Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Selective Transfer Learning for Cross Domain Recommendation

Collaborative filtering (CF) aims to predict users’ ratings on items according to historical user-item preference data. In many realworld applications, preference data are usually sparse, which would make models overfit and fail to give accurate predictions. Recently, several research works show that by transferring knowledge from some manually selected source domains, the data sparseness problem could be mitigated. However for most cases, parts of source domain data are not consistent with the observations in the target domain, which may misguide the target domain model building. In this paper, we propose a novel criterion based on empirical prediction error and its variance to better capture the consistency across domains in CF settings. Consequently, we embed this criterion into a boosting framework to perform selective knowledge transfer. Comparing to several state-of-the-art methods, we show that our proposed selective transfer learning framework can significantly improve the accuracy of rating prediction on several realworld recommendation tasks.
Pharmacological Evaluation of Cucumber for Cognition Enhancing Effect on Brain of Mice

Introduction: Cucumber is fruit of Cucumis sativus var. sativus L. which has been used traditionally in gastrointestinal problems, skin problems and as coolant in salad for body and brain. Cucumber is a great folk medicine used to reduce heat and inflammation. Cognitive effects of cucumber are assessed in this study. Methods: Fresh fruits of Cucumis sativus L. were ground and a paste was prepared which consisted of different concentrations of cucumber (30, 60, 90 % w/w). The three doses were given ad libitum to mice for 15 successive days. Animal models utilized were sodium nitrite induced hypoxia and object recognition task. Biochemical analysis employed estimation of acetylcholinesterase activity in brain, serum glucose levels, cholesterol levels, brain lipid peroxidation (MDA) levels and reduced glutathione levels in brain of mice. Results: 6g/kg and 9g/kg doses of cucumber significantly (P < 0.05, P < 0.01) increased frequency of entry, number of entry and duration of entry in small compartment in sodium nitrite induced hypoxia model and depicted significantly (P < 0.05, P < 0.001) enhanced exploratory activity in object recognition task model. Further, biochemical analysis indicated good potential of cucumber in cognition enhancement. 9 g/kg dose (P < 0.001) reduced brain AChE activity along with blood glucose and serum cholesterol levels. 6 g/kg dose (P < 0.01) replenished brain GSH levels and reduced lipid peroxides. Conclusion: Cucumber increased cognition in rodents.
Concentrations and Loads of Trace Contaminants in a Small Urban Tributary, San Francisco Bay, California

4 Introduction 5 Methods 6 Field Sampling and Loads Calculations 6 Analytical Methods & QA/QC 9 Results and Discussion 13 Rainfall and Runoff 13 Turbidity and Suspended Sediment Concentration 14 Mercury 16 Other Trace Elements 17 Organic Carbon and Nutrients 21 PCBs 23 Dioxins 25 PBDEs 26 PAHs 27 OC Pesticides 29 Pyrethroids 31 Conclusions 32 References 34
Functional interactions between anthrax toxin receptors and the WNT signalling protein LRP6

To exert its activity, anthrax toxin must be endocytosed and its enzymatic toxic subunits delivered to the cytoplasm. It has been proposed that, in addition to the anthrax toxin receptors (ATRs), lipoprotein‐receptor‐related protein 6 (LRP6), known for its role in Wnt signalling, is also required for toxin endocytosis. These findings have however been challenged. We show that LRP6 can indeed form a complex with ATRs, and that this interaction plays a role both in Wnt signalling and in anthrax toxin endocytosis. We found that ATRs control the levels of LRP6 in cells, and thus the Wnt signalling capacity. RNAi against ATRs indeed led to a drastic decrease in LRP6 levels and a subsequent drop in Wnt signalling. Conversely, LRP6 plays a role in anthrax toxin endocytosis, but is not essential. We indeed found that toxin binding triggered tyrosine phosphorylation of LRP6, induced its redistribution into detergent‐resistant domains, and its subsequent endocytosis. RNAis against LRP6 strongly delayed toxin endocytosis. As the physiological role of ATRs is probably to interact with the extracellular matrix, our findings raise the interesting possibility that, through the ATR–LRP6 interaction, adhesion to the extracellular matrix could locally control Wnt signalling.
Real-time multi-person tracking in fixed surveillance camera environment

