Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
What implementation and translation teach us: the case of semantic similarity measures in wordnets

Wordnet::Similarity is an important instrument used for many applications. It has been available for a while as a toolkit for English and it has been frequently tested on English gold standards. In this paper, we describe how we constructed a Dutch gold standard that matches the English gold standard as closely as possible. We also re-implemented the Word-Net::Similarity package to be able to deal with any wordnet that is speciﬁed in Wordnet-LMF format independent of the language. This opens up the possibility to compare the similarity measures across wordnets and across languages. It also provides a new way of comparing wordnet structures across languages through one of its core aspects: the synonymy and hy-ponymy structure. In this paper, we report on the comparison between Dutch and English wordnets and gold standards. This comparison shows that the gold standards, and therefore the intuitions of English and Dutch native speakers, appear to be highly compatible. We also show that our package generates similar results for English as reported earlier and good results for Dutch. To the contrary of what we expected, some measures even perform better in Dutch than English.
Human-Robot Cooperation using Quasi-symbols Generated by RNNPB Model

We describe a means of human robot interaction based not on natural language but on "quasi symbols," which represent sensory-motor dynamics in the task and/or environment. It thus overcomes a key problem of using natural language for human-robot interaction - the need to understand the dynamic context. The quasi-symbols used are motion primitives corresponding to the attractor dynamics of the sensory-motor flow. These primitives are extracted from the observed data using the recurrent neural network with parametric bias (RNNPB) model. Binary representations based on the model parameters were implemented as quasi symbols in a humanoid robot, Robovie. The experiment task was robot-arm operation on a table. The quasi-symbols acquired by learning enabled the robot to perform novel motions. A person was able to control the arm through speech interaction using these quasi-symbols. These quasi symbols formed a hierarchical structure corresponding to the number of nodes in the model. The meaning of some of the quasi-symbols depended on the context, indicating that they are useful for human-robot interaction.
A new filter feature selection approach for customer churn prediction in telecommunications

There is little literature to introduce the approaches for the feature selection, which plays an important role in the customer churn prediction. In addition, due to the imbalanced data classification problem occurring, most of the traditional approaches ineffectively select the important features for the churn prediction. This paper proposes a new filter feature selection approach for customer churn prediction in telecommunications. The main idea of this approach is to calculate the dependency between each input feature and the class. Finally, the comparative experiments were carried out, and the results show that the new proposed feature selection approach is very effective for the churn prediction.
Active camber system for lateral stability improvement of urban vehicles

A suspension system with the capability of cambering has an additional degree of freedom for changing camber angle to increase the maximum lateral tire force. This study investigates the effects of cambering on overall vehicle stability with emphasis on applications to urban vehicles. A full vehicle model with a reliable tire model including camber effects is employed to investigate the vehicle dynamics behavior under cambering. Besides, a linearized vehicle model is used to analytically study the effects of camber lateral forces on vehicle dynamics. Vehicle behavior for different configurations of camber angles in front and rear wheels is studied and compared. Then, an active camber system is suggested for improvement of vehicle lateral stability. Specifically, performances of active front camber, active rear camber, and their combination are investigated. The results show that a proper strategy for camber control can improve both yaw rate and sideslip angle, simultaneously. Finally, the active front camber system is compared with the well-known active front steering. It is shown that, utilizing more friction forces at the limits, active front camber is more effective in improving maneuverability and lateral stability than active front steering.
Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems in the Chitwan Valley of Nepal

Despite many valuable lessons that have been learnt regarding resource and resource user attributes there are some relationships that have yet to be understood. One such confounding issue has been the impact of heterogeneity among the users of a communitybased natural resource. Traditional commons research has mostly assumed the prevalence of homogeneity among resource users, however, it is known that differences (e.g. in socio-economic attributes, natural resource endowments, physical circumstances etc) can be present. It is mostly under assumptions of homogeneity that researchers have been able to collect evidence that shows that groups have been able to successfully selforganize (Ostrom 1990; Ostrom Gardner Walker, 1994; McKean 1992; Bromley 1992). What impact does heterogeneity have on collective action is an issue that is not yet fully understood and is the focus of much contemporary research in the common pool resource area. Similarly, the relationship between the nature of the resource and the ease with which users are able to organize around it is also not straightforward. This paper is an attempt to explore these issues with respect to Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems in the Chitwan Valley of Nepal.
Reply to “Type-extension tests can be performed in constant time”

