LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Influence of nacre deposition rate on cultured pearl grade and colour in the black-lipped pearl oyster Pinctada margaritifera using farmed donor families

Cultured pearl nacre deposition rate in Pinctada margaritifera oysters was studied to examine its influence on Tahitian classification grade and colour and to further our understanding of using selected donor oysters produced in a hatchery system for the improvement of these traits. A large-scale grafting experiment using 150 farmed donor oysters was realised in Rangiroa atoll (French Polynesia). After 18 months of culture, 874 pearls were harvested and 7 pearls quality traits were recorded: (1) nacre deposition rate assessed by nacre thickness and weight, (2) classification grade, lustre and surface defects, and (3) colour assessed by pearl colour darkness level and visual colour categories. Nacre deposition rate significantly influence pearl grade, surface defects, darkness level and colour categories, but not the lustre. Grade A pearls had the thickest and heaviest nacre on average, compared with grade D pearls and rejects. In addition, pearls without any surface defect had thicker and heavier nacre. Pearls with low darkness were the thinnest and the lightest. Pearls of aubergine–peacock secondary colours were the thickest and the heaviest. These results highlight the importance of rapid nacre deposition rate for increasing the production of grade A pearls, with less surface defects and dominance of a black tone colour. Fast nacre deposition may, however, have a negative impact on other pearl quality traits, such as pearl lustre. This study demonstrates the importance of examining relationships between pearl quality traits in a way that provides solid information that can be directly used for breeding and genetic selection programmes.
A Mood-Based Music Classification and Exploration System by

Mood classification of music is an emerging domain of music information retrieval. In the approach presented here features extracted from an audio file are used in combination with the affective value of song lyrics to map a song onto a psychologically based emotion space. The motivation behind this system is the lack of intuitive and contextually aware playlist generation tools available to music listeners. The need for such tools is made obvious by the fact that digital music libraries are constantly expanding, thus making it increasingly difficult to recall a particular song in the library or to create a playlist for a specific event. By combining audio content information with context-aware data, such as song lyrics, this system allows the listener to automatically generate a playlist to suit their current activity or mood. Thesis Supervisor: Barry Vercoe Title: Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
Characterising Behavior and Emotions on Social Media for Safety: Exploring Online Communication between Police and Citizens

Increased use of social media by police to connect with citizens has encouraged researchers to study different aspects of information exchange (e.g. type of information, credibility and propagation) during emergency and crisis situation. Research studies lack understanding of human behavior such as engagement, emotions and social interaction between citizen and police department on social media. Several social media studies explore and show technological implications of human behavioral aspects in various contexts such as workplace interaction and depression in young mothers. In this paper, we study online interactions between citizens and Indian police in context of day-to-day policing, including safety concerns, advisories, etc. Indian police departments use Facebook to issue advisories, send alerts and receive citizen complaints and suggestions regarding safety issues and day-today policing. We explore how citizens express their emotions and social support on Facebook. Our work discusses technological implications of behavioral aspects on social well being of citizens. ACM Classification
Higher Order n-gram Language Models for Arabic Diacritics Restoration

Dynamic programming based Arabic diacritics restoration aims to assign diacritics to Arabic words. The technique is purely statistical approach and depends only on an Arabic corpus annotated with diacritics. The possible word sequences with diacritics are assigned scores using statistical n-gram language modeling approach. Using the assigned scores, it is possible to search the most likely sequence using a dynamic programming algorithm. In previous work [1], the assigned scores are based on a bigram stochastic language model and the decoder was restricted to this model. Using higher order n-gram language may lead to better diacritization accuracy. In this work, we extend the dynamic programming decoding algorithm to support higher order language models. Preliminary results on a public domain corpus show that dynamic programming decoding based on higher order n-gram models can lead to better results than bigram models.
Diabetes Insipidus as a Complication of Wegener's Granulomatosis and Its Treatment with Biologic Agents

