Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Composing Measures for Computing Text Similarity

We present a comprehensive study of computing similarity between texts. We start from the observation that while the concept of similarity is well grounded in psychology, text similarity is much less well-defined in the natural language processing community. We thus define the notion of text similarity and distinguish it from related tasks such as textual entailment and near-duplicate detection. We then identify multiple text dimensions, i.e. characteristics inherent to texts that can be used to judge text similarity, for which we provide empirical evidence. We discuss state-of-the-art text similarity measures previously proposed in the literature, before continuing with a thorough discussion of common evaluation metrics and datasets. Based on the analysis, we devise an architecture which combines text similarity measures in a unified classification framework. We apply our system in two evaluation settings, for which it consistently outperforms prior work and competing systems: (a) an intrinsic evaluation in the context of the Semantic Textual Similarity Task as part of the Semantic Evaluation (SemEval) exercises, and (b) an extrinsic evaluation for the detection of text reuse. As a basis for future work, we introduce DKPro Similarity, an open source software package which streamlines the development of text similarity measures and complete experimental setups.
INHIBITORY EFFECTS OF PLANT PHENOLIC COMPOUNDS ON ENZYMATIC AND CYTOTOXIC ACTIVITIES INDUCED BY A SNAKE VENOM PHOSPHOLIPASE A2

Polyphenolic compounds have shown to inhibit toxic effects induced by snake venom proteins. In this work, we demonstrate that gallic acid, ferulic acid, caffeic acid, propylgallate and epigallocatechingallate inhibit the enzymatic activity of a phospholipase A2 (PLA2), using egg yolk as substrate. The IC50 values are between 0.38 – 3.93 mM. These polyphenolic compounds also inhibit the PLA2 enzymatic activity when synthetic substrate is used. Furthermore, these compounds decreased the cyotoxic effect induced by a myotoxic PLA2; specifically, epigallocatechin gallate exhibited the best inhibitory capacity with 90.92 ± 0.82%, while ferulic acid showed the lowest inhibitory activity with 30.96 ± 1.42%. Molecular docking studies were performed in order to determine the possible modes of action of phenolic compounds. All polyphenols showed hydrogen bonds with an active site of enzyme; moreover, epigallocatechingallate presented the strongest binding compared with the other compounds. Additionally, a preliminary structure-activity relationship analysis showed a correlation between the IC50 and the topological polar surface area of each compound (p = 0.0491, r = -0.8079 (-0.9878 to -0.2593)), which indicates the surface area required for each molecule to bind with the majority of the enzyme. Furthermore, our results show that propylgallate and epigallocatechingallate are two novel natural products with anti-myotoxic potential. The topical application of these plant polyphenols at the bite site could lead to prevent myotoxicity; however, further in vivo studies would be necessary to confirm the in vitro results.
Earnings management and the contest to the control: an international analysis of family-owned firms

In this paper, we focus on the conflict of interests among shareholders as a possible determinant of earnings management. Using a sample of 3559 listed firms from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Italy between 2008 and 2013, we analyse how the distribution of power among shareholders affects earnings management in family-owned firms. We find that the contest to the dominant family shareholder is relevant: namely, the more challenge to the control of dominant shareholders, the less earnings management in family firms. This contest is more important in civil law countries in which the shareholders rights are less protected. We also find that the nature of the blockholders can be relevant: consistent with the view that non-family shareholders are under more public scrutiny and have more difficulty to agree with the largest family shareholder to extract private benefits, our results suggest that a second or third non-family shareholder can reduce or alleviate earnings management.
The usefulness of measuring spatial opportunity structures for tracking down offenders: A theoretical analysis of geographic offender profiling using simulation studies

Abstract Geographic offender profiling (GOP) is an investigative activity aimed at locating an offender's residence on the basis of where he or she commits offences. Current tools that assist in GOP assume that spatial opportunity structures for crime are uniform: they assume that potential targets are evenly distributed in space, and that potential targets are equally attractive everywhere. In addition, they assume that travel distance is the only criterion that offenders consider when choosing a crime site. This paper demonstrates that, with the help of an extended target selection model, GOP tools could be improved if they measured and utilized spatial variation in criminal opportunity structures. The results of a computer simulation study illustrate this finding.
Identification of six key miRNAs associated with breast cancer through screening large-scale microarray data

