Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Idioms in Context: The IDIX Corpus

Idioms and other figuratively used expressions pose considerable problems to natural language processing applications because they are very frequent and often behave idiosyncratically. Consequently, there has been much research on the automatic detection and extraction of idiomatic expressions. Most studies focus on type-based idiom detection, i.e., distinguishing whether a given expression can (potentially) be used idiomatically. However, many expressions such as ""break the ice"" can have both literal and non-literal readings and need to be disambiguated in a given context (token-based detection). So far relatively few approaches have attempted context-based idiom detection. One reason for this may be that few annotated resources are available that disambiguate expressions in context. With the IDIX corpus, we aim to address this. IDIX is available as an add-on to the BNC and disambiguates different usages of a subset of idioms. We believe that this resource will be useful both for linguistic and computational linguistic studies.
The Basic Effects of Atmosphere–Ocean Thermal Coupling on Midlatitude Variability*

Abstract Starting from the assumption that the atmosphere is the primary source of variability internal to the midlatitude atmosphere–ocean system on intraseasonal to interannual timescales, the authors construct a simple stochastically forced, one-dimensional, linear, coupled energy balance model. The coupled system is then dissected into partially coupled and uncoupled systems in order to quantify the effects of coupling. The simplicity of the model allows for analytic evaluation of many quantities of interest, including power spectra, total variance, lag covariance between atmosphere and ocean, and surface flux spectra. The model predicts that coupling between the atmosphere and ocean in the midlatitudes will enhance the variance in both media and will decrease the energy flux between the atmosphere and the ocean. The model also demonstrates that specification of historical midlatitude sea surface temperature anomalies as a boundary condition for an atmospheric model will not generally lead to a correc.
HCN channels enhance spike phase coherence and regulate the phase of spikes and LFPs in the theta-frequency range

Significance The impact of the pacemaking hyperpolarization-activated cyclic-nucleotide–gated (HCN) channels on local field potentials (LFP) has not been analyzed. Here, employing a neuropil of several morphologically precise hippocampal neuronal models that received systematically randomized rhythmic synaptic inputs, we demonstrate that HCN channels alter the phase, but not the amplitude, of LFPs. Further, it is known that the spike timings of individual neurons follow the beat of the LFPs and fire at precise phases of the LFP beat. We demonstrate that the presence of HCN channels alters this phase and enhances the precision to which the spikes follow the LFP beat. These results unveil several important roles for HCN channels, extending their regulatory potential beyond single-neuron physiology. What are the implications for the existence of subthreshold ion channels, their localization profiles, and plasticity on local field potentials (LFPs)? Here, we assessed the role of hyperpolarization-activated cyclic-nucleotide–gated (HCN) channels in altering hippocampal theta-frequency LFPs and the associated spike phase. We presented spatiotemporally randomized, balanced theta-modulated excitatory and inhibitory inputs to somatically aligned, morphologically realistic pyramidal neuron models spread across a cylindrical neuropil. We computed LFPs from seven electrode sites and found that the insertion of an experimentally constrained HCN-conductance gradient into these neurons introduced a location-dependent lead in the LFP phase without significantly altering its amplitude. Further, neurons fired action potentials at a specific theta phase of the LFP, and the insertion of HCN channels introduced large lags in this spike phase and a striking enhancement in neuronal spike-phase coherence. Importantly, graded changes in either HCN conductance or its half-maximal activation voltage resulted in graded changes in LFP and spike phases. Our conclusions on the impact of HCN channels on LFPs and spike phase were invariant to changes in neuropil size, to morphological heterogeneity, to excitatory or inhibitory synaptic scaling, and to shifts in the onset phase of inhibitory inputs. Finally, we selectively abolished the inductive lead in the impedance phase introduced by HCN channels without altering neuronal excitability and found that this inductive phase lead contributed significantly to changes in LFP and spike phase. Our results uncover specific roles for HCN channels and their plasticity in phase-coding schemas and in the formation and dynamic reconfiguration of neuronal cell assemblies.
Towards an Evidence-Based Understanding of Electronic Data Sources

Systematic Literature Reviews and Systematic Mapping Studies are relatively new forms of secondary studies in software engineering. Identifying relevant papers from various Electronic Data Sources (EDS) is one of the key activities of conducting these kinds of studies. Hence, the selection of EDS for searching the potentially relevant papers is an important decision, which can affect a study's coverage of relevant papers. Researchers usually select EDS mainly based on personal knowledge, experience, and preferences and/or recommendations by other researchers. We believe that building an evidence-based understanding of EDS can enable researchers to make more informed decisions about the selection of EDS. This paper reports our initial effort towards this end. We propose an initial set of metrics for characterizing the EDS from the perspective of the needs of secondary studies. We explain the usage and benefits of the proposed metrics using the data gathered from two secondary studies. We also tried to synthesize the data from the two studies and that from literature to provide initial evidence-based heuristics for EDS selection.
The Structure of the Bacterial Oxidoreductase Enzyme DsbA in Complex with a Peptide Reveals a Basis for Substrate Specificity in the Catalytic Cycle of DsbA Enzymes*

