bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bilingualism and cognitive reserve: It’s a matter of top-down or bottom-up process
Authors: Boutris Panagiotis , Rees Jessica , Bevan Brodie , Izura Cristina
Published: September 2022

Cognitive performance declines with age following different trajectories. The cognitive trade-off, however, between age and cognitive reserve is still not clear. In addition, bilingualism has been thought to play a role in delaying cognitive decline by affecting cognitive control outside the scope of language. However, the effect has been unreliably reproduced and without exploring sufficiently the differences between cognitive functions that govern language control. In the current study 112 adults varying in age, level of bilingualism and cognitive reserve, completed a modified version of the Simon task, which engaged the mechanisms of interference suppression and shifting. Using ex-Gaussian analysis, the Simon effect was replicated in the normal component and the shifting effect was found in the exponential. Additional linear mixed-effects model analysis showed a significant “negative” effect of bilingualism on inhibition and a “positive” effect of cognitive reserve on shifting, both independent of age. Age affected similarly the speed of engagement of both executive functions irrespectively of language or cognitive background. Implications of a bilingual disadvantage and a beneficial effect of cognitive reserve during ageing are discussed.
Negotiating gender, religious and professional identities. Exploring some of the challenges of non-veiled Muslim women at work
Authors: Abdul Fatah Farhana , Schnurr Stephanie
Published: September 2022

Due to the increasing Islamisation, in contemporary Malaysia, non-veiled Muslim women have become the minority in many domains of public life, including the workplace (Hochel 2013; Izharuddin 2018; Mouser 2007). As the veil is widely regarded as a signifier of a Muslim woman’s identity and her level of piety (Ruby 2006; Stirling & Shaw 2004), a woman’s decision to not wear it can result in discriminatory treatment, such as exclusion from the religious community (Othman 2006).  In this paper we give these often discriminated against women a voice and describe some of the challenges that they experience at work. Our particular focus is how these non-veiling women construct their identities – as religious Muslims, “good” women, and successful professionals – in a socio-cultural context where veiling is the norm (Hochel 2013; Izharuddin 2018; Khalid and O’Connor 2011). Drawing on 20 interviews with such women and using Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) relationality principle, we demonstrate how through their stories of personal experience these women mobilise and orient to a range of different identities – including gender, religious and professional – which are intertwined  with each other in complex ways.
Semantic prosody of extended lexical units: A case study
Authors: Charitonidis Chariton
Published: September 2022

Semantic prosody is typically referred to as an evaluative function of certain words or multiword items appearing within collocates of positive or negative meaning. The present study deals with the semantic prosody (context properties) of extended lexical units (ELUs) according to the psycholinguistic variables ‘valence’ (emotional positivity), ‘arousal’ (excitement, mood-enhancement), and ‘concreteness’. The object of investigation are the verbal phrases feel blue (unambiguous idiomatic ELU, without a literal counterpart) and see red (ambiguous ELU, idiomatic or literal). The study builds on Snefjella & Kuperman (2016) who propose context norms for English words on the basis of a USENET mega-corpus. For the detection of ELU representations, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted with speakers of American English. For the detection of the context values of ELUs, a corpus research was carried on by using the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the News on the Web corpus (NOW). The results suggest that ELU contexts largely conform to the averaged context norms of ELU constituents. ELU representations are strongly dissociated from contexts.
Foreword to the special section
Authors: Dziubalska-Kołaczyk Katarzyna , Wojtkowiak Ewelina
Published: September 2022

This is the foreword to the special section with articles from the PLM2019 session titled “Modern phonetics and phonological representation: a new outlook on an old controversy”.
Ergenlik Döneminde Risk Alma Davranışının Yordayıcıları Olarak Akran Baskısı ve Bağlanma Stillerinin İncelenmesi
Authors: SATAN Ayşin , KAPLANER Kübra
Published: September 2022

Bu araştırmanın amacı ergenlerde bağlanma stilleri ve akran baskısının risk alma davranışı üzerindeki etkisinin incelenmesidir. Araştırma betimsel araştırma yöntemlerinden tarama modeli kapsamında yürütülmüştür. Araştırmanın evreni İstanbul’da lisede okuyan öğrencilerdir. Evrendeki öğrencilerden seçkisiz örnekleme yönteminden basit seçkisiz örneklemeyle seçilen 340 öğrenci araştırmanın örneklemini oluşturmaktadır. Bu öğrencilerin 191’i kız ( % 56.2) 149’su erkektir (% 43.8). Araştırmada İlişki Ölçeği, Akran Baskısı Ölçeği ve Risk Alma Davranışı Ölçeği kullanılmıştır. Araştırmada bağlanma stilleri, akran baskısı ve risk alma davranışları puanları arasındaki ilişkiyi ölçmek için Pearson Momentler Çarpımı Korelasyon katsayısı kullanılmıştır. Daha sonra aralarında ilişki bulunan değişkenlere Hiyerarşik Regresyon analizi uygulanmıştır. Yapılan analiz sonucunda ilk adımda akran baskısı, risk alma davranışının tek başına %16’sını açıklarken ikinci adımda bağlanma stillerinden güvenli bağlanma stili %3’ünü ve üçüncü adımda bağlanma stillerinden saplantılı bağlanma stili ise %2’sini açıklamaktadır. Araştırma bulguları doğrultusunda risk alma davranışını akran baskısı değişkeninin diğer değişkenlere göre daha fazla açıkladığı görülmektedir.
Antifungal–antiproliferative norcycloartane-type triterpenes from the Red Sea green alga Tydemania expeditionis
Authors: Alorfi Hajer S.
Published: September 2022

