Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An iterative algorithm for forward-parameterized skill discovery

We introduce COCOTTE (COnstrained Complexity Optimization Through iTerative merging of Experts), an iterative algorithm for discovering discrete, meaningful parameterized skills and learning explicit models of them from a set of behaviour examples. We show that forward-parameterized skills can be seen as smooth components of a locally smooth function and, framing the problem as the constrained minimization of a complexity measure, we propose an iterative algorithm to discover them. This algorithm fits well in the developmental robotics framework, as it does not require any external definition of a parameterized task, but discovers skills parameterized by the action from data. An application of our method to a simulated setup featuring a robotic arm interacting with an object is shown.
Juridification of Social Spheres: A comparative analysis in the areas of labor, corporate, antitrust and social welfare law

of efficacy, responsiveness and coherence: G. Teubner, “Juridification: Concepts, Aspects, Limits, Solutions” in G. Teubner (ed.), Juridification of Social Spheres: A Comparative Analysis in the Areas of Labor, Corporate, Antitrust, and Social Welfare Law (1987). That is to say, citizens and others demand administrative systems to be successful in managing their role, responding to the public will and acting consistently with the basic normative commitments of society. As Teubner has demonstrated, any reform which aims to improve the performance of an administrative body or system in one of these three respects will almost certainly worsen performance in at least one of the other two. In this sense, analysing how institutions such as public inquiries work, and how they ought to work, is a “perpetually unsatisfactory project”: J.L. Mashaw, “Structuring a Dense Complexity: Accountability and the Project of Administrative Law” (2005) 5 Issues in Legal Scholarship 1, at 14. At the start of the book, the author quotes Sir Edward Heath’s statement to Parliament concerning a possible review of the Government’s action prior to the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands: “the plain fact is that we have never succeeded in finding the perfect form of inquiry”. It is hard to avoid the impression, looking at both the history of public inquires and the analysis in this book, that the reason is that no such thing exists. There is cause for caution before we accept that this book provides the firm answers that it suggests it does. This does not detract, however, from the fact that Blom-Cooper’s study teaches us much about finding a way for public inquiries to, to borrow the phrase of Samuel Beckett, fail better.
Timing and design closure in physical design flows

A physical design flow consists of producing a production-worthy layout from a gate-level netlist subject to a set of constraints. This paper focuses on the problems imposed by shrinking process technologies. It exposes the problems of timing closure, signal integrity, design variable dependencies, clock and power/ground routing, and design signoff. It also surveys some physical design flows, and outlines a refinement-based flow.
Research on Local Energy Multi-Path Topology Control Mechanism

In wireless sensor networks, energy efficiency is crucial to achieve satisfactory network lifetime. Compared with other nodes, the bottleneck nodes in WSN have much more impact on network lifetime. In this paper, firstly a heuristic relative neighborhood graph-quasi bottleneck (HRNG-QB) model is presented. In HRNG-QB, the concept of quasi- bottleneck nodes and how to determine them in UDG is introduced, then a heuristic mechanism is proposed to save single node consumption. Based on this topology, a local energy multi- path (LEMP) topology control algorithm is given, which uses local energy multi-path to coordinate nodes and leverage energy consumption of different nodes. Simulation result under NS2 show that LEMP can extend WSN lifetime effectively.
Aptamers: A promising chemical antibody for cancer therapy

Aptamers, also known as chemical antibodies, are single-stranded nucleic acid oligonucleotides which bind to their targets with high specificity and affinity. They are typically selected by repetitive in vitro process termed systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX). Owing to their excellent properties compared to conventional antibodies, notably their smaller physical size and lower immunogenicity and toxicity, aptamers have recently emerged as a new class of agents to deliver therapeutic drugs to cancer cells by targeting specific cancer-associated hallmarks. Aptamers can also be structurally modified to make them more flexible in order to conjugate other agents such as nano-materials and therapeutic RNA agents, thus extending their applications for cancer therapy. This review presents the current knowledge on the practical applications of aptamers in the treatment of a variety of cancers.
Fast wavelet transform domain texture synthesis

Block based texture synthesis algorithms have shown better results than others as they help to preserve the global structure. Previous research has proposed several approaches in the pixel domain, but little effort has been taken in the synthesis of texture in a multiresolution domain. We propose a multiresolution framework in which coefficient-blocks of the spatio-frequency components of the input texture are efficiently stitched together to form the corresponding components of the output texture. We propose two algorithms to this effect. In the first, we use a constant block size throughout the algorithm. In the second, we adaptively split blocks so as to use the largest possible block size in order to preserve the global structure, while maintaining the mismatched error of the overlapped boundaries below a certain error tolerance. Special consideration is given to minimization of the computational cost, throughout the algorithm designs. We show that the adaptation of the multiresolution approach results in a fast, cost-effective, flexible texture synthesis algorithm that is capable of being used in modern, bandwidth-adaptive, real-time imaging applications. A collection of regular and stochastic test textures is used to prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Learning in Heterogeneous Environments: a Case Study

