Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Three Studies of Predicted Gender Differences in Processes of Word Reading

ABSTRACTThree studies were conducted to examine individual differences among young children in the extent of use of alternative cognitive processes for word reading. The expectation was that boys, of the same reading attainment level as girls, tend to rely more than girls on access to phonological segments of words. In Study I a predicted pattern of gender differences was tested with 87 seven-year-old children reading pseudohomophones graphemicalty different and graphemically similar to lexically matched words. In Study II predicted differences were tested with the same children reading words of regular and exception grapheme-phoneme relationships. For 84 six-year-old children in Study III predicted differences were examined in the relationship of word reading accuracy to phonological consistency of initial segments of words. The results of the three studies supported the expectation.
A study on multitarget tracking with adaptive local linearisation particle filters

Over the last decade much research has been conducted on exploiting particle filtering techniques in the field of target tracking. Although the major body of the work in that area concerns tracking a single target, algorithms have also been proposed for the multiple target case. In most multitarget algorithms the state estimator is a basic particle filter (e.g. a sequential importance resampling filter) used in a complex multitarget structure. The contribution of this paper is the use of the more powerful local linearisation particle filter as the basic estimation tool, for the multitarget problem
Toward Semantic XML Clustering

The increasing availability of heterogeneous XML informative sources has raised a number of issues concerning how to represent and manage semistructured data. Although XML sources can exhibit proper structures and contents, differently annotated XML documents may in principle encode related semantics due to subjective definitions of markup tags. Discovering knowledge to infer semantic organization of XML documents has become a major challenge in XML data management. In this context, we address the problem of clustering XML data according to structure as well as content features enriched with lexical ontology knowledge. We propose a framework for clustering semantically cohesive XML structures based on a transactional representation model. Experiments on large real datasets give evidence that the proposed approach is highly effective in detecting groups of XML data that exhibit structure and/or content affinities.
Global Optimization Of Linear Hybrid Systems With Varying Time Events

Dynamic optimization problems with linear hybrid (discrete/continuous) systems embedded whose transition times vary are inherently nonconvex. For a wide variety of applications, a certificate of global optimality is essential, but this cannot be obtained using conventional numerical methods. We present a deterministic framework for the solution of such problems in the continuous time domain. First, the control parametrization enhancing transform is used to transform the embedded dynamic system from a linear hybrid system with scaled discontinuities and varying transition times into a nonlinear hybrid system with stationary discontinuities and fixed transition times. Next, a recently developed convexity theory is applied to construct a convex relaxation of the original nonconvex problem. This allows the problem to be solved in a branch-and-bound framework that can guarantee the global solution within epsilon optimality in a finite number of iterations.
Resource allocation to defence and growth are driven by different responses to generalist and specialist herbivory in an invasive plant

1. Invasive plants often have novel biotic interactions in their introduced ranges. These interactions, including less frequent herbivore attacks, may convey a competitive advantage over native plants. Invasive plants may vary in defence strategies (resistance vs. tolerance) or in response to the type of herbivore (generalists vs. specialists), but no study to date has examined this broad set of traits simultaneously.
The interplay between cooperativity and diversity in model threshold ensembles

The interplay between cooperativity and diversity is crucial for biological ensembles because single molecule experiments show a significant degree of heterogeneity and also for artificial nanostructures because of the high individual variability characteristic of nanoscale units. We study the cross-effects between cooperativity and diversity in model threshold ensembles composed of individually different units that show a cooperative behaviour. The units are modelled as statistical distributions of parameters (the individual threshold potentials here) characterized by central and width distribution values. The simulations show that the interplay between cooperativity and diversity results in ensemble-averaged responses of interest for the understanding of electrical transduction in cell membranes, the experimental characterization of heterogeneous groups of biomolecules and the development of biologically inspired engineering designs with individually different building blocks.
Semantic and dialogic annotation for automated multilingual customer service

One central goal of the AMITIES multilingual humancomputer dialogue project is to create a dialogue management system capable of engaging the user in human-like conversation in a specific domain. To that end, we have developed new methods for the manual annotation of spoken dialogue transcriptions from European financial call centers. We have modified the DAMSL dialogic schema to create a dialogue act taxonomy appropriate for customer services. To capture the semantics, we use a domain-independent framework populated with domain-specific lists. We have designed a new flexible, platform-independent annotation tool, XDMLTool, and annotated several hundred dialogues in French and English. Inter-annotator agreement was moderate to high. We are using these data to design our dialogue system, and we hope that they will help us to derive appropriate dialogue strategies for novel situations.
Affectionate expressions as face‐threatening acts: Receiver assessments