Wegener's granulomatosis of the pituitary gland resulting in diabetes insipidus is a rare complication of the disease. Standard treatment for Wegener's granulomatosis involves a combination of prednisolone and cylophosphamide, however biologic agents are now being used in refractory cases. We report three cases of patients with diabetes insipidus as a complication of Wegener's granulomatosis who were treated with biologic agents. All three cases showed clinical response to treatment with biologic agents including rituximab and alemtuzumab and two cases demonstrated improvement in pituitary gland abnormalities by MRI. Clinicians should be aware that diabetes insipidus can present as a complication of Wegener's granulomatosis and that biologic therapies may be effective in refractory cases.
Issues in the Computer-based Assessment of Collaborative Problem Solving

Collaborative problem-solving skills are considered necessary skills for success in today’s world of work and school. Cooperative learning refers to learning environments in which small groups of people work together to achieve a common goal, and problem solving is defined as “cognitive processing directed at achieving a common goal when no solution method is obvious to the problem solver” (R. E. Mayer & M. C. Wittrock, 1996, p. 47). Thus, collaborative problem solving is defined as problem-solving activities that involve interactions among a group of individuals. This paper will address several key issues (e.g., theory and measurement of collaborative problem solving and issues in measuring problem-solving processes). We rely on computerization of the administration, scoring, and reporting of collaborative problem-solving skills, thus potentially increasing reliability and validity. In view of the changing needs in the workforce, the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) established a research program to identify and assess workforce skills. They examined the existing literature by reviewing five seminal studies on workforce readiness. All five studies identified higher order thinking, interpersonal and teamwork skills, and problem solving as the necessary generic skills needed for success in today’s world (O’Neil, Allred, & Baker, 1997). Of these generic skills, university graduates and 1 A revised version of this report is published as: O’Neil, H. F., Chuang, S., & Chung, G. K. W. K. (2003). Issues in the computer-based assessment of collaborative problem solving. Assessment in Education, 10, 361-373.
Supplementation of the Pure Flavonoids Epicatechin and Quercetin Affects Some Biomarkers of Endothelial Dysfunction and Inflammation in (Pre)Hypertensive Adults: A Randomized Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Crossover Trial.

BACKGROUND
Consumption of flavonoid-rich foods such as cocoa and tea may reduce cardiovascular disease risk. The flavonoids epicatechin (in cocoa and tea) and quercetin (in tea) probably play a role by reducing endothelial dysfunction and inflammation, 2 main determinants of atherosclerosis.


OBJECTIVE
We studied the effects of supplementation of pure epicatechin and quercetin on biomarkers of endothelial dysfunction and inflammation.


METHODS
Thirty-seven apparently healthy (pre)hypertensive men and women (40-80 y) participated in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial. Participants ingested (-)-epicatechin (100 mg/d), quercetin-3-glucoside (160 mg/d), or placebo capsules for a period of 4 wk, in random order. Plasma biomarkers of endothelial dysfunction and inflammation were measured at the start and end of each 4-wk intervention period. The differences in changes over time between the intervention and placebo periods (Δintervention - Δplacebo) were calculated and tested with a linear mixed model for repeated measures.


RESULTS
Epicatechin changed Δepicatechin - Δplacebo for soluble endothelial selectin (sE-selectin) by -7.7 ng/mL (95% CI: -14.5, -0.83; P = 0.03) but did not significantly change this difference (-0.30; 95% CI: -0.61, 0.01; P = 0.06) for the z score for endothelial dysfunction. Quercetin changed Δquercetin - Δplacebo for sE-selectin by -7.4 ng/mL (95% CI: -14.3, -0.56; P = 0.03), that for IL-1β by -0.23 pg/mL (95% CI: -0.40, -0.06; P = 0.009), and that for the z score for inflammation by -0.33 (95% CI: -0.60, -0.05; P = 0.02).


