Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Event StoryLine Corpus: A New Benchmark for Causal and Temporal Relation Extraction

This paper reports on the Event StoryLine Corpus (ESC) v1.0, a new benchmark dataset for the temporal and causal relation detection. By developing this dataset, we also introduce a new task, the StoryLine Extraction from news data, which aims at extracting and classifying events relevant for stories, from across news documents spread in time and clustered around a single seminal event or topic. In addition to describing the dataset, we also report on three baselines systems whose results show the complexity of the task and suggest directions for the development of more robust systems.
Waiter-Client and Client-Waiter Colourability and k-SAT Games

Waiter – Client and Client – Waiter games are two – player, perfect information games, with no chance moves, played on a finite set (board) with special subsets known as the winning sets. Each round of the biased $(1:q)$ Waiter – Client game begins with Waiter offering $q+1$ previously unclaimed elements of the board to Client, who claims one and leaves the remaining $q$ elements to be claimed by Waiter immediately afterwards. In a $(1:q)$ Client – Waiter game, play occurs in the same way except in each round, Waiter offers $t$ elements for any $t$ in the range $1\leqslant t\leqslant q+1$ . If Client fully claims a winning set by the time all board elements have been offered, he wins in the Client – Waiter game and loses in the Waiter – Client game. We give an estimate for the threshold bias ( i.e. the unique value of $q$ at which the winner of a $(1:q)$ game changes) of the $(1:q)$ Waiter – Client and Client – Waiter versions of two different games: the non – 2 – colourability game, played on the edge set of a complete $k$ – uniform hypergraph, and the $k$ – SAT game. More precisely, we show that the threshold bias for the Waiter – Client and Client – Waiter versions of the non – 2 – colourability game is $\frac{1}{n}\binom{n}{k}2^{\mathcal{O}_k(k)}$ and $\frac{1}{n}\binom{n}{k}2^{-k(1+o_k(1))}$ respectively. Additionally, we show that the threshold bias for the Waiter – Client and Client – Waiter versions of the $k$ – SAT game is $\frac{1}{n}\binom{n}{k}$ up to a factor that is exponential and polynomial in $k$ respectively. This shows that these games exhibit the probabilistic intuition .
IEEE 802.11b WLAN capacity and performance measurements in channel with large delay spreads

IEEE 802.11x wireless local area network (WLAN) systems are quite popular in office indoor environment and urban outdoor environments but suburban or rural environments can still offer unexploited possibilities, especially for military communication purposes. The radio channels of these environments have large delay spreads that pose limitations for IEEE 802.11b signal usage. In this study IEEE 802.11b WLAN capacity and performance is evaluated based on measurements of two different commercial vendors' WLAN products. Throughput and packet error ratio is studied as a function of excess delay. The radio channels are simulated using a radio channel simulator. We find that IEEE 802.11b WLAN systems' capacity and performance decrease as excess delay increases, and the systems cannot efficiently operate in channels where the excess delays are larger than symbol duration.
Optimal transport maps for distribution preserving operations on latent spaces of Generative Models

Generative models such as Variational Auto Encoders (VAEs) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are typically trained for a fixed prior distribution in the latent space, such as uniform or Gaussian. After a trained model is obtained, one can sample the Generator in various forms for exploration and understanding, such as interpolating between two samples, sampling in the vicinity of a sample or exploring differences between a pair of samples applied to a third sample. In this paper, we show that the latent space operations used in the literature so far induce a distribution mismatch between the resulting outputs and the prior distribution the model was trained on. To address this, we propose to use distribution matching transport maps to ensure that such latent space operations preserve the prior distribution, while minimally modifying the original operation. Our experimental results validate that the proposed operations give higher quality samples compared to the original operations.
The Howe Duality Conjecture

Representation theory was created at the end of the 19th century through the work of F G Frobenius (1849–1917) and I Schur (1875–1941). Recall that groups often occur in nature not as an abstract entity but as the set of symmetries of some natural object X, i.e. G Aut(X). From this point of view, a representation ρ of a group G on a vector space V (over the field C of complex numbers, say) is an action of G on V as linear transformations, i.e. a group homomorphism
MOF and Histone H4 Acetylation at Lysine 16 Are Critical for DNA Damage Response and Double-Strand Break Repair