We propose a learning mechanism suitable for using in a heterogeneous environment, where interconnected systems present simultaneously a competitive and cooperative behaviour. By interconnected systems we understand systems that need to interact with each other and then act either in an individual as well as a global way: each of the systems observes itself and the environment, and acts according to its unique perspective; but a system can also need the help of others to complete its own tasks. In our case, systems are represented by agents, since we are studying environments where autonomy and pro-activity are essential features. The learning mechanism we propose here can be classified as a multi-agent learning mechanism, not only because there are multiple agents learning concurrently in the same environment but also because it allows them to understand how to improve their own performance without degrading the performance of the other agents. We tested our learning mechanism over the Disruption Management in Airline Operations Control Center application domain, where interconnected agents (namely the Aircraft Manager, the Passenger Manager and the Crew Manager) need to combine their expertise. The results show that our learning mechanism provides a good performance to the agents that operate simultaneously in cooperative and competitive situations.
Is there any association between National Institute of Health category IV prostatitis and prostate-specific antigen levels in patients with low-risk localized prostate cancer?

ABSTRACT Purpose We investigated the association between National Institute of Health category IV prostatitis and prostate-specific antigen levels in patients with low-risk localized prostate cancer. Materials and Methods The data of 440 patients who had undergone prostate biopsies due to high PSA levels and suspicious digital rectal examination findings were reviewed retrospectively. The patients were divided into two groups based on the presence of accompanying NIH IV prostatitis. The exclusion criteria were as follows: Gleason score>6, PSA level>20ng/mL, >2 positive cores, >50% cancerous tissue per biopsy, urinary tract infection, urological interventions at least 1 week previously (cystoscopy, urethral catheterization, or similar procedure), history of prostate biopsy, and history of androgen or 5-alpha reductase use. All patient's age, total PSA and free PSA levels, ratio of free to total PSA, PSA density and prostate volume were recorded. Results In total, 101 patients were included in the study. Histopathological examination revealed only PCa in 78 (77.2%) patients and PCa+NIH IV prostatitis in 23 (22.7%) patients. The median total PSA level was 7.4 (3.5–20.0) ng/mL in the PCa+NIH IV prostatitis group and 6.5 (0.6–20.0) ng/mL in the PCa group (p=0.67). The PSA level was≤10ng/mL in 60 (76.9%) patients in the PCa group and in 16 (69.6%) patients in the PCa+NIH IV prostatitis group (p=0.32). Conclusions Our study showed no statistically significant difference in PSA levels between patients with and without NIH IV prostatitis accompanying PCa.
The Performance Worm: Real Time Visualisation of Expression based on Langner's Tempo-Loudness Animation

In an expressive performance, a skilled musician shapes the music by continuously modulating aspects like tempo and loudness to communicate high level information such as musical structure and emotion. Although automatic modelling of this phenomenon remains beyond the current state of the art, we present a system that is able to measure tempo and dynamics of a musical performance and to track their development over time. The system accepts raw audio input, tracks tempo and dynamics changes in real time, and displays the development of these expressive parameters in an intuitive and aesthetically appealing graphical format which provides insight into the expressive patterns applied by skilled artists.
Development‐based compartmentalization of the Drosophila central brain

The neuropile of the Drosophila brain is subdivided into anatomically discrete compartments. Compartments are rich in terminal neurite branching and synapses; they are the neuropile domains in which signal processing takes place. Compartment boundaries are defined by more or less dense layers of glial cells as well as long neurite fascicles. These fascicles are formed during the larval period, when the approximately 100 neuronal lineages that constitute the Drosophila central brain differentiate. Each lineage forms an axon tract with a characteristic trajectory in the neuropile; groups of spatially related tracts congregate into the brain fascicles that can be followed from the larva throughout metamorphosis into the adult stage. Here we provide a map of the adult brain compartments and the relevant fascicles defining compartmental boundaries. We have identified the neuronal lineages contributing to each fascicle, which allowed us to compare compartments of the larval and adult brain directly. Most adult compartments can be recognized already in the early larval brain, where they form a “protomap” of the later adult compartments. Our analysis highlights the morphogenetic changes shaping the Drosophila brain; the data will be important for studies that link early‐acting genetic mechanisms to the adult neuronal structures and circuits controlled by these mechanisms. J. Comp. Neurol. 518:2996–3023, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Why so serious? On the relation of serious games and learning

