Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GENDER BALANCE IN COMMITTEES AND HOW IT IMPACTS PARTICIPATION: EVIDENCE FROM COSTA RICA’S LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

espanolExaminamos la participacion de mujeres y hombres en legislaturas en un caso critico. Estudios anteriores han encontrado que las mujeres muchas veces participan menos que los hombres en las discusiones en comision y en los debates en el plenario. No obstante, estos estudios se realizaron sobre casos en que las mujeres ocupaban una proporcion relativamente pequena de los escanos y generalmente no ocupaban puestos de decision ni tenian antiguedad �factores que tienden a reducir la participacion. Usamos datos de la Asamblea Legislativa de Costa Rica (2010-2012) para evaluar si las mujeres participan menos que los hombres aun cuando esten en condiciones de (casi) igualdad institucional. Costa Rica tiene una cuota exitosa de un 40%, una mujer presidenta, y no esta permitida la reeleccion inmediata a la Asamblea, asi que ningun diputado tiene antiguedad, por lo que muchas barreras de genero se han superado en la politica costarricense. En este entorno aparentemente favorable, ? las diputadas participan a la par de los diputados? Respondemos a esta pregunta utilizando datos de dos comisiones permanentes que ofrecen una varianza en el porcentaje de mujeres que asisten a cada sesion. Los hallazgos empiricos sugieren que las mujeres participan tanto como los hombres en las comisiones, aun cuando hay muy pocas mujeres en la comision. Tambien encontramos que los y las presidentes/as de las comisiones tienen una participacion muy activa, lo que subraya la importancia de que las mujeres obtengan puestos de liderazgo en las comisiones. EnglishWe examine participation by women and men in legislatures in a critical case. Previous studies found that women often participate less than men in committee hearings and plenary debates. Yet these studies were conducted in cases where women held a fairly small share of seats and generally did not hold leadership positions or have seniority � factors expected to decrease participation. We use data from the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly (2010-2012) to assess whether women still participate less than men when placed in conditions of (near) institutional equality. Costa Rica has a successful 40% gender quota, a woman president, and no immediate reelection to the Assembly so all deputies lack seniority, thus many sex barriers have been broken in Costa Rican politics. In this apparently favorable environment, do women deputies participate equally with men? We answer this question using data from two standing committees, which offer variance on the percentage of women in attendance at each session. Empirical findings suggest that women participate as much as men in committee, even when the number of women on the committee is few. We also find that committee leaders are very active participants, which underscores the importance for women of obtaining committee leadership positions.
Title: Effect of a Brief Progressive Resistance Training Program in Hospital Porters on Pain, Work ability, and Physical Function

Background: Hospital porters are possibly exposed to the greatest mechanical loads within the hospital environment. However, the evidence about preventive strategies in this population is scarce. Objective: To investigate the effect of a workplace-based progressive resistance-training program on musculoskeletal pain among hospital porters. Method: A total of 37 hospital porters (27 women, 10 men) participated. Participants allocated to the intervention group performed five brief resistance training sessions/week, for 9 weeks during working hours at the hospital. Intensity was progressively increased. Participants allocated to the control group maintained their usual physical activity. The primary outcome was pain assessed with the patient global impression of pain change scale. Secondary outcome measures were average pain intensity, work ability, use of analgesics, and physical function. Additionally, perceived general changes were evaluated at follow-up: wellness, satisfaction at work, desire to exercise, motivation to eat healthy, energy to be with family and friends, and socialization with colleagues. Results: For the primary outcome, the intervention group showed lower general pain (p<0.0001) and greater wellbeing (p<0.0001), work satisfaction (p=0.0048), desire for practicing exercise (p=0.0007), and energy (p=0.0474) compared with the control group. Significant between-group interactions were found for work impairment due to diseases (d=-1.2), hips/thighs pain (d=0.7), ankles/feet pain (d=0.4), the Biering-Sorensen test (d=-0.6) and the push-ups test (d=-2.3) favoring the intervention group. All between-group differences were clinically important. Conclusion: A progressive resistance training program performed at the workplace is feasible and effective in reducing musculoskeletal pain and improving work ability and physical function among hospital porters.
This in an electronic reprint of the original article