Although expressions of affection may be regarded as a form of support between relational partners, affectionate communication has the potential also to be threatening to senders’ and receivers’ face needs, especially in nonromantic relationships. On the premise that a given communicative act can support positive face needs while simultaneously threatening negative face needs, this study applied politeness theory to the task of predicting receivers’ responses to affectionate messages from adult platonic friends. Results indicated that direct, unequivocal affectionate messages were the most supportive of positive face and also the most threatening to negative face, while indirect, equivocal messages supported positive face and threatened negative face the least. A curvilinear relationship emerged between the directness of affectionate messages and receivers’ intentions to reciprocate them, with the most direct and most indirect messages being most likely to be reciprocated. The implications of these findings both for affection research and for politeness theory are discussed.
Poverty Naturalized: Implications for Gender

The article illustrates how philosophical assumptions affect the theory, practice, and results of poverty analysis, to the potential detriment of women and girls. It links the income/consumption approach to poverty with naturalist normative theory, which developed historically from the moral theory of David Hume. It then traces the historical development of naturalist normative theory from Hume to modern utility theory and examines its links with the British empiricist tradition. Finally, it reviews some of the practical consequences for gender and argues that the philosophical baggage of the income/consumption poverty approach may ignore important issues for women and girls, thereby creating significant gender "gaps" in the analysis of deprivation.
Harvest‐induced evolution and effective population size

Much has been written about fishery‐induced evolution (FIE) in exploited species, but relatively little attention has been paid to the consequences for one of the most important parameters in evolutionary biology—effective population size (Ne). We use a combination of simulations of Atlantic cod populations experiencing harvest, artificial manipulation of cod life tables, and analytical methods to explore how adding harvest to natural mortality affects Ne, census size (N), and the ratio Ne/N. We show that harvest‐mediated reductions in Ne are due entirely to reductions in recruitment, because increasing adult mortality actually increases the Ne/N ratio. This means that proportional reductions in abundance caused by harvest represent an upper limit to the proportional reductions in Ne, and that in some cases Ne can even increase with increased harvest. This result is a quite general consequence of increased adult mortality and does not depend on harvest selectivity or FIE, although both of these influence the results in a quantitative way. In scenarios that allowed evolution, Ne recovered quickly after harvest ended and remained higher than in the preharvest population for well over a century, which indicates that evolution can help provide a long‐term buffer against loss of genetic variability.
Script Independent Word Spotting in Multilingual Documents

This paper describes a method for script independent word spotting in multilingual handwritten and machine printed documents. The system accepts a query in the form of text from the user and returns a ranked list of word images from document image corpus based on similarity with the query word. The system is divided into two main components. The first component known as Indexer, performs indexing of all word images present in the document image corpus. This is achieved by extracting Moment Based features from word images and storing them as index. A template is generated for keyword spotting which stores the mapping of a keyword string to its corresponding word image which is used for generating query feature vector. The second component, Similarity Matcher, returns a ranked list of word images which are most similar to the query based on a cosine similarity metric. A manual Relevance feedback is applied based on Rocchio’s formula, which re-formulates the query vector to return an improved ranked listing of word images. The performance of the system is seen to be superior on printed text than on handwritten text. Experiments are reported on documents of three different languages: English, Hindi and Sanskrit. For handwritten English, an average precision of 67% was obtained for 30 query words. For machine printed Hindi, an average precision of 71% was obtained for 75 query words and for Sanskrit, an average precision of 87% with 100 queries was obtained. Figure 1: A Sample English Document Spotted Query word shown in the bounding box.
User-Needs Analysis and Design Methodology for an Automated Documentation Generator

Telephone network planning engineers routinely study feeder routes within the telephone network in order to create and refine network capacity expansion (relief) plans. In doing so they make use of a powerful software tool called LEIS *-PLAN. We are developing an extension to PLAN called PLANDoc that will automatically generate natural language narratives documenting the engineers’ use of PLAN. In this paper, we present the user-needs analysis and design methodology we have used in developing the PLANDoc system. We describe our interviews with various end users to determine if such a system would be desirable and what design factors would make it useful. We show how we model the system on a set of iteratively-revised human-generated narratives. The model narratives determine the function and architecture of the documentation system, and they inform the development of the system components.
John A. Goldsmith: Autosegmental & Metrical Phonology . Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. 376 pp. ISBN 0-631-13675-4. ISBN 0-631-13676-2 pbk.