The current work aims to isolate the bioactive secondary metabolites from the Red Sea green alga T. expeditionis. Its organic extract was partitioned and analyzed using chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques. Four triterpenoids of the cycloartane-carbon skeleton were identified as: 29-norcycloartane-3-en-23,28-diol (1), 29-norcycloartane-5,24-dien-3-ol-23-one (2), 29-norcycloartane-3,24-dien-3-ol-23-one (3), and 29-norcycloartane-5,24-dien-3-ol (4), along with hydroxylated C-18 fatty acid, 3-hydroxyoctadeca-15(Z)-enoic acid (5). The antiproliferative activity of the isolated metabolites was examined against three cancer cell lines, i.e., HeLa, HepG-2, and MCF-7. Compounds 2 and 3 demonstrated a strong antiproliferative effect against all cells with IC50 values ranging from 17.8 ± 1.71 to 23.3 ± 1.66 µM. Compounds 1 and 4 showed a moderate antiproliferative effect against all cell lines with IC50 values ranging from 44.7 ± 2.32 to 65.0 ± 3.66 µM. The antifungal activity of all compounds has been tested against several fungi. Compounds 2–4 revealed strong inhibition against A. flavus and Fusarium oxysporum. Compounds 1–4 showed moderate to weak inhibition activity against A. niger, A. fumigatus, C. albicans, and C. tropicalis. Compound 5 showed weak to non-detected activity against all cell lines and microbes. The results indicated that norcycloartanes exhibit antiproliferative and antifungal activities, especially those with α,β-unsaturated ketones in their side chain.
Dual-Peak Lorentzian CEST MRI for antiretroviral drug brain distribution
Authors: Liu Yutong , Gauthier Gabriel C. , Gendelman Howard E. , Bade Aditya N.
Published: September 2022

Objectives

Spatial–temporal biodistribution of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) can now be achieved using MRI by utilizing chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) contrasts. However, the presence of biomolecules in tissue limits the specificity of current CEST methods. To overcome this limitation, a Lorentzian line-shape fitting algorithm was developed that simultaneously fits CEST peaks of ARV protons on its Z-spectrum.

Case presentation

This algorithm was tested on the common first line ARV, lamivudine (3TC), that has two peaks resulting from amino (–NH2) and hydroxyl (–OH) protons in 3TC. The developed dual-peak Lorentzian function fitted these two peaks simultaneously, and used the ratio of –NH2 and –OH CEST contrasts as a constraint parameter to measure 3TC presence in brains of drug-treated mice. 3TC biodistribution calculated using the new algorithm was compared against actual drug levels measured using UPLC-MS/MS. In comparison to the method that employs the –NH2 CEST peak only, the dual-peak Lorentzian fitting algorithm showed stronger correlation with brain tissue 3TC levels, signifying estimation of actual drug levels.

Conclusions

We concluded that 3TC levels can be extracted from confounding CEST effects of tissue biomolecules resulting in improved specificity for drug mapping. This algorithm can be expanded to measure a variety of ARVs using CEST MRI.
Validation of an analytical methodology to determine humic substances using low-volume toxic reagents
Authors: Brás Isabel , Tavares Ana , Pereira José , Silva Elisabete
Published: September 2022

The 12 principles of green chemistry were stated to pursue good practices and techniques that minimize the use of hazardous substances in the production and application of chemicals. To minimize the risks and the pollution generated using chemicals, new methodologies must be developed that avoid the application of dangerous products or its amount. Considering the principle of pollution prevention, this work proposes the development and application of a different methodology for the quantification of humic substances (HS), applying a spectrophotometric methodology that reduces the quantity of hazardous reagents (sodium dichromate and sulfuric acid) and minimizes the waste production. To deeply acknowledge the method, a validation of the methodology was done to allow the evaluation of its effectiveness to report reliable results. It was done by the evaluation of the parameters often used for this purpose (analytical limits, precision, accuracy, selectivity, robustness, and method working range). The detection limit attained was 0.03 g glucose/L and the quantification limit was 0.09 g glucose/L. The precision and accuracy were also evaluated using the repeatability limit and through performance testing, respectively, with a repeatability limit of 0.045 g/L and a Z-score less than 2. For selectivity and robustness, differences in variances were not significant, and the working range is well adjusted, with no differences regarding the precision of the lower and higher standard. The results obtained showed that the method under study, adapted to the green chemistry principles, can be applied to quantify HS in impure and complex samples.
Living in the Mountains. Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic Settlement in Northwest Portugal: Rock Shelter 1 of Vale de Cerdeira (Vieira do Minho)
Authors: Xavier Pedro , Meireles José , Alves Carlos
Published: September 2022

