Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experiences of elderly with emotionally beeping ECAs Embodied by a Nabaztag

goal of this research is to investigate how elderly people experience an ECA using beeping sounds as expressions of emotional states. In a possible future scenario is that these ECAs will be responsible for basis diagnostic decision-support tasks concerning our well-being. Qualitative research is done on how elderly people experienced "living with" a Nabaztag as companion. This Nabaztag performed the role of the ECA. Prior to the research, an online questionnaire was held to establish a classification of beeping sounds into different emotional states. In the second stage of the research, subjects had to classify a series of beeps into emotional groups before and after they took part in a scenario play with the Nabaztag. During these sessions, the Nabaztag communicated his emotional state by sounding appropriate beeps while with one group of subjects and communicated its emotional state with random emotional beeps while with the other group. Qualitative evaluation of living with a Nabaztag showed that a Nabaztag with an appropriate response to events was much more positively experienced than a Nabaztag making a random response. The elderly people enjoyed having a Nabaztag making beeps accompanying them. Because of the Nabaztag"s reactions to certain events, a "belief" of a Nabaztag"s primitive mind was created.
Expression of angiogenic factors in endometriosis: relationship to fibrinolytic and metalloproteinase systems.

BACKGROUND Endometriosis is a highly prevalent, benign disease in which the angiogenic, fibrinolytic and metalloproteinase (MMP) systems may be implicated. The objective of this study is to analyse mRNA expression and protein levels of several angiogenic factors and to correlate them with several components of the fibrinolytic and MMP systems in samples from 71 women with endometriosis and 50 controls. METHODS AND RESULTS Eutopic endometrium showed higher mRNA expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in patients than in controls. However, ovarian endometrioma had lower VEGF mRNA levels than did the eutopic endometrium of patients. Similar results were obtained for VEGF protein levels. On the other hand, a significant increase in thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) levels was observed in ovarian endometrioma than in eutopic endometrium. The peritoneal fluid from women with endometriosis showed a significant increase in VEGF, urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) and MMP-3 levels than that of controls. A significant correlation was observed between the levels of VEGF and uPA in endometrium and in peritoneal fluid. CONCLUSIONS Endometrium and peritoneal fluid from women with endometriosis have increased levels of VEGF, uPA and MMP-3 levels. Therefore, the development of endometriotic implants at ectopic sites may be facilitated, promoting the progress of the endometriosis.
Properties of Very Luminous Galaxies

Recent analysis of the data from the Southern Sky Redshift Survey extension (SSRS2) based on cell counts and the two-point correlation function has shown that very luminous galaxies are much more strongly clustered than fainter galaxies. In fact, the amplitude of the correlation function of very luminous galaxies (L > L*) asymptotically approaches that of R ≥ 0 clusters. In this paper we investigate the properties of the most luminous galaxies, with blue absolute magnitudes MB ≤ -21. We find that (1) the population mix is comparable to that in other ranges of absolute magnitude; (2) only a small fraction are located in bona fide clusters; (3) the bright galaxy–cluster cross-correlation function is significantly higher on large scales than that measured for fainter galaxies; (4) the correlation length of galaxies brighter than MB ∼ -20.0, expressed as a function of the mean interparticle distance, appears to follow the universal dimensionless correlation function found for clusters and radio galaxies; (5) a large fraction of the bright galaxies are in interacting pairs, while others show evidence for tidal distortions and some appear to be surrounded by faint satellite galaxies. We conclude that very luminous optical galaxies differ from the normal population of galaxies in both clustering and other respects. We speculate that this population is a highly biased tracer of mass, being associated with dark halos with masses more comparable to clusters than to typical loose groups.
Growth Collapses

We study episodes where economic growth decelerates to negative rates. While the majority of these episodes are of short duration, a substantial fraction last for a longer period of time than can be explained as the result of business-cycle dynamics. The duration, depth and associated output loss of these episodes differs dramatically across regions. We investigate the factors associated with the entry of countries into these episodes as well as their duration. We find that while countries fall into crises for multiple reasons, including wars, export collapses, sudden stops and political transitions, most of these variables do not help predict the duration of crises episodes. In contrast, we find that a measure of the density of a country's export product space is significantly associated with lower crisis duration. We also find that unconditional and conditional hazard rates are decreasing in time, a fact that is consistent with either strong shocks to fundamentals or with models of poverty traps.
Dynamic Bayesian Networks as Formal Abstractions of Structured Stochastic Processes

