Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Innate Immune Activity in Glomerular Podocytes

Glomerular podocytes are specialized in structure and play an essential role in glomerular filtration. In addition, podocyte stress can initiate glomerular damage by inducing the injury of other glomerular cell types. Studies have shown that podocytes possess the property of immune cells and may be involved in adaptive immunity. Emerging studies have also shown that podocytes possess signaling pathways of innate immune responses and that innate immune responses often result in podocyte injury. More recently, mitochondrial-derived damage-associated molecular patterns (mtDAMPs) have been shown to play a critical role in a variety of pathological processes in cells. In the present mini-review, we summarize the recent advances in the studies of innate immunity and its pathogenic role in podocytes, particularly, from the perspective of mtDAMPs.
Incarceration and Support for Children in Fragile Families

Incarceration is widespread in the United States, and previous literature has shown significant negative effects of incarceration on later employment, earnings, and relationship stability. Given the high rates of fatherhood among men in jails and prisons, a large number of children are placed at considerable risk when a parent is incarcerated. This paper examines one dimension of the economic risk faced by children of incarcerated fathers: the reduction in the financial support that they receive. We use a population-based sample of urban children to examine the effects of incarceration on this support. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal regression models, as well as a propensity score matching analysis, indicate that men with incarceration histories are significantly less likely to contribute to their families and those that do contribute provide significantly less. Moreover, sensitivity analysis suggests that these differences are unlikely to be a result of unobserved heterogeneity between incarcerated and never-incarcerated fathers. The negative effects of incarceration on fathers? financial support are due not only to diminished performance in the labor market by formerly incarcerated men, but also to their increased likelihood to live apart from their children. Men contribute far less through child support (formal or informal) than they do when they share their earnings within their household, suggesting that the destabilizing effects of incarceration on family relationships place children at significant economic disadvantage.
Use of tight frames for optimized compressed sensing

Compressed sensing (CS) theory relies on sparse representations in order to recover signals from an undersampled set of measurements. The sensing mechanism is described by the projection matrix, which should possess certain properties to guarantee high quality signal recovery, using efficient algorithms. Although the major breakthrough in compressed sensing results is obtained for random matrices, recent efforts have shown that CS performance could be improved with optimized non-random projections. Designing matrices that satisfy CS theoretical requirements is closely related to the construction of equiangular tight frames, a problem that has applications in various scientific fields like sparse approximations, coding, and communications. In this paper, we employ frame theory and propose an algorithm for the optimization of the projection matrix that improves sparse signal recovery.
Email recipient prediction using reverse chronologically arranged implicit groups

Although social networking has significantly influenced online communication, email still has managed to retain its importance. There are number of techniques proposed in past by researchers for recipient prediction/suggestion. Most of them are complex to implement and takes good amount of computation time. The major factor behind higher time complexity and space complexity is the prediction models these methods use. These days mobile device applications are being widely used for emailing and thus appropriate techniques should be found considering constraints of mobile devices. Keeping this in view our research focuses on proposing prediction model, which takes very less computational efforts to be maintained. Apart from this, existing methods focus on maximizing number of intended recipients in one prediction cycle. In this paper, we also propose a different way of looking at the problem, by targeting 1 intended recipient in each iteration. For this, we introduce hit rate as a good measurement technique to measure the effectiveness of recipient prediction algorithm. We also present a flaw in the compiled version of Enron data set, and show some novel analysis on Enron data set which will help immensely in creating efficient recipient prediction algorithm.
The Draft Reform of Land Taxation in the Czech Republic

The article is a reaction to the intention of the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic to propose a draft amendment to the Real Estate Tax Act, which could cause a revolution in the assessment of tax base. After outlining the different models for tax base and tax rate assessment of land tax and characterizing the currently valid legal regulation, the article analyses critically the intended draft amendment to the Real Estate Tax Act, which aims to introduce the ad valorem system of land taxation. It is expected that the most effective method will be used in the future, i.e. tax base maps compiled by municipalities as the beneficiaries of real estate tax. The article describes the disadvantages of the ad valorem system of land taxation and highlights the advantages of the intended changes.
Rate Adaptation with NAK-Aided Loss Differentiation in 802.11 Wireless Networks