Oxidative protein folding in Gram-negative bacteria results in the formation of disulfide bonds between pairs of cysteine residues. This is a multistep process in which the dithiol-disulfide oxidoreductase enzyme, DsbA, plays a central role. The structure of DsbA comprises an all helical domain of unknown function and a thioredoxin domain, where active site cysteines shuttle between an oxidized, substrate-bound, reduced form and a DsbB-bound form, where DsbB is a membrane protein that reoxidizes DsbA. Most DsbA enzymes interact with a wide variety of reduced substrates and show little specificity. However, a number of DsbA enzymes have now been identified that have narrow substrate repertoires and appear to interact specifically with a smaller number of substrates. The transient nature of the DsbA-substrate complex has hampered our understanding of the factors that govern the interaction of DsbA enzymes with their substrates. Here we report the crystal structure of a complex between Escherichia coli DsbA and a peptide with a sequence derived from a substrate. The binding site identified in the DsbA-peptide complex was distinct from that observed for DsbB in the DsbA-DsbB complex. The structure revealed details of the DsbA-peptide interaction and suggested a mechanism by which DsbA can simultaneously show broad specificity for substrates yet exhibit specificity for DsbB. This mode of binding was supported by solution nuclear magnetic resonance data as well as functional data, which demonstrated that the substrate specificity of DsbA could be modified via changes at the binding interface identified in the structure of the complex.
A meta-model for automatic modeling dynamic web applications

This paper proposes an approach to automatically transform source code of a web application into an abstraction model. A Web Application Program Dependency (WAPD) meta-model is being proposed to store dependency information based on a multi-tiered architecture, corresponding to web application’s behavior. A WebParseTree is used as an intermediate model for the transformation from the source code to the WAPD model. The WebParseTree is a DOM-like tree that consists of statements and dependencies stored information and behavior in the tree. To ensure that the resulting model is valid, it must conform to the defined web application rules. This validation step can be done automatically by a constraint validator using Object Constraint Language (OCL). The WAPD model will be represented as a generic model for web applications which can be used for many purposes such as automatic test case generation and automatic code transformation.
PMM-SA: A performance monitor model for the large-scale system area network

As the high-speed network environments become increasingly complex, how to effectively monitor large-scale network traffic, how to find the network performance bottlenecks and the potential failure, and how to gain the network performance optimization have emerged as important research topics. This paper presents a network performance monitor model called NPM, which uses a hierarchical structure with better scalability to the large-scale system area network. Through taking various factors into account, the paper also proposes the assessment model of the network health, on the basis of which an adaptive multi-thread performance monitoring method is proposed further. Finally the paper verifies the model and the method by testing and analyzing the network performance in accordance with the real traffic in some system area network.
Online unsupervised pattern discovery in speech using parallelization

Segmental dynamic time warping (DTW) has been demonstrated to be a useful technique for finding acoustic similarity scores between segments of two speech utterances. Due to its high computational requirements, it had to be computed in an offline manner, limiting the applications of the technique. In this paper, we present results of parallelization of this task by distributing the workload in either a static or dynamic way on an 8-processor cluster and discuss the trade-offs among different distribution schemes. We show that online unsupervised pattern discovery using segmental DTW is plausible with as low as 8 processors. This brings the task within reach of today's general purpose multi-core servers. We also show results on a 32-processor system, and discuss factors affecting scalability of our methods.
Evolution of image filters on graphics processor units using Cartesian Genetic Programming

Graphics processor units are fast, inexpensive parallel computing devices. Recently there has been great interest in harnessing this power for various types of scientific computation, including genetic programming. In previous work, we have shown that using the graphics processor provides dramatic speed improvements over a standard CPU in the context of fitness evaluation. In this work, we use Cartesian Genetic Programming to generate shader programs that implement image filter operations. Using the GPU, we can rapidly apply these programs to each pixel in an image and evaluate the performance of a given filter. We show that we can successfully evolve noise removal filters that produce better image quality than a standard median filter.
UMass at TREC 2002: Cross Language and Novelty Tracks