CONCLUSIONS
In (pre)hypertensive men and women, epicatechin may contribute to the cardioprotective effects of cocoa and tea through improvements in endothelial function. Quercetin may contribute to the cardioprotective effects of tea possibly by improving endothelial function and reducing inflammation. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01691404.
Dendritic cell-bound IgE functions to restrain allergic inflammation at mucosal sites

Antigen-mediated cross-linking of Immunoglobulin E (IgE) bound to mast cells/basophils via FcɛRI, the high affinity IgE Fc-receptor, is a well-known trigger of allergy. In humans, but not mice, dendritic cells (DCs) also express FcɛRI that is constitutively occupied with IgE. In contrast to mast cells/basophils, the consequences of IgE/FcɛRI signals for DC function remain poorly understood. We show that humanized mice that express FcɛRI on DCs carry IgE like non-allergic humans and do not develop spontaneous allergies. Antigen-specific IgE/FcɛRI cross-linking fails to induce maturation or production of inflammatory mediators in human DCs and FcɛRI-humanized DCs. Furthermore, conferring expression of FcɛRI to DCs decreases the severity of food allergy and asthma in disease-relevant models suggesting anti-inflammatory IgE/FcɛRI signals. Consistent with the improved clinical parameters in vivo, antigen-specific IgE/FcɛRI cross-linking on papain or lipopolysaccharide-stimulated DCs inhibits the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Migration assays confirm that the IgE-dependent decrease in cytokine production results in diminished recruitment of mast cell progenitors; providing a mechanistic explanation for the reduced mast cell-dependent allergic phenotype observed in FcɛRI-humanized mice. Our study demonstrates a novel immune regulatory function of IgE and proposes that DC-intrinsic IgE signals serve as a feedback mechanism to restrain allergic tissue inflammation.
Fast Rendering of Complex Environments Using a Spatial Hierarchy

We present a new method for accelerating the rendering of complex static scenes. The technique is applicable to unstructured scenes containing arbitrary geometric primitives and has sublinear asymptotic complexity. Our approach is to construct a spatial hierarchy of cells over the scene and to associate with each cell a simplified representation of its contents. The scene is then rendered using a traversal of the hierarchy in which a cell’s approximation is drawn instead of its contents if the approximation is sufficiently accurate. We apply the method to several different scenes and demonstrate significant speedups with little image degradation. We also exhibit and discuss some of the artifacts that our approximation may cause.
Bus guardians: an effective solution for online detection and correction of faults affecting system-on-chip buses

This paper presents a methodology for designing system-on-chip (SOC) interconnection architectures providing a high level of protection from crosstalk effects. An event driven simulator enriched with fault injection capabilities is exploited to evaluate the dependability level of the system being designed. The simulation environment supports several bus coding protocols and, thus, designers can easily evaluate different design alternatives. To enhance the dependability level of the interconnection architecture, we propose a distributed bus guardian scheme, where dedicated hardware modules monitor the integrity of the information transmitted over the bus and provide error correction mechanisms.
Reproducing Color Images as Duotones

We investigate a new approach for reproducing color images. Rather than mapping the colors in an image onto the gamut of colors that can be printed with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks, we choose the set of printing inks for the particular image being reproduced. In this paper, we look at the special case of selecting inks for duotone printing, a relatively inexpensive process in which just two inks are used. Specifically, the system we describe takes an image as input, and allows a user to select 0, 1, or 2 inks. It then chooses the remaining ink or inks so as to reproduce the image as accurately as possible and produces the appropriate color separations automatically. CR Categories: I.3.4 [Computer Graphics]: Graphics Utilities Additional
Bridging the Gap Between Value and Policy Based Reinforcement Learning