1. It is with the greatest expectations that one starts reading Autosegmental & Metrical Phonology (hereafter AMP), written by the 'father of autosegmental phonology' (hereafter AP). John A. Goldsmith has been an active participant and a central figure in the development of AP ever since 1976. His contributions have not only been of a general linguistic character, his work with Bantu tone and accent systems has been of special importance. In many ways, AMP lives up to expectations. This is an up-to-date introduction to both autosegmental and metrical phonology, and even to lexical phonology. A careful study of this book should enable a student of phonology to start doing research on his/her own. But AMP also has its weak points which it shares with a considerable number of the textbooks written within the Chomskyan tradition: it consistently ignores other approaches to its field of study.
Automated Channel Abstraction for Advertising Auctions

The use of simple auction mechanisms like the GSP in online advertising can lead to significant loss of efficiency and revenue when advertisers have rich preferences — even simple forms of expressiveness like budget constraints can lead to suboptimal outcomes. While the optimal allocation of inventory can provide greater efficiency and revenue, natural formulations of the underlying optimization problems grow exponentially in the number of features of interest, presenting a key practical challenge. To address this problem, we propose a means for automatically partitioning inventory into abstract channels so that the least relevant features are ignored. Our approach, based on LP/MIP column and constraint generation, dramatically reduces the size of the problem, thus rendering optimization computationally feasible at practical scales. Our algorithms allow for principled tradeoffs between tractability and solution quality. Numerical experiments demonstrate the computational practicality of our approach as well as the quality of the resulting abstractions.
- Koyanagi-Harada Syndrome

97 Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada syndrome is generally a rare multisystemic autoimmune disorder involving with pigmented structures, such as the eye, meninges, inner ear and skin. The syndrome typically presents as an episode of bilateral panuveitis after prodromal symptoms similar to aseptic meningitis. Auditory disturbances include tinnitus, hearing loss and vertigo. We report the case of a 74-year-old woman with blurred vision, two month history of sudden onset hearing loss and tinnitus in the right ear.
A 1.75-GHz polar modulated CMOS RF power amplifier for GSM-EDGE

This work presents a fully integrated linearized CMOS RF amplifier, integrated in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process. The amplifier is implemented on a single chip, requiring no external matching or tuning networks. Peak output power is 27 dBm with a power-added efficiency (PAE) of 34%. The amplitude modulator, implemented on the same chip as the RF amplifier, modulates the supply voltage of the RF amplifier. This results in a power efficient amplification of nonconstant envelope RF signals. The RF power amplifier and amplitude modulator are optimized for the amplification of EDGE signals. The EDGE spectral mask and EVM requirements are met over a wide power range. The maximum EDGE output power is 23.8 dBm and meets the class E3 power requirement of 22 dBm. The corresponding output spectrum at 400 and 600 kHz frequency offset is -59 dB and -70 dB. The EVM has an RMS value of 1.60% and a peak value of 5.87%.
Top-k aggregation using intersections of ranked inputs

There has been considerable past work on efficiently computing top k objects by aggregating information from multiple ranked lists of these objects. An important instance of this problem is query processing in search engines: One has to combine information from several different posting lists (rankings) of web pages (objects) to obtain the top k web pages to answer user queries. Two particularly well-studied approaches to achieve efficiency in top-k aggregation include early-termination algorithms (e.g., TA and NRA) and preaggregation of some of the input lists. However, there has been little work on a rigorous treatment of combining these approaches. We generalize the TA and NRA algorithms to the case when preaggregated intersection lists are available in addition to the original lists. We show that our versions of TA and NRA continue to remain "instance optimal," a very strong optimality notion that is a highlight of the original TA and NRA algorithms. Using an index of millions of web pages and real-world search engine queries, we empirically characterize the performance gains offered by our new algorithms. We show that the practical benefits of intersection lists can be fully realized only with an early-termination algorithm.
Patellar Resurfacing in Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Prospective, Randomized, Double-Blind Study with Five to Seven Years of Follow-up

Background: Whether to resurface the patella during a primary total knee arthroplasty performed for the treatment of degenerative osteoarthritis remains a controversial issue. Parameters that have been suggested as being useful in guiding this decision include patient height and weight, the presence of anterior knee pain preoperatively, and the grade of chondromalacia encountered intraoperatively. The purpose of this study was to determine whether these parameters were predictive of the clinical result following total knee arthroplasty with or without patellar resurfacing. Methods: Eighty-six patients (118 knees) undergoing primary total knee arthroplasty for the treatment of osteoarthritis were enrolled in a prospective, randomized, double-blind study. All patients received the same posterior-cruciate-sparing total knee prosthetic components. Patients were randomized to treatment with or without resurfacing of the patella. Evaluations consisted of the determination of a Knee Society clinical score, the completion of a patient satisfaction questionnaire, specific questions relating to patellofemoral symptoms, and radiographs. Sixty-seven patients (ninety-three knees) were followed for a minimum of five years (range, sixty to eighty-four months; average, 70.5 months). Results: With the numbers available, there was no significant difference between the groups treated with and without resurfacing with regard to the overall Knee Society score or the pain and function subscores. Obesity, the degree of patellar chondromalacia, and the presence of preoperative anterior knee pain did not predict postoperative clinical scores or the presence of postoperative anterior knee pain. Conclusions: The occurrence of anterior knee pain could not be predicted with any clinical or radiographic parameter studied. On the basis of these results, it seems likely that postoperative anterior knee pain is related either to the component design or to the details of the surgical technique, such as component rotation, rather than to whether or not the patella is resurfaced.
Brain mobile interfacing (BMI) system embedded with wheelchair

