Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relating initial turns of human-robot dialogues to discourse

User models can be useful for improving dialogue management. In this paper we analyze human-robot dialogues that occur during uncontrolled interactions and estimate relations between the initial dialogue turns and patterns of discourse that are indicative of such user traits as persistence and politeness. The significant effects shown in this preliminary study suggest that initial dialogue turns may be useful in modeling a user's interaction style.
Much Has Changed Since Baron and Kenny's (1986) Classic Paper: Let Us Learn What Kenny's (2012) Contemporary Mediation Analysis Prescribes

The procedure set for mediation analysis in the Baron and Kenny’s (1986) classical research article did not go without criticism (MacKinnon and Fairchild, 2009; Hayes, 2009; Bullock, Green, & Ha, 2010; Zhao, Lynch and Chen, 2010), and thanks to those critics, that Kenny (2012) had to bring a number of modifications and improvements through his today’s contemporary mediation analytic procedure. This paper presents a comparison of what Baron and Kenny (1986) had originally proposed, and what Kenny (2012) has now suggested after incorporating critics’ concerns. For this purpose, the two approaches of mediation analysis have been practically applied on an organizational justice - trust in supervisor - employees’ job satisfaction case, wherein variable ‘trust in supervisor’ was used to mediate between various facets of organization justice and employees’ job satisfaction. Whereas the classic approach required the estimation of the four paths (c, a, b & c’), through four steps and running three regression equations and testing for their statistical significance; the contemporary mediation analysis has shortened the paths from four to three (a, b & c’), requiring taking only two steps (Steps 2 and 3), and running two regression equations, declaring the first equation as unnecessary. The classic approach required that path b needs to become statistically significant and path c’ insignificant in step 3 & 4 for a complete mediation; contemporary approach asks for adding c’ with ab for determining total effect c, and then decomposing c in to direct effect (c’/c) and indirect or mediation effect (ab/c). Whereas classic approach aimed at solving for full or partial mediation in abstract form, the contemporary approach has the edge over the classic, in quantifying the mediation effect (ab). In case of our solved example, classic approach could only help to indicate that ‘trust-in-supervisor variable is partially mediating’, while in case of contemporary approach, mediation effect of this variable for INJ facet of organizational justice was not only quantified (17.36%) and tested for its non-zero effect, but zero-effect of other two facets, DJ and IJ, were also differentiated.
Conservation and Variability of West Nile Virus Proteins

West Nile virus (WNV) has emerged globally as an increasingly important pathogen for humans and domestic animals. Studies of the evolutionary diversity of the virus over its known history will help to elucidate conserved sites, and characterize their correspondence to other pathogens and their relevance to the immune system. We describe a large-scale analysis of the entire WNV proteome, aimed at identifying and characterizing evolutionarily conserved amino acid sequences. This study, which used 2,746 WNV protein sequences collected from the NCBI GenPept database, focused on analysis of peptides of length 9 amino acids or more, which are immunologically relevant as potential T-cell epitopes. Entropy-based analysis of the diversity of WNV sequences, revealed the presence of numerous evolutionarily stable nonamer positions across the proteome (entropy value of ≤1). The representation (frequency) of nonamers variant to the predominant peptide at these stable positions was, generally, low (≤10% of the WNV sequences analyzed). Eighty-eight fragments of length 9–29 amino acids, representing ∼34% of the WNV polyprotein length, were identified to be identical and evolutionarily stable in all analyzed WNV sequences. Of the 88 completely conserved sequences, 67 are also present in other flaviviruses, and several have been associated with the functional and structural properties of viral proteins. Immunoinformatic analysis revealed that the majority (78/88) of conserved sequences are potentially immunogenic, while 44 contained experimentally confirmed human T-cell epitopes. This study identified a comprehensive catalogue of completely conserved WNV sequences, many of which are shared by other flaviviruses, and majority are potential epitopes. The complete conservation of these immunologically relevant sequences through the entire recorded WNV history suggests they will be valuable as components of peptide-specific vaccines or other therapeutic applications, for sequence-specific diagnosis of a wide-range of Flavivivirus infections, and for studies of homologous sequences among other flaviviruses.
Development of a new method for deriving initial fittings for hearing aids with multi-channel compression: CAMEQ2-HF