ABSTRACT The human MOF gene encodes a protein that specifically acetylates histone H4 at lysine 16 (H4K16ac). Here we show that reduced levels of H4K16ac correlate with a defective DNA damage response (DDR) and double-strand break (DSB) repair to ionizing radiation (IR). The defect, however, is not due to altered expression of proteins involved in DDR. Abrogation of IR-induced DDR by MOF depletion is inhibited by blocking H4K16ac deacetylation. MOF was found to be associated with the DNA-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit (DNA-PKcs), a protein involved in nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) repair. ATM-dependent IR-induced phosphorylation of DNA-PKcs was also abrogated in MOF-depleted cells. Our data indicate that MOF depletion greatly decreased DNA double-strand break repair by both NHEJ and homologous recombination (HR). In addition, MOF activity was associated with general chromatin upon DNA damage and colocalized with the synaptonemal complex in male meiocytes. We propose that MOF, through H4K16ac (histone code), has a critical role at multiple stages in the cellular DNA damage response and DSB repair.
Conservation of Predatory Arthropods in Cotton: Role of Action Thresholds for Bemisia tabaci (Homoptera: Aleyrodidae)

Abstract Studies were conducted in 1994 and 1995 to examine the effects of a range of action thresholds for managing Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) Biotype B (=B. argentifolii Bellows & Perring) with insecticides in cotton on populations of arthropod predators in Imperial Valley, CA, and Maricopa, AZ. Application of insecticides significantly reduced population densities of spiders, Geocoris punctipes (Say), G. pallens (Stål), Orius tristicolor (White), Nabis alternatus Parshley, Zelus renardii Kolenati, Hippodamia convergens Guérin-Méneville, Spanogonicus albofasciatus (Reuter), Drapetis sp. , and Chrysoperla carnea Stephens in one or both years and sites compared with untreated controls. Use of higher B. tabaci thresholds conserved some species and groups relative to lower thresholds. Stepwise regression analyses indicated that reductions in predator populations were generally influenced more strongly by the timing of the first insecticide application than by the total number of sprays necessary to maintain suppression of the pest below any given action threshold. A predation index, which weights the importance of each predator species based on their known frequency of predation on B. tabaci and another key pest, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders), was developed and analyzed. Patterns were similar to results based on changes in abundance alone, but the index generally revealed less severe effects of insecticides on overall predator function. The current action threshold for conventional insecticidal control of B. tabaci in Arizona and southern California is five adults per leaf. Results here suggest that predator conservation may be enhanced by raising the initial threshold to delay the first application or initially using more selective materials such as insect growth regulators.
Factors influencing the accumulation of tetraphenylphosphonium cation in HeLa cells

Exposure of HeLa cells to tetraphenylphosphonium cation (TPP+) results in a rapid accumulation intracellularly, and a steady-state level is reached within 10 min. Accumulation of [3H]TPP+ in HeLa cells is reduced under the following conditions: (i) after preincubation of cells in buffered saline or in medium containing two- to fourfold higher concentrations of amino acids, (ii) exposure to the alkylating agent L-1-tosylamido-2-phenyl-ethylchloromethyl ketone, (iii) ouabain-mediated inhibition of the Na+, K+ ATPase, and (iv) high external K+ concentrations. In contrast, addition of serum increases the uptake of TPP+. In synchronized cells, intracellular levels of TPP+ differ at various stages of cell cycle and are lowest in mitosis.
Modelling cellular senescence as a result of telomere state

