Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Wavelet-Based Model to Recognize High-Quality Topics on Web Forum

Web forum has become an important resource on the Web due to its rich information contributed by millions of Internet users every day. Meanwhile, thousands of junk or valueless messages exist in Web forum. Recognizing high-quality topics should be fundamental tasks in search engine and Web mining systems. However, it is not a trivial problem to quantify high-quality topics on web forum. Users face a daunting challenge in identifying a small subset of topics worthy of their attention. In this paper, we present several characteristics to measure high-quality topic, based on these characteristics, we propose a novel model to recognize high-quality topics on Web forum. Our model consists of three steps. First, time series signals which contain distinctive characteristics between high-quality topics and non-high-quality topics are extracted from topics. Second, features are obtained from signals by using wavelet packet transform (WPT). Third, upon the features, high-quality topics are recognized by using backpropagation neural network. Conducting experiments on Tencent Message Boards which have 2,710,994 messages and 189,962 authors ranging from Jan 1, 2005 to Nov 12, 2007, we demonstrate the efficiency of our model, showing that the average accuracy rate of high-quality topic recognition is 95% and nearly 50,000 topics can be recognized in one second.
Translating Treebank Annotation for Evaluation

In this paper we discuss the need for corpora with a variety of annotations to provide suitable resources to evaluate different Natural Language Processing systems and to compare them. A supervised machine learning technique is presented for translating corpora between syntactic formalisms and is applied to the task of translating the Penn Treebank annotation into a Categorial Grammar annotation. It is compared with a current alternative approach and results indicate annotation of broader coverage using a more compact grammar.
Extension of DCT sign phase correlation to subpixel registration

We present a subpixel estimation technique for DCT sign phase correlation (DCT-SPC). The DCT-SPC requires only the signs of DCT coefficients and can be used in order to estimate the translation between signals. However, the translation values estimated by DCT-SPC were limited to integer numbers. The proposed technique enables DCT-SPC to estimate translation with subpixel accuracy. Considering the relation between DCT-SPC and phase-only correlation, we derive a subpixel estimation technique for DCT-SPC. Experimental results are shown to confirm the appropriateness and effectiveness of the proposed technique.
An unusual case of deafness with speech impairment: lesson in diagnosis and management

Abstract Hearing impairment can be the cause of significant disability and handicap. This medico-legal case demonstrates the need for accurate assessment of both the severity and type of hearing loss if the best clinical management is to be provided. In particular, the case identifies the critical role of additional, objective auditory testing when pure tone audiometry, which depends on the subjective response of the individual, is inconsistent or indicates severe hearing impairment.
Model-based 3 D Hand Tracking with on-line Hand Shape Adaptation

One of the shortcomings of the existing model-based 3D hand tracking methods is the fact that they consider a fixed hand model, i.e. one with fixed shape parameters. In this work we propose an online model-based method that tackles jointly the hand pose tracking and the hand shape estimation problems. The hand pose is estimated using a hierarchical particle filter. The hand shape is estimated by fitting the shape model parameters over the observations in a frame history. The candidate shapes required by the fitting framework are obtained by optimizing the shape parameters independently in each frame. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method tracks the pose of the hand and estimates its shape parameters accurately, even under heavy noise and inaccurate shape initialization.
Vertebral compression fractures--new clinical signs to aid diagnosis.

INTRODUCTION Acute osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures are common and usually managed conservatively. However, a significant number will remain symptomatic, causing significant pain with considerable associated morbidity and mortality. These fractures can be effectively treated with cement augmentation. However, it is impossible to distinguish between an acute and a chronic healed fracture on plain radiographs. The definitive investigation is a magnetic resonance scan. The aim of this paper is to describe and evaluate two new clinical signs to help in the diagnosis of symptomatic fractures. A prospective study of 83 patients with suspected acute osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures was carried out. All patients had a full clinical assessment, which included closed-fist percussion of their spine and asking the patient to lie supine on the examination couch. All patients had a MRI scan. RESULTS The closed-fist percussion sign had a sensitivity of 87.5% and a specificity of 90%. The supine sign had a sensitivity of 81.25% and a specificity of 93.33%. CONCLUSIONS These tests will enable the practitioner to predict more accurately which patients have an acute fracture, guiding referral for further imaging.
Dynamics of obesity and chronic health conditions among children and youth.

