Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mutagenesis of the 43-kD postsynaptic protein defines domains involved in plasma membrane targeting and AChR clustering

The postsynaptic membrane of the neuromuscular junction contains a myristoylated 43-kD protein (43k) that is closely associated with the cytoplasmic face of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (AChR)-rich plasma membrane. Previously, we described fibroblast cell lines expressing recombinant AChRs. Transfection of these cell lines with 43k was necessary and sufficient for reorganization of AChR into discrete 43k-rich plasma membrane domains (Phillips, W. D., C. Kopta, P. Blount, P. D. Gardner, J. H. Steinbach, and J. P. Merlie. 1991. Science (Wash. DC). 251:568-570). Here we demonstrate the utility of this expression system for the study of 43k function by site-directed mutagenesis. Substitution of a termination codon for Asp254 produced a truncated (28- kD) protein that associated poorly with the cell membrane. The conversion of Gly2 to Ala2, to preclude NH2-terminal myristoylation, reduced the frequency with which 43k formed plasma membrane domains by threefold, but did not eliminate the aggregation of AChRs at these domains. Since both NH2 and COOH-termini seemed important for association of 43k with the plasma membrane, a deletion mutant was constructed in which the codon Gln15 was fused in-frame to Ile255 to create a 19-kD protein. This mutated protein formed 43k-rich plasma membrane domains at wild-type frequency, but the domains failed to aggregate AChRs, suggesting that the central part of the 43k polypeptide may be involved in AChR aggregation. Our results suggest that membrane association and AChR interactions are separable functions of the 43k molecule.
Cooling-Off in Negotiations - Does it Work?

Negotiations frequently end in conflict after one party rejects a final offer. In a large-scale internet experiment, we investigate whether a 24-hour coolingoff period leads to fewer rejections in ultimatum bargaining. We conduct a standard cash treatment and a lottery treatment, where subjects receive lottery tickets for several large prizes - emulating a high-stakes environment. In the lottery treatment, unfair offers are less frequently rejected, and cooling-off significantly reduces the rejection rate further. In the cash treatment, rejections are more frequent and remain so after cooling-off. This treatment difference is particularly pronounced for subjects with lower cognitive abilities.
Pattern Learning for Relation Extraction with a Hierarchical Topic Model

We describe the use of a hierarchical topic model for automatically identifying syntactic and lexical patterns that explicitly state ontological relations. We leverage distant supervision using relations from the knowledge base FreeBase, but do not require any manual heuristic nor manual seed list selections. Results show that the learned patterns can be used to extract new relations with good precision.
Real Options and the Regulation of Brazilian Fixed-Line Telephone Operators : The Markup on the Cost of Capital *

This study argues in favor of the real option methodology to calculate the access price for Brazilian fixed-line phone operators. The new cost-oriented regulatory framework for interconnection of telecommunication networks, established in 2005, poses questions regarding the adequate remuneration of investments. By investing in a fixed-line telephone network while giving access to new entrants, the incumbent is actually providing an option to access its infrastructure. Since options aren’t costless, to properly compensate the investment, an effort to estimate the option premium is justified. We suggest a pragmatic approach where the real options rationality appears as a markup over the sector’s cost of capital. Failing to consider the real option granted by incumbents discourages investment in infrastructure in the sector and hinders the intertemporal maximization of social welfare.
Bi-directional amplifiers for half-duplex transceivers

This paper reports a unique bi-directional amplifier (BDA) circuit that combines the symmetry of common-gate connected HEMTs with topologically mirrored input and output matching, Bi-directional behavior of the BDA is demonstrated on fabricated circuits, with identical performance in forward and reverse directions. Between 40 and 45 GHz, 10-dB gain and 8-dB input and output return losses have been measured.
Relationship between Spontaneous Speech Function and Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function Profile in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Pilot Case Study

Background: Response inhibition and attentional flexibility are impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We descriptively analyzed whether differences in the functions of spontaneous speech derived from Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (A-B-C) analysis are related to the T-scores for response inhibition (“Inhibit”) and attentional flexibility (“Shift”) of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) profiles of children with ASD. Methods: Three children with ASD participated in this pilot case study. The BRIEF was used as a measure of executive function (EF). Spontaneous speech of all participants was recorded and classified into five categories: antecedent control of self (ACS), consequent control of self (CCS), antecedent control of others (ACO), consequent control of others (CCO), and exception (EXP). Results: The T-score for “Shift” of all participants exceeded a previously defined cut-off value. Spontaneous speech associated with “control of self” was not observed in any participant, while that associated with “control of others” varied among individuals. The participant with the highest frequency of spontaneous speech had the lowest “Shift” T-score, while the participant with the least active spontaneous speech had the highest “Shift” T-score. Conclusions: Our results suggest a potential association between spontaneous speech and a shift in executive function in children with ASD.
CAD for Colonography: A tool to address a growing need

