Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The mediation and organisation of gestures in vocabulary instructions: a microgenetic analysis of interactions in a beginning-level adult ESOL classroom

Abstract There is limited research on second language (L2) vocabulary teaching and learning which provides fine-grained descriptions of how vocabulary explanations (VE) are interactionally managed in beginning-level L2 classrooms where learners have a limited L2 repertoire, and how the VEs could contribute to the learners’ conceptual understanding of the meaning(s) of the target vocabulary items (VIs). To address these research gaps, we used a corpus of classroom video data from a beginning-level adult ESOL classroom in the United States and applied Conversation Analysis to examine how the class teacher employs various gestural and linguistic resources to construct L2 VEs. We also conducted a 4-month microgenetic analysis to document qualitative changes in learners’ understanding of the meaning of specific L2 VIs which were previously explained by the teacher. Findings revealed that the learners’ use of gestures allows for an externalisation of thinking processes providing visible output for inspection by the teacher and peers. These findings can inform educators’ understanding about L2 vocabulary development as a gradual process of controlling the right gestural and linguistic resources for appropriate communicative purposes.
CTCF Is the Master Organizer of Domain-Wide Allele-Specific Chromatin at the H19/Igf2 Imprinted Region

ABSTRACT A paternally methylated imprinting control region (ICR) directs allele-specific expression of the imprinted H19 and Igf2 genes. CTCF protein binding in the ICR is required in the maternal chromosome for insulating Igf2 from the shared enhancers, initiation of the H19 promoter transcription, maintaining DNA hypomethylation, and chromosome loop formation. Using novel quantitative allele-specific chromatin immunoprecipitation-single-nucleotide primer extension assays, we measured the chromatin composition along the H19/Igf2 imprinted domain in cells with engineered mutations at the four ICR-CTCF binding sites. Abolishing CTCF binding in the ICR reduced normally maternal allele-specific H3K9 acetylation and H3K4 methylation at the H19 ICR and promoter/gene body and maternal allele-specific H3K27 trimethylation at the Igf2 P2 promoter and Igf2 differentially methylated regions (DMRs). Paternal H3K27 trimethylation and macroH2A1 became biallelic in the mutant cells at the H19 promoter while paternal H3K9 acetylation and H3K4 methylation became biallelic at the Igf2 DMRs. We provide evidence that CTCF is the single major organizer of allele-specific chromatin composition in this domain. This finding has important implications: (i) for mechanisms of insulation since CTCF regulates chromatin at a distance, involving repression by H3K27 trimethylation at the Igf2 locus independently of repression by DNA hypermethylation; and (ii) for mechanisms of genomic imprinting since point mutations of CTCF binding sites cause domain-wide “paternalization” of the maternal allele's chromatin composition.
A self-adaptive super-resolution method based on dictionary library

In recent years, with the theory of compressed sensing being proposed and applied widely, the sparse representation method has become one of the hotspots to handle the superresolution problem. Usually, this kind of algorithms use only one dictionary pair for all low-resolution patches, which makes the recovered results less satisfied due to its bad adaptability. To overcome such problem, in this paper, we propose a self-adaptive image super-resolution reconstruction algorithm in which different dictionary pairs are trained and used for recovery according to different types of low-resolution patches. All the dictionary pairs are stored in the dictionary library for reuse. We apply the proposed algorithm on human face images and generic images respectively. The results show that the algorithm is superior to the existing algorithms in reconstruction performance. Besides compared with that of generic images, the reconstruction performance of human face images is improved more greatly.
Monitoring trends in waiting periods in Canada for elective surgery: validation of a method using administrative data.

BACKGROUND Provincial governments require timely, economical methods to monitor surgical waiting periods. Although use of prospective procedure-specific registers would be the ideal method, a less elaborate system has been proposed that is based on physician billing data. This study assessed the validity of using the date of the last service billed prior to surgery as a proxy for the beginning of the post-referral, pre-surgical waiting period. METHOD We examined charts for 31,824 elective surgical encounters between 1992 and 1996 at an Ontario teaching hospital. The date of the last service before surgery (the last billing date) was compared with the date of the consultant's letter indicating a decision to book surgery (i.e., to begin waiting). RESULTS Several surgical specialties (but excluding cardiac, orthopedic and gynecologic) had a close correlation between the dates of the last pre-surgery visit and those of the actual decision to place the patient on the waiting list. Similar results were found for 12 of 15 individually studied procedures, including some orthopedic and gynecological procedures. CONCLUSION Used judiciously, billing data is a timely, inexpensive and generally accurate method by which provincial governments could monitor trends in waiting times for appropriately selected surgical procedures.
Molecular Epidemiology of Paramyxoviruses in Frugivorous Eidolon helvum Bats in Zambia

