Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Manifold-based non-parametric learning of action-value functions

Finding good approximations to state-action value functions is a central problem in model-free on-line reinforcement learning. The use of non-parametric function approximators enables us to simultaneously represent model and confidence. Since Q functions are usually discontinu- ous, we present a novel Gaussian process (GP) kernel function to cope with discontinuity. We use a manifold-based distance measure in our kernels, the manifold being induced by the graph structure extracted from data. Using on-line learning, the graph formation is parallel with the estimation algorithm. This results in a compact and efficient graph structure, elimi- nates the need for predefined function class and improves the accuracy of the estimated value functions, as tested on simulated robotic control tasks.
The potential of follicle-stimulating hormone peptide-modified triptolide-loaded nanoparticles to induce a mouse model of premature ovarian insufficiency

The use of triptolide (TP) is limited by its poor water solubility and severe toxicity. In this study, we developed an active drug delivery system (TP-loaded nanoparticles) that could help improve the water solubility of TP and decrease its toxicity. Then, we investigated whether TP-loaded nanoparticles could be used to establish a novel premature ovarian insufficiency mouse model. The mice treated with TP-loaded nanoparticles for 35 days displayed normal growth, decreased serum antimullerian hormone, prominent ovarian fibrosis and vacuolar changes, fewer follicles and corpus lutea, increased collapsed oocytes and follicle apoptosis, and sterility. In conclusion, this model appears to show the reproductive characteristics associated with premature ovarian insufficiency in women and will allow us to study the mechanism of the effects of traditional Chinese medicine on gonadal toxicity.
Clause alignment for Hong Kong legal texts: A lexical-based approach

In this paper we report on our recent work in clause alignment for English-Chinese bilingual legal texts using available lexical resources including a bilingual legal glossary and a bilingual dictionary, for the purpose of acquiring examples at various linguistic levels for example-based machine translation. We present our formulation of an appropriate measure for the similarity of a candidate pair of clauses with respect to matched lexical items and the corresponding implementation of an effective algorithm for clause alignment based on this similarity measure. Experimental results show that the similarity measure and the lexical-based clause alignment algorithm, though very simple, are very effective, with a performance of 94.6% alignment accuracy. It confirms our intuition that lexical information gives a reliable indication of correct alignment. The significance of this lexical-based approach lies in both its simplicity and effectiveness.
Yang's Quantized Space-time Algebra and Holographic Hypothesis

The present-day significance of Yang's quantized space-time algebra (YST) is pointed out from the holographic viewpoint. One finds that the D-dimensional YST and its modified version (MYST) have the background symmetry SO(D+1,1) and SO(D,2), which are well known to underlie the dS/CFT and AdS/CFT correspondences, respectively. This fact suggests a new possibility of dS/YST and AdS/MYST in parallel with dS/CFT and AdS/CFT, respectively. The spatial components of quantized space-time and momentum operators of YST have discrete eigenvalues and their respective minimums, $a$ and 1/R, without contradiction to Lorentz-covariance. With respect to MYST, the spatial components of space-time operators and the time component (energy) of momentum operators have discrete eigenvalues and their respective minimums, $a$ and 1/R, in contrast to YST. This discrete structure of YST and MYST, which CFT lacks entirely, may provide a theoretical ground for the unified regularization or cutoff of ultraviolet and infrared divergences familiar in the UV/IR connection in the holographic hypothesis.
SNR-dependent non-uniform spectral compression for noisy speech recognition

It is known that the perceived loudness of a tone signal by a human is spectrally masked by background noise. This masking effect causes not only a shift of just-audible sound pressure level of the tone, but also produces a masked loudness function having steeper slope than the unmasked one. This masking property of perceived loudness stimulates us to propose a new mel-scale-based feature extraction method with non-uniform spectral compression for speech recognition in noisy environments. In this method, the speech power spectrum is to undergo mel-scaled band-pass filtering, as in the standard MFCC front-end. However, the energies of the outputs of the filters are compressed by different root values defined by a compression function. This compression function is a function of the SNR in each filter band. Using this new scheme of SNR-dependent non-uniform spectral compression (SNSC) for mel-scaled filter-bank-based cepstral coefficients, substantial improvement is found for recognition in different noisy environments, as compared to the standard MFCC and features derived with cubic root spectral compression.
Applications of Abduction #2: Knowledge-level Modeling