Serious games have become a key segment in the games market as well as in academic research. Although the number of games that identify themselves as belonging to this category as well as the research done on their effects has been rapidly growing, there has thus far been no attempt to define all of the various opportunities that digital games provide for learning. To address this issue we look at existing definitions of serious games and their potential for learning. We identify the shortcomings of existing definitions and typologies. We discuss opportunities for an educational use of serious games which have been marginalized so far and develop a more flexible classification system for serious games in order to include commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) games for learning purposes and description options for future developments of gaming technology. This classification system for digital and serious games uses labels and tags as a preferable solution instead of fixed genre categories. The aim of this paper is to move the focus from what serious games and their uses for learning currently are to what they can be.
LH Dynamics in Overweight Girls with Premature Adrenarche and Slowly Progressive Sexual Precocity

Background. Excess adiposity and premature adrenarche (PA) are risk factors for the development of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Methods. Girls with slowly progressive precocious breast development, who were overweight and had PA (SPPOPA, 6.2–8.2 years, ), overweight PA (6.6–10.8 years, ), and overweight premenarcheal controls (OW-PUB, 10.6–12.8 years, ) underwent hormonal sleep testing and GnRH agonist (GnRHag) and ACTH tests. Results. Despite an insignificant sleep-related increase in LH and prepubertal baseline hormone levels, SPPOPA peak LH and estradiol responses to GnRHag were intermediate between those of PA and OW-PUB, the LH being significantly different from both. Conclusions. GnRHag tests indicate that SPPOPA is a slowly progressive form of true puberty with blunted LH dynamics. These results argue against the prepubertal hyperandrogenism of excess adiposity or PA enhancing LH secretion or causing ovarian hyperandrogenism prior to menarche. Excess adiposity may contribute to both the early onset and slow progression of puberty.
Involuntary Embarrassing Exposures in Online Social Networks: A Replication Study

In this study, we carry out a methodological replication of the research done by Choi et al. (2015) published in Information System Research. In the original study, the authors integrate the privacy and teasing literatures under a social exchange framework to understand online involuntary exposures. The original study was conducted on students from Southeast Asia. Our study uses a significantly larger sample of college students in the United States. Our replication results show that whereas most of the hypotheses supported by the original results on behavioral responses replicate with high consistency (8 out of 12 hypotheses), the results that deal with the effects of network commonality on perceived privacy invasion and perceived relationship bonding did not replicate (4 out of 12 hypotheses). These results could stem from a failed manipulation of network commonality. We look into the possible rationales for this and show what would be an effective manipulation in our context. Further, we expand the original study by testing an additional embarrassing scenario catered to our subject pool. The results suggest that perceived privacy invasion and perceived relationship bonding affect individual’s behavioral responses to embarrassing exposures.
Sparsity analysis of learned factors in Multilayer NMF

The concept of nonnegative matrix factorization is a recent machine learning technique that is used to decompose large data matrices imposing the non-negativity constraints on the factors. This technique is now used in many data mining applications and thus remains a topic of ongoing interest. In this paper we are particularly interested in the Multilayer NMF - a model that can be seen as a pretraining step of Deep NMF model for learning hidden representations. We analyze the factors obtained using Multilayer NMF and show that the process of building layers can be seen as a repeated application of the Hoyer's projection operator applied sequentially to the factor of the second layer. We also provide the sparsity analysis for matrices obtained during the optimization procedure at each layer. We conclude that the overall sparsity decreases with the increasing number of layers despite the general assumption that Multilayer NMF is efficient due to the fact that it increases the sparsity of learned factors.
A phase 1 study of the bispecific anti-CD30/CD16A antibody construct AFM13 in patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma.

AFM13 is a bispecific, tetravalent chimeric antibody construct (TandAb) designed for the treatment of CD30-expressing malignancies. AFM13 recruits natural killer (NK) cells via binding to CD16A as immune effector cells. In this phase 1 dose-escalation study, 28 patients with heavily pretreated relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma received AFM13 at doses of 0.01 to 7 mg/kg body weight. Primary objectives were safety and tolerability. Secondary objectives included pharmacokinetics, antitumor activity, and pharmacodynamics. Adverse events were generally mild to moderate. The maximum tolerated dose was not reached. Pharmacokinetics assessment revealed a half-life of up to 19 hours. Three of 26 evaluable patients achieved partial remission (11.5%) and 13 patients achieved stable disease (50%), with an overall disease control rate of 61.5%. AFM13 was also active in brentuximab vedotin-refractory patients. In 13 patients who received doses of ≥1.5 mg/kg AFM13, the overall response rate was 23% and the disease control rate was 77%. AFM13 treatment resulted in a significant NK-cell activation and a decrease of soluble CD30 in peripheral blood. In conclusion, AFM13 represents a well-tolerated, safe, and active targeted immunotherapy of Hodgkin lymphoma. A phase 2 study is currently planned to optimize the dosing schedule in order to further improve the therapeutic efficacy. This phase 1 study was registered at www.clinicaltrials. gov as #NCT01221571.
Artificial intelligences and the problem of consciousness

