Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is the Mobile Phone a Personalized Social Robot

This paper explores how some people use their mobile phone to manage their emotions and presentation of self to such an extent that they develop a strong bond with it, turning to it first in times of emotional need. It examines how some social robots, designed by experts to provide bespoke emotional support, can address only particular emotional problems. This is further examined by contrasting the electronic emotions managed via the mobile phone with the uses for three social robots: Amazing Ally, KASPAR and Paro. Unlike these robots, that are effective only when responding to certain pre-programmed emotions, the mobile phone appears to be a constant companion dealing with every eventuality. Imbued with the user’s feelings and emotions that surround the continuous and always on presence of the device, the user constantly turns to it for solace, to share joyous moments, recall special memories and more. The resulting close emotional and physical association with a device that is filled with the personal biography of its user is that the mobile phone becomes like a personal social robot; a co-construction of functional machine and intimate emotional experiences known only to the user.
PRIMME_SVDS: A High-Performance Preconditioned SVD Solver for Accurate Large-Scale Computations

The increasing number of applications requiring the solution of large scale singular value problems have rekindled interest in iterative methods for the SVD. Some promising recent ad- vances in large scale iterative methods are still plagued by slow convergence and accuracy limitations for computing smallest singular triplets. Furthermore, their current implementations in MATLAB cannot address the required large problems. Recently, we presented a preconditioned, two-stage method to effectively and accurately compute a small number of extreme singular triplets. In this research, we present a high-performance software, PRIMME SVDS, that implements our hybrid method based on the state-of-the-art eigensolver package PRIMME for both largest and smallest singular values. PRIMME SVDS fills a gap in production level software for computing the partial SVD, especially with preconditioning. The numerical experiments demonstrate its superior performance compared to other state-of-the-art software and its good parallel performance under strong and weak scaling.
Transversals in 4-Uniform Hypergraphs

Let $H$ be a $4$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices. The transversal number $\tau(H)$ of $H$ is the minimum number of vertices that intersect every edge. The result in [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 50 (1990), 129—133] by Lai and Chang implies that $\tau(H) \le 7n/18$ when $H$ is $3$-regular. The main result in [Combinatorica 27 (2007), 473—487] by Thomasse and Yeo implies an improved bound of $\tau(H) \le 8n/21$. We provide a further improvement and prove that $\tau(H) \le 3n/8$, which is best possible due to a hypergraph of order eight. More generally, we show that if $H$ is a $4$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges with maximum degree $\Delta(H) \le 3$, then $\tau(H) \le n/4 + m/6$, which proves a known conjecture. We show that an easy corollary of our main result is that if $H$ is a $4$-uniform hypergraph with $n$ vertices and $n$ edges, then $\tau(H) \le \frac{3}{7}n$, which was the main result of the Thomasse-Yeo paper [Combinatorica 27 (2007), 473—487].
Correlation between the Response of the Heart to Sympathetic Stimulation and the Release of Endogenous Catecholamines into the Coronary Sinus of the Dog

The relationship between the increase in catecholamine levels of the coronary sinus b1lood and the amplitude of various cardiac responses to adrenergic nerve stimulation was studied in anesthetized dogs. Plasma catecholamine levels in both coronary sinus and aortic blood were measured by a modification of the radiometric enzymatic assay for tissue catecholamines and were found to be 0.622 ± 0.104 (SE) ng/ml and 0.933 ± 0.116 ng/ml, respectively, under basal conditions. The catecholamine levels in coronary sinus blood increased linearly during right cardioaccelerator nerve stimulation up to a frequency of 10 Hz. At this frequency, maximum values were observed in both coronary sinus blood catecholamine levels and cardiac responses. The correlation between the response in heart rate, mean coronary blood flow, and dP/dt of left ventricular pressure and the increase in endogenous catecholamine levels of coronary sinus blood was significant, but the relationship was nonlinear. The present experimental design may prove to be a reliable means of studying the role of the sympathetic nervous system in the regulation of cardiovascular function in vivo.
Automatic Identification of Word Translations from Unrelated English and German Corpora