In the 1990s, a research project was developed to identify, in the mountainous areas of the Northwest (NW) of Portugal, the existence of an occupation model associated with the last hunter–gatherer prehistoric communities in the region. Therefore, a set of consistent and detailed field surveys took place in the mountains of NW Portugal, leading to the discovery of the archaeological site named “Rock Shelter 1 of Cerdeira Valley,” a granite rock shelter situated in Cabreira mountain. The campaigns of excavations undertaken permitted the identification of two combustion structures, from which charcoal samples provided two C-14 dates, as well as a significant stone tool assemblage (around 30,000 pieces), that established the prehistoric occupation of “Rock Shelter 1 of Cerdeira Valley” between the Late Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic. This archaeological site and its body of evidences are being analysed within the context of an ongoing PhD project developed by one of the authors (P. Xavier), through two mutually related lines of research. The first one relates to the complete technological and typological study of the lithic assembly, identifying the objectives of the stone tool production, i.e. lithic production systems and related châines opératoires; and the second concerns itself with the classification and characterisation of different raw materials exploited by the prehistoric communities and, wherever possible, to make some additional considerations about raw material procurement. The goals of this article are the presentation of the methodologies adopted in the study of raw materials and the results obtained from the techno-typological study.
Gender Gap in Schooling and Wages: Effects of Foreign Capital and Education Subsidies
Authors: Mukhopadhyay Ujjaini
Published: September 2022

The paper develops a two-sector full employment general equilibrium model with endogenous schooling decisions. It aims to evaluate the effects of educational demand management policies on gender inequality in schooling and wage inequality. The results point towards the role of social norms in shaping parental discrimination against girls’ education, which accentuates gender gap in schooling due to gender-neutral education subsidy and rise in household income induced by foreign capital inflow. The two policies are favourable for gender wage gap if the agricultural sector is more female labour intensive than the manufacturing sector and returns to schooling are considerably higher for women than men. However, gender targeted education subsidy policies are in general beneficial with respect to both gendered schooling and wages. The paper contributes to the literature by identifying the role of factor intensity conditions and gender differentiated returns to education on the gendered schooling and labour market outcomes of demand side interventions in education. It also provides theoretical explanations to diverse impacts of these policies and suggests appropriate policy recommendations.
Neugründungen von Genossenschaften in Deutschland nach dem Abebben des jüngsten Gründungsbooms
Authors: Stappel Michael
Published: September 2022

Die von uns als „2000er-Genossenschaften“ bezeichneten Neugründungen haben dazu beigetragen, die Zahl der Genossenschaften in Deutschland stabil zu halten. Während der Neugründungswelle haben sich Genossenschaftsmodelle mit Vorbildcharakter herauskristallisiert, die zahlreich nachgeahmt wurden. Gleichzeitig sind vollkommen neue Modelle fernab traditioneller Betätigungsfelder entstanden. Beide Entwicklungen tragen in erheblichem Maße zur Nachhaltigkeit des Neugründungsgeschehen bei. Trotzdem gilt es, weiterhin immer neue Genossenschaftsmodelle zu entwickeln, in der Praxis zu erproben und für sie zu werben. Dabei bietet der bevorstehende Umbau der Wirtschaft nach den Krisen durch Corona-Pandemie und Ukraine-Krieg neue Chancen für die Genossenschaftsidee.
Gemeinwohlorientierung als Erweiterung des genossenschaftlichen Geschäftsmodells? Einige theoretische Überlegungen
Authors: Reichel Richard
Published: September 2022

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich vor dem Hintergrund der Gründungen gemeinwesenorientierter Genossenschaften mit der Frage, ob Genossenschaften in der deutschen Tradition dem „Gemeinwohl“ oder einem „Gemeinwesen“ dienen können. Eine erste Analyse aus rechtswissenschaftlicher Perspektive zeigt, dass primär gemeinwesenorientierte Genossenschaften in Sinne einer primären Förderung Dritter rechtlich nicht zulässig sind. Die ausführliche ökonomische Analyse zeigt, dass solche Konstrukte anreiztheoretisch kaum zu begründen sind. In der Praxis besteht darüber hinaus die Gefahr des Missbrauchs der genossenschaftlichen Rechtsform. Dies impliziert nicht, dass Genossenschaften keine positiven Wirkungen auf ein Gemeinwesen entfalten. Vielmehr ist regelmäßig damit zu rechnen. Allerdings steht die Förderung der Mitglieder an erster Stelle.
A narratív tudás mint a tudomány forrása – Az emberi gondolkodás és tudásátadás alapvető formái
Authors: Géczyné Simon Rózsa Anikó
Published: September 2022