Telomeres in mammalian cells end in large duplex T loops. These loops protect the single‐strand overhangs from degradation and/or interactions with signalling proteins. This protection is sometimes referred to as capping. At each cell division, telomeres shorten and there is a general consensus that telomere shortening triggers cell cycle exit. However, the exact mechanism by which telomere shortening causes cell cycle arrest is not known. Mathematical models of telomere shortening have been developed to help us understand the processes involved. Until now most models have assumed that the trigger for cell cycle arrest is the first telomere or a group of telomeres reaching a critically short length. However, there is evidence that cells stop cycling over a wide range of telomere lengths. This suggests that telomere length per se may not in fact be the trigger for cellular senescence. In this paper we develop a model which examines the hypothesis that uncapping of a telomere is the main trigger. By letting the probability of uncapping depend upon telomere length, we show that the hypothesized model provides a good fit to experimental data.
Liver involvement in acute vaso-occlusive crisis of sickle cell disease: Prevalence and predisposing factors

Objective. To study the prevalence and predisposing factors of liver involvement in sickle cell disease (SCD) of patients with acute vaso-occlusive crisis. Material and methods. We prospectively evaluated 41 consecutive patients (44% M, median age 39 years, range 16–56 years) with homozygous (HbSS; 12 cases) or sickle cell-beta thalassemia (HbSβ-thal; 29 cases), admitted to our Medical Department in the period 2002 to 2004. Severity of crisis was graded by in-house-modified APACHE score; presence of asplenia or functional hyposplenism was also considered. Hematological and biochemical parameters including various relevant enzymes/isoenzymes were followed daily. Results. Despite the fact that only 9 patients (22%) presented with acute painful hepatomegaly, liver involvement was evident in 16 (39%); hepatocellular-type injury was found in 1 patient, cholestatic in 8, and mixed in 7. Severity of crisis was not related to liver involvement (score 20.6 versus 18.2), but liver involvement occurred in the presence of normal spleen function (p<0.001) and platelet counts <500,000/mm3 (p<0.001) were. Patients with liver involvement, compared with those without, had higher total and direct bilirubin levels (4.3 versus 2.9 mg/dL, p=0.050; 1.9 versus 0.8 mg/dL, p=0.010, respectively), lower hematocrit (19% versus 23%, p=0.030) and longer hospitalization (10 versus 6.3 days, p<0.001). Conclusions. In SCD, there is a 39% prevalence of acute veno-occlusive involvement of the liver, a figure that is much higher than previously reported. The type of injury is mostly mixed hepatocellular-cholestatic or purely cholestatic and its course is usually benign. Liver involvement occurs more often in patients with normal spleen function and is not associated with the overall severity of the acute episode, both observations being unreported previously.
Genetically Modified Ruminal Bacteria Protect Sheep from Fluoroacetate Poisoning

ABSTRACT Four strains of Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens, transformed with a gene encoding fluoroacetate dehalogenase, maintained a combined population of 106 to 107 cells ml−1 in the rumens of test sheep. Five inoculated sheep showed markedly reduced toxicological symptoms after fluoroacetate poisoning when behavioral, physiological, and histological effects were compared with those of five uninoculated control sheep.
Who benefits from a psychosocial counselling versus educational intervention to improve psychological quality of life in prostate cancer survivors?

Objective: We examined selected survivor characteristics to determine what factors might moderate the response to two psychosocial interventions. Design: Seventy-one prostate cancer survivors (PCSs) were randomly assigned to either a telephone-delivered health education (THE) intervention or a telephone-delivered interpersonal counselling (TIP-C) intervention. Measures: Psychological quality of life (QOL) outcomes included depression, negative and positive affect, and perceived stress. Results: For three of the psychological outcomes (depression, negative affect and stress), there were distinct advantages from participating in THE. For example, more favourable depression outcomes occurred when men were older, had lower prostate specific functioning, were in active chemotherapy, had lower social support from friends and lower cancer knowledge. Participating in the TIP-C provided a more favourable outcome for positive affect when men had higher education, prostate specific functioning, social support from friends and cancer knowledge. Conclusion: Unique survivor characteristics must be considered when recommending interventions that might improve psychological QOL in PCSs. Future research must examine who benefits most and from what components of psychosocial interventions to enable clinicians to recommend appropriate psychosocial care.
Cellular fatty acid composition of group IVe, a nonsaccharolytic organism from clinical sources