A single inference procedure (abduction) can op-erationalise a wide variety of knowledge-level mod-This abductive approach ooers a uniform view of diierent problem solving methods in the style proposed by Clancey and Brueker. Also, this abductive approach is easily extensible to validation ; i.e. using this technique we can implement both inference tools and testing tools. Further, abduction can execute in vague and connicting domains (which we believe occur very frequently). We therefore propose abduction as a framework for knowledge-level modeling.
A Polymorphic Microsatellite Repeat within the ECE-1c Promoter Is Involved in Transcriptional Start Site Determination, Human Evolution, and Alzheimer's Disease

Genetic factors strongly contribute to the pathogenesis of sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). Nevertheless, genome-wide association studies only yielded single nucleotide polymorphism loci of moderate importance. In contrast, microsatellite repeats are functionally less characterized structures within our genomes. Previous work has shown that endothelin-converting enzyme-1 (ECE-1) is able to reduce amyloid β content. Here we demonstrate that a CpG-CA repeat within the human ECE-1c promoter is highly polymorphic, harbors transcriptional start sites, is able to recruit the transcription factors poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 and splicing factor proline and glutamine-rich, and is functional regarding haplotype-specific promoter activity. Furthermore, genotyping of 403 AD patients and 444 controls for CpG-CA repeat length indicated shifted allelic frequency distributions. Sequencing of 245 haplotype clones demonstrated that the overall CpG-CA repeat composition of AD patients and controls is distinct. Finally, we show that human and chimpanzee [CpG]m–[CA]n ECE-1c promoter repeats are genetically and functionally distinct. Our data indicate that a short genomic repeat structure constitutes a novel core promoter element, coincides with human evolution, and contributes to the pathogenesis of AD.
A cross-level verification methodology for digital IPs augmented with embedded timing monitors

Smart systems implement the leading technology advances in the context of embedded devices. Current design methodologies are not suitable to deal with tightly interacting subsystems of different technological domains, namely analog, digital, discrete and power devices, MEMS and power sources. The effects of interaction between components and with the environment must be modeled and simulated at system level to achieve high performance. Focusing on the digital domain, additional design constraints have to be considered as a result of the integration of multi-domain subsystems in a single device. The main digital design challenges, combined with those emerging from the heterogeneous nature of the whole system, directly impact on performance and on propagation delay of the digital component. This paper proposes a design approach to enhance the RTL model of a given digital component for the integration in smart systems, and a methodology to verify the added features at system-level. The design approach consists of augmenting the RTL model through the automatic insertion of delay sensors, which can detect and correct timing failures. The augmented model is abstracted to SystemC TLM and, then, mutants (i.e., code mutations for emulating timing failures) are automatically injected into the model. Experimental results demonstrate the applicability of the proposed design and verification methodology and the effectiveness of the simulation performance.
The Budding Yeast Cdc48Shp1 Complex Promotes Cell Cycle Progression by Positive Regulation of Protein Phosphatase 1 (Glc7)

The conserved, ubiquitin-selective AAA ATPase Cdc48 regulates numerous cellular processes including protein quality control, DNA repair and the cell cycle. Cdc48 function is tightly controlled by a multitude of cofactors mediating substrate specificity and processing. The UBX domain protein Shp1 is a bona fide substrate-recruiting cofactor of Cdc48 in the budding yeast S. cerevisiae. Even though Shp1 has been proposed to be a positive regulator of Glc7, the catalytic subunit of protein phosphatase 1 in S. cerevisiae, its cellular functions in complex with Cdc48 remain largely unknown. Here we show that deletion of the SHP1 gene results in severe growth defects and a cell cycle delay at the metaphase to anaphase transition caused by reduced Glc7 activity. Using an engineered Cdc48 binding-deficient variant of Shp1, we establish the Cdc48Shp1 complex as a critical regulator of mitotic Glc7 activity. We demonstrate that shp1 mutants possess a perturbed balance of Glc7 phosphatase and Ipl1 (Aurora B) kinase activities and show that hyper-phosphorylation of the kinetochore protein Dam1, a key mitotic substrate of Glc7 and Ipl1, is a critical defect in shp1. We also show for the first time a physical interaction between Glc7 and Shp1 in vivo. Whereas loss of Shp1 does not significantly affect Glc7 protein levels or localization, it causes reduced binding of the activator protein Glc8 to Glc7. Our data suggest that the Cdc48Shp1 complex controls Glc7 activity by regulating its interaction with Glc8 and possibly further regulatory subunits.
Complexity-reduced adaptive opportunistic spatial division multiple access for downlink with close-loop control

