Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Empirical Acquisition of Differentiating Relations from Definitions

This paper describes a new automatic approach for extracting conceptual distinctions from dictionary definitions. A broad-coverage dependency parser is first used to extract the lexical relations from the definitions. Then the relations are disambiguated using associations learned from tagged corpora. This contrasts with earlier approaches using manually developed rules for disambiguation.
Avoid violence, rioting, and outrage; approach celebration, delight, and strength: Using large text corpora to compute valence, arousal, and the basic emotions

Ever since Aristotle discussed the issue in Book II of his Rhetoric, humans have attempted to identify a set of “basic emotion labels”. In this paper we propose an algorithmic method for evaluating sets of basic emotion labels that relies upon computed co-occurrence distances between words in a 12.7-billion-word corpus of unselected text from USENET discussion groups. Our method uses the relationship between human arousal and valence ratings collected for a large list of words, and the co-occurrence similarity between each word and emotion labels. We assess how well the words in each of 12 emotion label sets—proposed by various researchers over the past 118 years—predict the arousal and valence ratings on a test and validation dataset, each consisting of over 5970 items. We also assess how well these emotion labels predict lexical decision residuals (LDRTs), after co-varying out the effects attributable to basic lexical predictors. We then demonstrate a generalization of our method to determine the most predictive “basic” emotion labels from among all of the putative models of basic emotion that we considered. As well as contributing empirical data towards the development of a more rigorous definition of basic emotions, our method makes it possible to derive principled computational estimates of emotionality—specifically, of arousal and valence—for all words in the language.
Tumor necrosis factor inhibitors added to nonbiological immunosuppressants vs. nonbiological immunosuppressants alone: a different signal of cancer risk according to the condition. A disproportionality analysis in a nationwide pharmacovigilance database

We aimed at detecting a signal of an increased risk of cancer in patients treated with TNF inhibitor (TNFi) and nonbiological immunosuppressant (NBIS), compared with NBIS alone for autoimmune diseases. Secondly, we aimed at comparing this risk between the different TNFis. We conducted a disproportionality analysis (case/noncase study) from the French National PharmacoVigilance Database. We selected all the reports of serious adverse drug reactions from 2000 to 2010 in patients treated with NBIS for labeled indications of TNFi. Cases were all the reports of cancer that occurred after a minimal 3‐month exposure to NBIS. Noncases were all the other reports. We searched for exposure to TNFi and calculated reporting odds ratios (RORs), stratified by condition and type of cancer and adjusted by age, gender, history of cancer, type of NBIS and year of reporting. Of the 1918 reports included in the study population, 217 were cases (135 solid and 82 blood cancers). A safety signal was found in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) (ROR: 5.43, 95% CI[3.52–8.38]) particularly for nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) (20.17[2.49–163.36]), and in psoriasis/psoriatic arthritis (3.45[1.09–10.92]). No signal was found in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and ankylosing spondylitis, whatever the type of cancer. There was no difference between TNFis. This study puts the argument of an increased risk of cancer (particularly NMSC) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis exposed to TNFi and NBIS compared with NBIS alone, but not in IBD and ankylosing spondylitis patients. No signal was detected for melanoma potentially related to the lack of power. The signal seems similar whatever the TNFi.
Sensor-based probabilistic roadmaps: experiments with an eye-in-hand system

We present a real implemented eye-in-hand test-bed system for sensor-based collision-free motion planning for articulated robot arms. The system consists of a PUMA 560 with a triangulation-based area-scan laser range finder (the eye) mounted on its wrist. The framework for our planning approach is inspired by recent motion planning research for the classical model-based case (known environment) and incrementally builds a roadmap that represents the connectivity of the free configuration space, as the robot senses the physical environment. We present some experimental results with our sensor-based planner running on this real test-bed. The robot is started in completely unknown and cluttered environments. Typically, the planner is able to reach (planning as it senses) the goal configuration in about 7-25 scans (depending on the scene complexity), while avoiding collisions with the obstacles throughout.
Decision Directed Channel Estimation for OFDM Systems Employing Fast Data Projection Method Algorithm

