Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary Tournament-Based Comparison of Learning and Non-Learning Algorithms for Iterated Games

Evolutionary tournaments have been used effectively as a tool for comparing game-playing algorithms. For instance, in the late 1970's, Axelrod organized tournaments to compare algorithms for playing the iterated prisoner's dilemma (PD) game. These tournaments capture the dynamics in a population of agents that periodically adopt relatively successful algorithms in the environment. While these tournaments have provided us with a better understanding of the relative merits of algorithms for iterated PD, our understanding is less clear about algorithms for playing iterated versions of arbitrary single-stage games in an environment of heterogeneous agents. While the Nash equilibrium solution concept has been used to recommend using Nash equilibrium strategies for rational players playing general-sum games, learning algorithms like fictitious play may be preferred for playing against sub-rational players. In this paper, we study the relative performance of learning and non-learning algorithms in an evolutionary tournament where agents periodically adopt relatively successful algorithms in the population. The tournament is played over a testbed composed of all possible structurally distinct 2×2 conflicted games with ordinal payoffs: a baseline, neutral testbed for comparing algorithms. Before analyzing results from the evolutionary tournament, we discuss the testbed, our choice of representative learning and non-learning algorithms and relative rankings of these algorithms in a round-robin competition. The results from the tournament highlight the advantage of learning algorithms over players using static equilibrium strategies for repeated plays of arbitrary single-stage games. The results are likely to be of more benefit compared to work on static analysis of equilibrium strategies for choosing decision procedures for open, adapting agent society consisting of a variety of competitors.
Palatal Displacement of Canine is Genetic and Related to Congenital Absence of Teeth

The palatally displaced canine is a harmful complication of dental development. It appears in 1 to 2% of the Western population. According to our clinical experience, this anomaly is seen in families in which missing and peg-shaped teeth are common. It could be caused by the same genetic component that causes incisor-premolar hypodontia. We examined 106 patients who had been operated on and treated orthodontically for palatally impacted canine(s). The patients and their family members were examined for dental anomalies. One hundred and ten first- and 93 second-degree relatives were clinically and radiologically examined, and 35 pedigrees were constructed. Thirty-six percent of the patients had congenitally missing permanent teeth (hypodontia), which is 4.5 times the population prevalence. Hypodontia was noted in 19 to 20% of both the first- and second-degree relatives. This is 2.5 times the population prevalence. Frequency of missing teeth, analyzed by tooth groups, was of the same order as that shown for incisor-premolar hypodontia in the Western population. In six of the 35 pedigrees, a palatally impacted canine was noted in several generations of the same family. Prevalence of this anomaly was 4.9% in the studied group, which is 2.5 times the population prevalence. From the findings, we conclude that the palatally displaced canine belongs to the spectrum of dental abnormalities related to hypodontia.
Cloning Serratia entomophila Antifeeding Genes—a Putative Defective Prophage Active against the Grass Grub Costelytra zealandica

ABSTRACT Serratia entomophila and Serratia proteamaculans (Enterobacteriaceae) cause amber disease in the grass grub Costelytra zealandica (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae), an important pasture pest in New Zealand. Larval disease symptoms include cessation of feeding, clearance of the gut, amber coloration, and eventual death. A 155-kb plasmid, pADAP, carries the genes sepA, sepB, and sepC, which are essential for production of amber disease symptoms. Transposon insertions in any of the sep genes in pADAP abolish gut clearance but not cessation of feeding, indicating the presence of an antifeeding gene(s) elsewhere on pADAP. Based on deletion analysis of pADAP and subsequent sequence data, a 47-kb clone was constructed, which when placed in either an Escherichia coli or a Serratia background exerted strong antifeeding activity and often led to rapid death of the infected grass grub larvae. Sequence data show that the antifeeding component is part of a large gene cluster that may form a defective prophage and that six potential members of this prophage are present in Photorhabdus luminescens subsp. laumondii TTO1, a species which also has sep gene homologues.
TESTING THE GENERALIZABILITY OF SAMPSON AND LAUB'S LIFE-COURSE THEORY: EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADULT SOCIAL BONDS AND DRUG USE AMONG AN AFRICAN AMERICAN SAMPLE