A tanulmány a tudás természetéről, annak két eltérő sajátosságokkal rendelkező típusáról, a narratív és a paradigmatikus tudás kettőséről értekezik.  A tudás fogalmának e dualisztikus megközelítése a tudományos kutatások meta szintű vizsgálata szempontjából válik fontossá. A narratív tudás tudományhoz, tudományossághoz való viszonya problematikusnak tekinthető a hétköznapi és relativizáló, szubjektív mozzanatai miatt, ugyanakkor a narratív tudás a humántudományok egyik legfontosabb forrása. Ebben az elméleti kutatásban arra keresem a választ, hogy miként válhat a narratív tudás a tudomány forrásává, milyen módon képes egységet képezni a narratív és a paradigmatikus tudás elméletben és a gyakorlati kutatásokban, hogyan lehet a narratíva által hordozott individuális valóságot makro szinten is tudományosan leírhatóvá, láthatóvá tenni.  A problémát szakirodalmi források alapján vázolom fel. Írásom célja, hogy bemutassam a narratív tudás humántudományokban betöltött szerepét, különös tekintettel a történettudományra és a kulturális antropológiára, valamint a pedagógiára. A válaszok a kutatási gyakorlat szintézisében rejlenek. A kvalitatív és kvantitaív kutatások egymástól elválaszthatatlan, egységes működése adja a tudományos nyelv szintézisét, mely lehetővé teszi, hogy a narratív tudás a tudomány forrásává váljon. A tanulmányban rögzítettek összefoglaló jellegű gondolatok az emberi gondolkodás és a tudásátadás alapvető formáiról, azok egymásra és tudományra gyakorolt hatásáról.
In-Season Training Model for National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Female Basketball Players Using “Microdosed” Programming
Authors: Bonder Ian J. , Shim Andrew L.
Published: September 2022

Basketball is an intermittent-intensity sport requiring sufficient levels of muscular strength and power to display successful performance. To achieve high levels of performance, proficiency must be attained in jumping/repeated jump ability, sprinting/repeated sprint ability, change of direction/agility, and basketball-specific skills. The “in-season” period during a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics female basketball team comprises more than 6 months of the annual plan, making it the longest uninterrupted training “‘block” throughout the year. However, no more than 3 hours per day may be allotted for practice, skill work, and training. Because of competition, travel, and academic obligations, little time may be available for training. The purpose of this article is to provide a time-efficient, in-season training plan using microdosing programming methodology directed at improving muscular strength and power. In turn, improvements in strength and power will be the foundation of developing traits specific to successful basketball performance and reducing chances of injury. In addition, methods to monitor individual daily fatigue are provided.
Identification of a Glutamatergic Claustrum-Anterior Cingulate Cortex Circuit for Visceral Pain Processing
Authors: Xu Qi-Ya , Zhang Hai-Long , Du Han , Li Yong-Chang , Ji Fu-Hai , Li Rui , Xu Guang-Yin
Published: September 2022

Chronic visceral pain is a major challenge for both patients and health providers. Although the central sensitization of the brain is thought to play an important role in the development of visceral pain, the detailed neural circuits remain largely unknown. Using a well-established chronic visceral hypersensitivity model induced by neonatal maternal deprivation (NMD) in male mice, we identified a distinct pathway whereby the claustrum (CL) glutamatergic neuron projecting to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is critical for visceral pain but not for CFA-evoked inflammatory pain. By a combination ofin vivocircuit-dissecting extracellular electrophysiological approaches and visceral pain related electromyographic (EMG) recordings, we demonstrated that optogenetic inhibition of CL glutamatergic activity suppressed the ACC neural activity and visceral hypersensitivity of NMD mice whereas selective activation of CL glutamatergic activity enhanced the ACC neural activity and evoked visceral pain of control mice. Further, optogenetic studies demonstrate a causal link between such neuronal activity and visceral pain behaviors. Chemogenetic activation or inhibition of ACC neural activities reversed the effects of optogenetic manipulation of CL neural activities on visceral pain responses. Importantly, molecular detection showed that NMD significantly enhances the expression of NMDA receptors and activated CaMKIIα in the ACC postsynaptic density (PSD) region. Together, our data establish a functional role for CL→ACC glutamatergic neurons in gating visceral pain, thus providing a potential treatment strategy for visceral pain.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTStudies have shown that sensitization of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays an important role in chronic pain. However, it is as yet unknown whether there is a specific brain region and a distinct neural circuit that helps the ACC to distinguish visceral and somatic pain. The present study demonstrates that claustrum (CL) glutamatergic neurons maybe responding to colorectal distention (CRD) rather than somatic stimulation and that a CL glutamatergic projection to ACC glutamatergic neuron regulates visceral pain in mice. Furthermore, excessive NMDA receptors and overactive CaMKIIα in the ACC postsynaptic density (PSD) region were observed in mice with chronic visceral pain. Together, these findings reveal a novel neural circuity underlying the central sensitization of chronic visceral pain.
Rupturing the Whitespace
Authors: Harrington Lalenja
Published: September 2022

In this article, I enter into a poetic engagement with scholars Audre Lorde, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, and Cynthia Dillard and to explore the ways in which I seek to “rupture” normative understandings and representations of teaching and research praxis in higher education. It is an unapologetic reclamation of Lorde’s concept of the Erotic as an act of what Dillard calls (re)membering, and Sullivan’s working of queer reading practices that encourage us to expand our scholarly vocabulary beyond the “whitespace”—beyond what English prose is able to capture. In this work, I offer my own body as data as well as a framework for assessing praxis alignment through embodied analysis, answering Lorde’s call to privilege the rightness of “feeling” as true knowledge. This article is a love letter to Black feminist cultural production and a radical reimagining of the metrics of oppression that have historically been used to disconnect our bodies and minds in the name of science and best practice. It is a call to celebrate the liminal spaces that we occupy with the fullness of ourselves, and to trust our own authoring of knowledge, experience, and wisdom as educators, researchers, and scholars.
The Impact of Diabetes on Acute Kidney Injury After Off-Pump Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting
Authors: Shen Ruhua , Wang Yang , Zhang Bing , Ge Jianjun
Published: September 2022

Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is one of the most frequent complications after coronary artery bypass grafting. Previous studies have shown that diabetes is a key pathogenic factor. But how diabetes is related to AKI in off-pump CABG patients still is in debate. Here, we aim to study the relationship between diabetes and AKI after off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting (off-pump CABG).
Methods: Patients who underwent off-pump CABG from April 2017 to December 2020 in The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC were enrolled in this retrospective study. AKI was defined and classified, according to the criteria proposed by the Acute Kidney Injury Network. The incidence risk of acute kidney injury was measured by logistic regression and compared.
Results: A total of 395 patients, who underwent off-pump CABG, were included in this study. The postoperative acute kidney injury rate for a patient with diabetes was significantly higher than for patients without diabetes (x2 = 5.09, P = 0.024). Logistic regression analysis showed that patients with diabetes have a much higher risk with acute kidney injury occurring after off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting (OR 1.852, 95% CI 1.161 - 2.954, P = 0.01).
Conclusions: Diabetes is an independent risk factor for postoperative AKI for patients undergoing off-pump CABG.
El Estado Corporativo
Authors: Stolzi Irene
Published: September 2022

Traducción
LAS CLÁUSULAS SOCIALES Y LA PERSPECTIVA DE GÉNERO EN LA CONTRATACIÓN PÚBLICA
Authors: Martínez Méndez Sara
Published: September 2022

La contratación pública constituye uno de los instrumentos principales a través de los cuales la Administración cumple los mandatos constitucionales y legales con el fin de satisfacer el interés general. La legislación española en materia de contratos públicos ha sido objeto de numerosas reformas en los últimos años, especialmente por la influencia del Derecho de la Unión Europea. Ello ha producido un avance hacia una contratación pública más social. En este sentido, la finalidad del presente estudio se centra en analizar cuándo y de qué forma la perspectiva de género puede estar presente en los contratos públicos que formaliza la Administración.
Bond Strength Comparison Among 10-MDP-Containing and Non-10-MDP-Containing Adhesives in Different Degrees of Dental Fluorosis
Authors: Solís-Martínez Luis Javier , Valles Flores Karla Yareli , Vargas Chávez Nohé , Almeda-Ojeda Oscar Eduardo , Barajas-Pérez Víctor Hiram , García-Torres Edgar
Published: September 2022

Dental fluorosis can cause changes in the enamel surface, conditioning its functionality and esthetics. The application of dental adhesives is a treatment option; however, their use on fluorotic teeth can result in limitations. The aim of this study was to compare the shear bond strength of two different adhesives, one with 10-MDP and one without 10-MDP, in different degrees of dental fluorosis.This is an in vitro study on dental enamel samples, a total of 180 samples with the inclusion criteria were treated, randomly divided into two groups of 90, according to the type of dental adhesive, where each group was again divided into three groups of 30 samples, representing different degrees of dental fluorosis according to the Thylstrup-Fejerskov index (Group I: TF1 and TF2; Group II: TF3; Group III: TF4). Normality tests, two-factor ANOVA, and post-hoc tests were used to determine differences between the groups, with a significance level of 95%. As results, a statistically significant difference was shown between the use of dental adhesive with 10-MDP and the three groups of dental fluorosis (p=0.011), in addition, a Tukey post-hoc test on the groups treated with 10-MDP adhesive revealed a statistically significant difference between group I versus group II, and group I versus group III, (p=<0.05). It is concluded that the use of adhesive systems with 10-MDP presents a better shear bond strength on enamel with dental fluorosis grades I and II in the Thylstrup-Fejerskov index.
A limit theorem for persistence diagrams of random filtered complexes built over marked point processes
Authors: Shirai Tomoyuki , Suzaki Kiyotaka
Published: September 2022

Random filtered complexes built over marked point processes on Euclidean spaces are considered. Examples of these filtered complexes include a filtration of $\check{\text{C}}$ech complexes of a family of sets with various sizes, growths, and shapes. The law of large numbers for persistence diagrams is established as the size of the convex window observing a marked point process tends to infinity.
Predicting Structural and Functional Sites in Proteins by Searching for Maximum-weight Cliques
Authors: Mascia Franco , Cilia Elisa , Brunato Mauro , Passerini Andrea
Published: September 2022

Fully characterizing structural and functional sites in proteins is a fundamental step in understanding their roles in the cell. This extremely challenging combinatorial problem requires determining the number of sites in the protein and the set of residues involved in each of them. We formulate it as a distance-based supervised clustering task, where training proteins are employed to learn a proper distance function between residues. A partial clustering is then returned by searching for maximum-weight cliques in the resulting weighted graph representation of proteins. A novel stochastic local search algorithm is proposed to efficiently generate approximate solutions. Our method achieves substantial improvements over a previous structured-output approach for metal binding site prediction. Significant improvements over the current state-of-the-art are also achieved in predicting catalytic sites from 3D structure in enzymes.
Optimal Strategies for Reviewing Search Results
Authors: Huang Jeff , Kazeykina Anna
Published: September 2022