Abstract : The University of Massachusetts participated in the cross-language and novelty tracks this year. The cross-language submission was characterized by combination of evidence to merge results from two different retrieval engines and a variety of different resources - stemmers, dictionaries, machine translation, and an acronym database. We found that proper names were extremely important in this year's queries. For the novelty track, we applied variants of techniques that have been employed for other problems. In addition, we created additional training data by manually annotating 48 additional topics.
Evaluation of Periodicals Journals and Community of Medical Sciences in Iran

Background: Medical journals are scientific resources where utilization of knowledge is availed and create an environment of competitiveness. To speed up the growth and increase scientific production and in order that the rank of Iranian journals be defined regionally and globally, journal standardization is necessary. This study was done to evaluate the country’s medical journals from 2004–2006. Methods: This is a descriptive/analytical study. Evaluation was based on the following; scientific credibility, registry and year of service, journal management, technical quality and accessibility. The number of journals evaluated during 2004–2006 were 86, 103 and 93, respectively and the process involved 3 phases 1) defining the journal’s structural indicators and designing the evaluation form 2) collection, sharing and final confirmation of information with the publication staff 3) data entry, analysis and ranking Results: Improvement and growth of publication depends largely on 5 parameters and its development were based on the following; publication management (61.62 points), scientific credibility (43.80 points), quality of accessing the journals (37.05 points), quality of publication (14.80 points) and registry and year of service (0.02 points). Based on the study, an upward developmental trend of the country’s medical journals can be seen and the tools were sufficient in terms of validity and reliability. A revised and more comprehensive checklist that would evaluate all aspects of a publication basing on latest indicators is developed. Conclusion: Evaluations of the country’s medical journals not only promote compliance to international standards but also led to more indexing of journals in accredited international indices.
Obesity and metabolic syndrome as related to cardiovascular disease

The metabolic syndrome (MetS) constitutes a multifaceted disorder, including obesity, dyslipidemia, hyperglycemia and hypertension, associated with an increased propensity towards cardiovascular disease (CVD). Besides this, accumulating data suggest the involvement of nontraditional, novel, cardiovascular risk factors in MetS. Among them, insulin resistance seems to possess a predominant role in MetS-related CVD in obese patients. Furthermore, adipose tissue fatty acid metabolism, increased incidence of oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction, and excessive production of adipocyte derivatives, known as adipokines, have all been proposed to contribute to the pathogenesis of CVD in obese patients with MetS. Lifestyle interventions, such as weight loss and increased physical activity, have long been the cornerstone for the treatment of obesity-related disorders. With the exception of obesity, pharmaceutical interventions targeting each disorder of MetS have yielded considerable improvement in cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The long-term management of obesity and its complications seems promising but requires further investigation.
Xanthine Oxidoreductase Is Involved in Macrophage Foam Cell Formation and Atherosclerosis Development

Objective—Hyperuricemia is common in patients with metabolic syndrome. We investigated the role of xanthine oxidoreductase (XOR) in atherosclerosis development, and the effects of the XOR inhibitor allopurinol on this process. Methods and Results—Oral administration of allopurinol to ApoE knockout mice markedly ameliorated lipid accumulation and calcification in the aorta and aortic root. In addition, allopurinol treatment or siRNA-mediated gene knockdown of XOR suppressed transformation of J774.1 murine macrophage cells, treated with acetylated LDL or very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) into foam cells. This inhibitory effect of allopurinol was also observed in primary cultured human macrophages. In contrast, overexpression of XOR promoted transformation of J774.1 cells into foam cells. Interestingly, SR-A1, SR-B1, SR-B II, and VLDL receptors in J774.1 cells were reduced by XOR knockdown, and increased by XOR overexpression. Conversely, expressions of ABCA1 and ABCG1 were increased by XOR knockdown and suppressed by XOR overexpression. Finally, productions of inflammatory cytokines accompanied by foam cell formation were also reduced by allopurinol administration. Conclusion—These results strongly suggest XOR activity and/or its expression level to contribute to macrophage foam cell formation. Thus, XOR inhibitors may be useful for preventing atherosclerosis.
Design principles for developing stream processing applications

Stream processing applications are used to ingest, process, and analyze continuous data streams from heterogeneous sources of live and stored data, generating streams of output results. These applications are, in many cases, complex, large‐scale, low‐latency, and distributed in nature. In this paper, we describe the design principles and architectural underpinnings for stream processing applications. These principles are distilled from our experience in building real‐world applications both for internal use as well as with customers from several industrial and academic domains. We provide principles, guidelines, as well as appropriate implementation examples to highlight the different aspects of stream processing application design and development. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Automatic Labeling of Lane Markings for Autonomous Vehicles