The cellular fatty acid composition of a group of gram-negative nonfermentative organisms designated group IVe was studied by gas-liquid chromatography. Strains of this group are isolated most frequently from urine and most closely resemble the Alcaligenes in conventional biochemical tests. On the basis of cellular fatty acids, however, we found these organisms to be strikingly different from Alcaligenes and other gram-negative species with similar phenotypic characteristics. The gas-liquid chromatography procedure offers an additional diagnostic test for rapid identification of unclassified bacteria like group IVe.
Examining Relationships Between Executive Functioning and Delay Aversion in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Although motivation and cognition are often examined separately, recent theory suggests that a delay-averse motivational style may negatively impact development of executive functions (EFs), such as working memory (WM) and response inhibition (RI) for children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD; Sonuga-Barke, 2002). This model predicts that performance on delay aversion and EF tasks should be correlated for school-age children with ADHD. However, tests of these relationships remain sparse. Forty-five children ages 8 to 12 with ADHD and 46 non-ADHD controls completed tasks measuring EFs and delay aversion. Children with ADHD had poorer WM and RI than non-ADHD controls, as well as nonsignificantly worse delay aversion. Consistent with previous research, RI was not related to delay aversion. However, delay aversion did predict WM scores for children with and without ADHD. Implications for the dual-pathway hypothesis and future research on cognitive and motivational processing in ADHD are discussed.
Effects of Variety and Postharvest Handling Practices on Microbial Population at Different Stages of the Value Chain of Fresh Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) in Western Terai of Nepal

Background. Fresh vegetables such as tomato should have low microbial population for safe consumption and long storage life. The aerobic bacterial count (ABC) and coliform bacterial count (CBC), yeast, and mold population are the most widely used microbial indicators in fresh vegetables which should be lower than 4 log CFU g−1 for safe consumption. The stages of the supply chain, postharvest handling methods, and crop varieties had significant effects on microbial population. ABC, CBC, yeast, and mold population were significantly highest (P < 0.05) at retail market (5.59, 4.38, 2.60, and 3.14 log CFU g−1, resp.), followed by wholesale market (4.72, 4.71, 2.43, and 2.44 log CFU g−1, resp.), and were least at farm gate (3.89, 3.63, 2.38, and 2.03 log CFU g−1, resp.). Improved postharvest practices (washing in clean water and grading and packaging in clean plastic crate) helped to reduce ABC, CBC, and mold population by 2.51, 32.70, and 29.86 percentage as compared to the conventional method (no washing and no grading and packaging in mud plastered bamboo baskets). Among varieties, Pusa ruby had the lowest microbial load of 2.58, 4.53, 0.96, and 1.77 log CFU g−1 for ABC, CBC, yeast, and mold count, respectively. Significantly negative correlation (P < 0.05) was observed between fruit pH & ABC and pH & mold count. Although the microbial quality of fresh tomato is safe in the local market of western Terai of Nepal both in conventional and in improved practices however still it is essential to follow improved postharvest handling practices in production and marketing of newly introduced tomato cultivars (high-pH cultivars) for ensuring the safe availability of fresh tomato in the market.
Deep Learning as an Opportunity in Virtual Screening

Deep learning excels in vision and speech applications where it pushed the state-of-the-art to a new level. However its impact on other ﬁelds remains to be shown. The Merck Kaggle challenge on chemical compound activity was won by Hin-ton’s group with deep networks. This indicates the high potential of deep learning in drug design and attracted the attention of big pharma. However, the unreal-istically small scale of the Kaggle dataset does not allow to assess the value of deep learning in drug target prediction if applied to in-house data of pharmaceutical companies. Even a publicly available drug activity data base like ChEMBL is magnitudes larger than the Kaggle dataset. ChEMBL has 13 M compound descriptors, 1.3 M compounds, and 5 k drug targets, compared to the Kaggle dataset with 11 k descriptors, 164 k compounds, and 15 drug targets. On the ChEMBL database, we compared the performance of deep learning to seven target prediction methods, including two commercial predictors, three predictors deployed by pharma, and machine learning methods that we could scale to this dataset
Integration of Assisted P 2 P Live Streaming Service in Community Network Clouds