The Physical Layer of the IEEE 802.11 standard family provides a set of different modulation and coding schemes and, thus, a multitude of data rates. However, the Standard itself does not specify a mechanism to select adaptively among these data rates to improve the network throughput. An efficient rate adaptation scheme should aim to improve channel utilization through selection of optimal data rates that suits current channel conditions. This paper proposes a rate adaptation technique that: 1) exploits the RSS of received DATA frame to recommend higher data rate for subsequent transmissions, 2) distinguishes causes of a frame loss by recording RSS of a CTS/ACK frame to predict if the channel quality is deteriorating or not, and 3) utilizes a NAK-frame to diagnose frame losses due to channel fading. Our scheme, dubbed as Differential Rate Adaptation with NAK-Assisted Loss Differentiation (DRANLD), is simulated using ns-2 and shown to adapt well to rapidly fluctuating channels.
Statistical Determination of Rainfall-Runoff Erosivity Indices for Single Storms in the Chinese Loess Plateau

Correlation analysis is popular in erosion- or earth-related studies, however, few studies compare correlations on a basis of statistical testing, which should be conducted to determine the statistical significance of the observed sample difference. This study aims to statistically determine the erosivity index of single storms, which requires comparison of a large number of dependent correlations between rainfall-runoff factors and soil loss, in the Chinese Loess Plateau. Data observed at four gauging stations and five runoff experimental plots were presented. Based on the Meng’s tests, which is widely used for comparing correlations between a dependent variable and a set of independent variables, two methods were proposed. The first method removes factors that are poorly correlated with soil loss from consideration in a stepwise way, while the second method performs pairwise comparisons that are adjusted using the Bonferroni correction. Among 12 rainfall factors, I 30 (the maximum 30-minute rainfall intensity) has been suggested for use as the rainfall erosivity index, although I 30 is equally correlated with soil loss as factors of I 20, EI 10 (the product of the rainfall kinetic energy, E, and I 10), EI 20 and EI 30 are. Runoff depth (total runoff volume normalized to drainage area) is more correlated with soil loss than all other examined rainfall-runoff factors, including I 30, peak discharge and many combined factors. Moreover, sediment concentrations of major sediment-producing events are independent of all examined rainfall-runoff factors. As a result, introducing additional factors adds little to the prediction accuracy of the single factor of runoff depth. Hence, runoff depth should be the best erosivity index at scales from plots to watersheds. Our findings can facilitate predictions of soil erosion in the Loess Plateau. Our methods provide a valuable tool while determining the predictor among a number of variables in terms of correlations.
PLIS+: A Rule-Based Personalized Location Information System

In this paper, the idea of providing personalized, location-based information services via rule-based policies is demonstrated. After a short introduction, an innovative Personalized Location Information System (PLIS+) is designed and implemented. PLIS+ delivers personalized and contextualized information to users according to rule-based policies. More specifically, many categories of points of interest (for example shops, restaurants) have rule-based policies to expose and deploy their marketing strategy on special offers, discounts, etc. PLIS+ evaluates these rules on-the-fly and delivers personalized information according to the user’s context and the corresponding rules fired within this context. After discussing the design and the implementation of PLIS+, illustrative examples of PLIS+ functionality are presented. As a result, PLIS+ proves that combining contextual data and rules can lead to powerful personalized information services.
The genetic interactome of prohibitins: coordinated control of cardiolipin and phosphatidylethanolamine by conserved regulators in mitochondria

Prohibitin ring complexes in the mitochondrial inner membrane regulate cell proliferation as well as the dynamics and function of mitochondria. Although prohibitins are essential in higher eukaryotes, prohibitin-deficient yeast cells are viable and exhibit a reduced replicative life span. Here, we define the genetic interactome of prohibitins in yeast using synthetic genetic arrays, and identify 35 genetic interactors of prohibitins (GEP genes) required for cell survival in the absence of prohibitins. Proteins encoded by these genes include members of a conserved protein family, Ups1 and Gep1, which affect the processing of the dynamin-like GTPase Mgm1 and thereby modulate cristae morphogenesis. We show that Ups1 and Gep1 regulate the levels of cardiolipin and phosphatidylethanolamine in mitochondria in a lipid-specific but coordinated manner. Lipid profiling by mass spectrometry of GEP-deficient mitochondria reveals a critical role of cardiolipin and phosphatidylethanolamine for survival of prohibitin-deficient cells. We propose that prohibitins control inner membrane organization and integrity by acting as protein and lipid scaffolds.
How to Use the EU-SILC Panel to Analyse Monthly and Hourly Wages

The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is a rotational panel provided by Eurostat that covers important variables over all EU Member States. Unfortunately, Eurostat provides separate data sets which do not cover all waves. Furthermore, information on monthly income and hourly wages are missing. In this paper, we make two contributions: first, we develop a method for combining the different waves in order to increase the number of observations; second, we derive monthly and hourly pay.
A Rectilinear Shortest-path Routing Algorithm for a Two Dimensional Grid