In this paper we propose a Fast Data Projection Method (FDPM)-based Channel Impulse Response (CIR) estimator of a Decision Directed Channel Estimation (DDCE) scheme for OFDM system. The proposed algorithm is employed in the context of a more realistic channel condition, the Fractionally Spaced (FS)-CIR based channel model. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with an earlier proposed deflated Projection Approximation Subspace Tracking (PASTd) algorithm. It is found from the simulation results that the FDPM-based DDCE outperformed the PASTd-based DDCE.
Inflammatory Arthritis in Patients With Myelodysplastic Syndromes

AbstractWe describe the characteristics and outcome of inflammatory arthritis in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in a French multicenter retrospective study.Twenty-two patients with MDS (median age, 77.5 yr [interquartile range, 69–81]; 10 women) were included. Inflammatory arthritis presented as polyarthritis in 17 cases (77%) and with symmetric involvement in 15 cases (68%). At diagnosis, the median disease activity score 28 based on C-reactive protein (DAS28-CRP) was 4.5 [2–6.5]. Two patients had anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPAs), and 1 had radiologic erosions. The median time between the diagnoses of arthritis and MDS was 10 months [6–42], with a median articular symptom duration of 3 months [2–8]. The diagnosis of both diseases was concomitant in 6 cases (27%); arthritis preceded MDS in 12 cases (55%), and occurred after MDS in 4 (18%). While the number of swollen and tender joints significantly decreased during follow-up, as did the median DAS28-CRP (from 4.3 [3.8–4.6] at baseline to 2.9 [1.75–3.3]; p < 0.05), CRP remained elevated (CRP >20 mg/L) in 8 patients (42%). Nevertheless, radiographic progression and new ACPA positivity were not observed during a median follow-up of 29 months [9–76]. While most of the patients were treated with steroids (n = 16) for arthritis, additional treatment was administered in only 4 patients (hydroxychloroquine, n = 2; sulfasalazine [Salazopyrin] and etanercept, n = 1, respectively). Eleven patients died during follow-up from acute myeloid leukemia (n = 5); infections (n = 3); or cerebral bleeding, cardiorespiratory failure, or undetermined cause (n = 1, respectively). Inflammatory arthritis associated with MDS can have various presentations and is often seronegative and nonerosive. Steroids alone are the most common treatment in MDS-associated arthritis, but that treatment is insufficient to control arthritis. Steroid-sparing strategies need to be identified.
Annotated checklist of the coastal ichthyofauna from Michoacán State, Mexico

Abstract This study is the first to complete an intensive and comprehensive list of the ichthyofauna of nearly all ecosystems of the Michoacán coast, Mexico. The resulting systematic checklist, supplemented with information from the literature and scientific collections, comprises 440 species belonging to two classes, 31 orders, 104 families, and 264 genera. The families with the highest number of species were Sciaenidae (30 spp.), Carangidae (26), Haemulidae (24), Serranidae (21), Paralichthyidae, and Gobiidae (13). Of the total species list, 134 represent first records for the Michoacán State, and one is a first record for Mexico. The results expand the number of known fish species of the Michoacán coast by almost one third and will help to develop conservation and management plans for this coastal zone.
Characterization of UC781-Tenofovir Combination Gel Products for HIV-1 Infection Prevention in an Ex Vivo Ectocervical Model

ABSTRACT HIV continues to be a problem worldwide. Topical vaginal microbicides represent one option being evaluated to stop the spread of HIV. With drug candidates that have a specific action against HIV now being studied, it is important that, when appropriate and based on the mechanism of action, the drug permeates the tissue so that it can be delivered to specific targets which reside there. Novel formulations of the nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor tenofovir (TFV) and the nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor UC781 have been developed and evaluated here. Gels with three distinct rheological properties were prepared. The three gels released both UC781 and TFV under in vitro conditions at concentrations equal to or above the reported 50% effective concentrations (EC50s). The drug concentrations in ectocervical tissues were well in excess of the reported EC50s. The gels maintain ectocervical viability and prevent infection of ectocervical explants after a HIV-1 challenge. This study successfully demonstrates the feasibility of using this novel combination of antiretroviral agents in an aqueous gel as an HIV infection preventative.
A SAT-based polynomial space algorithm for answer set programming