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer in both men and women. It is estimated that in 2004, nearly 147,000 cases of colon and rectal cancer will be diagnosed in the US, and approximately 57,000 people would die from the disease, accounting for about 11% of all cancer deaths. While there is wide consensus that screening patients is effective in decreasing advanced disease, only 44% of the eligible population undergoes any type of colorectal cancer screening. Multiple reasons have been identified for non-compliance, key being: patient comfort, bowel preparation and cost. Virtual Colonoscopy (VC) derived from computer tomographic (CT) images is gaining broader acceptance as a screening method for colorectal neoplasia. Our research suggests that Computer Aided Detection (CAD), as a second reader, has great potential in improving polyp detection. The developed CAD system, presented in this paper, has focused on the detection of polyps of sizes up to and including 20mm. Results of this study, with 150 patients, demonstrate that: the developed algorithm generalizes, the sensitivity for middle- to large- sized polyps is on the average 90% while the overall sensitivity is roughly 82%. The false positive rate is a manageable 4.5 per volume on average.
Fully adaptive SVD-based noise removal for robust speech recognition

This paper presents a new approach to improve the robustness of large vocabulary continuous speech recognition. The proposed technique { based on Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) { originates from classical signal enhancement, but it is adapted to the speci(cid:12)c requirements imposed by the speech recognition process. Additive noise reduction is obtained by altering the singular value spectrum of the signal observation matrix, thereby preserving speech signal components and suppressing noise-related components. The basic algorithms are developed for white noise but they can easily be extended to the general coloured noise case. With the aid of a noise reference, non-stationary noise can be handled as well. All schemes are adaptive, and work in real-time. Recognition experiments on a noise-corrupted database with large vocabulary, continuous speech (Resource Management) reveal that relative reductions of the WER 1 of more than 60% are obtained.
The Genomic and Genetic Toolbox of the Teleost Medaka (Oryzias latipes)

The Japanese medaka, Oryzias latipes, is a vertebrate teleost model with a long history of genetic research. A number of unique features and established resources distinguish medaka from other vertebrate model systems. A large number of laboratory strains from different locations are available. Due to a high tolerance to inbreeding, many highly inbred strains have been established, thus providing a rich resource for genetic studies. Furthermore, closely related species native to different habitats in Southeast Asia permit comparative evolutionary studies. The transparency of embryos, larvae, and juveniles allows a detailed in vivo analysis of development. New tools to study diverse aspects of medaka biology are constantly being generated. Thus, medaka has become an important vertebrate model organism to study development, behavior, and physiology. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of established genetic and molecular-genetic tools that render medaka fish a full-fledged vertebrate system.
Implementation of a quantum algorithm on a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computer

Quantum computing shows great promise for the solution of many difficult problems, such as the simulation of quantum systems and the factorization of large numbers. While the theory of quantum computing is fairly well understood, it has proved difficult to implement quantum computers in real physical systems. It has recently been shown that nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) can be used to implement small quantum computers using the spin states of nuclei in carefully chosen small molecules. Here we demonstrate the use of a NMR quantum computer based on the pyrimidine base cytosine, and the implementation of a quantum algorithm to solve Deutsch’s problem (distinguishing between constant and balanced functions). This is the first successful implementation of a quantum algorithm on any physical system.
Using the Web for Nominal Anaphora Resolution

We present a novel method for resolving non-pronominal anaphora. Instead of using handcrafted lexical resources, we search the Web with shallow patterns which can be predetermined for the type of anaphoric phenomenon. In experiments forother-anaphora and bridging, our shallow, almost knowledge-free and unsupervised method achieves state-ofthe-art results.
Image reconstruction from dense binary pixels

Recently, the dense binary pixel Gigavision camera had been introduced, emulating a digital version of the photographic film. While seems to be a promising solution for HDR imaging, its output is not directly usable and requires an image reconstruction process. In this work, we formulate this problem as the minimization of a convex objective combining a maximum-likelihood term with a sparse synthesis prior. We present MLNet - a novel feed-forward neural network, producing acceptable output quality at a fixed complexity and is two orders of magnitude faster than iterative algorithms. We present state of the art results in the abstract.
New dimension for sketches