Breast Cancer (BC) is one of the most common primary malignant tumors, which is life threatening. Previous studies have demonstrated that microRNAs (miRNA) may regulate or affect the incidence of BC. However, results of these studies are inconsistent, due to factors including the different sequencing platforms and sample selection methods used. To explore the key miRNAs involved in the pathogenesis of BC, and to use these miRNAs to monitor the tumor progression of BC, a systematic review was performed on the previous studies examining BC miRNA; the function of the target genes that were modulated by these key miRNAs were also analyzed. A total of 8 representative miRNA datasets examining the pathogenesis of BC were selected. Key miRNAs were identified by comparing the overlap between these datasets. Then, the target genes of these key miRNAs were predicted through TargetScan. Furthermore, functional enrichment analysis of target genes and transcription factor (TF) binding analysis was also performed using the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery and Tfacts database, respectively. A total of 6 key miRNAs were identified by comparing the differentially expressed miRNAs datasets in the pathogenesis of BC. Compared with normal tissues, 3 miRNAs were upregulated: Hsa-miR-21b; hsa-miR-29b; and hsa-miR-155; and 3 miRNAs were downregulated: Hsa-miR-10b; hsa-miR-125; and hsa-miR-145. The target genes regulated by the up- and downregulated miRNAs were significantly enriched in the biological processes of ‘transcriptional regulation’, and these target genes depended on RNA polymerase II promoter and DNA template, respective to the up- and downregulated genes. The downregulated key miRNAs were specifically enriched in the biological processes of ‘ephrin receptor signaling pathway’ (GO: 0048013) and ‘axon guidance’ (GO: 0007411). TF analysis of the key miRNA target genes revealed that 104 TFs interacted with the 319 target genes of the upregulated miRNAs, while the 92 TFs interacted with the 254 target genes of the downregulated miRNAs. In total, there were 133 TFs and 63 (47.3%) TFs shared by the 2 types (up- and downregulated) of target genes. In summary, 6 key miRNAs in BC were identified by systematic review; the corresponding target genes and TFs that bind to these target genes were also identified, and the potential functions of target genes were revealed. These data may be beneficial to increasing the accuracy of BC treatment through monitoring miRNA.
Ageing and burst of surface bubbles

Upon burst, surface bubbles transfer biological and chemical material from water bodies to the air we breathe via the production of droplets. An understanding of what shapes the size and payload of such droplets starts by understanding the fundamental physics of bubble birth, drainage and burst. Our combined experimental and theoretical investigation focuses on film-drop-producing surface bubbles. Controlling fluid properties such as temperature, salinity and volatility, coupled with changes of ambient air saturation, we elucidate the ageing and lifetime of bubbles. We derive and validate a generalized bubble cap drainage model accounting for both curvature-pressure-induced drainage and Marangoni flows induced by the coupling between the bubble and its surrounding air. We show that this deterministic drainage is coupled with stochastic local perturbations, both intrinsic and extrinsic, from impacts by mist droplets to microbubbles. We derive the conditions for such perturbations to be lethal to the cap film, involving the competition of mixing and drainage time scales on the bubble, the film thickness, the size of the perturbation and the local Marangoni stresses introduced. We explain how the mixing dynamics on the cap ensures that bursts mostly occur at the foot of bubbles rather than on their cap. Our study sheds light on the coupling between the deterministic cap thinning and the stochastic events leading to bubble death. We conclude that ubiquitous water contaminants enable the birth of a bubble, sustain it through its ageing, but ultimately also kill it.
Molecular Docking, Computational, and Antithrombotic Studies of Novel 1,3,4-Oxadiazole Derivatives