We study the problem of finite-horizon probabilistic invariance for discrete-time Markov processes over general (uncountable) state spaces. We compute discrete-time, finite-state Markov chains as formal abstractions of general Markov processes. Our abstraction differs from existing approaches in two ways. First, we exploit the structure of the underlying Markov process to compute the abstraction separately for each dimension. Second, we employ dynamic Bayesian networks (DBN) as compact representations of the abstraction. In contrast, existing approaches represent and store the (exponentially large) Markov chain explicitly, which leads to heavy memory requirements limiting the application to models of dimension less than half, according to our experiments. We show how to construct a DBN abstraction of a Markov process satisfying an independence assumption on the driving process noise. We compute a guaranteed bound on the error in the abstraction w.r. t. the probabilistic invariance property; the dimension-dependent abstraction makes the error bounds more precise than existing approaches. Additionally, we show how factor graphs and the sum-product algorithm for DBNs can be used to solve the finite-horizon probabilistic invariance problem. Together, DBN-based representations and algorithms can be significantly more efficient than explicit representations of Markov chains for abstracting and model checking structured Markov processes.
Purification of Peptides from Bacillus Strains with Biological Activity

One of the greatest causes of loss in the food industry is postharvest diseases of fruits and vegetables (Vero Mendez & Mondino, 1999). According to U.S.A. estimations this loss reaches 20 25% whereas in developing countries the losses are often more severe due to inadequate storage and transportation facilities (Sharma et al., 2009), but loss has generally been considered to be approximately 10% to 40% depending on packinghouse technology (Vero et al, 2002).
A century of the ornamental plant trade and its impact on invasion success

We identify a significant relationship between domestic market‐based propagule pressure, as measured both in presence in the British horticultural market and in seed prices of ornamental plant species, with success in invasion. We employ a multispecies temporal approach and use a Generalized Estimation Equation model comparing ornamental non‐native species introduced into Britain which started to invade with species introduced but not known outside cultivation. Historical nursery catalogues gave information on the availability and prices of seeds of 506 ornamental species in the British horticultural market every 20 years from 1885 to 1985. Higher market frequency and cheap prices of seeds were more significant and had a greater impact on the invading probability 20 years later than at the date of listing in a nursery catalogue. Our results suggest that national economic factors are an important part of the explanation for the invasiveness of ornamental plant species, and hence for the development of potential solutions.
Be Your Own Prada: Fashion Synthesis with Structural Coherence

We present a novel and effective approach for generating new clothing on a wearer through generative adversarial learning. Given an input image of a person and a sentence describing a different outfit, our model “redresses” the person as desired, while at the same time keeping the wearer and her/his pose unchanged. Generating new outfits with precise regions conforming to a language description while retaining wearer’s body structure is a new challenging task. Existing generative adversarial networks are not ideal in ensuring global coherence of structure given both the input photograph and language description as conditions. We address this challenge by decomposing the complex generative process into two conditional stages. In the first stage, we generate a plausible semantic segmentation map that obeys the wearer’s pose as a latent spatial arrangement. An effective spatial constraint is formulated to guide the generation of this semantic segmentation map. In the second stage, a generative model with a newly proposed compositional mapping layer is used to render the final image with precise regions and textures conditioned on this map. We extended the DeepFashion dataset [8] by collecting sentence descriptions for 79K images. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. A user study is also conducted.
Effect of low-carbohydrate high-protein diets on acid-base balance, stone-forming propensity, and calcium metabolism.

BACKGROUND Low-carbohydrate high-protein (LCHP) diets are used commonly for weight reduction. This study explores the relationship between such diets and acid-base balance, kidney-stone risk, and calcium and bone metabolism. METHODS Ten healthy subjects participated in a metabolic study. Subjects initially consumed their usual non-weight-reducing diet, then a severely carbohydrate-restricted induction diet for 2 weeks, followed by a moderately carbohydrate-restricted maintenance diet for 4 weeks. RESULTS Urine pH decreased from 6.09 (Usual) to 5.56 (Induction; P < 0.01) to 5.67 (Maintenance;P < 0.05). Net acid excretion increased by 56 mEq/d (Induction; P < 0.001) and 51 mEq/d (Maintenance; P < 0.001) from a baseline of 61 mEq/d. Urinary citrate levels decreased from 763 mg/d (3.98 mmol/d) to 449 mg/d (2.34 mmol/d; P < 0.01) to 581 mg/d (3.03 mmol/d; P < 0.05). Urinary saturation of undissociated uric acid increased more than twofold. Urinary calcium levels increased from 160 mg/d (3.99 mmol/d) to 258 mg/d (6.44 mmol/d; P < 0.001) to 248 mg/d (6.19 mmol/d; P < 0.01). This increase in urinary calcium levels was not compensated by a commensurate increase in fractional intestinal calcium absorption. Therefore, estimated calcium balance decreased by 130 mg/d (3.24 mmol/d; P < 0.001) and 90 mg/d (2.25 mmol/d; P < 0.05). Urinary deoxypyridinoline and N-telopeptide levels trended upward, whereas serum osteocalcin concentrations decreased significantly (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION Consumption of an LCHP diet for 6 weeks delivers a marked acid load to the kidney, increases the risk for stone formation, decreases estimated calcium balance, and may increase the risk for bone loss.
A behavioural and functional imaging investigation of Stroop task performance in late proficient bilinguals