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology is much advancing and got a boon in recent years. Brain computer interface (BCI) is an interesting application which could be used in several fields such as education, entertainment, instrumentation and medical application. It is worth saying that physically challenged people are gifted with BCI applications such as prosthesis, information translator (Speller), BCI controlled wheelchair etc. BCI lets physically challenged people to lead a normal life without the need of any bulky instruments. This paper enhances Brain Computer Interface (BCI) into much simpler Brain Mobile Interface (BMI) for wheelchair application with collusion detection. The proposed system integrates EEG headset, smart phone, and the wheelchair. Neural signals are obtained from human brain using wireless EEG headset and are processed by the smart phone. The command signal is transmitted to the wheelchair through wireless communication. The wheelchair consists of microcontroller to execute the command and an IR camera to detect obstacles in the path.
Multirobot C-SLAM: Simultaneous localization, control, and mapping

This paper is about closing the low level control loop during Multirobot Simultaneous Localization and Map Building from an estimation-control theoretic viewpoint. We present a multi-vehicle control strategy that uses the state estimates generated from the SLAM algorithm as input to a multi-vehicle controller. Given the separability between optimal state estimation and regulation, we show that the tracking error does not influence the estimation performance of a fully observable EKF based multirobot SLAM implementation, and viceversa, that estimation errors do not undermine controller performance. Furthermore, both the controller and estimator are shown to be asymptotically stable. The feasibility of using this technique to close the perception-action loop during multirobot SLAM is validated with simulation results.
Surface-Secreted von Willebrand Factor Mediates Aggregation of ADP-Activated Platelets at Moderate Shear Stress: Facilitated by GPIb but Controlled by GPIIb-IIIa

Summary We previously showed that ADP activation of washed human platelets in plasma-free suspensions supports aggregation at moderate shear stress (0.4-1.6 Nm-2) in Poiseuille flow. Although most activated platelets expressed maximal fibrinogen-occupied GPIIb-IIIa receptors, aggregation appeared to be independent of bound fibrinogen, but blocked by the hexapeptide GRGDSP. Here, we tested the hypothesis that von Willebrand factor (vWF) secreted and expressed on activated platelets mediates aggregation at moderate shear rates from 300 to 1000 s_1 corresponding to shear stresses from 0.3 to 1.1 Nm-2. Relatively unactivated platelets (<15% expressing prebound fibrinogen) were prepared from acidified citrated platelet rich plasma (cPRP) by single centrifugation with 50 nM stable prostacyclin derivative ZK 36374 and resuspended in Tyrodes-albumin at 5 X 104 cells ε_1. Flow cytometric measurements with monoclonal antibody (mAb) 2.2. 9 reporting on surface-bound vWF, and with mAb S12 reporting on a-granule secreted P-selectin, showed that 65% and 80%, respectively, of all platelets were maximally activated with respect to maximal secretion and surface expression of these proteins. “Resting” washed platelets exhibited both surface-bound vWF and significant P-selectin secretion. We showed that mAbs 6D1 and NMC4, respectively blocking the adhesive domains on the GPIb receptor recognizing vWF, and on the vWF molecule recognizing the GPIb receptor, partially inhibited ADP-induced aggregation under shear in Couette flow, the degree of inhibition increasing with increasing shear stress. In contrast, mAb 10E5, blocking the vWF binding domain on GPIIb-IIIa, essentially blocked all aggregation at the shear rates tested. We conclude that vWF, expressed on ADP-activated platelets, is at least the predominant cross-bridging molecule mediating aggregation at moderate shear stress. There is an absolute requirement for free activated GPIIb-IIIa receptors, postulated to interact with platelet-secreted, surface bound vWF. The GPIb-vWF cross-bridging reaction plays a facilitative role becoming increasingly important with increasing shear stress. Since aurin tricarboxylic acid, which blocks the GPIb binding domain on vWF, was also found to completely block aggregation in Poiseuille flow, we conclude that it too affects the GPIIb-IIIa interaction.