Purpose - The European Commission has published a general framework of entrepreneurship competence, EntreComp, to create a shared definition and support its development. This study proposes and tests a scale to measure entrepreneurship competence based on the EntreComp framework and examines its relation to start-up behaviour using data from seven European countries. Design/methodology/approach - The data was gathered from seven European countries and consists of 1128 answers from both secondary and higher education level students. We use explorative factor analysis, analysis of variance, and logistic regression analysis as data analysis methods. Findings - The results show that entrepreneurship competence is related to start-up behaviour and sensitive to role models and prior experience of entrepreneurship but is not sensitive to gender or level of education. The results also show that although the framework proposes three distinct areas, entrepreneurship competence is unidimensional. Originality/Value - The study tests the EntreComp framework and introduces a scale for measuring EC based on the framework. The results show that EC can be addressed as unidimensional construct, and that it explains start-up behavior and develops through enterprising activities. The study also shows the impact of role models on EC. No difference in EC between genders is observed, suggesting the gender differences in entrepreneurship arise from factors other than competence.
Role of the medial prefrontal cortex in impaired decision making in juvenile attention-deficit / hyperactivity disorder

eMethods. Supplementary methods eResults. Supplementary results eFigure 1. Analysis of the FRN eFigure 2. Neural correlates of RPEs and decision function eFigure 3. Analysis of sgACC/VS-ROI and functional connectivity eTable 1. Behavioral comparison between groups eTable 2. Results of the Bayesian model comparison eTable 3. Results of additional fMRI analyses: main task effect of RPE (cue + outcome) and decision steepness (model parameter β)
A model for the emergence and diffusion of software standards

The economic impact of the growth dynamic of standards is often described from a macroeconomic point of view, employing network effect theory and models dealing with externalities. Game-theoretic models try to depict and predict the situation on the microeconomic side. We follow a new approach, which simulates the system's behavior based on the modeling of a set of individual conduction rules, and their interaction in a closed environment. Implementing such an agent based computational economics approach, using a simulation environment called SWARM, we assume the existence of three firm sizes combined with three types of standards. Each standard has an optimal fit to a firm size, which results in reduced costs according to standardization benefits, whereas other combinations lead to lower savings respectively. In addition we postulate initial standardization cost for internal restructuring measures and different scopes of communication fitted to the three firm types. Each firm can repeatedly decide to standardize in various simulation passes depending on an expected standardization benefit. As an outcome of various simulations, we observe a dominance of the communication standard preferred by the large companies as a function of growing network density. For an increasing communication range the same behavior emerges for all firm types. The model underpins the well-known concentration tendency in real worlds' technology markets.
MOJAVE: Monitoring of Jets in Active galactic nuclei with VLBA Experiments