ABSTRACT In this study, we describe the detection of novel paramyxoviruses from the Eidolon helvum species of fruit bats. We extracted RNA from 312 spleen samples from bats captured in Zambia over a period of 4 years (2008–2011). Semi-nested RT-PCR detected a total of 25 (8%) positive samples for paramyxoviruses which were then directly sequenced and analyzed using phylogenetic analysis. Among the positive samples, seven novel paramyxoviruses were detected. Five viruses were closely related to the genus Henipavirus, while two viruses were related to the unclassified Bat paramyxoviruses from Ghana and Congo Brazzaville. Our study identified novel Henipavirus-related and unrelated viruses using RT-PCR in fruit bats from Kansaka National Park and indicated the presence of similar Bat paramyxoviruses originating from wide geographic areas, suggesting the ability of bats to harbor and transmit viruses. The presence of these viruses in fruit bats might pose a public health risk.
Infer User Interests via Link Structure Regularization

Learning user interests from online social networks helps to better understand user behaviors and provides useful guidance to design user-centric applications. Apart from analyzing users' online content, it is also important to consider users' social connections in the social Web. Graph regularization methods have been widely used in various text mining tasks, which can leverage the graph structure information extracted from data. Previously, graph regularization methods operate under the cluster assumption that nearby nodes are more similar and nodes on the same structure (typically referred to as a cluster or a manifold) are likely to be similar. We argue that learning user interests from complex, sparse, and dynamic social networks should be based on the link structure assumption under which node similarities are evaluated based on the local link structures instead of explicit links between two nodes. We propose a regularization framework based on the relation bipartite graph, which can be constructed from any type of relations. Using Twitter as our case study, we evaluate our proposed framework from social networks built from retweet relations. Both quantitative and qualitative experiments show that our proposed method outperforms a few competitive baselines in learning user interests over a set of predefined topics. It also gives superior results compared to the baselines on retweet prediction and topical authority identification.
Altruism and Self Control

We extend the dual-self model to include altruistic preferences. This lets us explain (1) why people appear to have preferences for equality in the laboratory, while not giving much to obviously poorer individuals in the eld, (2) why they often avoid the ask from solicitors or charities when they would have donated if avoiding was impossible, (3) why cognitive load and (4) time pressure may increase giving, and (5) why intermediate (rather than just zero or even-split) donations may occur in dictator game experiments. In addition, we (6) point out that the dual-self model predicts that delaying payments to both parties in the dictator game decreases giving. We verify this prediction in a large-scale online experiment: people give less when making decisions for the future compared to when payo s occur on the day of the experiment. This version: November 21, 2014. First Version: January 19, 2014. We thank Syed Nageeb Ali, Gary Charness, Tom Cunningham, Jon de Quidt, Gautam Rao, Josh Schwartzstein, Charlie Spenger, Jeremey Tobacman and Leeat Yariv for helpful conversations and comments. We are grateful to NSF Grants SES-08-51315 and 1258665, as well as the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation (Svenska Handelbankens Forskningsstiftelser), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation for nancial support. ∗Corresponding author: David K. Levine Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics Department of Economics, Harvard University Department of Economics, European University Institute and Washington University in St. Louis Department of Psychology, Department of Economics, and School of Management, Yale University Preprint submitted to Mimeo: WUSTL November 21, 2014
Preventing Cache Overflows in an Object-Oriented Database Management System with the Object-Descriptor Architecture

In an object-oriented database management system built in the object-descriptor architecture, there is a concern about cached object-descriptors (CODs) filling up the client object cache space and, consequently, failing a database transaction. This phenomenon occurs especially during the data loading which keeps creating new objects in the object cache space. In this paper, we reexamine the structure and use of CODs, discuss the pros and cons of retaining CODs in an object cache, and propose a resolution to the problem of cache overflow. Our solution requires only a slight modification of the transaction termination protocol.
The relationship between self-directed learning readiness and resilience among graduate students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-directed learning readiness and resilience among graduate students. A convenience sample of 148 graduate students was selected from three departments in the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Participants were administered the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS) developed by Guglielmino (1977), the Resilience Scale (RS) developed by Wagnild and Young (1987), and a demographic questionnaire to describe the sample. A significant positive correlation was found between SDLRS and RS mean scores (r = .61; p < .001). Other findings inc1ude positive correlation's with self-directed learning readiness and the resilience factors: personal competence and acceptance of self and life. Another positive correlation was found between self-directed learning readiness and age, that is, as age increases, SDLRS scores tend to increase. Significant regressions were found using the total RS scores and age. Tota] RS scores and age tend to explain 39.2% of the variability in the SDLRS. However, the personal competence factor of the RS explained 43.4% of the variability in the SDLRS. Recommendations for future research inc1ude replicating this study with diverse populations of graduate students in terms of racial identity. Research is also needed in self-directed learning readiness and resilience with other adult populations from community groups. Research is needed with different instruments that measure self­ directed learning readiness and resilience because most research on resilience has focused on children and there is a need to develop more research on resilience among adults.
Effects of phonetic quality and duration on perceptual acceptability of temporal changes in speech