Algorithms for the alignment of words in translated texts are well established. However, only recently new approaches have been proposed to identify word translations from non-parallel or even unrelated texts. This task is more difficult, because most statistical clues useful in the processing of parallel texts cannot be applied to non-parallel texts. Whereas for parallel texts in some studies up to 99% of the word alignments have been shown to be correct, the accuracy for non-parallel texts has been around 30% up to now. The current study, which is based on the assumption that there is a correlation between the patterns of word co-occurrences in corpora of different languages, makes a significant improvement to about 72% of word translations identified correctly.
The basic N-terminal domain of TRF2 limits recombination endonuclease action at human telomeres

The stability of mammalian telomeres depends upon TRF2, which prevents inappropriate repair and checkpoint activation. By using a plasmid integration assay in yeasts carrying humanized telomeres, we demonstrated that TRF2 possesses the intrinsic property to both stimulate initial homologous recombination events and to prevent their resolution via its basic N-terminal domain. In human cells, we further showed that this TRF2 domain prevents telomere shortening mediated by the resolvase-associated protein SLX4 as well as GEN1 and MUS81, 2 different types of endonucleases with resolvase activities. We propose that various types of resolvase activities are kept in check by the basic N-terminal domain of TRF2 in order to favor an accurate repair of the stalled forks that occur during telomere replication.
Improved Jacobian adaptation for fast acoustic model adaptation in noisy speech recognition

This paper describes two algorithms to improve a previously proposedJacobian adaptation (JA)techniquefor fast acoustic speech recognizer model adaptation in environmental noise. The (cid:12)rst technique introduces a new bias term, that is a function of the reference noise estimate to account for the mismatch between the reference noise estimate and noise component of the noisy speech spectrum. This functional mismatch bias is quite general, and here we choose to represent it as a linear function of the reference noise estimate. The second algorithm uses a more accurate relationship between the log and linear spectral domain versions of the HMM parameters. The combination of these new techniques achieves an increase of between 3.3-10.9% in recognition accuracy in adapting from automobile highway noise (HWY1) to such low-frequency noise sources as IBM PC cooling fan noise (PS2), large city street noise (LCI) and HWY2 (a di(cid:11)erent highway noise with di(cid:11)erent automobile at di(cid:11)erent signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)) over the original Jacobian adaptation in context independent phone recognition on TIMIT database.
Escalas de masculinidad y feminidad: estado actual de la cuestión

Masculinity and femininity scales: Current state of the art. A theoretical and empirical review of masculinity and femininity scales was carried out after 30 years of their existence. Hypotheses to be tested were: (a) muldimensionality versus bidimensionality; (b) inadequate percentage of variance accounted for (less than 50%); (c) inconsistency between factor structure and the dualistic model. 618, 200 and 287 students took part in each of the three studies that were carried out. Factorial analyses (PAF) were performed. Results support multidimensionality, unsatisfactory percentage of variance accounted for, and lack of congruence between obtained factors and the dualistic model. All these data were analysed within the context of the twofold sex and gender reality model.
The Prevalence of Transmitted Antiretroviral Drug Resistance in Treatment-Naive HIV-Infected Individuals in China

Background:Transmission of HIV drug resistance (TDR) gives rise to reduced efficacy of initial antiretroviral treatment and has become a public health concern. Methods:A nationwide survey on TDR was conducted in antiretroviral therapy-naive HIV-1-infected individuals from September 2004 to October 2005 in China. Drug resistance genotyping was performed on subjects' plasma samples. Drug resistance mutations were determined and scored by Stanford HIV Drug Resistance algorithm. Results:Sequences were obtained from 676 individuals, of whom 61.2% were former plasma and blood donors, 17.3% were infected sexually, and 17.2% were intravenous drug users. Subtype B' HIV-1 strains were found in 73.5%, CRF01_AE in 13.9%, CRF07_BC in 6.2%, CRF08_BC in 2.7%, subtype C in 1.04%, subtype B in 0.9%, CRF02_AG in 0.4%, and B'/C intersubtype recombinant strains in 1.3% of the subjects. Twenty-six (3.8%) were found to harbor drug resistance strains. The rates of resistance to protease inhibitors, nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, and nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors were 0.4%, 1.6%, and 2.1%, respectively. Though there was no significant difference in TDR rates between 2004 and 2005 (2.9% vs. 4.4%), an increased trend was observed in the rate of high-level drug resistance (0.8% in 2004 vs. 3.0% in 2005, P = 0.0634). Conclusions:The rate of TDR was relatively low in China, as compared with those in developed countries. Surveys among recently HIV-infected subjects should be performed continually to ensure the success of the scale-up antiretroviral treatment.
Pharmacokinetics of Ceftazidime in Adult Cystic Fibrosis Patients During Continuous Infusion and Ambulatory Treatment at Home