This paper presents a rectilinear shortest-path routing algorithm for a two dimensional grid. The grid is composed of open-cells and obstacles. Obstacles are further classified into corner and noncorner cells. The key feature of the algorithm is extracting a smaller, path preserving graph (ACG) from the grid to assist path calculation. The nodes in the graph represent adjacent open-cell of corners (AOCs) of rectilinear obstacles and edges represent Manhattan distance between the nodes. When a path between two cells S and T is to be searched then ACG is modified by adding S and T in it. Finally Dijkstra[1] algorithm is applied on ACG to obtain shortest path between S and T. The worst case complexity of the proposed algorithm is in O(o + cn + c).
JENA ECONOMIC RESEARCH PAPERS # 2009 – 078 Technology , Competition and the Time of Entry : Diversification Patterns in the Development of New Drugs

This paper empirically investigates the determinants of R&D diversification strategies in the drug industry. It enriches the existing literature by proposing to look at diversification factors, which reflect market and technological proximity of an R&D project towards other projects within a firm’s portfolio as well as R&D competition factors. Additionally, the characteristics of R&D in the market where a new potential product is developed affect future product choice. The analysis is performed for products-in-development data, merged with firms’ patents, which allows us to separate project proximity in market niches from technological proximity. The results of empirical estimation support an idea that R&D diversification is governed by the economies of scope as well as the escape competition motive. Moreover, it is found that competition rather than spillovers in the niche where an R&D project is developed defines firms’ decisions to diversify.
How logic emerges from the dynamics of information

It is often claimed that the symbolic approach to information processing is incompatible with connectionism and other associationist modes of representing information. I propose to throw new light on this debate by presenting two examples of how logic can be seen as emerging from an underlying information dynamics. The first example shows how intuitionistic logic results very naturally from an abstract analysis of the dynamics of information. Theanalysis of the dynamics of information. The second example establishes that the activities of a large class of neural networks may be interpreted, on the symbolic level, as nonmonotonic inferences. On the basis of these examples I argue that symbolic and non-symbolic approaches to information can be described in terms of different perspectives on the same phenomenon. Thus, I find that Fodor and Pylyshyn’s claim that connectionist systems cannot be systematic and compositional is based on a misleading interpretation of representations in such systems. 1. TWO PARADIGMS OF COGNITIVE
NICT-2 Translation System for WAT2016: Applying Domain Adaptation to Phrase-based Statistical Machine Translation

This paper describes the NICT-2 translation system for the 3rd Workshop on Asian Translation. The proposed system employs a domain adaptation method based on feature augmentation. We regarded the Japan Patent Office Corpus as a mixture of four domain corpora and improved the translation quality of each domain. In addition, we incorporated language models constructed from Google n-grams as external knowledge. Our domain adaptation method can naturally incorporate such external knowledge that contributes to translation quality.
Code obfuscation against symbolic execution attacks

Code obfuscation is widely used by software developers to protect intellectual property, and malware writers to hamper program analysis. However, there seems to be little work on systematic evaluations of effectiveness of obfuscation techniques against automated program analysis. The result is that we have no methodical way of knowing what kinds of automated analyses an obfuscation method can withstand. This paper addresses the problem of characterizing the resilience of code obfuscation transformations against automated symbolic execution attacks, complementing existing works that measure the potency of obfuscation transformations against human-assisted attacks through user studies. We evaluated our approach over 5000 different C programs, which have each been obfuscated using existing implementations of obfuscation transformations. The results show that many existing obfuscation transformations, such as virtualization, stand little chance of withstanding symbolic-execution based deobfuscation. A crucial and perhaps surprising observation we make is that symbolic-execution based deobfuscators can easily deobfuscate transformations that preserve program semantics. On the other hand, we present new obfuscation transformations that change program behavior in subtle yet acceptable ways, and show that they can render symbolic-execution based deobfuscation analysis ineffective in practice.
An Ensemble Ranking Solution for the Yahoo ! Learning to Rank Challenge

This paper describes our proposed solution for the Yahoo! Learning to Rank challenge. The solution consists of an ensemble of three point-wise, two pair-wise and one list-wise approaches. In our experiments, the point-wise approaches are observed to outperform pairwise and list-wise ones in general, and the final ensemble is capable of further improving the performance over any single approach. In terms of the online validation performance, our proposed solution achieves an ERR of 0.4565 (NDCG 0.7870) for set 1.
A local stereo matching approach using adaptive weight boundary