We propose a method for creating 'smart' sketches of free form 3D objects. A 2D sketch of an object drawn by the user is enriched with information about its 3D structure. With the help of our system, the user can rotate the created sketch of the object and view it from various angles. Since most of the user input is a traditional 2D sketch, the system is very easy to use and doesn't limit the user's creativity. Our approach closely simulates the way 3D objects are drawn by artists. The user first models by sketching a simple 3D skeleton of the desired object. A more detailed sketch of the object is drawn in 2D over the skeleton. The skeleton helps the user to maintain correct proportions while drawing. Using the 3D skeleton, the system helps the user rotate the sketch. This way a hybrid model of an object is created - although being essentially 2D, the model can be rotated smoothly and viewed from various angles.
General Information Model and Its Application for Rock Excavation in Underground Work Sites

In the underground mining and tunnelling rock excavation processes, there is plethora of different machine, tool and information system providers involved and practically no general information model covering the complete process. The competition in the field is getting more intense and all the actors should intensify their operations. The information management and integration of different information systems’ data is among the most interesting enablers for such a better operational efficiency. The main goal of the research was to develop flexible methods for better application interoperability and information management for the underground rock excavation processes. The research used a literature survey, a commercial systems survey, professional interviews and worksite observations in order to develop a new general information model for rock excavation and define a toolchain for the exploitation of the developed model. In this research, the information model for underground rock excavation actions was developed applying applicable parts of existing standards and software tools. The main information model can be extended by using separately designed sub-models. In addition to information model also a toolchain of how to practically do the model development and information integration, has been described. These actions will enhance information management and application interoperability in the rock excavation processes and enable more efficient information exploitation leading potentially to better controlled processes, more efficient work phases and cost savings.
Stanford Neural Machine Translation Systems for Spoken Language Domains

Neural Machine Translation (NMT), though recently developed, has shown promising results for various language pairs. Despite that, NMT has only been applied to mostly formal texts such as those in the WMT shared tasks. This work further explores the effectiveness of NMT in spoken language domains by participating in the MT track of the IWSLT 2015. We consider two scenarios: (a) how to adapt existing NMT systems to a new domain and (b) the generalization of NMT to low-resource language pairs. Our results demonstrate that using an existing NMT framework1, we can achieve competitive results in the aforementioned scenarios when translating from English to German and Vietnamese. Notably, we have advanced state-of-the-art results in the IWSLT EnglishGerman MT track by up to 5.2 BLEU points.
ERA + GA : A Method for Solving SAT Instances

A method for solving satisfiability (SAT) instances is presented. It is based on two basic components: An Epistasis Reducer Algorithm (ERA) and a simple Genetic Algorithm (GA). ERA is implemented by a simulated annealing algorithm (SA), which preprocess the original SAT problem by rearranging the variables to satisfy the condition that the most related ones are in closer positions inside the chromosome, and in this way produce a more suited representation for a GA. Then a simple GA is used to solve the preprocessed SAT instances. The Results of experimentation demonstrated that the proposed combined approach outperforms a simple GA in all the tests accomplished. Key-Words: Genetic Algorithms, Epistasis, Satisfiability.
Poly(ADP-ribose) protects vascular smooth muscle cells from oxidative DNA damage

Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) undergo death during atherosclerosis, a widespread cardiovascular disease. Recent studies suggest that oxidative damage occurs in VSMCs and induces atherosclerosis. Here, we analyzed oxidative damage repair in VSMCs and found that VSMCs are hypersensitive to oxidative damage. Further analysis showed that oxidative damage repair in VSMCs is suppressed by a low level of poly (ADP-ribosyl)ation (PARylation), a key post-translational modification in oxidative damage repair. The low level of PARylation is not caused by the lack of PARP-1, the major poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase activated by oxidative damage. Instead, the expression of poly(ADP-ribose) glycohydrolase, PARG, the enzyme hydrolyzing poly(ADP-ribose), is significantly higher in VSMCs than that in the control cells. Using PARG inhibitor to suppress PARG activity facilitates oxidative damage-induced PARylation as well as DNA damage repair. Thus, our study demonstrates a novel molecular mechanism for oxidative damage-induced VSMCs death. This study also identifies the use of PARG inhibitors as a potential treatment for atherosclerosis. [BMB Reports 2015; 48(6): 354-359]
JUST.ASK, a QA system that learns to answer new questions from previous interactions