The relation between answer set programming (ASP) and propositional satisfiability (SAT) is at the center of many research papers, partly because of the tremendous performance boost of SAT solvers during last years. Various translations from ASP to SAT are known but the resulting SAT formula either includes many new variables or may have an unpractical size. There are also well known results showing a one-to-one correspondence between the answer sets of a logic program and the models of its completion. Unfortunately, these results only work for specific classes of problems. In this paper we present a SAT-Based decision procedure for answer set programming that (i) deals with any (non disjunctive) logic program, (ii) works on a SAT formula without additional variables, and (iii) is guaranteed to work in polynomial space. Further, our procedure can be extended to compute all the answer sets still working in polynomial space. The experimental results of a prototypical implementation show that the approach can pay off sometimes by orders of magnitude when computing one solution, and it is competitive when computing all solutions.
Highly Conductive Nanocomposite Enabled by an Accordion-like Graphene Network for Flexible Heating Films and Supercapacitors

Graphene-reinforced polymer nanocomposites can have favorable electrical properties, making them promising in electromagnetic, electrochromic, and photovoltaic devices. Using graphene to fabricate nanocomposites with specific electrical properties requires that the dispersion of graphene in polymer matrix is well-controlled, which however remains a big challenge. Here, we propose two intriguing designs, that is, slightly oxidizing graphene sheets and hot drawing nanocomposites, resulting in a uniform, dense, and highly aligned graphene network. The achieved conductivity of nanocomposites is as high as 25 S m–1 at 6.25 wt % of graphene, which is 8 and 2 orders of magnitude higher than those of polymer matrix and nanocomposites without hot drawing, respectively. Furthermore, prototypes of heating films and flexible supercapacitors made of the highly conductive nanocomposites both exhibit high performance.
A System for Interpretation of Line Drawings

A system for interpretation of images of paper-based line drawings is described. Since a typical drawing contains both text strings and graphics, an algorithm has been developed to locate and separate text strings of various font sizes, styles, and orientations. This is accomplished by applying the Hough transform to the centroids of connected components in the image. The graphics in the segmented image are processed to represent thin entities by their core-lines and thick objects by their boundaries. The core-lines and boundaries are segmented into straight line segments and curved lines. The line segments and their interconnections are analyzed to locate minimum redundancy loops which are adequate to generate a succinct description of the graphics. Such a description includes the location and attributes of simple polygonal shapes, circles, and interconnecting lines, and a description of the spatial relationships and occlusions among them. Hatching and filling patterns are also identified. The performance of the system is evaluated using several test images, and the results are presented. The superiority of these algorithms in generating meaningful interpretations of graphics, compared to conventional data compression schemes, is clear from these results. >
On a conjecture of Thomassen concerning subgraphs of large girth

In 1983 C. Thomassen conjectured that for every k, g∈ℕ there exists d such that any graph with average degree at least d contains a subgraph with average degree at least k and girth at least g. Kühn and Osthus [2004] proved the case g = 6. We give another proof for the case g = 6 which is based on a result of Füredi [1983] about hypergraphs. We also show that the analogous conjecture for directed graphs is true. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 67:316‐331,2011
Document page similarity based on layout visual saliency: application to query by example and document classification