Aims. We have investigated a frequency-dependent shift in the absolute position of the optically thick apparent origin of parsec-scale jets (“core shift” effect) to probe physical conditions in ultra-compact relativistic outflows in active galactic nuclei. Methods. We used multi-frequency Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations of 191 sources carried out in 12 epochs in 2006 within the Monitoring Of Jets in Active galactic nuclei with VLBA Experiments (MOJAVE) program. The observations were performed at 8.1, 8.4, 12.1, and 15.4 GHz. We implemented a method of determining the core shift vector based on (i) image registration by two-dimensional normalized cross-correlation and (ii) model-fitting the source brightness distribution to take into account a non-zero core component offset from the phase center. Results. The 15.4−8.1, 15.4−8.4, and 15.4−12.1 GHz core shift vectors are derived for 163 sources, and have median values of 128, 125, and 88 μas, respectively, compared to the typical measured errors of 50, 51, 35 μas. The effect occurs predominantly along the jet direction, with departures smaller than 45◦ from the median jet position angle in over 80% of the cases. Despite the moderate ratio of the observed frequencies ( 2σ) are detected for about 55% of the sources. These shifts are even better aligned with the jet direction, deviating from the latter by less than 30◦ in over 90% of the cases. There is an indication that the core shift decreases with increasing redshift. Magnetic fields in the jet at a distance of 1 parsec from the central black hole, calculated from the obtained core shifts, are found to be systematically stronger in quasars (median B1 ≈ 0.9 G) than those in BL Lacs (median B1 ≈ 0.4 G). We also constrained the absolute distance of the core from the apex of the jet at 15 GHz as well as the magnetic field strength in the 15 GHz core region.
CARLA-Loc: Synthetic SLAM Dataset with Full-stack Sensor Setup in Challenging Weather and Dynamic Environments

The robustness of SLAM algorithms in challenging environmental conditions is crucial for autonomous driving, but the impact of these conditions are unknown while given the difficulty of arbitrarily changing the relevant environmental parameters of the same environment in the real world. Therefore, we propose CARLA-Loc, a synthetic dataset of challenging and dynamic environments built on CARLA simulator. We integrate multiple sensors into the dataset with strict calibration, synchronization and precise timestamping. 7 maps and 42 sequences are posed in our dataset with different dynamic levels and weather conditions. Objects in both stereo images and point clouds are well-segmented with their class labels. We evaluate 5 visual-based and 4 LiDAR-based approaches on varies sequences and analyze the effect of challenging environmental factors on the localization accuracy, showing the applicability of proposed dataset for validating SLAM algorithms.
A Benchmark for Text Expansion: Datasets, Metrics, and Baselines

This work presents a new task of Text Expansion (TE), which aims to insert fine-grained modifiers into proper locations of the plain text to concretize or vivify human writings. Different from existing insertion-based writing assistance tasks, TE requires the model to be more flexible in both locating and generation, and also more cautious in keeping basic semantics. We leverage four complementary approaches to construct a dataset with 12 million automatically generated instances and 2K human-annotated references for both English and Chinese. To facilitate automatic evaluation, we design various metrics from multiple perspectives. In particular, we propose Info-Gain to effectively measure the informativeness of expansions, which is an important quality dimension in TE. On top of a pre-trained text-infilling model, we build both pipelined and joint Locate&Infill models, which demonstrate the superiority over the Text2Text baselines, especially in expansion informativeness. Experiments verify the feasibility of the TE task and point out potential directions for future research toward better automatic text expansion.
Efficient Pyramid Channel Attention Network for Pathological Myopia Detection

Pathological myopia (PM) is the leading ocular disease for impaired vision and blindness worldwide. The key to detecting PM as early as possible is to detect informative features in global and local lesion regions, such as fundus tessellation, atrophy and maculopathy. However, applying classical convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to efficiently highlight global and local lesion context information in feature maps is quite challenging. To tackle this issue, we aim to fully leverage the potential of global and local lesion information with attention module design. Based on this, we propose an efficient pyramid channel attention (EPCA) module, which dynamically explores the relative importance of global and local lesion context information in feature maps. Then we combine the EPCA module with the backbone network to construct EPCA-Net for automatic PM detection based on fundus images. In addition, we construct a PM dataset termed PM-fundus by collecting fundus images of PM from publicly available datasets (e.g., the PALM dataset and ODIR dataset). The comprehensive experiments are conducted on three datasets, demonstrating that our EPCA-Net outperforms state-of-the-art methods in detecting PM. Furthermore, motivated by the recent pretraining-and-finetuning paradigm, we attempt to adapt pre-trained natural image models for PM detection by freezing them and treating the EPCA module and other attention modules as the adapters. The results show that our method with the pretraining-and-finetuning paradigm achieves competitive performance through comparisons to part of methods with traditional fine-tuning methods with fewer tunable parameters.
Architecture stratigraphique et flux sédimentaires sur la marge sud du golfe de Corinthe (Grèce) : analyse de terrain, modélisations expérimentales et numériques