It is always a pleasure to learn that a proposed feature is even better or easier to implement than originally thought. I gladly retract my mistaken statement that a loop is (in general) unavoidable for a type test. Cohen’s reference to Dijkstra’s display compels me to add another remark. The display containing the addresses of statically enclosing procedure activation records appeared to be a marvelous idea to increase the efficiency of access to nonlocal variables. Upon closer analysis, we decided to discard the use of a display that was already in our first Pascal compiler (1969). The reason was that (1) the display requires updating for every procedure call and return (! ) that causes a change of context, and (2) variables at intermediate levels (neither local nor global) are referenced quite rarely. As a result, the maintenance of a display turned out to be more costly than the inefficient access of nonlocal variables via a static link. I wish to point out that, unlike Dijkstra’s display, no such “hidden” maintenance is necessary for type descriptors. They do not disappear and do not require updating. Hence, there is no “hidden” cost compensating for the gain in efficiency, except slightly larger type descriptors of variable size.
Compile-time analysis of parallel programs that share memory

Traditional optimization techniques for sequential programs are not directly applicable to parallel programs where concurrent activities may interfere with each other through shared variables. New compiler techniques must be developed to accommodate features found in parallel languages. In this paper, we use abstract interpretation to obtain useful properties of programs, e.g., side effects, data dependences, object lifetime and concurrent expressions, for a language that supports first-class functions, pointers, dynamic allocations and explicit parallelism through cobegin. These analyses may facilitate many applications, such as program optimization, parallelization, restructuring, memory management, and detecting access anomalies. Our semantics is based on a labeled transition system and is instrumented with procedure strings to record the procedural/concurrency movement along the program interpretation. We develop analyses in both concrete domains and abstract domains, and prove the correctness and termination of the abstract interpretation.
FETI domain decomposition method to solution of contact problems with large displacements

The solution to contact problems between solid bodies poses difficulties to solvers because in general neither the distributions of the contact tractions throughout the areas currently in contact nor the configurations of these areas are known a priori. This implies that the contact problems are inherently strongly nonlinear. Probably the most popular solution method is based on direct iterations with the non-penetration conditions imposed by the penalty method ([Z93] or [W02]). The method enables easily enhance other non-linearity such as in the case of large displacements. In this paper we are concerned with application of a variant of the FETI domain decomposition method that enforces feasibility of Lagrange multipliers by the penalty [DH04b]. The dual penalty method, which has been shown to be optimal for small displacements is used in inner loop of the algorithm that treats large displacements. We give results of numerical experiments that demonstrate high efficiency of the FETI method
Low-Complexity Polynomial Channel Estimation in Large-Scale MIMO With Arbitrary Statistics

This paper considers pilot-based channel estimation in large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems, also known as “massive MIMO,” where there are hundreds of antennas at one side of the link. Motivated by the fact that computational complexity is one of the main challenges in such systems, a set of low-complexity Bayesian channel estimators, coined Polynomial ExpAnsion CHannel (PEACH) estimators, are introduced for arbitrary channel and interference statistics. While the conventional minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimator has cubic complexity in the dimension of the covariance matrices, due to an inversion operation, our proposed estimators significantly reduce this to square complexity by approximating the inverse by a L-degree matrix polynomial. The coefficients of the polynomial are optimized to minimize the mean square error (MSE) of the estimate. We show numerically that near-optimal MSEs are achieved with low polynomial degrees. We also derive the exact computational complexity of the proposed estimators, in terms of the floating-point operations (FLOPs), by which we prove that the proposed estimators outperform the conventional estimators in large-scale MIMO systems of practical dimensions while providing a reasonable MSEs. Moreover, we show that L needs not scale with the system dimensions to maintain a certain normalized MSE. By analyzing different interference scenarios, we observe that the relative MSE loss of using the low-complexity PEACH estimators is smaller in realistic scenarios with pilot contamination. On the other hand, PEACH estimators are not well suited for noise-limited scenarios with high pilot power; therefore, we also introduce the low-complexity diagonalized estimator that performs well in this regime. Finally, we also investigate numerically how the estimation performance is affected by having imperfect statistical knowledge. High robustness is achieved for large-dimensional matrices by using a new covariance estimate which is an affine function of the sample covariance matrix and a regularization term.
Optimizing top-k document retrieval strategies for block-max indexes

Large web search engines use significant hardware and energy resources to process hundreds of millions of queries each day, and a lot of research has focused on how to improve query processing efficiency. One general class of optimizations called early termination techniques is used in all major engines, and essentially involves computing top results without an exhaustive traversal and scoring of all potentially relevant index entries. Recent work in [9,7] proposed several early termination algorithms for disjunctive top-k query processing, based on a new augmented index structure called Block-Max Index that enables aggressive skipping in the index. In this paper, we build on this work by studying new algorithms and optimizations for Block-Max indexes that achieve significant performance gains over the work in [9,7]. We start by implementing and comparing Block-Max oriented algorithms based on the well-known Maxscore and WAND approaches. Then we study how to build better Block-Max index structures and design better index-traversal strategies, resulting in new algorithms that achieve a factor of 2 speed-up over the best results in [9] with acceptable space overheads. We also describe and evaluate a hierarchical algorithm for a new recursive Block-Max index structure.
3D Object Reconstruction from Hand-Object Interactions