Title of Dissertation: TESTING THE GENERALIZABILITY OF SAMPSON AND LAUB’S LIFE-COURSE THEORY: EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADULT SOCIAL BONDS AND DRUG USE AMONG AN AFRICAN AMERICAN SAMPLE Danielle Polizzi Fox, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation Directed By: Professor John H. Laub Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice In 1993, Sampson and Laub found that high quality bonds to employment and marriage redirect offending pathways, net of early criminal propensity among a sample of 500 delinquent and 500 non-delinquent white males living in Boston. The current research explores the generalizability of Sampson and Laub’s (1993) findings using Ann Brunswick’s Harlem Longitudinal Study of Urban Black Youth. Using the first three waves of the dataset, two main research questions are posed: 1) Is there a relationship between adult social bonds and drug use frequency? , and 2) Is there a relationship between the change in adult social bonds and the change in drug use when controlling for unobserved individual heterogeneity? The effects of the social bonding variables in this study do not provide consistent support for Sampson and Laub’s theory. The ordinary-least squares regression results indicate that there is a significant relationship between adult social bonds and drug use in early adulthood in the direction predicted by the underlying theory. In later adulthood, the strongest predictor of drug use frequency is the prior wave’s measure of drug use frequency. The first-differences analysis reveals no significant relationships between the changes in social bonds during adulthood and changes in drug use frequency during the same period. There are no consistent interaction effects uncovered in the data across the two analytic techniques and the drug-specific results mimic those uncovered using the composite measure of drug use frequency. The mixed results from this research may be due to omitted variable bias, low variation in the social bonding variables of interest, how the social bonding variables are measured, or characteristics of the study and the sample population. While no consistent effect for education, employment, or marriage is found to explain changes in drug use frequency over time, supplemental analyses reveal that church is significantly and inversely related to drug use frequency in adulthood. This finding is consistent with Sampson and Laub’s life course theory. Beyond education, employment, and marriage, religion may serve as an institution that is able to strengthen ties and bonds to conventional society and modify drug use trajectories in
Age-based mating success in the codling moth, Cydia pomonella, and the obliquebanded leafroller, Choristoneura rosaceana

Abstract In this study, the passage of spermatophores was examined between 1-day-old males mated in no-choice situations with females 0, 2, 4, or 6 days old and the converse for both the codling moth, Cydia pomonella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), and the obliquebanded leafroller, Choristoneura rosaceana (Harris). For C. pomonella, female age had no effect on the passage of spermatophores from males, and only 6-day-old female C. rosaceana had reduced spermatophore number. The ages of moths at the time of mating had a greater effect on males, with C. pomonella males older than 2 days showing significant reductions in the ability to successfully pass a spermatophore to 1-day-old females. For C. rosaceana, 2- and 6-day-old males were significantly less likely to pass a spermatophore, but reduced transfer from 4-day-old males did not reach statistical significance. Wind-tunnel assays were used to evaluate the ability of 1- or 4-day-old males to fly upwind and successfully contact a young calling female. Four-day-old males were more likely to initiate flight upwind, but were less efficient at finding and contacting the females than younger males. This study suggests that evaluation of multiple components of the mating process are required to understand the effect of age at the time of mating on population dynamics of these moths.
Exploring obstacles: integrating CSCW in evolving organisations

Integrating CSCW systems to organisations is highly complex. This paper examines the co-evolution process involved in tailoring a CSCW system to fit in with the current organisational structure, whilst concurrently adapting the working practices to enable the system to support collaboration. A study is presented which analyses the various obstacles and inequities that ensue when a multi-user system is implemented in a company. To facilitate the management and resolution of the emergent problems, a preliminary conceptual framework is outlined. Finally, a case is presented for involving intermediaries in helping companies customise CSCW systems and adapt their work practices.
The roles of apoptotic pathways in the low recovery rate after cryopreservation of dissociated human embryonic stem cells

Human embryonic stem (hES) cells have enormous potential for clinical applications. However, one major challenge is to achieve high cell recovery rate after cryopreservation. Understanding how the conventional cryopreservation protocol fails to protect the cells is a prerequisite for developing efficient and successful cryopreservation methods for hES cell lines and banks. We investigated how the stimuli from cryopreservation result in apoptosis, which causes the low cell recovery rate after cryopreservation. The level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is significantly increased, F‐actin content and distribution is altered, and caspase‐8 and caspase‐9 are activated after cryopreservation. p53 is also activated and translocated into nucleus. During cryopreservation apoptosis is induced by activation of both caspase‐8 through the extrinsic pathway and caspase‐9 through the intrinsic pathway. However, exactly how the extrinsic pathway is activated is still unclear and deserves further investigation. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog. , 2010
Insulin resistance and associated compensatory responses in african-american and Hispanic children.