We present JUST.ASK, a publicly available Question Answering system, which is freely available. Its architecture is composed of the usual Question Processing, Passage Retrieval and Answer Extraction components. Several details on the information generated and manipulated by each of these components are also provided to the user when interacting with the demonstration. Since JUST.ASK also learns to answer new questions based on users feedback, (s)he is invited to identify the correct answers. These will then be used to retrieve answers to future questions.
Gender in Shakespeare: Automatic Stylistics Gender Character Classification Using Syntactic, Lexical and Lemma Features

For a variety of text types, methods for automatically determining the gender of a document’s author can now reliably achieve accuracy of at least 70-80%. Our aim here is to extend this research, to examine determining the gender of literary characters from the author’s differing word use between characters of different genders. Here we describe results showing how Shakespeare used language differently for his male and female characters, and we have studied the top discriminating features from characters of both genders. We used Sequential Minimal Optimization (SMO) to classify of gender character, based on various lexical and syntactic features to analyze the language Shakespeare used for gendering characters. Our methods achieve classification accuracy as high as 82% for classifying character gender. We further observe several interesting patterns in the most distinguishing features, including the fact that some constellations of features match well to previous reports of features that distinguish between male and female authors.
E1 Title a Methodology for Designing Information Systems Based on Situational Theories of Agency E2 Project Description and Background

Research goals: In the past 30 years a number of methodologies have been developed to assist information systems (IS) designers to produce and document systems designs, especially the data models that underpin these systems. They can be referred to collectively as Information Engineering Methodologies (IEM), with Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology (SSADM, the British government standard) being a typical example. These methodologies consist of prescriptive steps to be used in analysis of the task domain, and various design aids used to represent and document data models for databases transaction recorded processes. These methodologies have been widely disseminated through the IS profession by practitioners, consultants and educators. The performance of these information systems is thus to a large degree determined by the fitness for purpose of these methodologies. Noting that information systems form part of goal-directed socio-technical systems, we propose that the methodologies used in information system design should be analysed against theories of agency. We argue that traditional IS development methodologies display deep biases toward a deliberative theory of agency that assumes goal-directed action is enabled by deliberation upon abstract models of the world. In this project we propose a program of research aimed at demonstrating that a paradigmatically different approach to system design, based on a situational approach to agency, is possible and useful in developing effective systems for certain domains. We will do this by: 1. Developing and refining iteratively an alternative systems IS design methodology based on a radically different theory of agency that is currently being articulated in robotics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, but which has as yet had little explicit influence on information systems design. This approach to agency emphasises using simple rule-like responses to situations within structured environments; 2. Demonstrating that the methodology can produce effective systems in a variety of IS task domains; 3. Showing that the methodology so developed is paradigmatically different to existing IEM methodologies. The primary outputs of this project will be: • A fully documented and tested methodology and tool set for the design of situational systems; • Significant insights into alternative designs for information systems including a set of fully documented real-world examples; • A demonstration of usefulness of evaluating information systems designs based on their underlying theories of agency; • Significant insights into the nature of goal-directed activity in socio-technical systems. The project builds on a completed pilot study that has produced a prototype methodology …
MIMO channel modeling with cluster configuration of Complex Time Delay Fully Recurrent Neural Network

Artificial Neural Network (ANN)s like the Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP)s with temporal characteristics demonstrate architectural complexity during estimation of Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) channels for which alternative ANN options are required. The Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) with the ability to track time-dependence of input signals emerge as a choice for such applications. But a standoff surfaces regarding the approach in which RNNs are to be trained to deal with signals with real and complex components. Signals with separate real and complex components can be used to train RNNs better with the responses of each block combined and optimized with Self Organizing Map (SOM) enabling them to show satisfactory performance with tightly coupled transmissions. The present work deals with the formation of a cluster of Complex Time Delay Fully Recurrent Neural Network (CTDFRNN)s optimized with SOMs with inherent temporal characteristics to deal with MIMO channel estimation. The performance derived is superior to statistical and MLP-based approaches and provide diversity gain.
The Role of Generational Communication Differences in the Development of a Positive Gay Midlife Identity

This study draws upon interviews and thematic analysis to explore the role of gay midlife men’s perceived communication differences from their younger counterparts in the formation of a positive age identity. Utilizing the identity process theory as a sensitizing framework, interviews with 40 midlife gay men (aged 40–53) addressed participants’ perceptions of generational communication differences that had positively contributed to gay age identity formation. Coding resulted in three themes of communication difference: communicative finesse, face-to-face orientation, and masculine expression. The themes contribute to an expanded understanding of the role of communication in positive perceptions of gay midlife.