Future wireless communication systems are required to support extremely high speed packet data transmission. Multiple antennas and multi-user packet scheduling are two promising techniques to achieve this target with limited available spectrum resource in PHY layer and MAC layer, respectively. One interesting synergy of these two is the opportunistic beamforming method proposed in [1]. Unlike traditional deterministic beamforming method where the beams are generated pointing to a designated user, beams are generated randomly in opportunistic beamforming method. By reporting the resultant channel gain, one user who opportunistically fall into the main lobe will be scheduled. However, the original method only generates one random beam so that large part of spatial resource is wasted. Later in [2], the author proposed to generate multiple random beams so that opportunistic spatial division multiple access (SDMA) is possible. However, there are always nT number of scheduled users which is not necessary optimal due to variation of channel condition. On the other hand, the adaptive method proposed in [3] can properly adjust the number of scheduled users, however, with large amount of feedback information. This paper propose a new complex reduced adaptive method by utilization of time-correlation of resultant fading channel. In particular, the number of scheduled users will be tuned by a close-loop control procedure between the base station and mobile users over different scheduling intervals. Simulation results show that proposed method can perform quite close to optimal method with tremendous reduction of feedback information.
Computing stabilized norms for quantum operations via the theory of completely bounded maps

The diamond and completely bounded norms for linear maps play an increasingly important role in quantum information science, providing fundamental stabilized distance measures for differences of quantum operations. Based on the theory of completely bounded maps, we formulate an algorithm to compute the norm of an arbitrary linear map. We present an implementation of the algorithm via Maple, discuss its efficiency, and consider the case of differences of unitary maps.
Development of a Simulator for the FIFA World Cup 2014

In this paper, a probabilistic simulator for the upcoming FIFA World Cup is developed. For that, we develop a simulation model that can predict the outcome of a match by calculating a win expectancy for both participating teams based on several rules, that take into account dierent rating methods and can be arbitrarily weighted and combined by the user. The process of deriving the rules’ formulae, if not available, from historical FIFA World Cup matches is described as well as the methods for calculating the probability for a draw and the expected number of goals in a match. Further, the resulting application, which does not only include the program to run the simulation, but also a web front end and a back end, which allow straight-forward user interaction with the simulator, is described.
Transferable Discriminative Dimensionality Reduction

In transfer learning scenarios, previous discriminative dimensionality reduction methods tend to perform poorly owing to the difference between source and target distributions. In such cases, it is unsuitable to only consider discrimination in the low-dimensional source latent space since this would generalize badly to target domains. In this paper, we propose a new dimensionality reduction method for transfer learning scenarios, which is called transferable discriminative dimensionality reduction (TDDR). By resolving an objective function that encourages the separation of the domain-merged data and penalizes the distance between source and target distributions, we can find a low-dimensional latent space which guarantees not only the discrimination of projected samples, but also the transferability to enable later classification or regression models constructed in the source domain to generalize well to the target domain. In the experiments, we firstly analyze the perspective of transfer learning in brain-computer interface (BCI) research and then test TDDR on two real datasets from BCI applications. The experimental results show that the TDDR method can learn a low-dimensional latent feature space where the source models can perform well in the target domain.
Is XML-Based Test Case Prioritization for Validating WS-BPEL Evolution Effective in Both Average and Adverse Scenarios?

In real life, a tester can only afford to apply one test case prioritization technique to one test suite against a service-oriented workflow application once in the regression testing of the application, even if it results in an adverse scenario such that the actual performance in the test session is far below the average. It is unclear whether the factors of test case prioritization techniques known to be significant in terms of average performance can be extrapolated to adverse scenarios. In this paper, we examine whether such a factor or technique may consistently affect the rate of fault detection in both the average and adverse scenarios. The factors studied include prioritization strategy, artifacts to provide coverage data, ordering direction of a strategy, and the use of executable and non-executable artifacts. The results show that only a minor portion of the 10 studied techniques, most of which are based on the iterative strategy, are consistently effective in both average and adverse scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first piece of empirical evidence regarding the consistency in the effectiveness of test case prioritization techniques and factors of service-oriented workflow applications between average and adverse scenarios.
Development of speech synthesis simulation system and study of timing between articulation and vocal fold vibration for consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/