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to compare insulin resistance relative to body fat and the associated compensatory responses in 57 healthy children living in Los Angeles, California (14 Caucasians, 15 African-Americans, and 28 Hispanics). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Insulin sensitivity and acute insulin response were determined by intravenous glucose tolerance test. Insulin secretion, hepatic insulin extraction, and insulin clearance were estimated by C-peptide and insulin modeling. RESULTS Insulin sensitivity was significantly lower in Hispanics and African-Americans compared with Caucasian children, and acute insulin response was significantly higher in African-American children. No ethnic differences were noted in the first-phase secretion, but second-phase insulin secretion was significantly higher in Hispanic children than in African-American children (200 +/- 53 vs. 289 +/- 41 nmol/min; P = 0.03). The greater acute insulin response in African-Americans, despite lower secretion, was explained by a lower hepatic insulin extraction in African-Americans compared with Hispanics (36.6 +/- 2.9 vs. 47.3 +/- 2.2%; P = 0.0006). CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, Hispanic and African-American children are more insulin resistant than Caucasian children, but the associated compensatory responses are different across ethnic groups.
TDParse: Multi-target-specific sentiment recognition on Twitter

Existing target-specific sentiment recognition methods consider only a single target per tweet, and have been shown to miss nearly half of the actual targets mentioned. We present a corpus of UK election tweets, with an average of 3.09 entities per tweet and more than one type of sentiment in half of the tweets. This requires a method for multi-target specific sentiment recognition, which we develop by using the context around a target as well as syntactic dependencies involving the target. We present results of our method on both a benchmark corpus of single targets and the multi-target election corpus, showing state-of-the art performance in both corpora and outperforming previous approaches to multi-target sentiment task as well as deep learning models for single-target sentiment.
South African Serial Homicide: Consistency in Victim Types and Crime Scene Actions Across Series

Key to understanding the significance of behavioural evidence for linkage purposes is in establishing how consistently an offender displays the same or similar behaviours across their series. There have however to date been very few studies aiming at identifying salient components of offending behaviour that can be used reliably for linking individual crimes as part of a single series. In addition, studies that have been conducted have all dealt with serial homicide in the Western world and have been based on small samples of cases from each country. Some of the recent literature has started to disentangle some of these salient features, notably the victim, violence levels, control, and planning. The current study focused on evaluating the consistency of these features across series, using a sample of serial homicides from South Africa consisting of 30 offenders with a total of 283 victims and 235 crime scenes. Results indicate that the level of interaction with the victim may be influential to the stability or instability of offending patterns across the series. How offenders approach planning in their offence also showed a certain degree of consistency, with patterns of violence being the least consistent across the series of all components tested. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Transmembrane Domains 1 and 2 of the Latent Membrane Protein 1 of Epstein-Barr Virus Contain a Lipid Raft Targeting Signal and Play a Critical Role in Cytostasis

ABSTRACT The latent membrane protein 1 (LMP-1) oncoprotein of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a constitutively active, CD40-like cell surface signaling protein essential for EBV-mediated human B-cell immortalization. Like ligand-activated CD40, LMP-1 activates NF-κB and Jun kinase signaling pathways via binding, as a constitutive oligomer, to tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factors (TRAFs). LMP-1's lipid raft association and oligomerization have been linked to its activation of cell signaling pathways. Both oligomerization and lipid raft association require the function of LMP-1's polytopic multispanning transmembrane domain, a domain that is indispensable for LMP-1's growth-regulatory signaling activities. We have begun to address the sequence requirements of the polytopic hydrophobic transmembrane domain for LMP-1's signaling and biochemical activities. Here we report that transmembrane domains 1 and 2 are sufficient for LMP-1's lipid raft association and cytostatic activity. Transmembrane domains 1 and 2 support NF-κB activation, albeit less potently than does the entire polytopic transmembrane domain. Interestingly, LMP-1's first two transmembrane domains are not sufficient for oligomerization or TRAF binding. These results suggest that lipid raft association and oligomerization are mediated by distinct and separable activities of LMP-1's polytopic transmembrane domain. Additionally, lipid raft association, mediated by transmembrane domains 1 and 2, plays a significant role in LMP-1 activation, and LMP-1 can activate NF-κB via an oligomerization/TRAF binding-independent mechanism. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an activity's being linked to individual membrane-spanning domains within LMP-1's polytopic transmembrane domain.
Impaired Urinary Cortisol Excretion and Early Cardiopulmonary Dysfunction in Immature Baboons