To establish a perceptually valid rule for the durational control of synthetic speech, it is necessary to know the degree to which a given temporal error or distortion is acceptable to human listen- ers. Two perceptual experiments were conducted to estimate the acceptability of modiﬁcations in either vocalic or consonantal du- rationsasa functionof twoattributesof themodiﬁed portions, i.e., the phonetic quality and the original (unmodiﬁed) duration. The results showed that the listeners’ acceptable modiﬁcation ranges were narrowest for vowels, and widest for voiceless fricatives and silent closures, with nasals in between. They were also narrower for those portions with shorter base durations. The effect of the original duration was larger for the vowel stimuli than for the voiceless fricative stimuli. The perceptual mechanism mediating these results is discussed with regard to the dependency of the listeners’ temporal sensitivity on the stimulus loudness and base duration. [Re: http://www.hip. atr.co.jp/˜kato/single duration/]
Speech understanding, dialogue management and response generation in corpus-based spoken dialogue system

This paper presents construction of a spoken dialogue system using a large-scale spoken dialogue corpus with intention tags. In this system, all of main components, such as speech understanding, dialogue management, and response generation, are constructed with corpus-based methods. An evaluation experiment using a test set has shown that the performance of the corpus-based dialogue system is improved by adding examples.
Olfaction in Olfactory Bulbectomized Rats

Experimental rats had their right olfactory bulb removed on postnatal day 2 (P2) and their left olfactory bulb removed on P90. Control rats had one or both olfactory bulbs removed on P90. Before and after their adult-stage surgery, rats were trained using olfactometry and operant conditioning to detect and discriminate odors. Anterograde transport of horseradish peroxidase applied to the olfactory epithelium revealed numerous axons of olfactory sensory neurons in the right hemisphere of 27 experimental rats. These axons terminated in glomerular-like clusters within the frontal neocortex (n = 5) or anterior olfactory nucleus with some axons extending into the subventricular epithelium (n = 22). Seventeen of the experimental rats were able to detect a variety of odors and to discriminate between odors. Performance accuracy was related to the location and density of these anomalous inputs; experimental rats with inputs confined to frontal neocortex and those lacking any inputs to the forebrain were anosmic, as were adult-operated bilaterally bulbectomized rats. Our results provide strong support for the contention that, in the absence of the olfactory bulbs, olfactory connections to novel forebrain sites can support both odor detection and odor discrimination.
Designer Invariants for Large Phylogenies 257 The Model I will assume the same kind of probabilistic model as Cavender and Felsenstein

The Cavender-Felsenstein edge-length invariants for binary characters on 4-trees provide the starting point for the development of “customized” invariants for evaluating and comparing phylogenetic hypotheses. The binary character invariants may be generalized to k-valued characters without losing the quadratic nature of the invariants as functions of the theoretical frequencies f( UVXY) of observable character configurations (U at organism 1, V at 2, etc.). The key to the approach is that certain sets of these configurations constitute events which are probabilistically independent from other such sets, under the symmetric Markov change models studied. By introducing more complex sets of configurations, we find the quadratic invariants for Strees in the binary model and for individual edges in 6-trees or, indeed, in any size tree. The same technique allows us to formulate invariants for entire trees, but these are cubic functions for 6-trees and are higher-degree polynomials for larger trees. With k-valued characters and, especially, with large trees, the types of configuration sets (events) used in the simpler examples are too rare (i.e., their predicted frequencies are too low) to be useful, and the construction of meaningful pairs of independent events becomes an important and nontrivial task in designing invariants suited to testing specific hypotheses. In a very natural way, this approach fits in with well-known statistical methodology for contingency tables. We explore use of events such as “only transitions occur for character i (i.e., position i in a nucleic acid sequence) in subtree a” in analyzing a set of data on ribosomal RNA in the context of the controversy over the origins of archaebacteria, eubacteria, and eukaryotes.
Free-breathing diffusion-weighted single-shot echo-planar MR imaging using parallel imaging (GRAPPA 2) and high b value for the detection of primary rectal adenocarcinoma