CONTEXT Rates of obesity and other childhood chronic conditions have increased over recent decades. Patterns of how conditions change over time have not been widely examined. OBJECTIVE To evaluate change in prevalence of obesity and other chronic conditions in US children, including incidence, remission, and prevalence. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Prospective study using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Cohort (1988-2006) of 3 nationally representative cohorts of children. Children were aged 2 through 8 years at the beginning of each study period, and cohorts were followed up for 6 years, from 1988 to 1994 (cohort 1, n = 2337), 1994 to 2000 (cohort 2, n = 1759), and 2000 to 2006 (n = 905). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Parent report of a child having a health condition that limited activities or schooling or required medicine, special equipment, or specialized health services and that lasted at least 12 months. Obesity was defined as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for age. Chronic conditions were grouped into 4 categories: obesity, asthma, other physical conditions, and behavior/learning problems. RESULTS The end-study prevalence of any chronic health condition was 12.8% (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.2%-14.5%) for cohort 1 in 1994, 25.1% (95% CI, 22.7%-27.6%) for cohort 2 in 2000, and 26.6% (95% CI, 23.5%-29.9%) for cohort 3 in 2006. There was substantial turnover in chronic conditions: 7.4% (95% CI, 6.5%-8.3%) of participants in all cohorts had a chronic condition at the beginning of the study that persisted to the end, 9.3% (95% CI, 8.3%-10.3%) reported conditions at the beginning that resolved within 6 years, and 13.4% (95% CI, 12.3%-14.6%) had new conditions that arose during the 6-year study period. The prevalence of having a chronic condition during any part of the 6-year study period was highest for cohort 3 (51.5%; 95% CI, 47.3%-55.0%), and there were higher rates among male (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.24; 95% CI, 1.07-1.42), Hispanic (AOR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.11-1.67), and black (AOR, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.35-1.90) youth. CONCLUSIONS Prevalence of chronic conditions among children and youth increased from 1988 to 2006. However, presence of these conditions was dynamic over each 6-year cohort.
Successful Preoperative Chemotherapy with S-1 plus Low-Dose Cisplatin for Advanced Gastric Cancer with Synchronous Liver Metastases: Report of 2 Cases

We report 2 cases of advanced gastric cancer with synchronous liver metastases who were successfully downstaged using S-1 plus low-dose cisplatin chemotherapy followed by surgical resection. S-1 was administered orally (80 mg/m2/day) twice daily for 14 consecutive days, and cisplatin (15 mg/m2) was infused over 1 h on days 1 and 8. Successful downstaging of the hepatic metastases was confirmed by imaging analyses; however, neither patient showed a complete response of the primary lesion in the stomach. Toxicities, according to the WHO criteria, were mild. The patients underwent surgical resection within 4 weeks after the last chemotherapy. Postoperatively, they were discharged without complications and received adjuvant chemotherapy. Both patients remained alive and well at 17 and 12 months after surgery, respectively, without recurrence. These cases provide further evidence that S-1 plus low-dose cisplatin chemotherapy enables downstaging of advanced gastric cancer and a subsequent potentially curative resection without serious complications.
A comparative study on macrofiber composites and active fiber composites with metal-core piezoelectric actuators/sensors

Piezoelectric sensors and actuators have gained considerable interest by investigators and researchers for their use in intelligent/smart structures and electromechanical systems. Furthermore, demands from industry for sensors and actuators with higher quality and better performance for a variety of applications have lead the researchers to design piezoelectric systems with optimal configurations to enhance the performance of such actuators and sensors. An analytical micromechanics approach is presented to model the effective longitudinal mechanical properties of Metal-Core Piezoelectric Fibers (MPFs) and Macro Fiber Composites (MFCs). The model assumes general orthotropic material properties for both outside and inside materials. Next, using constitutive equations, the exact analytical solutions for the stress distributions are obtained for axially loaded active fibers. To examine the mechanical performance of the MPF and MFC, material properties and geometric dimensions are substituted into the analytical exact solutions and then effective longitudinal mechanical properties as well as the stress distributions within the domain of each constituent material are obtained and then compared. Finally, the results are presented and concluding remarks are addressed and discussed in details.
Topological Fidelity in Sensor Networks

Sensor Networks are inherently complex networks, and many of their associated problems require analysis of some of their global characteristics. These are primarily affected by the topology of the network. We present in this paper, a general framework for a topological analysis of a network, and develop distributed algorithms in a generalized combinatorial setting in order to solve two seemingly unrelated problems, 1) Coverage hole detection and Localization and 2) Worm hole attack detection and Localization. We also note these solutions remain coordinate free as no priori localization information of the nodes is assumed. For the coverage hole problem, we follow a "divide and conquer approach", by strategically dissecting the network so that the overall topology is preserved, while efficiently pursuing the detection and localization of failures. The detection of holes, is enabled by first attributing a combinatorial object called a "Rips Complex" to each network segment, and by subsequently checking the existence/non-existence of holes by way of triviality of the first homology class of this complex. Our estimate exponentially approaches the location of potential holes with each iteration, yielding a very fast convergence coupled with optimal usage of valuable resources such as power and memory. We then show a simple extension of the above problem to address a well known problem in networks, namely the localization of a worm hole attack. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented algorithm with several substantiating examples.
Shock wave and cavitation bubble dynamics during photodisruption in ocular media and their dependence on the pulse duration