Web search engines respond to a query by returning more results than can be reasonably reviewed. These results typically include the title, link, and snippet of content from the target link. Each result has the potential to be useful or useless and thus reviewing it has a cost and potential benefit. This paper studies the behavior of a rational agent in this setting, whose objective is to maximize the probability of finding a satisfying result while minimizing cost. We propose two similar agents with different capabilities: one that only compares result snippets relatively and one that predicts from the result snippet whether the result will be satisfying. We prove that the optimal strategy for both agents is a stopping rule: the agent reviews a fixed number of results until the marginal cost is greater than the marginal expected benefit, maximizing the overall expected utility. Finally, we discuss the relationship between rational agents and search users and how our findings help us understand reviewing behaviors.
How Incomplete Is Your Semantic Web Reasoner?
Authors: Stoilos Giorgos , Cuenca Grau Bernardo , Horrocks Ian
Published: September 2022

Conjunctive query answering is a key reasoning service for many ontology-based applications. In order to improve scalability, many Semantic Web query answering systems give up completeness (i.e., they do not guarantee to return all query answers). It may be useful or even critical to the designers and users of such systems to understand how much and what kind of information is (potentially) being lost. We present a method for generating test data that can be used to provide at least partial answers to these questions, a purpose for which existing benchmarks are not well suited. In addition to developing a general framework that formalises the problem, we describe practical data generation algorithms for some popular ontology languages, and present some very encouraging results from our preliminary evaluation.
Prioritization of Domain-Specific Web Information Extraction
Authors: Huang Jian , Yu Cong
Published: September 2022

It is often desirable to extract structured information from raw web pages for better information browsing, query answering, and pattern mining. many such Information Extraction (IE) technologies are costly and applying them at the web-scale is impractical. In this paper, we propose a novel prioritization approach where candidate pages from the corpus are ordered according to their expected contribution to the extraction results and those with higher estimated potential are extracted earlier. Systems employing this approach can stop the extraction process at any time when the resource gets scarce (i.e., not all pages in the corpus can be processed), without worrying about wasting extraction effort on unimportant pages. More specifically, we define a novel notion to measure the value of extraction results and design various mechanisms for estimating a candidate page’s contribution to this value. We further design and build the Extraction Prioritization (EP) system with efficient scoring and scheduling algorithms, and experimentally demonstrate that EP significantly outperforms the naive approach and is more flexible than the classifier approach.
Learning to Predict Opinion Share in Social Networks
Authors: Kimura Masahiro , Saito Kazumi , Ohara Kouzou , Motoda Hiroshi
Published: September 2022

We address the problem of predicting the expected opinion share over a social network at a target time from the opinion diffusion data under the value-weighted voter model with multiple opinions. The value update algorithm ensures that it converges to a correct solution and the share prediction results outperform a simple linear extrapolation approximation when the available data is limited. We further show in an extreme case of complete network that the opinion with the highest value eventually takes over, and the expected share prediction problem with uniform opinion value is not well-defined and any opinion can win.
Temporal Information Extraction
Authors: Ling Xiao , Weld Daniel
Published: September 2022

Research on information extraction (IE) seeks to distill relational tuples from natural language text, such as the contents of the WWW. Most IE work has focussed on identifying static facts, encoding them as binary relations. This is unfortunate, because the vast majority of facts are fluents, only holding true during an interval of time. It is less helpful to extract PresidentOf(Bill-Clinton, USA) without the temporal scope 1/20/93 — 1/20/01. This paper presents TIE, a novel, information-extraction system, which distills facts from text while inducing as much temporal information as possible. In addition to recognizing temporal relations between times and events, TIE performs global inference, enforcing transitivity to bound the start and ending times for each event. We introduce the notion of temporal entropy as a way to evaluate the performance of temporal IE systems and present experiments showing that TIE outperforms three alternative approaches.
EWLS: A New Local Search for Minimum Vertex Cover
Authors: Cai Shaowei , Su Kaile , Chen Qingliang
Published: September 2022

A number of algorithms have been proposed for the Minimum Vertex Cover problem. However, they are far from satisfactory, especially on hard instances. In this paper, we introduce Edge Weighting Local Search (EWLS), a new local search algorithm for the Minimum Vertex Cover problem. EWLS is based on the idea of extending a partial vertex cover into a vertex cover. A key point of EWLS is to find a vertex set that provides a tight upper bound on the size of the minimum vertex cover. To this purpose, EWLS employs an iterated local search procedure, using an edge weighting scheme which updates edge weights when stuck in local optima. Moreover, some sophisticated search strategies have been taken to improve the quality of local optima. Experimental results on the broadly used DIMACS benchmark show that EWLS is competitive with the current best heuristic algorithms, and outperforms them on hard instances. Furthermore, on a suite of difficult benchmarks, EWLS delivers the best results and sets a new record on the largest instance.
A Novel Transition Based Encoding Scheme for Planning as Satisfiability
Authors: Huang Ruoyun , Chen Yixin , Zhang Weixiong
Published: September 2022