We establish a new connection between value and policy based reinforcement learning (RL) based on a relationship between softmax temporal value consistency and policy optimality under entropy regularization. Specifically, we show that softmax consistent action values correspond to optimal entropy regularized policy probabilities along any action sequence, regardless of provenance. From this observation, we develop a new RL algorithm, Path Consistency Learning (PCL), that minimizes a notion of soft consistency error along multi-step action sequences extracted from both onand off-policy traces. We examine the behavior of PCL in different scenarios and show that PCL can be interpreted as generalizing both actor-critic and Q-learning algorithms. We subsequently deepen the relationship by showing how a single model can be used to represent both a policy and the corresponding softmax state values, eliminating the need for a separate critic. The experimental evaluation demonstrates that PCL significantly outperforms strong actor-critic and Q-learning baselines across several benchmarks.2
Factors associated with surgical management following neoadjuvant therapy in patients with primary HER2-positive breast cancer: results from the NeoALTTO phase III trial.

BACKGROUND
The NeoALTTO trial showed that dual HER2 blockade nearly doubles the rate of pathologic complete response (pCR) in patients with primary HER2-positive breast cancer. However, this did not translate into a higher rate of breast-conserving surgery (BCS).


PATIENTS AND METHODS
In NeoALTTO, patients with HER2-positive breast cancer were randomly assigned to either trastuzumab, lapatinib or their combination with paclitaxel before surgery with pCR as the primary end point. We investigated the association between the surgery type and clinicopathological factors and response to treatment, adjusting for the treatment arm.


RESULTS
Four hundred and twenty-nine patients were subjected to breast surgery. Two hundred and forty-two (56%) and 187 (44%) patients underwent mastectomy and BCS, respectively. In a logistic regression model, negative estrogen receptor (ER), multicentricity and the presence of a palpable mass before surgery were significantly associated with a low chance of BCS. Conversely, patients with small tumors and those eligible for BCS at diagnosis were managed more with BCS, independent of the treatment arm. Radiological response was not associated with the surgical decision.


CONCLUSIONS
Tumor characteristics before neoadjuvant therapy play a main role in deciding the type of surgery calling for a clear consensus on the role of BCS in patients responding to neoadjuvant therapy.
The Development of Play

INTRODUCTION 425 DEFINING PLAY 426 THEORIES OF PLAY 428 Piaget 428 Vygotsky 429 VARIETIES OF PLAY AND THEIR DEVELOPMENTAL COURSE 430 Sensorimotor and Object Play 430 Physical or Locomotor Play 430 Rough-and-Tumble Play 431 Exploratory Play 431 Construction Play 432 Symbolic Play 432 Summary 433 CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN PLAY RESEARCH 433 Pretend Play and Theory of Mind 433 Symbolic Understanding 439 Object Substitution 441 Distinguishing Pretense From Reality 442 Initiating Pretend Play 446 Does Play Improve Developmental Outcomes? 447 INTERINDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN PLAY 451 Gender Differences in Play 451 The Play of Atypically Developing Children 451 Play Across Cultures 454 FUTURE DIRECTIONS 457 Changing Modes of Play 457 Why Children Pretend 458 Play Across the Life Span 459 CONCLUSION 459 REFERENCES 460
Effect of opicapone on levodopa pharmacokinetics, catechol-O-methyltransferase activity and motor fluctuations in patients with Parkinson's disease.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Opicapone (OPC) is a novel third generation catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) inhibitor that enhances levodopa availability. This study investigated the effects of OPC in comparison with placebo on levodopa pharmacokinetics, tolerability and safety, COMT activity and motor response to levodopa in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with motor fluctuations.


METHODS
This was a randomized, multicentre, double-blind and placebo-controlled study in four parallel groups of PD patients treated with standard-release 100/25 mg levodopa/carbidopa or levodopa/benserazide and with motor fluctuations (wearing-OFF phenomenon). Subjects were sequentially assigned to be administered, once-daily, up to 28 days (maintenance phase), placebo (n = 10) or 5 (n = 10), 15 (n = 10) and 30 mg (n = 10) OPC. Two levodopa tests were performed, one at baseline and another following the maintenance phase. Subjects kept a diary to record motor fluctuations (ON/OFF periods) throughout the study.