As autonomous vehicles become more popular, there is an increasing need to reduce the cost of the expensive equipment outfitted on each car. Traditional sensors for autonomous vehicles include an expensive lidar ( ̃$70,000) to accurately determine depth near the car. Generally, if the equipment is damaged, the only solution is to purchase another. In this project I will build a system to automatically label highway lane markings. These labels will be used to train a deep neural network that will be able to predict lanes using images from inexpensive cameras. Removing the lidar completely from autonomous vehicles is beyond the scope of a quarter-long project. Future projects can use my system to label cars, road signs, and other obstacles in the road as inputs to other machine learning systems. Existing solutions to this problem such as the Mobileye Lane Departure Warning System are effective at a range of only 30 meters [3]. My goal is to predict lane markings beyond that. I will combine data collected from a Velodyne lidar (HDL-32E), HDR video streams, and a high precision GPS and build a large dataset of labeled lane markings. Eventually this data will be used to train a neural network which will predict lanes from only photos.
Techniques to estimate the instantaneous frequency with an aim of diagnosis induction machines faults

In this work we present a new techniques to detect a mechanical faults in asynchronous machines by exploiting the instantaneous frequencies estimated starting from an accelerometer sensor, optical encoder and stator current. Bearing damages cause a torque oscillations as well as a disturbance in the velocity signal which can be detected by a mechanical measurements. These fluctuations will be reflected on the stator currents and cause a phase modulation. Where, the idea to exploit the instantaneous frequency in order to find informations related to the defect. An experimental data were used to verify the validity of the different techniques. Data were collected through an accelerometer sensor to measure the mechanical vibrations, an optical encoder fixed on rotor shaft and by electrical measurements. The results, in presence of natural raceway bearing fault, illustrate the very good performance of the proposed methods.
Mosaicing with Parallax using Time Warping

2D image alignment methods are applied successfully for mosaicing aerial images, but fail when the camera moves in a 3D scene. Such methods can not handle 3D parallax, resulting in distorted mosaicing. General egomotion methods are slow, and do not have the robustness of 2D alignment methods. We propose to use the x-y-t space-time volume as a tool for depth invariant mosaicing. When the camera moves on a straight line in the x direction, a y-t slice of the space-time volume is a panoramic mosaic, while a x-t slice is an EPI plane. Time warping, which is a resampling of the t axix, is used to form straight feature lines in the EPI planes. This process will simultaneously give best panoramic mosaic in the y-t slices. This approach is as robust as 2D alignment methods, while giving depth invariant motion ("ego motion"). Extensions for two dimensional camera motion on a plane are also described, with applications for 2D mosaicing, and for image based rendering such as "light field".
Exploring the process of attending a reflective practice group during training: A preliminary grounded theory study of qualified clinical psychologists’ experiences

Section A: This section critically considers reflective practice definitions, conceptualisations and implementation within dominant theoretical models. The value and limitations of the favoured method for developing reflective capacities in clinical psychology training, the reflective practice group (RPG), are described. Group theory and the current empirical evidence base for RPGs within counsellor and clinical psychology training are critically considered and future research is suggested. Section B: This section presents a preliminary grounded theory study of qualified clinical psychologists’ experiences of attending a reflective practice group during training. Reflective practice has become implicit within the clinical psychology profession; there is a lack however of empirical research on the methods through which reflective capacities are developed in trainees. This study aimed to build upon earlier research by Knight et al. (2010), which investigated the impact of reflective practice groups (RPG) whilst training, through further qualitative exploration of the mechanisms of experience related to participants perceiving the RPG as valuable and the role of distressing experiences. Eleven qualified clinical psychologists from a UK training programme who had previously (Knight el al. 2010) been categorised into 1 of 4 factor groups based on level of perceived value and distress (e.g. high value-low distress), took part in semi-structured interviews. Grounded theory methodology informed the data collection and analysis. A preliminary interactional map of experience was constructed from the data and five categories were important in understanding how the groups were perceived as valuable in the context of varying distress levels: ‘negotiating the unknown’; ‘managing emotion’; ‘negotiating the development of self-awareness’; ‘negotiating the reciprocal impact of others’; and ‘reflection-on-reflection’. It was recommended that training programmes should consider: trainee expectations; approach and motivation; the dual-relationships within groups/cohort; and facilitator style in offering RPGs. Recommendations were made for future research to attempt to match trainee personal learning style with appropriate reflective development methods, to build an evidence base for reflective practice methods generally and to establish the benefits of reflection for clinical practice. Section C: This section presents a critical appraisal of the study undertaken in relation to 4 stipulated questions. Learning outcomes and future research skill development needs are considered, limitations of the study and proposed retrospective changes are highlighted and the impact on practice is considered. Finally suggestions for future research are elaborated upon.