Acute exacerbations of Pseudomonas aeruginosa lung infections were treated with ceftazidime (CTZ) by continuous infusion (CI) in eight adult cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. CTZ pharmacokinetics were studied after a single dose and during CI (100 mg/kg/24 h) with a CADD-PLUS infusion pump at home for 3 weeks. Individual CTZ pharmacokinetic parameters after single-dose administration were a half-life (t1/2β) of 1.90 ± 0.85 h (mean ± SD), a volume of distribution (VS) of 0.28 ± 0.08 L/kg, and a total body clearance (CL) of 0.152 ± 0.014 L/h/kg. CL during CI was 0.147 ± 0.019 L/h/kg, equal to the CL after a single dose. CTZ clearance at the start and at the end of the treatment did not differ. The mean fraction of the dose recovered from the urine was 92.6% (range 85.6–98.5%). Renal clearance was 0.147 ± 0.015 L/h/kg and was not influenced by the pulmonary exacerbation. The early-morning serum concentrations were significantly higher than the afternoon levels (p < 0.02). The mean CTZ serum concentration during CI was 28.7 ± 5.0 mg/L. Clinical condition and quality of life improved significantly during and after treatment. With the pharmacokinetic population data from the single-dose study, the CTZ steady-state concentrations during CI could be predicted [precision (root mean squared prediction error) 3.1 mg/L; bias (mean prediction error) 0.4 mg/L]. This method may serve as a model in the development of CTZ continuous-infusion dosage regimens in CF home treatment.
The Role of Music in Everyday Life: Current Directions in the Social Psychology of Music

Music is a crucial element of everyday life. People spend hours listening to it and billions of dollars buying it. Yet despite the pervasiveness of music, mainstream social-personality psychology has hardly given any attention to this universal social phenomenon. Why is music important to people? What role does music play in everyday life? This article reviews research in fields outside mainstream psychology concerned with the social and psychological factors that influence how people experience and use music in their daily lives. The research in this area shows that music can have considerable effects on cognition, emotion, and behavior. It also indicates that people use music to serve various functions, from emotion regulation to self-expression to social bonding. Research in this emerging field reveals how social-personality psychology can inform our understanding of music, and in doing so it highlights the real-world relevance of mainstream theory and research.
Neuropathic pain: transcranial electric motor cortex stimulation using high frequency random noise. Case report of a novel treatment

Objectives Electric motor cortex stimulation has been reported to be effective for many cases of neuropathic pain, in the form of epidural stimulation or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). A novel technique is transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS), which increases the cortical excitability irrespective of the orientation of the current. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of tRNS on neuropathic pain in a small number of subjects, and in a case study explore the effects of different stimulation parameters and the long-term stability of treatment effects. Methods The study was divided into three phases: (1) a double-blind crossover study, with four subjects; (2) a double-blind extended case study with one responder; and (3) open continued treatment. The motor cortex stimulation consisted of alternating current random noise (100–600 Hz), varying from 0.5 to 10 minutes and from 50 to 1500 μA, at intervals ranging from daily to fortnightly. Results One out of four participants showed a strong positive effect (also compared with direct-current-sham, P = 0.006). Unexpectedly, this effect was shown to occur also for very weak (100 μA, P = 0.048) and brief (0.5 minutes, P = 0.028) stimulation. The effect was largest during the first month, but remained at a highly motivating level for the patient after 6 months. Discussion The study suggests that tRNS may be an effective treatment for some cases of neuropathic pain. An important result was the indication that even low levels of stimulation may have substantial effects.
Amelioration of Murine Colitis by Feeding a Solution of Lysed Escherichia coli