Shock waves and cavitation bubbles generated by optical breakdown may strongly influence the surgical effect of photodisruptive lasers. We have investigated the shock wave and cavitation bubble effects of femtosecond and picosecond laser pulses generated during photodisruption in corneal tissue and water. Laser pulses with 150 fs duration at approximately 620 nm wavelength have been focused into both corneal tissue and water to create optical breakdown. Pulses with durations of 20 ps have been applied for comparative studies. Time-resolved flash photography has been used to investigate the dynamics of the generated shock waves and cavitation bubbles. Femtosecond pulse engender rapidly decaying shock waves in both materials. The spatial range of shock waves induced by femtosecond laser pulses is considerably smaller than that of shock waves induced by picosecond optical breakdown. Cavitation bubbles excited by femtosecond pulses are observed to develop more rapidly and to reach smaller maximum diameter than those generated by longer pulses. In corneal tissue intrastromal cavitation bubbles generated by femtosecond pulses disappear within a few tens of seconds, notably faster than cavitation bubbles generated by picosecond pulses. The reduced shock wave and cavitation bubble effects of the femtosecond laser result in more localized tissue damage. Therefore, a more confined surgical effect should be expected from a femtosecond laser than that from picosecond (or nanosecond) lasers. This indicates a potential benefit from the application of femtosecond laser technology to intraocular microsurgery.
Pristine Early Eocene Wood Buried Deeply in Kimberlite from Northern Canada

We report exceptional preservation of fossil wood buried deeply in a kimberlite pipe that intruded northwestern Canada’s Slave Province 53.3±0.6 million years ago (Ma), revealed during excavation of diamond source rock. The wood originated from forest surrounding the eruption zone and collapsed into the diatreme before resettling in volcaniclastic kimberlite to depths >300 m, where it was mummified in a sterile environment. Anatomy of the unpermineralized wood permits conclusive identification to the genus Metasequoia (Cupressaceae). The wood yields genuine cellulose and occluded amber, both of which have been characterized spectroscopically and isotopically. From cellulose δ18O and δ2H measurements, we infer that Early Eocene paleoclimates in the western Canadian subarctic were 12–17°C warmer and four times wetter than present. Canadian kimberlites offer Lagerstätte-quality preservation of wood from a region with limited alternate sources of paleobotanical information.
What Is Engagement? Proactivity as the Missing Link in the HEXACO Model of Personality.

We tested the hypothesis that proactivity represents the engagement vector in the HEXACO model of personality. Questionnaire data were obtained in five studies, three of which consisted (mostly) of students: Study 1 (N = 188, Mage = 20.0, 89.4% women), Study 3 (N = 315, Mage = 20.4, 80.6% women), and Study 4 (N = 309 self-ratings, Mage = 20.0, 78.3% women; N = 307 other-ratings, Mage = 24.5, 62.2% women). Participants in the other two studies came from an ISO-certified representative community panel: Study 2 (N = 525, Mage = 51.2, 52.0% women) and Study 5 (N = 736, Mage = 42.2, 48.0% women). Proactive Personality and Proactivity were positively related to Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience, but only weakly related or unrelated to Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Agreeableness, supporting the alignment of Proactive Personality/Proactivity with the hypothesized HEXACO engagement vector. Additionally, Proactivity explained incremental variance in self-rated job performance on top of the HEXACO facets that were most closely associated with Proactive Personality/Proactivity, that is, Social Boldness (an Extraversion facet), Diligence (a Conscientiousness facet), and Creativity (an Openness to Experience facet), but not in entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. Proactivity is the missing engagement link in the HEXACO model of personality. The results are discussed in light of higher-order factors (e.g., general factor of personality and Alpha and Beta) of personality and bandwidth-fidelity controversies.
Can Prosody Aid the Automatic Classification of Dialog Acts in Conversational Speech?

Identifying whether an utterance is a statement, question, greeting, and so forth is integral to effective automatic understanding of natural dialog. Little is known, however, about how such dialog acts (DAs) can be automatically classified in truly natural conversation. This study asks whether current approaches, which use mainly word information, could be improved by adding prosodic information. The study is based on more than 1000 conversations from the Switchboard corpus. DAs were hand-annotated, and prosodic features (duration, pause, F0, energy, and speaking rate) were automatically extracted for each DA. In training, decision trees based on these features were inferred; trees were then applied to unseen test data to evaluate performance. Performance was evaluated for prosody models alone, and after combining the prosody models with word information—either from true words or from the output of an automatic speech recognizer. For an overall classification task, as well as three subtasks, prosody made significant contributions to classification. Feature-specific analyses further revealed that although canonical features (such as F0 for questions) were important, less obvious features could compensate if canonical features were removed. Finally, in each task, integrating the prosodic model with a DA-specific statistical language model improved performance over that of the language model alone, especially for the case of recognized words. Results suggest that DAs are redundantly marked in natural conversation, and that a variety of automatically extractable prosodic features could aid dialog processing in speech applications.
Functional Specialisation and the Location of Multinational Firms in the Enlarged Europe∗