Wireless community networks (CNs) are large-scale, self-organized and decentralized communication infrastructures built and operated by citizens for citizens. Community network cloud infrastructures have been recently introduced to run services inside the network, without the need to consume them from the Internet. We have developed a Linux-based distribution code-named Cloudy, which fosters the service deployment and automation in community network clouds. In this paper we present two ways provisioned by Cloudy to integrate the services and improve the users QoS in these clouds. First, we present a distributed service discovery mechanism that helps users with service quality metrics to choose the best service from a pool of instances. Second, we experiment with a live video streaming service deployed in CN environments, using more than 50 real CN nodes across Europe for the evaluation. Our analysis shows that tuning the vital parameters of this service as neighborhood peer selection strategies, and source node dispersion strategy, improves the video streaming QoS in the CNs. Our results indicate that both ways help the user to experience improved service performance. Automated service selection, needed once the number of micro service providers becomes larger, is the next step that can be built upon our results.
Genetic organization of sulphur‐controlled aryl desulphonation in Pseudomonas putida S‐313

Pseudomonas putida S‐313 is able to desulphonate a broad range of aromatic sulphonates to provide sulphur for growth by monooxygenolytic cleavage to yield the corresponding phenol. After miniTn5 transposon mutagenesis of this strain, 11 mutants were isolated that were no longer able to utilize benzenesulphonate as a sulphur source. Three of these mutants were defective in the utilization of all aromatic sulphonates tested, but they grew normally with other sulphur sources. These strains contained independent insertions in the novel 4.2 kb asfRABC gene cluster, encoding a putative reductase (AsfA), a ferredoxin (AsfB), a putative periplasmic binding protein (AsfC), which was localized to the periplasm using alkaline phosphatase fusions, and a divergently oriented fourth gene, asfR, that encoded a LysR‐type regulator protein. A further mutant was interrupted in the ssu locus, which includes the gene for a putative desulphonative monooxygenase. Transformation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa with the asfRAB genes was sufficient to allow arylsulphonate utilization by this species, which does not normally use these compounds, suggesting that the AsfAB proteins may constitute an arylsulphonate‐specific electron transport system that interacts with a less specific oxygenase. Expression of the asfABC genes in P. putida was induced by benzenesulphonate or toluenesulphonate, and it was repressed in the presence of sulphate in the growth medium. AsfR was a negative regulator of asfABC expression, and toluenesulphonate induced expression of these genes indirectly by reducing the expression of the asfR gene.
DDCCast: Meeting Point to Multipoint Transfer Deadlines Across Datacenters using ALAP Scheduling Policy

Large cloud companies manage dozens of datacenters across the globe connected using dedicated inter-datacenter networks. An important application of these networks is data replication which is done for purposes such as increased resiliency via making backup copies, getting data closer to users for reduced delay and WAN bandwidth usage, and global load balancing. These replications usually lead to network transfers with deadlines that determine the time prior to which all datacenters should have a copy of the data. Inter-datacenter networks have limited capacity and need be utilized efficiently to maximize performance. In this report, we focus on applications that transfer multiple copies of objects from one datacenter to several datacenters given deadline constraints. Existing solutions are either deadline agnostic, or only consider point-to-point transfers. We propose DDCCast, a simple yet effective deadline aware point to multipoint technique based on DCCast and using ALAP traffic allocation. DDCCast performs careful admission control using temporal planning, uses rate-allocation and rate-limiting to avoid congestion and sends traffic over forwarding trees that are carefully selected to reduce bandwidth usage and maximize deadline meet rate. We perform experiments confirming DDCCast's potential to reduce total bandwidth usage by up to $45\%$ while admitting up to $25\%$ more traffic into the network compared to existing solutions that guarantee deadlines.