Early adrenal insufficiency is associated with cardiopulmonary dysfunction in immature infants. Isolated cortisol levels and ACTH stimulation testing may not adequately show ontogeny of postnatal cortisol secretion nor identify at risk infants. Our objectives were 1) to determine postnatal urinary cortisol excretion rate (UCER) from birth to 14 d in immature baboons and 2) to evaluate the relation between UCER and cardiac performance. UCER was assessed via 6-h blocked urine collections from birth to 336 h of age in twenty-one 125-d gestation (term = 185 d) baboons. Urinary cortisol was measured by RIA. Cardiopulmonary parameters were averaged over the same time periods as urine collection. Serial two-dimensional echocardiograms were performed. After 24-h age, a subgroup (n = 8) received up to four doses (0.5–1.0 mg/kg each) of hydrocortisone for refractory hypotension. UCER significantly increased from 0 to 6 h through 66 to 72 h age for non-cortisol-treated infants. Significantly reduced UCER patterns between birth and 24 h were found for animals subsequently requiring cortisol treatment. Cortisol-treated infants had lower mean blood pressure, worse metabolic acidosis, increased fluid needs, and impaired left ventricular function between 12 and 48 h of age. No group differences were found in gas exchange or ventilator support. We conclude that adrenal cortisol secretion significantly improves over the initial 72 h of life in the 125-d immature baboon. Failure to increase UCER after 12–24 h of life correlated with poor cardiovascular function that improved with hydrocortisone therapy. Adrenal hypofunction in the immature baboon is similar to the very preterm human and could serve as a model for future postnatal investigations.
Nucleoside Phosphorylation by Phosphate Minerals*

In the presence of formamide, crystal phosphate minerals may act as phosphate donors to nucleosides, yielding both 5′- and, to a lesser extent, 3′-phosphorylated forms. With the mineral Libethenite the formation of 5′-AMP can be as high as 6% of the adenosine input and last for at least 103 h. At high concentrations, soluble non-mineral phosphate donors (KH2PO4 or 5′-CMP) afford 2′- and 2′:3′-cyclic AMP in addition to 5′-and 3′-AMP. The phosphate minerals analyzed were Herderite Ca[BePO4F], Hureaulite Mn2+5(PO3(OH)2(PO4)2(H2O)4, Libethenite Cu2+2(PO4)(OH), Pyromorphite Pb5(PO4)3Cl, Turquoise Cu2+Al6(PO4)4(OH)8(H2O)4, Fluorapatite Ca5(PO4)3F, Hydroxylapatite Ca5(PO4)3OH, Vivianite Fe2+3(PO4)2(H2O)8, Cornetite Cu2+3(PO4)(OH)3, Pseudomalachite Cu2+5(PO4)2(OH)4, Reichenbachite Cu2+5(PO4)2(OH)4, and Ludjibaite Cu2+5(PO4)2(OH)4). Based on their behavior in the formamide-driven nucleoside phosphorylation reaction, these minerals can be characterized as: 1) inactive, 2) low level phosphorylating agents, or 3) active phosphorylating agents. Instances were detected (Libethenite and Hydroxylapatite) in which phosphorylation occurs on the mineral surface, followed by release of the phosphorylated compounds. Libethenite and Cornetite markedly protect the β-glycosidic bond. Thus, activated nucleic monomers can form in a liquid non-aqueous environment in conditions compatible with the thermodynamics of polymerization, providing a solution to the standard-state Gibbs free energy change (ΔG°') problem, the major obstacle for polymerizations in the liquid phase in plausible prebiotic scenarios.
US Men Discussing Prostate-Specific Antigen Tests With a Physician

PURPOSE Informed decision making is recommended for prostate cancer screening. I wanted to examine demographic and screening-related factors associated with men’s discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests with their physicians. METHODS I used data from 2,184 men aged 50 years and older who reported a screening prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test in the 2000 National Health Interview Survey cancer control supplement. The dependent variable was discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the test before it was conducted. RESULTS Sixty-three percent of tested men reported a discussion in relation to their most recent PSA test. Discussion was more common for African American men and those with a usual source of care, and when the physician initiated the testing. CONCLUSIONS Characteristics of the patient-physician relationship were more central to the discussion of risks and benefits than were patient attributes. Future research should examine what role practice setting and the physician-patient relationship play in a discussion of PSA testing and how to facilitate active involvement of patients in decision making.
A Chinese Efficient Analyser Integrating Word Segmentation, Part-Of-Speech Tagging, Partial Parsing and Full Parsing

This paper introduces an efficient analyser for the Chinese language, which efficiently and effectively integrates word segmentation, part-of-speech tagging, partial parsing and full parsing. The Chinese efficient analyser is based on a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and an HMM-based tagger. That is, all the components are based on the same HMM-based tagging engine. One advantage of using the same single engine is that it largely decreases the code size and makes the maintenance easy. Another advantage is that it is easy to optimise the code and thus improve the speed while speed plays a critical important role in many applications. Finally, the performances of all the components can benefit from the optimisation of existing algorithms and/or adoption of better algorithms to a single engine. Experiments show that all the components can achieve state-of-art performances with high efficiency for the Chinese language.