Abstract 33 described a procedure, CAMEQ, for the initial fitting of multi-channel compression hearing aids. The procedure was derived using a model of loudness perception for impaired hearing. We describe here the development of a new fitting method, CAMEQ2-HF, which differs from CAMEQ in the following ways: (1) CAMEQ2-HF gives recommended gains for centre frequencies up to 10 kHz, whereas the upper limit for CAMEQ is 6 kHz; (2) CAMEQ is based on the assumption that the hearing aid user faces the person they wish to hear and uses a free-field-to-eardrum transfer function for frontal incidence. CAMEQ2-HF is based on the assumption that the user may wish to hear sounds from many directions, and uses a diffuse-field-to-eardrum transfer function; (3) CAMEQ2-HF is based on an improved loudness model for impaired hearing; (4) CAMEQ2-HF is based on recent wideband measurements of the average spectrum of speech. Sumario 33 describieron un procedimiento, CAMEQ, para la adaptación inicial de auxiliares auditivos con compresión de múltiples canales. El procedimiento se basó en el uso de un modelo de percepción de la intensidad subjetiva para casos de audición disminuida. Describimos aquí el desarrollo de un nuevo método de adaptación, CAMEQ2-HF, que difiere del CAMEQ en las siguientes formas: (1) CAMEQ2-HF proporciona ganancias recomendadas para las frecuencias centrales hasta 10 kHz mientras que el límite superior para el CAMEQ es 6 kHz; (2) CAMEQ se basa en la suposición de que el usuario de un auxiliar auditivo (se ubica de frente)hace frente a la persona que quiere oír y usa la función de transferencia campo libre-membrana timpánica para una incidencia frontal. CAMEQ2-HF se basa en la suposición de que el usuario quiere oír los sonidos desde muchas direcciones y usa una función de transferencia campodifuso-a-membrana timpánica; (3) CAMEQ2-HF se basa en un modelo de intensidad subjetiva mejorada para la audición disminuida; (4) CAMEQ2-HF se basa en las recientes mediciones de banda ancha del espectro promedio del habla.
Cloning of mouse integrin alphaV cDNA and role of the alphaV-related matrix receptors in metanephric development

Metanephrogenesis has been a long-standing model to study cell-matrix interactions. A number of adhesion molecules, including matrix receptors (i.e., integrins), are believed to be involved in such interactions. The integrins contain alpha and beta s ubunits and are present in various tissues in different heterodimeric forms. In this study, one of the members of the integrin superfamily, alphaV, was characterized, and its relevance in murine nephrogenesis was investigated. Mouse embryonic renal cDNA libraries were prepared and screened for alphaV, and multiple clones were isolated and sequenced. The deduced amino acid sequence of the alpha-v cDNA clones and hydropathic analysis revealed that it has a typical signal sequence and extracellular, transmembrane, and cytoplasmic domains, with multiple Ca2+ binding sites. No A(U)nA mRNA instability motifs were present. Conformational analysis revealed no rigid long-range-ordered structure in murine alphaV. The alphaV was expressed in the embryonic kidney at day 13 of the gestation, with a transcript size of approximately 7 kb. Its expression increased progressively during the later gestational stages and in the neonatal period. It was distributed in the epithelial elements of developing nephrons and was absent in the uninduced mesenchyme. In mature metanephroi, the expression was relatively high in the glomeruli and blood vessels, as compared to the tubules. Various heterodimeric associations of alphaV, i.e., with beta1, beta3, beta5, and beta6, were observed in metanephric tissues. Inclusion of alphaV- antisense-oligodeoxynucleotide or -antibody in metanephric culture induced dysmorphogenesis of the kidney with reduced population of the nephrons, disorganization of the ureteric bud branches, and reduction of mRNA and protein expressions of alphaV. The expressions of integrin beta3, beta5, and beta6 were unaltered. These findings suggest that the integrin alphaV is developmentally regulated, has a distinct spatio- temporal expression, and is relevant in the mammalian organogenesis.
Rail Flatness Measurement Method Based on Virtual Rules