In this paper we propose to define a measure of visualsimilarity to compare different pages in a corpus. Thismeasure is based on the analysis of the visual layoutsaliency of the page composition. This similarity iscomputed using both the document layout andcharacteristics of the text itself. The text characterizationuses statistical features derived from textural primitives.Our purpose is to establish perceptive links betweendocuments in order to facilitate their storage and theirretrieval. In this paper we present two possibleapplications of this measure of similarity: the query ofthe corpus by example and the documents classification.In the first application, we extract documents that are themost visually similar to a document, given as query. Inthe second application, the similarity measure is used toclassify the document under investigation using its visualsimilarity to a reference set of documents. Our test corpusis extracted from the Finland MTDB Oulu multi-genredatabase that provides a great diversity of page layoutsand contents.
Biomarkers of response to therapy in oesophago-gastric cancer

Cancer of the oesophagus, gastro-oesophageal junction (GOJ) and stomach remains a major health problem worldwide. The evidence base for the optimal management of patients with operable oesophago-gastric cancer is evolving. Accepted approaches include preoperative chemotherapy followed by surgery (oesophageal cancer), chemo-radiotherapy alone (oesophageal cancer) and perioperative chemotherapy (gastric and gastro-oesophageal adenocarcinomas). The underlying principles behind neoadjuvant therapy are to improve resectability of the tumour by tumour shrinkage/downstaging and to treat occult metastatic disease as early as possible. The response rate to cytotoxic therapy is about 40% in oesophago-gastric cancer. Available evidence suggests that a favourable histopathological response to cytotoxic therapy may be a useful positive predictive marker in oesophago-gastric cancer. However, the ability to predict tumour response in routine clinical practice is difficult and is an area of intense investigation. There is evolving evidence for the role of predictive biomarkers in cancer in general and oesophago-gastric cancer in particular. We provide an overview on the current status of radiological and biological predictive biomarkers. We have focussed on clinical translational investigations and, where appropriate, provided pre-clinical insights. Whether predictive markers will be routinely incorporated in clinical practice remains to be seen as biomarker research is expensive and the data generated from these investigations are complex. It is clear that a concerted international effort between academia and industry is critical if personalised medicine as a practical reality for our cancer patients is to be realised.
On the computational power of iterative auctions

We embark on a systematic analysis of the power and limitations of iterative combinatorial auctions. Most existing iterative combinatorial auctions are based on repeatedly suggesting prices for bundles of items, and querying the bidders for their "demand" under these prices. We prove a large number of results showing the boundaries of what can be achieved by auctions of this kind. We first focus on auctions that use a polynomial number of demand queries, and then we analyze the power of different kinds of ascending-price auctions.
Model of anti-Stokes cooling in a Yb-doped fiber

We use a comprehensive model of cooling by anti-Stokes fluorescence in a single-mode fiber that includes the effects of fiber loss, concentration quenching, mode profiles, and amplified spontaneous emission to analyze the trends of cooling in single-mode Yb-doped ZBLANP fibers. Simulations demonstrate that heat extraction varies significantly along the fiber. There is an optimum pump power (58 mW at 1015 nm for the modeled fiber) for which the maximum heat extracted per unit length is at the start of the fiber. Launching more power moves the coolest point further down the fiber. At substantially higher powers, ASE has a significant heating effect, and coupled with the heating due to absorptive loss, the entire fiber warms up. For a given fiber length, the total extracted heat is maximized for a different pump power (430 mW for a 20-m length). The temperature change is then negative along the entire fiber, and the total extracted heat is 7.12 mW (1.65% cooling efficiency). When the fiber absorptive loss is negligible, this value increases to 30.5 mW for a 2-W pump, giving a 3.48% cooling efficiency, only slightly below the quantum limit (3.7%). The optimum dopant concentration has a similar trade-off: the total extracted heat is maximized for a Yb concentration of 2 wt. %, and the cooling efficiency for 0.5 wt. %. A model of ASF cooling in fiber lasers is also described and exploited to investigate how to select the fiber laser parameters to extract the most power output from a radiation-balanced fiber laser. It shows that increasing the cavity length increases cooling at the expense of laser efficiency, and that a low output coupler reflectivity enhances ASF cooling. Simulations predict that a large-mode-area fiber laser should produce 12.7 W of output power at 63% efficiency, a performance limited by the fiber’s absorptive loss, the core diameter (30 μm), and concentration quenching.
Knowledge-Based Selection of Association Rules for Text Mining