A major difficulty for the engineers and designers of artificial intelligence (AI) systems has been to replicate consciousness. After all, it has always been assumed that only living beings may be conscious or not. The paper examines the nature of consciousness in the biological world and the conditions that must be fulfilled before consciousness can be attributed to some organism. States of consciousness in organic systems are compared to states of artificial cybernetic information processing systems, such as computers, androids and robots, to which consciousness might be or has been attributed. The claims of orthodox cognitive scientists and the advocates of a “strong AI” with respect to consciousness are examined in detail. The paper gives continuity to the author’s previous studies on the limits of computation, in particular, on intentionality in the context of artificial intelligences. Its main argument is that consciousness presupposes life. It is a state that can only attributed to living systems.
Teachers Evaluating Teachers. Peer Review and the New Unionism. Studies in Social Philosophy and Policy, No. 20.

As a writer on education reform, Myron Lieberman has criticized the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) for standing in the way of needed improvement in our schools. One of the most telling criticisms of these organizations is that they have been too quick to defend teachers charged with incompetence. In response to this charge from Lieberman and others, the NEA and the AFT have championed a "new unionism," under which teacher unions would assume responsibility for ensuring teacher competence by instituting peer review systems. Teachers Evaluating Teachers explores the peer review phenomenon and the teacher unions' stake in perpetuating it. Lieberman examines the costs of peer review programs and seeks to determine whether their promised benefits have been realized. The true test of a program's success should be improvement in teacher competence, which would lead to gains in student achievement, but Lieberman argues that there is no evidence that student scores on standardized test have improved in districts with peer review. Indeed, he shows that peer review has had little or no impact on the number dismissed on grounds of poor performance.
On s-sum vectors-version 1 Techincal Report

We study vectors of positive integers such that a finite number of positive linear combinations of their elements results in the sum of the elements of the vector. We find a family of vectors such that their sum can be obtained only by one positive linear combination of their elements and we prove that this family contains the vectors having minimal sum in function of the number of their elements.
Inhibitory Activity of Flavonoids against Class I Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase Isoforms

Class I PI3 Kinase (PI3K) phosphorylates phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphophate (PIP2) to generate the second messenger phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate (PIP3) and therefore plays an important role in fundamental cellular responses such as proliferation. There are four isoforms of class I PI3K which are known to have different functions and relate to various diseases such as cancer and inflammation. Flavonoids are abundant in fruits, vegetables and plant-derived beverages such as tea. So far, various pharmacological effects of flavonoids have been reported. We previously reported that the flavonoid baicalein exhibits potent PI3K-inhibitory activity. Recently we examined the inhibitory activity of eighteen flavonoids against PI3Kα by using an in vitro homogenous time resolved fluorescence (HTRF) kinase assay, and deduced their structure-activity relationships by comparing the activities of the analogues. Our result suggests that the number of hydroxyl groups in the A and B rings might promote the activity, while loss of C2-C3 double bond might reduce the activity. Furthermore, the activity against 4 class I PI3K isoforms of some selected flavonoids was investigated, and the results indicate that the flavonoids seem to exhibit more potent activity on PI3Kα and δ isoforms compared with that on PI3Kβ and γ isoforms.
The Visual Callosal Connection: A Connection Like Any Other?

Recent work about the role of visual callosal connections in ferrets and cats is reviewed, and morphological and functional homologies between the lateral intrinsic and callosal network in early visual areas are discussed. Both networks selectively link distributed neuronal groups with similar response properties, and the actions exerted by callosal input reflect the functional topography of those networks. This supports the notion that callosal connections perpetuate the function of the lateral intrahemispheric circuit onto the other hemisphere. Reversible deactivation studies indicate that the main action of visual callosal input is a multiplicative shift of responses rather than a changing response selectivity. Both the gain of that action and its excitatory-inhibitory balance seem to be dynamically adapted to the feedforward drive by the visual stimulus onto primary visual cortex. Taken together anatomical and functional evidence from corticocortical and lateral circuits further leads to the conclusion that visual callosal connections share more features with lateral intrahemispheric connections on the same hierarchical level and less with feedback connections. I propose that experimental results about the callosal circuit in early visual areas can be interpreted with respect to lateral connectivity in general.