In this paper, we propose a real-time multi-person tracking system operating in fixed surveillance camera environment. We adopt particle filtering as our object tracking framework. Background subtraction is used to generate the ROI. And pedestrian detection is used to initialize each tracker. Object size estimation and tracking failure detection is proposed to improve tracking accuracy and robustness. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm tracks multiple persons efficiently in real-time.
Quality of Auditory-Tactile Virtual Environments

In our daily life, we mostly perceive an event by more than one sensory modality (e.g., vision, audition, touch). Therefore multimodal integration and interaction play an important role when we use objects in our environment, e.g. for object or event recognition. Burdea and Coiffet define the virtual environment as a simulation in which computer graphics is used to create a realistic looking interactive world [1]. Virtual environments support communication with the user not only through the visual channel but also through other modalities, taking into account the multisensory nature of humans. In addition to the visual communication channel, the auditory and tactile senses are the most used communication channels. In recent years a variety of customer products which have additional tactile input and output capabilities have been developed (for example: Apple iPhone, different touch-screen applications, Wiimote, etc.). Some of these devices bring new possibilities to interact with a computer. These trends are also valid for the auditory modality. Binaural synthesis and rendering are becoming a key technology for multimedia products. “Virtual Environments” are not any more only the subject of academic research, there are also commercial applications, particularly in medicine, game and entertainment industry. This trend results that the quality of virtual environments becomes more and more important. The user interactivity of virtual environments is a key issue for the quality perception. Several studies have discussed the quality of displays, input and output devices (for different modalities) as well as software and hardware issues. However the multimodal user interaction should be taken into account in addition to the mentioned parameters to assess the quality of virtual environments. The focus of this paper is on the parameters influencing the perceptual quality of audio-tactile virtual environments.
Decentralized Reinforcement Learning Control of a Robotic Manipulator

Multi-agent systems are rapidly finding applications in a variety of domains, including robotics, distributed control, telecommunications, etc. Learning approaches to multi-agent control, many of them based on reinforcement learning (RL), are investigated in complex domains such as teams of mobile robots. However, the application of decentralized RL to low-level control tasks is not as intensively studied. In this paper, we investigate centralized and decentralized RL, emphasizing the challenges and potential advantages of the latter. These are then illustrated on an example: learning to control a two-link rigid manipulator. Some open issues and future research directions in decentralized RL are outlined
Effect of metabolic acidosis and alkalosis on NEM-sensitive ATPase in rat nephron segments.

An N-ethylmaleimide (NEM)-sensitive adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) displaying the kinetic and pharmacological properties of an electrogenic proton pump has been described in the different segments of rat nephron, where it mediates part of the active tubular proton secretion. This study was therefore designed to evaluate whether changes in urinary acidification observed during metabolic acidosis or alkalosis were associated with alterations of the activity of tubular NEM-sensitive ATPase, and if so, to localize the nephron segments responsible for these changes. Within 1 wk after the onset of ammonium chloride treatment, rats developed a metabolic acidosis, and NEM-sensitive ATPase activity was markedly increased in the medullary thick ascending limb of Henle's loop and outer medullary collecting tubule, and slightly increased in the cortical collecting tubule. Conversely, treatment with sodium bicarbonate induced a metabolic alkalosis that was accompanied by decreased NEM-sensitive ATPase activity in medullary thick ascending limb and outer medullary collecting tubule. NEM-sensitive ATPase activity was not altered in any other nephron segment tested in alkalotic and acidotic rats, i.e., the proximal tubule and the cortical thick ascending limb of Henle's loop. Changes qualitatively similar were observed as soon as 3 h after the onset of NaHCO3 or NH4Cl-loading. In the medullary collecting tubule, alterations of NEM-sensitive ATPase activity are in part due to hyperaldosteronism observed in both acidotic and alkalotic rats. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Improving the quality of Gujarati-Hindi Machine Translation through part-of-speech tagging and stemmer-assisted transliteration