In this thesis, Stroop task performance was investigated (using behavioural, electrophysiological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques) in late and proficient adult bilinguals currently living in the second language (L2) environment. Monolingual participants, matched for age and handedness, were recruited as controls. The Stroop colour-word task was considered an appropriate tool to test the general hypothesis that bilingualism might influence executive or cognitive control processes. In Study One, a dual-task paradigm was used for assessing the lateralisation of language functions (given the linguistic nature of the Stroop paradigm used here) in the bilinguals (MacedonianEnglish/M-E). Bilinguals showed a more bilateral hemispheric involvement, for both languages, compared to monolinguals. These findings also provided supporting evidence for the hypothesis of greater right-hemispheric involvement for language in bilinguals. In Study Two, two behavioural Stroop task paradigms (manual and verbal) were used in order to assess the magnitude of the Stroop effect between the groups. Bilinguals (M-E, German-English/GE) showed a trend of smaller interference scores across both languages compared to monolinguals. In Study Three, manual Stroop task performance with concurrent electroencephalograph (EEG) recording revealed that bilinguals had temporal shifts in the N400 component (of about 30-40 ms) for the interference comparison for both languages compared to monolinguals. Also, relative to monolinguals, M-E bilinguals (for both L1 and L2) and G-E bilinguals (for L2) had fewer electrodes over frontal and central sites with a significant amplitude difference in the interference comparison (i.e., a reduced interference effect). In Study Four, the neural substrates engaged during Stroop task performance were investigated using fMRI. In general, monolinguals showed greater activation in regions such as the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate (regions associated with good executive control). This suggested that relative to bilinguals, monolinguals require more neural resources to accomplish conflict resolution. Taken together, Stroop task performance in late and proficient bilinguals currently living in the L2 environment differed from that of monolinguals across all methods of investigation. It appears that cognitive processing changes at the executive level can be observed as a result of bilingualism. The results also provide some evidence for changes in L1 processing following late L2 acquisition, as similar results across both languages and tasks were observed for the M-E bilinguals. It is also possible
Intensification of the Southern Hemisphere summertime subtropical anticyclones in a warming climate

The Southern Hemisphere subtropical anticyclones (SAs) are important features of the Earth's climate. A broad consensus among Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 and phase 5 climate models suggests an intensification of summer SAs over SH oceans in association with the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Diagnostic and modeling analyses conducted here demonstrate that the strengthening of the SAs is primarily caused by enhanced diabatic heating over continents and cooling over oceans in austral summer. This enhancement of Southern Hemisphere near‐surface SAs identified here together with the enhancement of their Northern Hemisphere counterparts as suggested by Li et al. (2012) indicates increasingly important roles played by SAs in modulating weather and climate on regional and global scales.
Challenges in Cross-Sectoral Partnerships: An Organizational Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to identify challenges to cross-sectoral collaboration based on principals in current organization theory regarding organizational boundaries. The boundarymaintenance function enables organizations to maintain sufficient stability and focus for goal attainment. Organizations periodically adjust their boundaries for tactical and strategic purposes, making participation in cross-sectoral partnerships possible and influencing the manner in which participation will take place. Because collaboration places boundary maintenance at risk, organizations generally appear unlikely to participate except when collaboration is based on loose and terminable linkages and cooperation of a temporary nature. These principles suggest that advocates of cross-sectoral collaboration today risk setting unrealistic goals for such arrangements. Examination of several foundation-funded initiatives illustrates limitations in the ability of organizations to compromise boundary maintenance in the interests of cross-sectoral collaboration. More optimistically, this paper aims at combining organization theory, evaluation, and action research to produce practical suggestions for promotion of successful cross-sectoral partnerships. Suggestions derived from theory and case studies conducted throughout the United States include: recruiting and empowering leadership committed to cross-sectoral collaboration; ensuring the presence of appropriately mandated, supervised, and paid staff; providing limited access by outsiders to privileged data and decision-making processes, and respecting the integrity of participant organizations’ core commitments and resources. As in the case of foundation-funded initiatives, external forces may prove essential to the initiation and sustainability of cross-sectoral collaboration.
Correcting a POS-Tagged Corpus Using Three Complementary Methods

The quality of the part-of-speech (PoS) annotation in a corpus is crucial for the development of PoS taggers. In this paper, we experiment with three complementary methods for automatically detecting errors in the PoS annotation for the Icelandic Frequency Dictionary corpus. The first two methods are language independent and we argue that the third method can be adapted to other morphologically complex languages. Once possible errors have been detected, we examine each error candidate and hand-correct the corresponding PoS tag if necessary. Overall, based on the three methods, we hand-correct the PoS tagging of 1,334 tokens (0.23% of the tokens) in the corpus. Furthermore, we re-evaluate existing state-of-the-art PoS taggers on Icelandic text using the corrected corpus.
Comparing the efficiency of sampling strategies to establish a representative in the phenotypic-based genetic diversity core collection of orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata L.).