This paper deals with the problem of measuring the flatness of rails in the final stage of their manufacturing. The flatness must be measured repeatedly along the total length of the rails. Controlling the flatness of manufactured rails is very important; only rails with very good flatness can be used in high-speed railways. Rails with moderate flatness defects can be used in standard railways, but if the flatness defects are greater than specific tolerances, the rails must undergo a straightening process or be discarded. To measure flatness, we propose a method based on emulation of the manual measurement process: the placement of virtual rules along the entire length of rails. The goal of using virtual rules is to measure potential rail defects. The results indicate which of the rails meets the minimum quality conditions required and which need to be re-manufactured or even discarded. The proposed method is based on an official standard: the European Standard EN-13674-1-2011. An extensive dataset of rails has been measured to test the performance of the proposed method. Results indicate the proposed method is robust and accurate.
Mitochondrial Superoxide Radical Formation is Controlled by Electron Bifurcation to the High and Low Potential Pathways

The generation of oxygen radicals in biological systems and their sites of intracellular release have been subject of numerous studies in the last decades. Based on these studies mitochondria are considered to be the major source of intracellular oxygen radicals. Although this finding is more or less accepted, the mechanism of univalent oxygen reduction in mitochondria is still obscure. One of the most critical electron transfer steps in the respiratory chain is the electron bifurcation at the cytochrome bc 1 complex. Recent studies with genetically mutated mitochondria have made it clear that electron bifurcation from ubiquinol to the cytochrome bc 1 complex requires the free mobility of the head domain of the Rieske iron-sulfur protein. On the other hand, it has been long known that inhibition of electron bifurcation by antimycin A causes leakage of single electrons to dioxygen, which results in the release of superoxide radicals. These findings lead us to study whether hindrance of the interaction of ubiquinol with the cytochrome bc 1 complex is the regulator of single electron diversion to oxygen. Hindrance of electron bifurcation was observed following alterations of the physical state of membrane phospholipids in which the cytochrome bc 1 complex is inserted. Irrespective of whether the fluidity of the membrane lipids was elevated or decreased, electron flow rates to the Rieske iron-sulfur protein were drastically reduced. Concomitantly superoxide radicals were released from these mitochondria, strongly suggesting an effect on the mobility of the head domain of the Rieske iron-sulfur protein. This revealed the involvement of the ubiquinol cytochrome bc 1 redox couple in mitochondrial superoxide formation. The regulator, which controls leakage of electrons to oxygen, appears to be the electron-branching activity of the cytochrome bc 1 complex.
A CMOS-Compatible Fabrication Process for Scaled Self-Aligned InGaAs MOSFETs

We have developed a scalable gate-last process to fabricate planar self-aligned InGaAs Quantum-well ( QW) MOSFETs that relies on extensive use of dry recess . The fabrication sequence yields precise control of all critical transistor dimensions, in particular, the length and thickness of the channel and the access regions. The process involves a combination of anisotropic and isotropic F-based dry etching of ref ractory metal ohmic contacts that are formed early in the process. Anisotropic Cl-based dry etching is used to recess the In-based III -V cap material. A digital etch technique that achieves a thickness control down to ~1 nm is used to trim the channel to its final thickness . We have demonstrated Lg=20 nm MOSFETs with 15 nm contact-gate separation and good electrical characteristics. A device design optimized for transport exhibits a record transconductance of 3.1 mS/ m.
Short-term and Medium-term Gas Demand Load Forecasting by Neural Networks