Background: Immune reactivity towards the bacterial intestinal flora plays an important part in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease. Disease activity can be positively influenced by the administration of living probiotic bacteria. We investigated the effect of soluble bacterial antigens extracted from Escherichia coli (strain Laves) on the disease activity of murine colitis. Methods: C3H.IL-10-/- and BALB/c mice with dextran sulphate sodium-induced colitis were treated with either a bacterial lysate from E. coli or with a placebo. Mice were monitored and inflammation was assessed by histological scoring, analysis of fecal IL-1β and measurement of cytokine production by ELISA. T cell proliferation was quantified by 3 H-thymidine incorporation. Results: Clinically and histologically, bacterial-lysate-treated mice revealed significantly (P < 0.05) fewer signs of colitis than placebo-treated mice. Fecal IL-1β and mucosal TNF-α and IFN-γ concentrations were significantly lower (P < 0.05) in verum-treated mice than in the placebo group. Furthermore, lymphocyte proliferation after stimulation with lipopolysaccharide or caecal bacterial antigen was significantly (P < 0.05) reduced in verum-treated mice. Conclusion: The use of E. coli lysate is effective in the amelioration of murine colitis. This effect may be due to a decreased Th1 reaction and to an induction of tolerance against bacterial antigens.
Crucial role of nonspecific interactions in amyloid nucleation

Significance The assembly of normally soluble proteins into large fibrils, known as amyloid aggregation, is associated with a range of pathologies. Prefibrillar protein oligomers but not the grown fibers are believed to be the main toxic agents. It is unresolved if these oligomers are necessary for fibril assembly or just a dangerous byproduct. We show using computer simulations that, at physiological concentrations, amyloid formation must proceed through a two-step process including prefibrillar oligomers. We find that there is an optimal oligomeric size for amyloid nucleation and that classical nucleation theory cannot be applied to this process. Formation of oligomers and hence, fibrils, is controlled by the strength of nonspecific attractions, whose weakening may be crucial in preventing amyloid aggregation. Protein oligomers have been implicated as toxic agents in a wide range of amyloid-related diseases. However, it has remained unsolved whether the oligomers are a necessary step in the formation of amyloid fibrils or just a dangerous byproduct. Analogously, it has not been resolved if the amyloid nucleation process is a classical one-step nucleation process or a two-step process involving prenucleation clusters. We use coarse-grained computer simulations to study the effect of nonspecific attractions between peptides on the primary nucleation process underlying amyloid fibrillization. We find that, for peptides that do not attract, the classical one-step nucleation mechanism is possible but only at nonphysiologically high peptide concentrations. At low peptide concentrations, which mimic the physiologically relevant regime, attractive interpeptide interactions are essential for fibril formation. Nucleation then inevitably takes place through a two-step mechanism involving prefibrillar oligomers. We show that oligomers not only help peptides meet each other but also, create an environment that facilitates the conversion of monomers into the β-sheet–rich form characteristic of fibrils. Nucleation typically does not proceed through the most prevalent oligomers but through an oligomer size that is only observed in rare fluctuations, which is why such aggregates might be hard to capture experimentally. Finally, we find that the nucleation of amyloid fibrils cannot be described by classical nucleation theory: in the two-step mechanism, the critical nucleus size increases with increases in both concentration and interpeptide interactions, which is in direct contrast with predictions from classical nucleation theory.
Arranger Certification in Project Finance