Recent advances have enabled 3d object reconstruction approaches using a single off-the-shelf RGB-D camera. Although these approaches are successful for a wide range of object classes, they rely on stable and distinctive geometric or texture features. Many objects like mechanical parts, toys, household or decorative articles, however, are textureless and characterized by minimalistic shapes that are simple and symmetric. Existing in-hand scanning systems and 3d reconstruction techniques fail for such symmetric objects in the absence of highly distinctive features. In this work, we show that extracting 3d hand motion for in-hand scanning effectively facilitates the reconstruction of even featureless and highly symmetric objects and we present an approach that fuses the rich additional information of hands into a 3d reconstruction pipeline, significantly contributing to the state-of-the-art of in-hand scanning.
Induction of hepatocyte‐like cells from mouse embryonic stem cells by lentivirus‐mediated constitutive expression of Foxa2/Hnf4a

Hepatocytes can be generated from embryonic stem cells (ESCs) using inducers such as chemical compounds and cytokines, but issues related to low differentiation efficiencies remain to be resolved. Recent work has shown that overexpression of lineage‐specific transcription factors can directly cause cells phenotypic changes, including differentiation, trans‐differentiation, and de‐differentiation. We hypothesized that lentivirus‐mediated constitutive expression of forkhead box A2 (Foxa2) and hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 alpha (Hnf4a) could promote inducing mouse ESCs to hepatocyte‐likes cells. First, ESC lines that stably expressed Foxa2, Hnf4a, or Foxa2/Hnf4a were constructed via lentiviral expression vectors. Second, observations of cell morphology changes were made during the cell culture process, followed by experiments examining teratoma formation. Then, the effects of constitutive expression of Foxa2 and Hnf4a on hepatic differentiation and maturation were determined by measuring the marker gene expression levels of Albumin, α‐fetoprotein, Cytokeratin18, and α1‐antitrypsin. The results indicate that constitutive expression of Foxa2 and Hnf4a does not affect ESCs culture, teratoma formation, or the expression levels of the specific hepatocyte genes under autonomous differentiation. However, with some assistance from inducing factors, Foxa2 significantly increased the hepatic differentiation of ESCs, whereas the expression of Hnf4a alone or Foxa2/Hnf4a could not. Differentiated CCE‐Foxa2 cells were more superior in expressing several liver‐specific markers and protein, storing glycogen than differentiated CCE cells. Therefore, our method employing the transduction of Foxa2 would be a valuable tool for the efficient generation of functional hepatocytes derived from ESCs. J. Cell. Biochem. 114: 2531–2541, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Model Assembly for Estimating Cell Surviving Fraction for Both Targeted and Nontargeted Effects Based on Microdosimetric Probability Densities

We here propose a new model assembly for estimating the surviving fraction of cells irradiated with various types of ionizing radiation, considering both targeted and nontargeted effects in the same framework. The probability densities of specific energies in two scales, which are the cell nucleus and its substructure called a domain, were employed as the physical index for characterizing the radiation fields. In the model assembly, our previously established double stochastic microdosimetric kinetic (DSMK) model was used to express the targeted effect, whereas a newly developed model was used to express the nontargeted effect. The radioresistance caused by overexpression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 known to frequently occur in human cancer was also considered by introducing the concept of the adaptive response in the DSMK model. The accuracy of the model assembly was examined by comparing the computationally and experimentally determined surviving fraction of Bcl-2 cells (Bcl-2 overexpressing HeLa cells) and Neo cells (neomycin resistant gene-expressing HeLa cells) irradiated with microbeam or broadbeam of energetic heavy ions, as well as the WI-38 normal human fibroblasts irradiated with X-ray microbeam. The model assembly reproduced very well the experimentally determined surviving fraction over a wide range of dose and linear energy transfer (LET) values. Our newly established model assembly will be worth being incorporated into treatment planning systems for heavy-ion therapy, brachytherapy, and boron neutron capture therapy, given critical roles of the frequent Bcl-2 overexpression and the nontargeted effect in estimating therapeutic outcomes and harmful effects of such advanced therapeutic modalities.
Deciding quantifier-free Presburger formulas using parameterized solution bounds