The objective of the present work is to characterize sediment supply dynamics within the Plio-Pleistocene Corinth Rift using an integrated approach based on field observations and analyses, experimental modeling and numerical modeling. Detailed sedimentological, structural and biostratigraphical studies on the southern coast of the rift provide a tectono-stratigraphic model within a well-constrained climatic and eustatic setting. Stratigraphic simulations (DIONISOS) are used to validate this model, to quantify the sediment supply and to discuss the relative role of four controlling factors on stratigraphic architecture (sediment flux, water flux, subsidence, eustasy). Finally, a geomorphological experimental approach has been developed to study the relative role of factors (rainfall, uplift rate. . . . . ) that control sediment supply and their record within the sedimentary signal.
Stormflow generation in tropical rainforests: a hydrochemical approach

The interaction of soil physical and hydrometeorological characteristics determine the prevailing hydrological flow paths for a given geo-ecosystem. In the tropical rainforests of northeast Queensland and western Amazonia that interaction favors the participation of near- surface flow paths in stormflow generation whose chemical fingerprint is distinct from that of subsurface flow paths. Using the molar ratio of potassium to silica, to differentiate unambiguously between near- surface and subsurface flow paths, in an end-member mixing model, we show that the stormflow contribution of event water in the form of saturation overland flow, one of several possible near-surface flow paths, reaches 50%. The total contribution of near-surface flow paths, which also encompass pre-event water, can be considerably higher.
AMULET: a Mutation Language Enabling Automatic Enrichment of SysML Models

SysML models are widely used for designing and analyzing complex systems. Model-based design methods often require successive modifications of the models, whether for incrementally refining the design (e.g. in agile development methods) or for testing different design options. Such modifications, or mutations, are also used in mutation-based testing approaches. However, the definition of mutation operators can be a complex issue and applying them to models is sometimes performed by hand: this is time consuming and error prone. The paper addresses this issue thanks to the introduction of AMULET, the first mutation language for SysML. AMULET encompasses the modifications targeting SysML block and state-machine diagrams, and is supported by a compiler the paper presents. This compiler is integrated in TTool, an open-source SysML toolkit, enabling the full support of design methods including model design, mutation and verification tasks in a unique toolkit. The paper also introduces two case-studies providing concrete examples of AMULET use for modeling vulnerabilities and cyber attacks, and highlighting the benefits of AMULET for SysML mutations.
NEW INSIGHTS INTO RUBBER NETWORK STRUCTURE BY A COMBINATION OF EXPERIMENTAL TECHNIQUES

ABSTRACT Robust quantitative cross-link density characterization becomes necessary for the complete understanding of the structure and optimization of final properties of rubber compounds for industrial applications. A combination of different experimental techniques have been used to establish the quantitative consistency on the correlations between the results obtained by the individual methods within a reliable unique (physically based) platform reclined on the concept of rubber elasticity that considers the impact of entanglements in technical rubbers. The contribution of cross-links and elastically active entanglements to mechanical properties has been quantified by the analysis of uniaxial stress–strain measurements by means of the extended tube model of rubber elasticity. In a complementary manner, rubber network structure has also been investigated by state-of-the-art multiple-quantum low-field NMR experiments and classical T1 and T2 relaxation measurements. In addition, equilibrium swelling data .
Neuroinflammation: A Common Pathway in Alzheimer’s Disease and Epilepsy