A new region-based local stereo matching algorithm with accurate disparity estimation is proposed. For the local stereo matching, finding an appropriate support window is crucial to the performance of disparity estimation. In order to generate an accurate support region, a modified cross-based local approach combined with mean-shift segmentation is performed. We then further improve the reliability of the aggregation cost by adaptively adjusting the weights of the boundary pixels in the support region. With the stable aggregating matching cost, some noises caused by outliers at the object boundaries can be removed, which is greatly beneficial to the quality of the depth estimation. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves superior performance compared with other state-of-the-art methods.
Overlapping Generations Models and Graded Age-Set Societies

From Africa through North America to Asia, anthropologists have found societies with formalized age-group systems. In these societies, social and economic relations between individuals are regulated by well-established rules governing transitions through the lifecycle. In this paper we detail the relationship between the classic formulations in Stewart's (1977) Fundamentals of Age-Group Systems and the overlapping generations (OLG) model. We establish that OLG models can accurately represent a large subset of actual age-group societies called graded age-set societies. Thus, an OLG model bears a close resemblance to reality.
Fast sequential forensic camera identification

Two sequential camera source identification methods are proposed. Sequential tests implement a log-likelihood ratio test in an incremental way, thus enabling a reliable decision with a minimal number of observations. One of our methods adapts Goljan et al.'s to sequential operation. The second, which offers better performance in terms of error probabilities and average number of test observations, is based on treating the alternative hypothesis as a doubly stochastic model. We also discuss how the standard sequential test can be corrected to account for the event of weak fingerprints. Finally, we validate the goodness of our methods with experiments.
Pain regulation by non-neuronal cells and inflammation

Acute pain is protective and a cardinal feature of inflammation. Chronic pain after arthritis, nerve injury, cancer, and chemotherapy is associated with chronic neuroinflammation, a local inflammation in the peripheral or central nervous system. Accumulating evidence suggests that non-neuronal cells such as immune cells, glial cells, keratinocytes, cancer cells, and stem cells play active roles in the pathogenesis and resolution of pain. We review how non-neuronal cells interact with nociceptive neurons by secreting neuroactive signaling molecules that modulate pain. Recent studies also suggest that bacterial infections regulate pain through direct actions on sensory neurons, and specific receptors are present in nociceptors to detect danger signals from infections. We also discuss new therapeutic strategies to control neuroinflammation for the prevention and treatment of chronic pain.
The learning effectiveness of using game-based interaction multimedia courseware on low visual capacity student

Multimedia interactive courseware has gradually become the current trend in teaching, because it can provide more motivations. The effectiveness to facilitate learning performance is also revealed according to the latest researches. However, multimedia courseware must be adaptive to learners with different capabilities before the methodology can be maximized. This study developed concrete, semi-concrete, and abstract levels of multimedia courseware based on polynomial operations from K7 math unit in an attempt to investigate the learners' performance with low visual working memory capability on different types of multimedia courseware. Results indicate that only concrete courseware can effectively enhance performance of students with low visual-spatial capacity on polynomial operations learning. Findings of this study are intended to provide useful references for teachers to author multimedia courseware for learners with low visual working memory capability students in the hope that learning achievements can be facilitated when individualized learning and remedial instruction are being engaged.
Marketing Research Within a Changing Information Environment

Part 1: The Role and Value of Marketing Research Information 1Marketing Research for Managerial Decision Making 2The Marketing Research Process 3Information Management for Marketing Decisions: Secondary Data Sources Part 2: Technology in the Research Process 4Customer Relationship Management and the Marketing Research Process 5Marketing Decision Support Systems Part 3: Designing the Marketing Research Project 6Exploratory Designs: In-Depth Interviews and Focus Groups 7Descriptive Research Designs: Survey Methods and Errors 8Observation Techniques, Experiments, and Test Markets Part 4: Gathering and Collecting Accurate Data 9Sampling: Theory and Design 10Sampling: Methods and Planning 11Overview of Measurement: Construct Development and Scale Measurement 12Attitude Scale Measurements Used in Marketing Research 13Questionnaire Design and Issues Part 5: Data Preparation, Analysis, and Reporting the Results 14Coding, Editing, and Preparing Data for Analysis 15Data Analysis: Testing for Significant Differences 16Data Analysis: Testing for Association 17Data Analysis: Multivariate Techniques for the Research Process 18Preparing the Marketing Research Report and Presentation