We examine certification by lead arrangers of project finance (PF) syndicated loans, because PF vehicle companies are stand-alone entities, created for a single purpose, with all valuation impacts contained in the project financing package. Using a sample of 4,122 project finance loans, worth $769 billion, arranged between 1991 and 2005, we show that certification by prestigious lead arranging banks creates economic value by reducing overall loan spreads compared to loans arranged by less prestigious arrangers. Banks participating in these loan syndicates, rather than the project sponsors, are the parties that pay for certification, and do so by allowing top-tier arrangers to keep larger fractions of the up-front arranging fees, though overall fees are reduced when a prestigious bank arranges a loan. Our results are robust to correcting for endogenous choice of loans by prestigious arrangers, and we show that certification is most valuable during periods of extreme financial stress.
Joint-Triplet Motion Image and Local Binary Pattern for 3D Action Recognition Using Kinect

This paper presents a new action recognition method that utilizes the 3D skeletal motion data captured using the Kinect depth sensor. We propose a robust view-invariant joint motion representation based on the spatio-temporal changes in relative angles among the different skeletal joint-triplets, namely the joint relative angle (JRA). A sequence of JRAs obtained for a particular joint-triplet intuitively represents the level of involvement of those joints in performing a specific action. Collection of all joint-triplet JRA sequences is then utilized to construct a spatial holistic description of action-specific motion patterns, namely the 2D joint-triplet motion image. The proposed method exploits a local texture analysis method, the local binary pattern (LBP), to highlight micro-level texture details in the motion images. This process isolates prototypical features for different actions. LBP histogram features are then projected into a discriminant Fisher-space, resulting in more compact and disjoint feature clusters representing individual actions. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using two publicly available Kinect action databases. Extensive experiments show advantage of the proposed joint-triplet motion image and LBP-based action recognition approach over existing methods.
Variable External Forcing Obscures the Weak Relationship between the NAO and North Atlantic Multidecadal SST Variability

North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SST) exhibit a lagged response to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in both models and observations, which has previously been attributed to changes in ocean heat transport. Here we examine the lagged relationship between the NAO and Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) in the context of the two other major components of the AMV: atmospheric noise and external forcing. In preindustrial control runs, we generally find that after accounting for spurious signals introduced by filtering, the SST response to the NAO is only statistically significant in the subpolar gyre. Further, the lagged SST response to the NAO is small in magnitude and offers a limited contribution to the AMV pattern, statistics, or predictability. When climate models include variable external forcing, the relationship between the NAO and AMV is obscured and becomes inconsistent. In these historically forced runs, knowledge of the prior NAO offers reduced predictability. The differences between the preindustrial and the historically forced ensembles suggest that we do not yet have enough observational data to surmise the true NAO–AMV relationship and add evidence that external forcing plays a substantial role in producing the AMV.
Geniposide protects pancreatic β cells from high glucose‐mediated injury by activation of AMP‐activated protein kinase

Our previous works indicated that geniposide could regulate glucose‐stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS), and improved chronic high glucose‐induced dysfunctions in pancreatic β cells, but the molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. In the present study, we investigated the role of 5′‐AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) in high glucose induced cell injury and explored the associated molecular mechanisms in rat INS‐1 pancreatic β cells. Data suggested that geniposide obviously prevented the cell damage induced by high (25 mM) glucose in INS‐1 cells, which increased the protein levels of cell apoptosis‐associated enzymes, including heme oxygenase‐1 (HO‐1), and Bcl‐2, but apparently attenuated the protein level of Bax, an apoptotic protein. In addition, Compound C, an AMPK inhibitor, remarkably inhibited the effects of geniposide on the protein levels of HO‐1, Bcl‐2, and Bax, but AICAR, an AMPK activator, potentiated the role of geniposide on the protein levels of HO‐1, Bcl‐2, and Bax. More importantly, geniposide directly prevented the cleavage of caspase‐3 induced by high glucose, and this effect was also evidently prohibited by the pre‐incubation of compound C in high glucose‐treated INS‐1 cells. Furthermore, using the method of RNA interfere, we further proved that treatment with AMPK siRNA attenuated the effects of geniposide on the apoptosis‐associated proteins and cell viability. All these data suggest that AMPK plays a crucial role on geniposide antagonizing high glucose‐induced pancreatic β cells injury.