Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Hierarchical Unification of LIRICS and VerbNet Semantic Roles

This research compares several of the thematic roles of Verb Net (VN) to those of the Linguistic Infrastructure for Interoperable Resources and Systems (LIRICS). The purpose of this comparison is to develop a standard set of thematic roles that would be suited to a variety of natural language processing (NLP) applications. We draw from both resources to construct a unified set of semantic roles that will replace existing VN semantic roles. Through the process of comparison, we find that a hierarchical organization of coarse-grained, intermediate and fine-grained roles facilitates mapping between semantic resources of differing granularity and allows for flexibility in how VN can be used for diverse NLP applications, thus, we propose a hierarchical taxonomy of the unified role set. The comparison and subsequent development of the hierarchy reveals a level of granularity shared by both resources, which could be further developed into a standard set of thematic roles for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
OUR BROTHERS’ KEEPERS: SIBLINGS ABUSING CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES LIVING WITH NON-USING SIBLINGS

Non-using siblings are adversely affected by the substance abuse and related behaviour of their brothers and sisters. This article allows greater understanding of the plight of non-using siblings obtained from 28 participants interviewed in this qualitative study. Findings reflect the relationships, feelings, challenges and coping strategies of the participants as well as their perceptions of the role of social workers in assisting the chemical substance abuser. Strategies are suggested for social work policy and practice to treat chemical substance abuse holistically.
Effect of IAA on in vitro growth and colonization of Nostoc in plant roots

Nostoc is widely known for its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen and the establishment of symbiotic relationship with a wide range of plants from various taxonomic groups. Several strains of Nostoc produce phytohormones that promote growth of its plant partners. Nostoc OS-1 was therefore selected for study because of the presence of putative ipdC gene that encodes a key enzyme to produce Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). The results indicated that both cellular and released IAA was found high with increasing incubation time and reached to a peak value (i.e., 21 pmol mg-1ch-a) on the third week as determined by UPLC-ESI-MS/MS. Also the Nostoc OS-1 strain efficiently colonized the roots and promoted the growth of rice as well as wheat under axenic conditions and induced ipdC gene that suggested the possible involvement of IAA in these phenotypes. To confirm the impact of IAA on root colonization efficiency and plant promoting phenotypes of Nostoc OS-1, an ipdC knockout mutant was generated by homologous recombinant method. The amount of releasing IAA, in vitro growth, root colonization, and plant promoting efficiency of the ipdC knockout mutant was observed significantly lower than wild type strain under axenic conditions. Importantly, these phenotypes were restored to wild-type levels when the ipdC knockout mutant was complemented with wild type ipdC gene. These results together suggested that ipdC and/or synthesized IAA of Nostoc OS-1 is required for its efficient root colonization and plant promoting activity.
A visual analysis approach to update systematic reviews

Context: In order to preserve the value of Systematic Reviews (SRs), they should be frequently updated considering new evidence that has been produced since the completion of the previous version of the reviews. However, the update of an SR is a time consuming, manual task. Thus, many SRs have not been updated as they should be and, therefore, they are currently outdated. Objective: The main contribution of this paper is to support the update of SRs. Method: We propose USR-VTM, an approach based on Visual Text Mining (VTM) techniques, to support selection of new evidence in the form of primary studies. We then present a tool, named Revis, which supports our approach. Finally, we evaluate our approach through a comparison of outcomes achieved using USR-VTM versus the traditional (manual) approach. Results: Our results show that USR-VTM increases the number of studies correctly included compared to the traditional approach. Conclusions: USR-VTM effectively supports the update of SRs.
Camouflaging independent sets in quasi-random graphs

In this paper, we look at the problem of how one might try to hide a large independent set in a graph in which all other independent sets are signiicantly smaller. We observe that the most common methods of generating graphs with known maximal independent sets are subject to attack using quite simple techniques that are successful signiicantly often for graphs of practical size. We present an improved random graph generation system, DELTA, which increases the range of maximal independent sets that can be hidden from these techniques.
Universal programming interfaces for robotic devices