A reoccuring problem in mining association rules is the selection of interesting association rules within the overall, and possibly huge set of extracted rules. The majority of previous work in this area relies on statistical methods for quality estimation and selection of association rules. However, strictly bottom-up approaches are oblivious of knowledge though knowledge may be available (e.g., provided by ontologies), and rule extraction may take advantage of it. In this paper, we conceive of the problem of selecting association rules as a classification task. A framework of a binary probabilistic classifier is introduced that uses ontologies in order to estimate whether and to which degree a rule expresses a mere taxonomic relationship. In so doing, selection of association rules (selection by elimination) is carried out by identifying and discarding trivial association rules.
Transmission control Protocol Performance Comparison using Piggyback Scheme in WLANs

The main problem at wireless networks is the overhe ad at MAC layer; when the data physical rate is increasing it causes increasing the overhead and de creasing at the MAC efficiency. In this study we st udy the performance comparison of TCP protocol in WLANs with and without using piggyback. The study of results concerning of implemented both mechanisms in NS2 simulator and find out the good performance from this comparison. Based on the results from our experiments show that the Piggyback scheme is one of the efficient ways to reduce the overhead at MAC wi reless networks.
Empathy in virtual learning environments

How do we engage teachers and learners in the learning process and what are the benefits of this? How do we get students to learn? Many academic institutions of all levels are asking these questions. Throughout the years new teaching methodologies and strategies have been explored and applied (Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Dewey, 1997). In assessments of these, some have been associated with improving the targeted students' levels of knowledge, understanding, functionality and motivations (Gulbahar and Tinmaz, 2006; Kjellin and Stenfors, 2003). In this study we review a variety of teaching methodologies and introduce a research hypothesis that these methodologies have an unlike potential for supporting empathic aspects of the teacher and learner relationship and that, further, Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) will have strong potential for empathic support. We set up an evaluation framework using a qualitative approach to examine the empathic factor in VLEs. Finally, we identify design factors for VLEs that could impact learning and suggest these as the focus for future study.
Effects of Withania somnifera and Tinospora cordifolia Extracts on the Side Population Phenotype of Human Epithelial Cancer Cells

Recent reports suggest the existence of a subpopulation of stem-like cancer cells, termed as cancer stem cells (CSCs), which bear functional and phenotypic resemblance with the adult, tissue-resident stem cells. Side population (SP) assay based on differential efflux of Hoechst 33342 has been effectively used for the isolation of CSCs. The drug resistance properties of SP cells are typically due to the increased expression of ABC transporters leading to drug efflux. Conventionally used chemotherapeutic drugs may often leads to an enrichment of SP, revealing their inability to target the drug-resistant SP and CSCs. Thus, identification of agents that can reduce the SP phenotype is currently in vogue in cancer therapeutics. Withania somnifera (WS) and Tinospora cordifolia (TC) have been used in Ayurveda for treating various diseases, including cancer. In the current study, we have investigated the effects of ethanolic (ET) extracts of WS and TC on the cancer SP phenotype. Interestingly, we found significant decrease in SP on treatment with TC-ET, but not with WS-ET. The SP-inhibitory TC-ET was further fractionated into petroleum ether (TC-PET), dichloromethane (TC-DCM), and n-butyl alcohol (TC-nBT) fractions using bioactivity-guided fractionation. Our data revealed that TC-PET and TC-DCM, but not TC-nBT, significantly inhibited SP in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, flow cytometry–based functional assays revealed that TC-PET and TC-DCM significantly inhibited ABC-B1 and ABC-G2 transporters and sensitized cancer cells toward chemotherapeutic drug-mediated cytotoxicity. Thus, the TC-PET and TC-DCM may harbor phytochemicals with the potential to reverse the drug-resistant phenotype, thus improving the efficacy of cancer chemotherapy.