This paper describes development of an articulatory speech synthesis system using a transmission line model. A speech synthesis method that simulates speech production process has a potential to produce human-like speech. However, there are many parameters to be set such as vocal tract area functions and timing between articulatory movement and vocal fold vibration. A simulation system that allows us to evaluate the effects of related parameters on synthesized speech provides us with useful information on adequate values for the related parameters. In this paper, therefore, an articulatory speech synthesis system with graphical user interface (GUI) has been developed to overcome the difficulty in setting control parameters. The system is based on the speech synthesizer proposed by Sondhi and Schroeter. In the synthesizer, the two-mass model of the vocal folds proposed by Ishizaka and Flanagan is used to produce the glottal source. This paper focuses on producing of stop consonants such as /p/, /t/ and /k/. The GUI-based simulation system has been developed in Java language in order to investigate relative timing between articulation and vocal fold vibration. First, area functions for /p/, /t/ and /k/ were studied by evaluating transfer functions for acoustic tubes as vocal tract shapes, because the difference of frequency range of energy distribution among these consonants is one of important cues. Secondly, relative timing between the events of articulation and vocal fold vibration was studied by evaluating its effects on the synthesized speech from the point of view of voice onset time (VOT). The simulation results showed adequate ranges between both the events for producing successful consonant sounds /p/, /t/ and /k/. Moreover, these results allow us to utilize the timing information for improving the simulation system having an automatic adjustment function for setting related parameters.
Performance analysis of the disk subsystem

An important performance measure in client/server systems is the response time. Response time is generally limited by how fast data is retrieved from the underlying storage system. The storage system performance is especially limiting in I/O intensive applications, where the response time is of critical concern. Therefore, there is a need to model the performance of disk subsystem in the early stages of its design as well as during its execution, so that a better configuration is achieved. This research analyzes the performance of disk storage subsystems by obtaining metrics such as response time and throughput. The mechanics of a single disk is studied in detail. Analytical service time moment equations are derived, and the results are compared against the Disksim*. As far as we know, the analytical approach presented is the only one close enough to represent Disksim results. The analytical model used for the single disk is further extended to be used in RAID I system time approximations. In a typical client/server environment, arrivals to the disk subsystem are departures from the server CPU. Therefore, the Markovian arrival assumption to the disk subsystem, as was made in the early work of [Xiong06] needs to be improved by a more general arrival process. Here, this is done by expressing the interarrival times observed between two disk arrivals mathematically, which then enables us to compute its first and second moments. A phase-type distribution is used to model this general arrival process and to carry out a queueing analysis to compute a set of performance measures. GI/G/1 queueing analysis of the system is done, and performance metrics such as the average waiting time at the disk queue, as well as the average number of requests waiting are found. The results are compared against the results our simulator, which is fine-tuned and statistically proven to represent the Disksim behavior. It is shown that the accuracy of the proposed approximation is highly acceptable. Finally, different request scheduling algorithms are analyzed and compared with the one we have proposed. *Disksim is a simulator developed at the University of Michigan and enhanced at the CMU.
Examining Differences in Examinee Performance in Paper and Pencil and Computerized Testing

The study evaluated the comparability of two versions of a certification test: a paper-and-pencil test (PPT) and computer-based test (CBT). An effect size measure known as Cohen’s d and differential item functioning (DIF) analyses were used as measures of comparability at the test and item levels, respectively. Results indicated that the effect sizes were small ( d p > 0.05), suggesting no substantial difference between the two test versions. Moreover, DIF analysis revealed that reading and mathematics items were comparable for both versions. However, three writing items were flagged for DIF. Substantive reviews failed to identify format differences that could explain the performance differences, so the causes of DIF could not be identified.
Distance based clustering of association rules

Association rule mining is one of the most important procedures in data mining. In industry applications, often more than 10,000 rules are discovered. To allow manual insepection and support knowledge discovery the number of rules has to be reduced significantly by techniques such as pruning or grouping. In this paper, we present a new normalized distance metric to group association rules. Based on these distances, an agglomerative clustering algoritm is used to cluster the rules. Also the rules are embedded in a vector space by multi-dimensional scaling and clustered using a self organizing feature map. The results are combined for visualization. We compare various distance measures and illustrate subjective and objective cluster purity on results obtained from real data-sets.