Machine Translation for Indian languages is an emerging research area. Transliteration is one such module that we design while designing a translation system. Transliteration means mapping of source language text into the target language. Simple mapping decreases the efficiency of overall translation system. We propose the use of stemming and part-of-speech tagging for transliteration. The effectiveness of translation can be improved if we use part-of-speech tagging and stemming assisted transliteration.We have shown that much of the content in Gujarati gets transliterated while being processed for translation to Hindi language.
Asymptotics of the allele frequency spectrum associated with the Bolthausen-Sznitman coalescent

We consider a coalescent process as a model for the genealogy of a sample from a population. The population is subject to neutral mutation at constant rate $\rho$ per individual and every mutation gives rise to a completely new type. The allelic partition is obtained by tracing back to the most recent mutation for each individual and grouping together individuals whose most recent mutations are the same. The allele frequency spectrum is the sequence $(N_1(n), N_2(n), \ldots, N_n(n))$, where $N_k(n)$ is number of blocks of size $k$ in the allelic partition with sample size $n$. In this paper, we prove law of large numbers-type results for the allele frequency spectrum when the coalescent process is taken to be the Bolthausen-Sznitman coalescent. In particular, we show that $n^{-1}(\log n) N_1(n) {\stackrel{p}{\rightarrow}} \rho$ and, for $k \geq 2$, $n^{-1}(\log n)^2 N_k(n) {\stackrel{p}{\rightarrow}} \rho/(k(k-1))$ as $n \to \infty$. Our method of proof involves tracking the formation of the allelic partition using a certain Markov process, for which we prove a fluid limit.
Cellular Aspects of Prion Replication In Vitro

Prion diseases or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are fatal neurodegenerative disorders in mammals that are caused by unconventional agents predominantly composed of aggregated misfolded prion protein (PrP). Prions self-propagate by recruitment of host-encoded PrP into highly ordered β-sheet rich aggregates. Prion strains differ in their clinical, pathological and biochemical characteristics and are likely to be the consequence of distinct abnormal prion protein conformers that stably replicate their alternate states in the host cell. Understanding prion cell biology is fundamental for identifying potential drug targets for disease intervention. The development of permissive cell culture models has greatly enhanced our knowledge on entry, propagation and dissemination of TSE agents. However, despite extensive research, the precise mechanism of prion infection and potential strain effects remain enigmatic. This review summarizes our current knowledge of the cell biology and propagation of prions derived from cell culture experiments. We discuss recent findings on the trafficking of cellular and pathologic PrP, the potential sites of abnormal prion protein synthesis and potential co-factors involved in prion entry and propagation.
The MUST guide to Paris: Implementation and expert evaluation of a multimodal tourist guide to Paris

In this paper we present the implementation and expert evaluation of a speech centric multimodal demonstrator that has been developed in the EURESCOM MUST project (MUltimodal, multilingual information Services for small mobile Terminals). The demonstrator is a tourist guide for Paris. The paper focuses on the technical implementation and interface design of the demonstrator. Based on GALAXY Communicator software, Telenor and Portugal Telecom were able to build transparent, modular, and stable versions of the demonstrator in a relatively short time. User Interface experts at Telenor and Portugal Telecom evaluated the demonstrator in two phases. In phase one they explored the interface. Phase two was a Cognitive Walkthrough with predefined tasks and action sequences. It appeared that it was not obvious that the interface was multimodal, and in particular that it was possible to tap and talk simultaneously. However, some experts discovered simultaneous multimodal interaction after a while, and we observed a very steep learning curve. The experts foresee problems for naive users, if no special attention is paid to the introduction phase. The implications of the expert evaluation for the planned user tests are discussed at the end of the paper.
Monsoonal Forcing of European Ice‐Sheet Dynamics During the Late Quaternary