Abstract Our objective was to determine the diagnostic accuracy of a free-breathing diffusion-weighted single-shot echo-planar magnetic resonance imaging (FBDW-SSEPI) technique with parallel imaging and high diffusion factor value (b = 1000 s/mm2) in the detection of primary rectal adenocarcinomas. Thirty-one patients (14M and 17F; mean age 67 years) with histopathologically proven primary rectal adenocarcinomas and 31 patients without rectal malignancies (14M and 17F; mean age 63.6 years) were examined with FBDW-SSEPI (repetition time (TR/echo time (TE) 3900/91 ms, gradient strength 45 mT/m, acquisition time 2 min) at 1.5 T using generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisitions (GRAPPA, acceleration factor 2) and a b value of 1000 s/mm2. Apparent diffusion coefficients (ADCs) of rectal adenocarcinomas and normal rectal wall were measured. FBDW-SSEPI images were evaluated for tumour detection by 2 readers. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and Youden score for rectal adenocarcinoma detection were calculated with their 95% confidence intervals (CI) for ADC value measurement and visual image analysis. Rectal adenocarcinomas had significantly lower ADCs (mean 1.036 × 10−3 ± 0.107 × 10−3 mm2/s; median 1.015 × 10−3 mm2/s; range (0.827–1.239) × 10−3 mm2/s) compared with the rectal wall of control subjects (mean 1.387 × 10−3 ± 0.106 × 10−3 mm2/s; median 1.385 × 10−3 mm2/s; range (1.176–1.612) × 10−3 mm2/s) (p < 0.0001). Using a threshold value ≤ 1.240 × 10−3 mm2/s, all rectal adenocarcinomas were correctly categorized and 100% sensitivity (31/31; 95% CI 95–100%), 94% specificity (31/33; 95% CI 88–100%), 97% accuracy (60/62; 95% CI 92–100%) and Youden index 0.94 were obtained for the diagnosis of rectal adenocarcinoma. FBDW-SSEPI image analysis allowed depiction of all rectal adenocarcinomas but resulted in 2 false-positive findings, yielding 100% sensitivity (31/31; 95% CI 95–100%), 94% specificity (31/33; 95% CI 88–100%), 97% accuracy (60/62; 95% CI 92–100%) and Youden index 0.94 for the diagnosis of primary rectal adenocarcinoma. We can conclude that FBDW-SSEPI using parallel imaging and high b value may be helpful in the detection of primary rectal adenocarcinomas.
Hierarchical Bayesian Embeddings for Analysis and Synthesis of High-Dimensional Dynamic Data

High-dimensional, time-dependent data are analyzed by developing a dynamic model in an associated low-dimensional embedding space. The proposed approach employs hierarchical Bayesian methods to learn a reversible statistical embedding, allowing one to (i) estimate the latent-space dimension from a set of training data, (ii) discard the training data when embedding new data, and (iii) synthesize high-dimensional data from the embedding space. Properties (i)-(iii) are useful for the general analysis of high-dimensional data, even in the absence of time dependence. For the case of dynamic data, hierarchical Bayesian methods are employed to learn a nonlinear dynamic model in the low-dimensional embedding space, allowing joint analysis of multiple types of dynamic data, sharing strength and inferring inter-relationships in dynamic data. Combined, the overall learned model enables the analysis and synthesis of high-dimensional dynamic data. Example results are presented for statistical embedding, latent-space dimensionality estimation, and analysis and synthesis of high-dimensional (dynamic) motion-capture data.
ARY uential gene activation by ecdysone in Drosop archical equivalence of early and early late gen

There hormon results respons pattern the thir nificant insights into this sequential regulation. Four classes of puffs have been described: the intermolt puffs, which are active at the beginning of the response to ecdysone and thereafter regress, the early puffs, which are induced within minutes by ecdysone, the early-late puffs appearing with a delay of two hours or so, and the late puffs, which appear from three hours onwards. Ashburner et al. (1974) proposed a model for the activation of the early and late puffs. Ecdysone, complexed with a receptor, activates directly and hence rapidly a few early puffs while repressing the late puffs. When the proteins encoded by the early puffs become sufficiently abundant they both repress their own promoters and activate the late genes. Recent molecular studies enable us to integrate the intermoult and early-late genes in this model and, in this study, we determine their hierarchical position in the response. Molecular analyses have confirmed and extended many aspects of the Ashburner model. The active receptor that binds ecdysone and DNA is now known to be a heteromer contain, EcR r sup , 199 oform ressi man sive the the three early genes, E74, E75 and the Broad-Complex (BRC) respectively. These three early ecdysone-inducible genes are large (>60 kb) and complex, with multiple overlapping transcription units each encoding a family of proteins structurally related to transcription factors (Andres and Thummel, 1992 for review). In particular the E75 proteins are members of the nuclear receptor superfamily. Antibodies directed against E74A and E75A proteins stain early and late responsive loci (Urness and Thummel, 1990; Hill et al., 1993). The early genes are expressed in all tissues studied (Andres and Thummel, 1992; Huet et al., 1993), suggesting that the general features of the Ashburner model apply to other tissues. Although they are potential regulators for the late class of genes or for their own repression, the function of each early gene product remains to be determined. The position of the early-late puffs in the regulatory hierarchy is ambiguous. They begin to increase when the early Develop Printed i