Despite the recent development of location theory, the role of services surrounding production activity has been largely understudied. We propose to analyze the location of multinational firms’ value chain in the enlarged European Union. We develop a multi-stage model where downstream functions, i.e., logistics or sales and marketing offices, consider the size of the market in their location choice, while upstream activities, i.e., headquarters and Research & Development centers, focus on high skill abundant locations. Production units face a trade-off between production costs and high market potential. We then implement the model empirically, using recently collected individual firm data of almost 11.000 location choices over five years and 23 countries. We analyze the determinants of location for each activity, including sectoral and functional agglomeration variables. We find evidence that agglomeration effects arise at the sectoral level for production activities and at the functional level for service activities. This finding corroborates theories developed in urban economics. Finally, we illuminate the co-agglomeration of functions at the company level, specifically between R&D and production. JEL classification: F23, L22, R3
An Adaptive Process Model to Support Product Development Project Management

Projects are temporary allocations of resources commissioned to achieve a desired result. Since each project is unique, the landscape between the current state (the start of the project) and the desired state (the successful end of the project) is often dynamic, uncertain, and ambiguous. Conventional project plans define a set of related activities (a work breakdown structure and activity network) with the assumptions that this set is necessary and sufficient to reach the project's desired result. Popular models for project planning (scheduling, budgeting, etc.) and control are also based on a set of project activities that are specified and scheduled a priori. However, these assumptions often do not hold, because, as an attempt to do something novel, the actual path to a project's desired result is often revealed only by the additional light provided once the work is underway. In this paper, we model a product development process as a complex adaptive system. Rather than prespecifying which activities will be done and when, we set up: 1) a superset of general classes of activities, each with modes that vary in terms of inputs, duration, cost, and expected benefits; and 2) simple rules for activity mode combination. Thus, instead of rigidly dictating a specific project schedule a priori, we provide a ldquoprimordial souprdquo of activities and simple rules through which the activities can self-organize. Instead of attempting to prescribe an optimal process, we simulate thousands of adaptive cases and let the highest-value process emerge. Analyzing these cases leads to insights regarding the most likely paths (processes) across the project landscape, the patterns of iteration along the paths, and the paths' costs, durations, risks, and values. The model also provides a decision support capability for managers. For researchers, this way of viewing projects and the modeling framework provide a new basis for future studies of agile and adaptive processes.
Representing and Reasoning about Temporal Granularities

In this paper, we propose a new logical approach to represent and to reason about different time granularities. We identify a time granularity as an infinite sequence of time points properly labelled with proposition symbols marking the starting and ending points of the corresponding granules, and we symbolically model sets of granularities by means of linear time logic formulas. Some real-world granularities are provided, from a clinical domain and from the Gregorian Calendar, to motivate and exemplify our approach. Different formulas are introduced, which represent relations between different granularities. The proposed framework permits one to algorithmically solve the consistency, the equivalence, and the classification problems in a uniform way, by reducing them to the validity problem for the considered linear time logic.
Regulation on Toll-like Receptor 4 and Cell Barrier Function by Rab26 siRNA-loaded DNA Nanovector in Pulmonary Microvascular Endothelial Cells

The small GTPase Rab26 is involved in multiple processes, such as vesicle-mediated secretion and autophagy. However, the mechanisms and functions of Rab26 in the human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells (HPMVECs) are not clear. In this study, we thoroughly investigated the role and novel mechanism of Rab26 in permeability and apoptosis of HPMVECs using a self-assembled Rab26 siRNA loaded DNA Y-motif nanoparticle (siRab26-DYM) and Rab26 adenovirus. We found that siRab26-DYM could be efficiently transfected into HPMVECs in a time- and dose-dependent manner. Importantly, the siRab26-DYM nanovector markedly aggravated the LPS-induced apoptosis and hyper-permeability of HPMVECs by promoting the nuclear translocation of Foxo1, and subsequent activation of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) signal pathway. Overexpression of Rab26 by Rab26 adenoviruses partially inactivated LPS-induced TLR4 signaling pathway, suppressed the cell apoptosis and attenuated the hyperpermeability of HPMVECs. These results suggest that the permeability and apoptosis of HPMVECs can be modulated by manipulating Rab26 derived TLR4 signaling pathway, and that Rab26 can be potential therapeutic target for the treatment of vascular diseases related to endothelial barrier functions.