RESULTS
In relation to placebo, levodopa exposure (AUC0-6) increased 24.7%, 53.9% and 65.6% following 5, 15 and 30 mg OPC, respectively. Maximum COMT inhibition (Emax) ranged from 52% (5 mg OPC) to 80% (30 mg OPC). The study was not designed to detect any significant differences in motor performance, but the exploratory analysis performed shows improvement in various motor outcomes, including a dose-dependent change in absolute OFF time corresponding to a percentage decrease of 4.16% (P > 0.05), 29.55% (P > 0.05) and 32.71% (P < 0.05) with 5, 15 and 30 mg OPC, respectively. Treatments were generally well tolerated and safe.


CONCLUSIONS
OPC is a promising new COMT inhibitor that significantly decreased COMT activity, increased systemic exposure to levodopa and improved motor response.
Intertemporal Pricing with Strategic Customer Behavior

This paper develops a model of dynamic pricing with endogenous intertemporal demand. In the model, there is a monopolist who sells a finite inventory over a finite time horizon. The seller adjusts prices dynamically to maximize revenue. Customers arrive continually over the duration of the selling season. At each point in time, customers may purchase the product at current prices, remain in the market at a cost to purchase later, or exit, and they wish to maximize individual utility. The customer population is heterogeneous along two dimensions: they may have different valuations for the product and different degrees of patience (waiting costs). We demonstrate that heterogeneity in both valuation and patience is important because they jointly determine the structure of optimal pricing policies. In particular, when high-value customers are proportionately less patient, markdown pricing policies are effective because the high-value customers would buy early at high prices while the low-value customers are willing to wait (i.e., they are not lost). On the other hand, when the high-value customers are more patient than the low-value customers, prices should increase over time to discourage inefficient waiting. Contrary to intuition, we find that strategic waiting by customers may sometimes benefit the seller: when low-value customers wait, they compete for availability with highvalue customers and thus increase their willingness to pay. Our results also shed light on how the composition of the customer population affects optimal revenue, consumer surplus, and social welfare. Finally, we consider the long-run problem of selecting the optimal initial stocking quantity.
Comparison of data acquisition technique using logical extraction method on Unrooted Android Device

Acquisition data method on Mobile Device Forensics's activity divided into two method: physical and logical extraction where each of these method has their own advantages and disadvantages. On Unrooted Android Device that have limited privilege, Logical Extraction method is used to acquire data on the device. Technique on the Logical Extraction method to acquire the data include AFLogical, SDcard Imaging, Android Backup Analysis, and proprietary applications for mobile device forensics activity such as Oxygen-Forensics. These four technique has its own acquisition technique with different capability to capture the data on the device and different activity while the acquisition data is performed. Problem in using Logical Extraction on unrooted android device is choosing right technique for data acquisition that can be used for digital evidences. Because of that problem, it's necessary to analyze several techniques on Logical Extraction method by comparing quantity of data that can be acquired and how intrusive activities performed on the device to be able to determine better acquisition technique. Best technique is technique that can acquire enough data that needed as a digital evidence without damaging the integrity of the evidence itself. On the capability to capture the data, we found that Android Backup analysis is the best technique to capture application artifact, SDCard Imaging is the best technique to captured external memory data, and Commercial provider using Oxygen-forensics is the best technique to capture other system files data with limited privilege. Finally with proving the communication log on Steam apps, after comparing all technique in Logical Extraction in safetyness (rooting or install application activities) and data captured aspect, we found that using Android Backup Analysis technique is the best technique for unrooted without doing rooting activity or installing application because of Android Backup Analysis itself is analyze the backup that created from the phone from android debug bridge which the backup store some application data on the phone. We use Steam apps case study as our proof of concept.