Studnicki M. , Mądry W. , Schmidt J. (2013): Comparing the efficiency of sampling strategies to establish a representative in the phenotypic-based genetic diversity core collection of orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata L.). Czech J. Genet. Plant Breed. , 49: 36–47. Establishing a core collection that represents the genetic diversity of the entire collection with a minimum loss of its original diversity and minimal redundancies is an important problem for gene bank curators and crop breed ers. In this paper, we assess the representativeness of the original genetic diversity in core collections consisting of one-tenth of the entire collection obtained according to 23 sampling strategies. The study was performed using the Polish orchardgrass Dactylis glomerata L. germplasm collection as a model. The representativeness of the core collections was validated by the difference of means (MD%) and difference of mean squared Euclidean distance (d ‒ D%) for the studied traits in the core subsets and the entire collection. In this way, we compared the efficiency of a simple random and 22 (20 cluster -based and 2 direct cluster-based) stratified sampling strategies. Each cluster -based stratified sampling strategy is a combination of 2 clusterings, 5 allocations and 2 methods of sampling in a group. We used the accession genotypic predicted values for 8 quantitative traits tested in field trials. A sampling strategy is considered more effective for establishing core collections if the means of the traits in a core are maintained at the same level as the means in the entire collection (i.e., the mean of MD% in the simulated samples is close to zero) and, simultaneously, when the overall variation in a core collection is greater than in the entire collection (i.e., the mean of d ‒ D% in the simulated samples is greater than that obtained for the simple random sampling strategy). Both cluster analyses ( unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean UPGMA and Ward) were similarly useful in constructing those sampling strategies capable of establishing representative core collections. Among the allocation methods that are relatively most useful for construct ing efficient samplings were proportional and D2 (including variation). Within the Ward clusters, the random sampling was better than the cluster-based sampling, but not within the UPGMA clusters.
Exploiting channel diversity for rate adaptation in backscatter communication networks

Backscatter communication networks receive much attention recently due to the small size and low power of backscatter nodes. As backscatter communication is often influenced by the dynamic wireless channel quality, rate adaptation becomes necessary. Most existing approaches share a common drawback: they do not distinguish channel qualities from different nodes or sub-channels. Consequently, the transmission rate may be improperly selected, resulting in low network throughput. Through extensive experimental studies, we observe that channel diversity plays a significant role in rate selection. Therefore, there are opportunities of exploiting channel diversity for better rate adaptation, improving network throughput. In this paper, we propose a Channel-Aware Rate Adaptation framework (CARA) for backscatter communication networks. By employing a lightweight channel probing scheme, we are able to obtain fine-grained channel information that enables accurate channel estimation. We further design a novel channel selection algorithm, benefiting as many backscatter nodes as possible. On each selected channel, CARA chooses data rate with respect to the node that has the best channel condition. We implement CARA on commercial readers and the experiment results show that CARA achieves up to 4× goodput gain compared with state-of-the-art rate adaptation scheme.
Evolutionary and Expression Signatures of Pseudogenes in Arabidopsis and Rice1[C][W][OA]

Pseudogenes (Ψ) are nonfunctional genomic sequences resembling functional genes. Knowledge of Ψs can improve genome annotation and our understanding of genome evolution. However, there has been relatively little systemic study of Ψs in plants. In this study, we characterized the evolution and expression patterns of Ψs in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and rice (Oryza sativa). In contrast to animal Ψs, many plant Ψs experienced much stronger purifying selection. In addition, plant Ψs experiencing stronger selective constraints tend to be derived from relatively ancient duplicates, suggesting that they were functional for a relatively long time but became Ψs recently. Interestingly, the regions 5′ to the first stops in the Ψs have experienced stronger selective constraints compared with 3′ regions, suggesting that the 5′ regions were functional for a longer period of time after the premature stops appeared. We found that few Ψs have expression evidence, and their expression levels tend to be lower compared with annotated genes. Furthermore, Ψs with expressed sequence tags tend to be derived from relatively recent duplication events, indicating that Ψ expression may be due to insufficient time for complete degeneration of regulatory signals. Finally, larger protein domain families have significantly more Ψs in general. However, while families involved in environmental stress responses have a significant excess of Ψs, transcription factors and receptor-like kinases have lower than expected numbers of Ψs, consistent with their elevated retention rate in plant genomes. Our findings illustrate peculiar properties of plant Ψs, providing additional insight into the evolution of duplicate genes and benefiting future genome annotation.