Planning as satisfiability is a principal approach to planning with many eminent advantages. The existing planning as satisfiability techniques usually use encodings compiled from the STRIPS formalism. We introduce a novel SAT encoding scheme based on the SAS+ formalism. It exploits the structural information in the SAS+ formalism, resulting in more compact SAT instances and reducing the number of clauses by up to 50 fold. Our results show that this encoding scheme improves upon the STRIPS-based encoding, in terms of both time and memory efficiency.
Latent Class Models for Algorithm Portfolio Methods
Authors: Silverthorn Bryan , Miikkulainen Risto
Published: September 2022

Different solvers for computationally difficult problems such as satisfiability (SAT) perform best on different instances. Algorithm portfolios exploit this phenomenon by predicting solvers' performance on specific problem instances, then shifting computational resources to the solvers that appear best suited. This paper develops a new approach to the problem of making such performance predictions: natural generative models of solver behavior. Two are proposed, both following from an assumption that problem instances cluster into latent classes: a mixture of multinomial distributions, and a mixture of Dirichlet compound multinomial distributions. The latter model extends the former to capture burstiness, the tendency of solver outcomes to recur. These models are integrated into an algorithm portfolio architecture and used to run standard SAT solvers on competition benchmarks. This approach is found competitive with the most prominent existing portfolio, SATzilla, which relies on domain-specific, hand-selected problem features; the latent class models, in contrast, use minimal domain knowledge. Their success suggests that these models can lead to more powerful and more general algorithm portfolio methods.
Single-Frontier Bidirectional Search
Authors: Felner Ariel , Moldenhauer Carsten , Sturtevant Nathan , Schaeffer Jonathan
Published: September 2022

On the surface, bidirectional search (BDS) is an attractive idea with the potential for significant asymptotic reductions in search effort. However, the results in practice often fall far short of expectations. We introduce a new bidirectional search algorithm, Single-Frontier Bidirectional Searc (SFBDS). Unlike traditional BDS which keeps two frontiers, SFBDS uses a single frontier. Each node in the tree can be seen as an independent task of finding the shortest path between the current start and current goal. At a particular node we can decide to search from start to goal or from goal to start, choosing the direction with the highest potential for minimizing the total work done. Theoretical results give insights as to when this approach will work and experimental data validates the algorithm for a broad range of domains.
1.6-Bit Pattern Databases
Authors: Breyer Teresa , Korf Richard
Published: September 2022

We present a new technique to compress pattern databases to provide consistent heuristics without loss of information. We store the heuristic estimate modulo three, requiring only two bits per entry or in a more compact representation, only 1.6 bits. This allows us to store a pattern database with more entries in the same amount of memory as an uncompressed pattern database. These compression techniques are most useful where lossy compression using cliques or their generalization is not possible or where adjacent entries in the pattern database are not highly correlated. We compare both techniques to the best existing compression methods for the Top-Spin puzzle, Rubik's cube, the 4-peg Towers of Hanoi problem, and the 24 puzzle. Under certain conditions, our best implementations for the Top-Spin puzzle and Rubik's cube outperform the respective state of the art solvers by a factor of four.
Filtering Bounded Knapsack Constraints in Expected Sublinear Time
Authors: Malitsky Yuri , Sellmann Meinolf , Szymanek Radoslaw
Published: September 2022

We present a highly efficient incremental algorithm for propagating bounded knapsack constraints. Our algorithm is based on the sublinear filtering algorithm for binary knapsack constraints by Katriel et al. and achieves similar speed-ups of one to two orders of magnitude when compared with its linear-time counterpart. We also show that the representation of bounded knapsacks as binary knapsacks leads to ineffective filtering behavior. Experiments on standard knapsack benchmarks show that the new algorithm significantly outperforms existing methods for handling bounded knapsack constraints.
Searching Without a Heuristic: Efficient Use of Abstraction
Authors: Larsen Bradford , Burns Ethan , Ruml Wheeler , Holte Robert
Published: September 2022

In problem domains where an informative heuristic evaluation function is not known or not easily computed, abstraction can be used to derive admissible heuristic values. Optimal path lengths in the abstracted problem are consistent heuristic estimates for the original problem. Pattern databases are the traditional method of creating such heuristics, but they exhaustively compute costs for all abstract states and are thus usually appropriate only when all instances share the same single goal state. Hierarchical heuristic search algorithms address these shortcomings by searching for paths in the abstract space on an as-needed basis. However, existing hierarchical algorithms search less efficiently than pattern database constructors: abstract nodes may be expanded many times during the course of a base-level search. We present a novel hierarchical heuristic search algorithm, called Switchback, that uses an alternating direction of search to avoid abstract node re-expansions. This algorithm is simple to implement and demonstrates superior performance to existing hierarchical heuristic search algorithms on several standard benchmarks.
Finding Optimal Solutions to Cooperative Pathfinding Problems
Authors: Standley Trevor
Published: September 2022

In cooperative pathfinding problems, non-interfering paths that bring each agent from its current state to its goal state must be planned for multiple agents. We present the first practical, admissible, and complete algorithm for solving problems of this kind. First, we propose a technique called operator decomposition, which can be used to reduce the branching factors of many search algorithms, including algorithms for cooperative pathfinding. We then show how a type of independence common in instances of cooperative pathfinding problems can be exploited. Next, we take the idea of exploiting independent subproblems further by adding improvements that allow the algorithm to recognize many more cases of such independence. Finally, we show empirically that these techniques drastically improve the performance of the standard admissible algorithm for the cooperative pathfinding problem, and that their combination results in a complete algorithm capable of optimally solving relatively large problems in milliseconds.
Lazy Theta*: Any-Angle Path Planning and Path Length Analysis in 3D
Authors: Nash Alex , Koenig Sven , Tovey Craig
Published: September 2022