Given a formula /spl Phi/ in quantifier-free Presburger arithmetic, it is well known that, if there is a satisfying solution to /spl Phi/, there is one whose size, measured in bits, is polynomially bounded in the size of /spl Phi/. In this paper, we consider a special class of quantifier-free Presburger formulas in which most linear constraints are separation (difference-bound) constraints, and the nonseparation constraints are sparse. This class has been observed to commonly occur in software verification problems. We derive a solution bound in terms of parameters characterizing the sparseness of linear constraints and the number of nonseparation constraints, in addition to traditional measures of formula size. In particular, the number of bits needed per integer variable is linear in the number of nonseparation constraints and logarithmic in the number and size of nonzero coefficients in them, but is otherwise independent of the total number of linear constraints in the formula. The derived bound can be used in a decision procedure based on instantiating integer variables over a finite domain and translating the input quantifier-free Presburger formula to an equisatisfiable Boolean formula, which is then checked using a Boolean satisfiability solver. We present empirical evidence indicating that this method can greatly outperform other decision procedures.
A Model Deformation Approach for 3D Reconstruction

In this paper, we present a model deformation approach based on a visual hull technique for improving 3D reconstruction. The proposed approach combines the exquisite 3D model derived by active acquisition methods and the constraints from the rough 3D model derived by passive methods. We take the advantages of active and passive methods to obtain a 3D model with the better quality. The clustering method is adopted to segment 3D models into several sub-models and we then match the sub-models individually via an iterative closest point algorithm. Three testing 3D models are used for evaluating the proposed approach. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.
Nicotine exploits a COPI-mediated process for chaperone-mediated up-regulation of its receptors

Chronic exposure to nicotine up-regulates high sensitivity nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in the brain. This up-regulation partially underlies addiction and may also contribute to protection against Parkinson’s disease. nAChRs containing the α6 subunit (α6* nAChRs) are expressed in neurons in several brain regions, but comparatively little is known about the effect of chronic nicotine on these nAChRs. We report here that nicotine up-regulates α6* nAChRs in several mouse brain regions (substantia nigra pars compacta, ventral tegmental area, medial habenula, and superior colliculus) and in neuroblastoma 2a cells. We present evidence that a coat protein complex I (COPI)-mediated process mediates this up-regulation of α6* or α4* nAChRs but does not participate in basal trafficking. We show that α6β2β3 nAChR up-regulation is prevented by mutating a putative COPI-binding motif in the β3 subunit or by inhibiting COPI. Similarly, a COPI-dependent process is required for up-regulation of α4β2 nAChRs by chronic nicotine but not for basal trafficking. Mutation of the putative COPI-binding motif or inhibition of COPI also results in reduced normalized Förster resonance energy transfer between α6β2β3 nAChRs and εCOP subunits. The discovery that nicotine exploits a COPI-dependent process to chaperone high sensitivity nAChRs is novel and suggests that this may be a common mechanism in the up-regulation of nAChRs in response to chronic nicotine.
Finding great software engineers with GitHub

The formulation of Topic-Sensitive PageRank is very similar, except that we teleport the random walker only to a specific subset of graph nodes that are representative in some way of some property we are interested in finding elsewhere in the graph. In the classic formulation, this algorithm teleported to, for example, a manually curated set of medical webpages on the internet. The resulting stationary probability would be biased towards pages these pages linked to. In aggregate, medical pages would be given higher scores than other documents.
The Effects of Age, Sex and Alzheimer's Disease on Strategy Use During Verbal Fluency Tasks

ABSTRACT Clustering and switching strategies during phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks were investigated in healthy adults (n = 193, 86 males, 20–90 years) in young, middle-aged, young–old, and old–old age groups (Study 1). Older groups produced fewer total words and lower switching scores; males relied more on clustering and females on switching to produce equivalent output. In Study 2, early Alzheimer's disease participants, compared to healthy older adults, (n = 26 per group) produced fewer total words and smaller average clusters. Sex, age, and clinical differences on switching and clustering strategies support a dual processing model of verbal fluency.
Applying the CHECk tool to participatory design sessions with children

To encourage ethical practices in participatory design with children the CHECk tool was created. This paper reports on an expert review of the CHECk tool and a validating case study. Four main challenges to the CHECk tool are identified: (1) how to inform children on the research and their role herein, (2) distinguishing between project values and designer or researcher's personal values, (3) accounting for the dynamic nature and social constructedness of values in design, and (4) the emergence of values in all stakeholders including child design partners. We advocate complementing CHECk with interactive storytelling and show how this narrative can be used to not only inform participation and achieve ethical symmetry, but also to negotiate values with child design partners.