The dynamics of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets during Late Quaternary glacials have yet been dominantly examined from a Laurentide Ice Sheet perspective, which helped shaping the idea of moisture‐starved glacials and small‐scale ice volume variability. However, the waxing and waning of the European Ice Sheet (EIS) casts doubt on this perception. Understanding EIS dynamics under glacial boundary conditions is crucial because its meltwater pulses influence global climate by weakening deepwater formation in the North Atlantic Ocean. Here we show that the advection of subtropical water toward the continental margin of western Europe lead to enhanced moisture availability on the continent and fueled the growth of EIS lobes during glacials. This warm‐water pooling was caused by monsoonally paced enhanced Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW) entrainment that dragged subtropical surface waters toward the European margin. This mechanism presents a yet unrecognized marine‐terrestrial pathway that allows low‐latitude forcing to shape high‐latitude glaciations.
Video Question Answering via Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Attention Networks

Open-ended video question answering is a challenging problem in visual information retrieval, which automatically generates the natural language answer from the referenced video content according to the question. However, the existing visual question answering works only focus on the static image, which may be ineffectively applied to video question answering due to the lack of modeling the temporal dynamics of video contents. In this paper, we consider the problem of open-ended video question answering from the viewpoint of spatio-temporal attentional encoder-decoder learning framework. We propose the hierarchical spatio-temporal attention network for learning the joint representation of the dynamic video contents according to the given question. We then develop the spatio-temporal attentional encoder-decoder learning method with multi-step reasoning process for open-ended video question answering. We construct a large-scale video question answering dataset. The extensive experiments show the effectiveness of our method.
Continuous–discrete-time adaptive observers for nonlinear systems with sampled output measurements

ABSTRACT This paper considers the continuous–discrete-time adaptive observer (CDAO) design for a class of nonlinear systems with unknown constant parameters and sampled output measurements. The proposed observer is actually an impulsive system, since the observer state flows according to a set of differential equations and with instantaneous state jumps corresponding to measured samples and their estimates, and an inter-sample output predictor is used to predict the output during sampling intervals. By assuming appropriate persistent excitation conditions and following a technical lemma, an upper bound of the sampling intervals is derived, with which the convergence of the observer state and unknown parameters can be ensured. Finally, the proposed observer is used in examples of chaotic oscillators and single-link flexible-joint robot manipulator to show the effectiveness.
An enhanced technology acceptance model for e-learning systems in high-tech companies

With the rapid change in working environment, there is a need to implement e-learning systems but their adoption requires a fully understanding of the user acceptance processes. The aim of the research is to propose a new construct, perceived control, to examine the applicability of the technology acceptance model (TAM) in explaining employees' decisions to accept e-learning. Based on a sample of 206 employees taken from twelve high-tech companies at Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan, the results strongly support the extended TAM in predicting employees' behavioral intention to use e-learning.
Designing Gene Regulatory Networks With Specified Functions

To design and construct gene regulatory networks with specified functions, such as gene switches or gene oscillators, a precise mathematical description of the networks and their properties are developed from the viewpoint of integrated systems biology. The theoretical results provide insights into the modular structures of gene regulatory networks and their quantitative functions. Specifically, based on priori knowledge of the structure of functional modules, we use feedback system to create gene regulatory networks performing basic tasks. Two typical biological networks: positive and cyclic feedback networks are used to create functions as bistable switches or oscillators. The hybrid feedback networks are adopted to provide a variety of functional designs, which demonstrate the crucial role of interactions between biological modules
Electrical transport in C‐doped GaAs nanowires: surface effects