The ability of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for estimating the natural gas demand load for the next day and month of the populated cities has shown to be a real concern. As the most applicable network, the ANN with multi-layer back propagation perceptrons is used to approximate functions. Throughout the current work, the daily effective temperature is determined, and then the weather data with the gas consumption data of the last days are used for network training. It is shown that nearly 93% and 98.9% of the result is in a good agreement with the real data for the daily gas load forecasting and those of the monthly respectively. These results clearly show the capability of the presented networks. The method, however, can further be developed for prediction of other required information in various industries.
Ischaemic changes in refractoriness of human cutaneous afferents under threshold‐clamp conditions

1 A technique was developed to counteract the changes in threshold to electrical stimuli of large myelinated cutaneous afferents in the human median nerve induced by ischaemia for 13 min. Intermittent application of polarizing currents was used in five subjects, in whom refractoriness, supernormality and the strength‐duration time constant (τSD) were tracked to determine whether compensating for the ischaemia‐induced changes in threshold also controlled the ischaemic changes in these excitability parameters. 2 The threshold compensation prevented the ischaemic changes in τSD, an excitability parameter dependent on nodal Na+ channels. Threshold compensation did not prevent the changes in refractoriness and supernormality, whether the compensation began 10, 100 or 200 ms prior to the test stimuli. 3 In three subjects, continuous polarizing current was injected for 13 min to compensate for the ischaemic change in threshold, thus clamping threshold at the pre‐ischaemic level. Again, τSD was effectively controlled, but there were still ischaemic changes in refractoriness and supernormality. 4 The effective control of τSD suggests that both the intermittent threshold compensation and the continuous threshold clamp effectively controlled membrane potential at the node of Ranvier. 5 The ischaemic increase in refractoriness when threshold was kept constant could be due to interference with the processes responsible for refractoriness by a metabolic product of ischaemia. The ischaemic change in supernormality during effective compensation probably results from the intrusion of refractoriness into the conditioning‐test intervals normally associated with maximal supernormality. 6 The present results indicate that ischaemia has effects on axonal excitability that cannot be readily explained by changes in membrane potential. Specifically, it is suggested that ischaemic metabolites interfere with the recovery of Na+ channels from inactivation.
A Totally Decoupled Piezo-Driven XYZ Flexure Parallel Micropositioning Stage for Micro/Nanomanipulation

This paper reports the design and development processes of a totally decoupled flexure-based XYZ parallel-kinematics micropositioning stage with piezoelectric actuation. The uniqueness of the proposed XYZ stage lies in that it possesses both input and output decoupling properties with integrated displacement amplifiers. The input decoupling is realized by actuation isolation using double compound parallelogram flexures with large transverse stiffness, and the output decoupling is implemented by employing two-dimensional (2-D) compound parallelogram flexures. By simplifying each flexure hinge as a two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) compliant joint, analytical models of kinematics, statics, and dynamics of the XYZ stage are established and then validated with finite-element analysis (FEA). The derived models are further adopted for optimal design of the stage through particle swarm optimization (PSO), and a prototype of XYZ stage is fabricated for performance tests. The nonsymmetric hysteresis behavior of the piezo-stage is identified with the modified Prandtl-Ishlinskii (MPI) model, and a control scheme combining the inverse model-based feedforward with feedback control is constructed to compensate the plant nonlinearity and uncertainty. Experimental results reveal that a submicron accuracy 1-D and 3-D positioning can be achieved by the system, which confirms the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism and controller design as well.
AN EDGE DETECTION MODEL BASED ON VIRTUAL MAGNETIC FIELD: APPLICATION TO DIGITAL COLOR IMAGES