Grids with blocked and unblocked cells are often used to represent continuous 2D and 3D environments in robotics and video games. The shortest paths formed by the edges of 8-neighbor 2D grids can be up to 8% longer than the shortest paths in the continuous environment. Theta* typically finds much shorter paths than that by propagating information along graph edges (to achieve short runtimes) without constraining paths to be formed by graph edges (to find short "any-angle" paths). We show in this paper that the shortest paths formed by the edges of 26-neighbor 3D grids can be 13% longer than the shortest paths in the continuous environment, which highlights the need for smart path planning algorithms in 3D. Theta* can be applied to 3D grids in a straight-forward manner, but it performs a line-of-sight check for each unexpanded visible neighbor of each expanded vertex and thus it performs many more line-of-sight checks per expanded vertex on a 26-neighbor 3D grid than on an 8-neighbor 2D grid. We therefore introduce Lazy Theta*, a variant of Theta* which uses lazy evaluation to perform only one line-of-sight check per expanded vertex (but with slightly more expanded vertices). We show experimentally that Lazy Theta* finds paths faster than Theta* on 26-neighbor 3D grids, with one order of magnitude fewer line-of-sight checks and without an increase in path length.
Using Imagery to Simplify Perceptual Abstraction in Reinforcement Learning Agents
Authors: Wintermute Samuel
Published: September 2022

In this paper, we consider the problem of reinforcement learning in spatial tasks. These tasks have many states that can be aggregated together to improve learning efficiency. In an agent, this aggregation can take the form of selecting appropriate perceptual processes to arrive at a qualitative abstraction of the underlying continuous state. However, for arbitrary problems, an agent is unlikely to have the perceptual processes necessary to discriminate all relevant states in terms of such an abstraction.To help compensate for this, reinforcement learning can be integrated with an imagery system, where simple models of physical processes are applied within a low-level perceptual representation to predict the state resulting from an action. Rather than abstracting the current state, abstraction can be applied to the predicted next state. Formally, it is shown that this integration broadens the class of perceptual abstraction methods that can be used while preserving the underlying problem. Empirically, it is shown that this approach can be used in complex domains, and can be beneficial even when formal requirements are not met.
An Integrated Systems Approach to Explanation-Based Conceptual Change
Authors: Friedman Scott , Forbus Kenneth
Published: September 2022

Understanding conceptual change is an important problem in modeling human cognition and in making integrated AI systems that can learn autonomously. This paper describes a model of explanation-based conceptual change, integrating sketch understanding, analogical processing, qualitative models, truth-maintenance, and heuristic-based reasoning within the Companions cognitive architecture. Sketch understanding is used to automatically encode stimuli in the form of comic strips. Qualitative models and conceptual quantities are constructed for new phenomena via analogical reasoning and heuristics. Truth-maintenance is used to integrate conceptual and episodic knowledge into explanations, and heuristics are used to modify existing conceptual knowledge in order to produce better explanations. We simulate the learning and revision of the concept of force, testing the concepts learned via a questionnaire of sketches given to students, showing that our model follows a similar learning trajectory.
Ontologies and Representations of Matter
Authors: Davis Ernest
Published: September 2022

We carry out a comparative study of the expressive power of different ontologies of matter in terms of the ease with which simple physical knowledge can be represented. In particular, we consider five ontologies of models of matter: particle models, fields, two ontologies for continuous material, and a hybrid model. We evaluate these in terms of how easily eleven benchmark physical laws and scenarios can be represented.
Topological Relations between Convex Regions
Authors: Li Sanjiang , Liu Weiming
Published: September 2022

Topological relations between spatial objects are the most important kind of qualitative spatial information. Dozens of relation models have been proposed in the past two decades. These models usually make a small number of distinctions and therefore can only cope with spatial information at a fixed granularity of spatial knowledge. In this paper, we propose a topological relation model in which the topological relation between two convex plane regions can be uniquely represented as a circular string over the alphabet {u; v; x; y}. A linear algorithm is given to compute the topological relation between two convex polygons. The infinite relation calculus could be used in hierarchical spatial reasoning as well as in qualitative shape description.
First-Order Indefinability of Answer Set Programs on Finite Structures
Authors: Chen Yin , Zhang Yan , Zhou Yi
Published: September 2022

An answer set program with variables is first-order definable on finite structures if the set of its finite answer sets can be captured by a first-order sentence, otherwise this program is first-order indefinable on finite structures. In this paper, we study the problem of first-order indefinability of answer set programs. We provide an Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse game-theoretic characterization for the first-order indefinability of answer set programs on finite structures. As an application of this approach, we show that the well-known finding Hamiltonian cycles program is not first-order definable on finite structures. We then define two notions named the 0-1 property and unbounded cycles or paths under the answer set semantics, from which we develop two sufficient conditions that may be effectively used in proving a program's first-order indefinability on finite structures under certain circumstances.