Background: Neuroinflammation is an innate immunological response of the central nervous system that may be induced by a brain insult and chronic neurodegenerative conditions. Recent research has shown that neuroinflammation may contribute to the initiation of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathogenesis and associated epileptogenesis. Objective: This systematic review aimed to investigate the available literature on the shared molecular mechanisms of neuroinflammation in AD and epilepsy. Methods: The search included in this systematic review was obtained from 5 established databases. A total of 2,760 articles were screened according to inclusion criteria. Articles related to the modulation of the inflammatory biomarkers commonly associated with the progression of AD and epilepsy in all populations were included in this review. Results: Only 7 articles met these criteria and were chosen for further analysis. Selected studies include both in vitro and in vivo research conducted on rodents. Several neuroinflammatory biomarkers were reported to be involved in the cross-talk between AD and epilepsy. Conclusion: Neuroinflammation was directly associated with the advancement of AD and epilepsy in populations compared to those with either AD or epilepsy. However, more studies focusing on common inflammatory biomarkers are required to develop standardized monitoring guidelines to prevent the manifestation of epilepsy and delay the progression of AD in patients.
A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed: Investigating the Quality of Training Data from Peers for Auto-generating Empathetic Textual Responses to Non-Sensitive Posts in a Cohort of College Students

Towards providing personalized care, digital mental-wellness apps today ask questions to learn about subjects. However, not all subjects using these apps will have mood problems; thus, they do not need follow-up questions. In this study, we investigate an alternate mechanism to handle such non-sensitive posts (i.e., those not indicating mood problems) in college settings. To do so, we generate and use training data provided by a cohort of peer college students so that responses to non-sensitive posts are contextual, emotionally aware, and empathetic while also being terminal (not asking follow-up questions). Using data from a real mental-wellness app used by students, we identify that AI models trained with our peer-provided dataset generate desirable responses to non-sensitive posts, while models trained with state-of-the-art (Facebook’s) Empathetic Dataset yields responses that ask many follow-up questions, hence giving a perception of being intrusive. We believe that mental wellness apps today must not assume that any subject using these apps has mood problems. Perceptions of intrusiveness (i.e., apps asking many questions) must be a factor in design. We also believe that peer students can provide rich and reliable training datasets for college mental wellness apps, a topic that is not yet explored.
A Comparative Study on the Genetic Algorithm and Regression Analysis in Urban Population Surface Modeling

Taking the East-Hwasung area as the case, this study first builds gridded population data based on the municipal population survey raw data, and then measures, by way of GIS tools, the major urban spatial variables that are thought to influence the composition of the regional population. For the purpose of comparison, the urban models based on the Genetic Algorithm technique and the regression technique are constructed using the same input variables. The findings indicate that the GA output performed better in differentiating the effective variables among the pilot model variables, and predicted as much consistent and meaningful coefficient estimates for the explanatory variables as the regression models. The study results indicate that GA technique could be a very useful and supplementary research tool in understanding the urban phenomena.
Kiel , Germany Efficiency and Labor Market Dynamics in a Model of Labor Selection *

We characterize efficient allocations and business cycle fluctuations in a labor selection model. Due to forward-looking hiring and labor supply decisions, efficiency entails both static and intertemporal margins. We develop welfare-relevant measures of marginal rates of transformation and efficiency along each margin that nest their counterparts in frictionless labor markets. In a calibrated version of the model, efficient fluctuations feature highly volatile unemployment and job-finding rates, in line with empirical evidence. We show analytically in a simplified version of the model that volatility arises from selection effects, rather than general equilibrium effects. We also develop sufficient conditions on wages, which are independent of the wage-determination process, that decentralize efficient allocations. Unlike the Hosios condition for matching models, there is no simple restriction on Nash bargaining that guarantees that Nash wages can support efficient allocations. Cyclical fluctuations in the Nash-bargaining economy display even larger amplification of productivity shocks into labor market outcomes than in the efficient economy, without extreme assumptions about bargaining shares, inflexibility of wages, or the size of surpluses that govern labor demand. The results establish normative and positive foundations for DSGE labor selection models.