecular networks by integrating multi-source heterogeneous omics data. Third, a close cooperation among biologists, medical workers, and researchers from network science is still a prerequisite in the applications of network biology. The rapid development of network biology will undoubtedly raise important clues for understanding complex phenotypes in biological systems.
Numerical modelling of stellar winds for supernova progenitors

A two-dimensional hydrodynamic numerical model is extended and applied to simulate the interaction between stellar winds and the interstellar medium (ISM). In particular, the stellar wind evolution of Oand B-type stars is calculated. First, the evolution of a stellar wind into the ambient interstellar medium and also a more dense molecular cloud are considered for the case of no relative motion between the star and the interstellar medium. This interaction results in a cavity being blown into the ISM. Of importance in this work is the boundary radius (astropause) of the stellar wind and also the location where the outflow speed decreases from supersonic to subsonic speeds, called the termination shock. Different parameters like ISM density, outflow speed and mass-loss rate were varied to study the effect these have on the computed astropause (AP) and termination shock (TS) radii. The evolution of these structures is presented up to a simulation time of 1 My. However, stars are not stationary relative to the ISM, and the evolution of stellar winds into the interstellar medium including relative motion is also considered. It is shown that the positions of the TS and AP are dependent on the mass-loss rate and stellar wind outflow speed of the star and the interstellar medium density and relative speed. When these massive stars reach the end of their life, they end their life in a supernova explosion. The explosion results in a blast wave moving outward, called the forward shock (FS) and a reverse shock (RS) also forms which moves inward. Previous work done by Ferreira and de Jager (2008) to simulate supernova remnant (SNR) evolution, was only done for the case of evolution into the undisturbed ISM (no cavity). In this work, the evolution of SNR is simulated taking also into account the pre-existing cavity blown out by the stellar winds of these massive stars. The results of this study showed that the evolution of the SNR is definitely influenced by the presence of a stellar wind cavity even if the cavity is only a few pc in extent.