A new series of 1,3,4-oxadiazoles derivatives was synthesized, characterized, and evaluated for their in vitro and in vivo anti-thrombotic activity. Compounds (3a–3i) exhibited significant clot lysis with respect to reference drug streptokinase (30,000 IU), and enhanced clotting time (CT) values (130–342 s) than heparin (110 s). High affinity towards 1NFY with greater docking score was observed for the compounds (3a, 3i, 3e, 3d, and 3h) than the control ligand RPR200095. In addition, impressive inhibitory potential against factor Xa (F-Xa) was observed with higher docking scores (5612–6270) with Atomic Contact Energy (ACE) values (−189.68 to −352.28 kcal/mol) than the control ligand RPR200095 (Docking score 5192; ACE −197.81 kcal/mol). In vitro, in vivo, and in silico results proposed that these newly synthesized compounds might be used as anticoagulant agents.
Zero-Shot Open Entity Typing as Type-Compatible Grounding

The problem of entity-typing has been studied predominantly as a supervised learning problems, mostly with task-specific annotations (for coarse types) and sometimes with distant supervision (for fine types). While such approaches have strong performance within datasets they often lack the flexibility to transfer across text genres and to generalize to new type taxonomies. In this work we propose a zero-shot entity typing approach that requires no annotated data and can flexibly identify newly defined types. Given a type taxonomy, the entries of which we define as Boolean functions of freebase “types,” we ground a given mention to a set of type-compatible Wikipedia entries, and then infer the target mention’s type using an inference algorithm that makes use of the types of these entries. We evaluate our system on a broad range of datasets, including standard fine-grained and coarse-grained entity typing datasets, and on a dataset in the biological domain. Our system is shown to be competitive with state-of-the-art supervised NER systems, and to outperform them on out-of-training datasets. We also show that our system significantly outperforms other zero-shot fine typing systems.
Sex steroid hormones - roles in adaptive immunity and vascular pathology

The prevalence of autoimmune diseases is higher in women than men, while for cardiovascular disease, there is a male predominance. The sexual dimorphism of autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases probably relates to a number of factors, e.g. difference in exposure to risk factors and response to therapy, together with the effects of sex steroid hormones on disease pathophysiology. The sex difference and the effect of sex steroid hormones sometimes coincide while sometimes not: male sex and testosterone protect from autoimmune disease while male sex is considered a risk factor for CVD although testosterone is atheroprotective. Owing to this, it is important to in detail understand the targets and mechanisms for the effects of sex steroid hormones in vascular pathology and adaptive immunity. This thesis aimed to 1) determine the role of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) for the vasculoprotective actions of estradiol, 2) determine the role of the androgen receptor (AR) in the atheroprotection actions of testosterone, 3) investigate the role of the AR in neointimal hyperplasia, 4) determine the mechanisms and target cells for ARmediated regulation of B cell homeostasis, and 5) determine the mechanisms and target cells for AR-mediated regulation of T cell homeostasis in mice. Concluding the results in this thesis, we found that testosterone exerts its inhibitory effect on B lymphopoiesis in males by targeting the AR in osteoblasts while the thymic epithelial cells are a target for AR-mediated inhibition of T lymphopoiesis. A distinct regulation of peripheral B and T cell homeostasis may involve non-hematopoietic spleen cells and inhibition of B cell activating factor (BAFF) production. Moreover, testosterone exerts atheroprotection through AR-dependent as well as ARindependent pathways. The AR also mediates protection from neointimal hyperplasia as a response to vascular injury, possibly through regulation of endothelial nitric oxide production leading to reduced proliferatory capacity of vascular smooth muscle cells. Lastly, the COMT enzyme is dispensable for vascular protection by estradiol in vivo. Although the conclusions in this thesis increase our understanding of the role of sex steroid hormones in adaptive immunity and vascular pathology, they also raise new questions that warrant further investigation.
Research Report: Experience of Food Insecurity and Its Effect on the Psychosocial Well-Being of School-Aged Children in Damot Gale Woreda, South Ethiopia