In computer vision, the edge detection is an essent ial and difficult problem to study. For this reason , many detectors were developed for gray-level and color i mages. However, these edge detectors may miss some parts of the edges. In the aim, to deal with this p roblem, a new approach is proposed. It is based on Virtual Magnetic Field (VMF) in conjunction with Cubical Voxels (CV). The main idea of this approach is to model a color image as a magnetic cube which has the same height and width as the image. The pixels intensities are modeled by the CV model as voxels t hat are considered by the VMF model as virtual magnetic moments. This technique allows determining easily the most important three operators that are used to provide approximate gradients for each plan e color component. The method is tested on synthesized and real images that show promising res ults.
Effect of Methyl Jasmonate on antioxidative enzyme activities and on the contents of ROS and H2O2 in Ricinus communis leaves

Jasmonates are a class of plant hormones that mediate various aspects in gene and metabolic regulation, defense, stress responses, reproduction and, possibly, communication. Oxidative stress stimulates synthesis of antioxidant metabolites and enhances antioxidant enzyme activities that could protect plant tissues. The aim of this study was to verify the effects of methyl jasmonate (JAME) treatment on the reactive oxygen species (ROS) and on the activities of H2O2 scavenging enzymes, such as superoxide dismutase (SOD; EC 1.15.1.1), catalase (CAT; EC 1.11.1.6), ascorbate peroxidase (APX EC; 1.11.1.1), and guaiacol peroxidase (GPX; EC 1.11.1.7) in Ricinus communis leaves. The activity of CAT and GPX was transient while SOD activity decreased and APX increased after treatment with JAME. In addition, JAME exposure induced ROS accumulation.
A simulated method of modeling wireless channel based on CDL

Rapid development of wireless communications gives prominence to simulation. Simulated methods of modeling wireless channel are of significance to wireless communications simulation on both link and system levels. There have been quite a lot of theoretical models which have accurately described the characteristics of wireless channel. However when it comes to the realization of wireless channel in simulation, there seem no accurate enough methods and conclusions. Current simulated methods are mostly built up based on TDL, which is a common framework to model micro fading and mainly focused on micro fading. As to macro fading, Doppler-effect and polarization of electromagnetic wave, this method behaves not well enough, and other statistical approximations is indispensable, such as shadow fading, Doppler power spectrum density and so on. To the question existed, this paper proposes a simulated method to accurately model wireless channel under given wireless environment, on the basis of cluster delay line. This method is highlighted with comprehensive consideration of macro and micro fading, Doppler, multi-path and polarization effect. Analysis and simulation results on characteristics of wireless channel such as signal envelope, coherent time and bandwidth, validate the proposed model.
From exposome to microbiome to infectome--'pathogens vs. sanogens'.

Bacterial meningitis is a life-threatening infectious disease with high mortality and disability rates, despite availability of antibiotics and adjunctive therapy with dexamethasone. Several risk factors and predisposing conditions have been identified that increase susceptibility for bacterial meningitis. Such risk factors can consist of medical conditions resulting in immunodeficiency, host genetic factors or anatomical defects of the natural barriers of the central nervous system. These factors can increase the risk of meningitis in general or result in a specific risk of meningococcal or pneumococcal meningitis, the two most important causes of bacterial meningitis, which are characterised by distinct host-pathogen interactions. In this review we describe several risk factors for communityacquired bacterial meningitis in adults and discuss what preventive measurements can be taken in these populations.
Predictors of early survival in Soay sheep: cohort-, maternal- and individual-level variation

A demographic understanding of population dynamics requires an appreciation of the processes influencing survival—a demographic rate influenced by parameters varying at the individual, maternal and cohort level. There have been few attempts to partition the variance in demography contributed by each of these parameter types. Here, we use data from a feral population of Soay sheep (Ovis aries), from the island of St Kilda, to explore the relative importance of these parameter types on early survival. We demonstrate that the importance of variation occurring at the level of the individual, and maternally, far outweighs that occurring at the cohort level. The most important variables within the individual and maternal levels were birth weight and maternal age class, respectively. This work underlines the importance of using individual based models in ecological demography and we, therefore, caution against studies that focus solely on population processes.