The particular morphology and di-mensions of nanowires (NWs) in the last years have opened many perspectives in applications ranging from electronics, optoelectronics to energy harvesting and stor-age [1–3]. The successful incorporation of dopants in the nanowires is key for the implementation of such devices. Doping of nanowires has been a challenging task, due to the particular growth mechanisms [4]. In this Letter, we report on the electrical properties of C-doped GaAs nanowires obtained by the Ga-assisted method [5]. As C is not soluble in Ga, its incorporation in the nanowire core through the droplet remains difficult. Our strategy is then to grow an intrinsic NW core and a doped shell around it. The growth of the shell is similar to the thin films growth [6]. We study the doping and surface effects on the NWs resistivity, field effect mobility as well as the minority car-rier diffusion length.
A conceptual density‐based approach for the disambiguation of toponyms

Nowadays, a huge quantity of information is stored in digital format. A great portion of this information is constituted by textual and unstructured documents, where geographical references are usually given by means of place names. A common problem with textual information retrieval is represented by polysemous words, that is, words can have more than one sense. This problem is present also in the geographical domain: place names may refer to different locations in the world. In this paper we investigate the use of our word sense disambiguation technique in the geographical domain, with the aim of resolving ambiguous place names. Our technique is based on WordNet conceptual density. Due to the lack of a reference corpus tagged with WordNet senses, we carried out the experiments over a set of 1,210 place names extracted from the SemCor corpus that we named GeoSemCor and made publicly available. We compared our method with the most‐frequent baseline and the enhanced‐Lesk method, which previously has not been tested in large contexts. The results show that a better precision can be achieved by using a small context (phrase level), whereas a greater coverage can be obtained by using large contexts (document level). The proposed method should be tested with other corpora, due to the fact that our experiments evidenced the excessive bias towards the most‐frequent sense of the GeoSemCor.
Opportunistic media sharing for mobile networks

Nowadays there is a proliferation of smart devices used for media consumption. Usually, media contents are streamed from a Content Distribution Network (CDN), through a cellular network, which can get overloaded when there is a large number of active users per cell. At the same time the devices, i.e. smartphones, typically possess a set of wireless interfaces such as WiFi and Bluetooth that can be used to communicate with other devices in its proximity. In this work we propose a publish/subscribe, opportunistic network protocol aimed at off-load infrastructure network nodes. It contributes to optimize the cellular network usage among mobile devices and to reduce the costs and energy consumption induced by the reproduction of media that are temporally popular.
Protective association of genetic variation in alcohol dehydrogenase with alcohol dependence in Native American Mission Indians.

OBJECTIVE Two alcohol dehydrogenase genes (ADH2 and ADH3 on chromosome 4) and one aldehyde dehydrogenase gene (ALDH2 on chromosome 12) exhibit functional polymorphisms. The goal of this study was to determine whether any associations exist between the ADH2, ADH3, and ALDH2 polymorphisms and alcohol dependence in a group of Native Americans. An additional goal was to determine if any associations exist between these polymorphisms and the endophenotype, maximum number of drinks ever consumed in a 24-hour period. METHOD Mission Indian adults (N=340) were recruited for participation from reservations in southern California. Each participant completed an interview with the Semi-Structured Assessment for the Genetics of Alcoholism. A blood sample was collected from each participant for genotyping at the ALDH2, ADH2, and ADH3 loci. RESULTS Sixty percent of all participants (72% of men and 53% of women) met lifetime DSM-III-R criteria for alcohol dependence. A significant difference in the ADH2 allele distributions was found between alcohol-dependent and non-alcohol-dependent participants. Those with alcohol dependence were significantly less likely to have the ADH2*3 allele (odds ratio=0.28) and significantly more likely to have the ADH2*1 allele (odds ratio=2.00) than those who were not alcohol dependent. Individuals with ADH2*3 reported a lower number of maximum drinks ever consumed in a 24-hour period, compared to those without this allele. CONCLUSIONS These results are consistent with genetic linkage studies showing protective associations for alcohol dependence and related behavior on chromosome 4 and suggest that ADH2 polymorphisms may account for these findings. These results also highlight the utility of evaluating protective factors in populations with high rates of alcohol dependence.