This study aimed to describe the psychosocial experience of children living in food insecure family. Among the 328 total population, one hundered (100) are involved in the study. These participants were only involved in the quantitative data gathering process. Additionally, 28 participants are involved in the semi-structured interview and focus group discussion. Mixed approaches (quantitative and qualitative methods) has employed in the study. Descriptive statistics like percentage, mean and standard deviation; and independent t – test used to analyze the quantitative data, whereas summarization and direct quoting used to analyze the qualitative data. Children in food insecure households have common problems like - aggressive behaviors, misconduct behaviors (i.e. cheating, stealing and disrespecting the elders), depression, feeling shame and poor interpersonal relationship. Additionally, children experience behaviors like - gambling, robbery, murder or homicide, school absenteeism, hot emotionality, inferiority, insomnia, stigma and discrimination. The older children (13 – 18) are more experience depressive behavioral and interpersonal relationship problems than the younger children (6-12) are. Maternal depression, parenting style (autocratic parenting style), parental carelessness to fulfill children’s basic needs, children’s current dressing styles, health conditions; tasks, duties and responsibilities that are beyond the children’s capacity are the basic reasons that push children to experience the psychological and social problems. Beside the physical consequences of food insecurity, it has great effect on the children’s psychological and social wellbeing. Working in poverty reduction rather than heavily relying on food aids, using inclusive methods of research, using inclusive psychosocial care and support strategies, establishing community and institution based care and support and expert based intervention on the children’s misconduct behaviors are suggested direction to overcome children’s problems.
Spherical and Cylindrical Ion Acoustic Solitary Waves in Electron-Positron-Ion Plasmas with Non-Maxwellian Electrons and Positrons

The propagation of cylindrical and spherical ion acoustic solitary waves in a plasma system consisting of ions, electrons and positrons are investigated. The electrons and positrons are assumed to be following the nonextensive distribution popularly known as Tsallis distribution. The standard nonlinear equation i.e. Korteweg de-Vries (KdV) equation has been solved numerically using suitable mathematical transformations. The effect of nonextensivity (q) and nonplanar geometry on the amplitudes and width of ion acoustic potential structures have been studied numerically. A transition from negative to positive potential structures have been observed for the planar as well as nonplanar geometries for lower values of q in the range −1 < q < 0. Soliton amplitude is maximum for spherical waves and is minimum and for planar waves while it lies in between the two for cylindrical waves. The present investigation may help us in understanding the study of cylindrical and spherical solitary waves in astrophysical plasmas.
SULPHIDE REACTIVITY WITHIN CEMENTED PASTE BACKFILL: OXYGEN CONSUMPTION TEST RESULTS

Oxygen consumption tests were performed on 5 manufactured laboratory tailings containing approximately 4, 12, 22, 34 and 74% wt. of pyrite at different degree of saturation, and on the same tailings when incorporated into cemented paste backfill (CPB). Oxygen consumption results showed that tailings reactivity depends on pyrite content and degree of saturation. For CPB samples, oxygen consumption seems to be related also to type of binder. The results showed that the reactivity of a given paste backfill recipe does not significantly increase after 28 days of curing time. Comparing the oxygen consumption results of sulphide tailings and the corresponding paste backfill samples indicate that CPB samples are less reactive than the non-cemented manufactured tailings at degrees of water saturation less than 70%. However, at higher degrees of saturation, the oxygen consumption results of the manufactured tailings were similar and even less than for the CPB samples. The results of this preliminary study demonstrate that CPB technology is a viable means to reduce the reactivity of sulphide tailings in surface disposal areas. RESUME Des essais de consommation d’oxygene ont ete effectues sur 5 rejets de concentrateur sulfureux prepares au laboratoire dont les proportions en poids de pyrite sont approximativement de 4, 12, 22, 34 et 74%. Les essais ont ete effectues a differents degres de saturation. D’autres essais de consommation d’oxygene ont ete effectues sur des cylindres de remblai en pâte cimentes fabriques a partir de ces memes rejets. Les resultats de consommation d’oxygene sur les rejets de concentrateur montrent que la reactivite des residus est une fonction de la quantite de pyrite et du degre de saturation. Quant aux essais sur les echantillons de remblai en pâte, ceux-ci ont montre que la reactivite des echantillons semble aussi une fonction de du type de liant utilise, et que la reactivite du melange n’augmente plus apres 28 jours de curage. En comparant les resultats des essais de consommation d’oxygene sur des rejets de concentrateur incorpores ou non dans un remblai en pâte, on s’apercoit que les echantillons de remblai en pâte sont beaucoup moins reactifs que les rejets de concentrateurs sans liant qui ont un degre de saturation inferieur a 70%. Cependant, a saturation plus elevee, les rejets de concentrateur ont une reactivite similaire sinon meme inferieure au remblai en pâte. Les resultats de cette etude preliminaire confirment que la technologie du remblai en pâte cimente est une approche interessante pour reduire la reactivite de rejets de concentrateur sulfureux stockes en surface.
PREDICTION OF STOCK PRICE USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK: A CASE OF INDONESIA

Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been widely used in many application because of its ability to solve non-parametric problems. ANN is also recognized as a good and widely used tool in forecasting stock prices. Traditionally stock forecasting in Indonesia usually used time series analysis. This paper compared the stock forecasting result of ANTM (PT Aneka Tambang) using ANN and that of Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA). The results of the study showed that forecasting using ANN method has smaller error than ARIMA method. been developed for different hybrid power system configurations for tuning the proportional-integral controller for SVC. Transient responses of different autonomous configurations show that SVC controller with its gained tuned by the ANNs provide optimum system performance for a variety of loads.
Physicochemical properties, volatile compounds, and oxidative stability of cold pressed kernel oils from raw and roasted pistachio (Pistacia vera L. Var Kerman)

Pistachio kernel oil (PKO) was prepared by cold‐pressing from raw (RPKO), conventional (CRPKO), and microwave (MRPKO) roasted kernels for Kerman pistachio. Physicochemical properties, bioactive compounds, antioxidant activities, and thermal behaviors of extracted oils were determined in this study. Volatile compounds were tentatively identified and semi‐quantified by headspace solid‐phase micro‐extraction combined with gas chromatography‐mass spectrometry technique. The results showed that there was no significant difference between oil samples for some physicochemical parameters and fatty acid profiles. Roasting treatments caused an increase in total phenolics and antioxidant capacity and a decrease in levels of total tocopherols and chlorophylls. The thermal transition temperatures of the RPKO were −47.15 and −19.85°C for crystallization, and −13.11 and 3.11°C for melting. Among the 43 volatile compounds identified, the major compounds were limonene, α‐pinene, β‐myrcene, hexanoic acid, and nonanal in RPKO. The levels of these compounds decreased after roasting. However, concentrations of pyrazines, furans, and pyrroles increased significantly as a result of roasting, especially for CRPKO. Using a PV of 15 meq/kg oil as a quality criterion, PKO stored in transparent glass bottles after exposed to fluorescent light (720 Lux) and room temperature conditions had an acceptable quality for only 30 days of storage. Practical applications: Pistachios are normally consumed as salted and roasted snacks or as an ingredient in bakery and confectionery products, desserts, and ice‐creams. With the increasing consumption and demand for novel edible oils, the market is expanding and creating space for the production of the pistachio kernel oil. After analyzing the physicochemical characteristics and volatile compounds, roasting treatments may provide additional volatile compounds in the pistachio kernel oil. The research results suggest that cold‐pressed pistachio kernel oil is highly susceptible to photo‐oxidative degradation, and must be stored in containers with light‐barrier properties together with the addition of some appropriate natural antioxidants. Physicochemical properties, volatile compounds, and oxidative stability of pistachio kernel oils obtained from different treated pistachio kernels (raw, conventional, and microwave roasting) by cold pressing method were analyzed. Results indicate that pistachio kernel oil can be produced by the cold pressing technique giving edible quality, which does not require chemical refining, and only a simple filtering or centrifugation to remove suspended plant materials may be needed. Conventional or microwave roasting treatments before pressing did not change the oil specifications significantly.