Robotic devices, whether service robots designed to help people or entertainment robots, are more and more widespread, and their number is increasing. All these robots currently have a different programming interface, more or less complex and more or less powerful. The situation is reminding of the 80's and the personal computer revolution: many vendors, models and as many programming languages and interfaces. We have developed URBI, a Universal Robotic Body Interface in an attempt to address this issue and provide a standard and simple way to control robots, while still providing powerful high-level capabilities expected from a modern programming language. To achieve this, URBI is based on a client/server architecture where the server is running on the robot and accessed by the client, typically via TCP/IP. The client can be any system, thus giving a great deal of flexibility. The URBI language is a high level scripted interface language used by the client and capable of controlling the joints of the robot or accessing its sensors, camera, speakers or any accessible part of the machine, We present in this article a short introduction to URBI and show application examples with Aibo. We finally explore how URBI could impact the development of everyday robotics and facilitate the interaction between robots, computers and smart objects in general.
Multiphasic helical computed tomography predicts subsequent development of severe brain edema in acute ischemic stroke.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the use of multiphasic helical computed tomography (CT) in predicting subsequent development of severe brain edema in patients with acute middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke. DESIGN Case-control study. SETTING Tertiary referral hospital. PATIENTS We studied 31 patients with acute MCA stroke who had a baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score of 15 or higher within 6 hours of symptom onset. Sequential 4-phasic enhanced helical CT scans were performed after taking precontrast CT scans. The severity of perfusion deficit was graded as "severe" or "moderate" depending on collateral blood flow. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Patients were classified as having severe brain edema if they showed signs of uncal herniation or deterioration with mass effect leading to hemicraniectomy. RESULTS Severe brain edema developed in 10 patients (32%). Severe perfusion deficit greater than 50% of the presumed MCA territory on multiphasic helical CT was more often found in patients with severe brain edema than in those without (8 of 10 vs 4 of 21, P =.002). In contrast, parenchymal hypodensity greater than 50% on precontrast CT was observed only in 5 patients with severe brain edema (5 of 10 vs 4 of 21, P =.10). Additional involvement of the anterior or posterior cerebral artery territory was found on multiphasic CT (6 of 10 vs 0 of 21, P <.001) and on precontrast CT (4 of 10 vs 0 of 21, P =.007) only in patients with severe brain edema. CONCLUSION Multiphasic helical CT is more useful than precontrast CT for predicting subsequent severe brain edema in acute MCA stroke based on the findings of severe perfusion deficit greater than 50% of the MCA territory and additional involvement of the anterior or posterior cerebral artery territory.
- xiang An Improved Particle Swarm Optimizer Based on Thermodynamical Model

particle swarm optimization, based on the simple evolutionary equations and the steep thermodynamical selection rule, are proposed to alleviate the premature convergence. The algorithm based on thermodynamical model, in which the selection rule simulates the competitive mechanism between energy and entropy in annealing to modify the exploitation and the exploration adaptively, can produce less off-particles in different free-energy scale not only to prevent the swarm from clustering and reduce the computational cost, but also to vary the diversity of the swarm and contribute to a global optimum output in the swarm. Relative experiments have been done; the results show the improved PSO performs very well on benchmark problems, and outperforms the other related PSO in search ability and stability.
Cognition and Hippocampal Plasticity in the Mouse Is Altered by Monosomy of a Genomic Region Implicated in Down Syndrome

Down syndrome (DS) is due to increased copy number of human chromosome 21. The contribution of different genetic regions has been tested using mouse models. As shown previously, the Abcg1-U2af1 genetic region contributes to cognitive defects in working and short-term recognition memory in Down syndrome mouse models. Here we analyzed the impact of monosomy of the same genetic interval, using a new mouse model, named Ms2Yah. We used several cognitive paradigms and did not detect defects in the object recognition or the Morris water maze tests. However, surprisingly, Ms2Yah mice displayed increased associative memory in a pure contextual fear-conditioning test and decreased social novelty interaction along with a larger long-term potentiation recorded in the CA1 area following stimulation of Schaffer collaterals. Whole-genome expression studies carried out on hippocampus showed that the transcription of only a small number of genes is affected, mainly from the genetic interval (Cbs, Rsph1, Wdr4), with a few additional ones, including the postsynaptic Gabrr2, Gabbr1, Grid2p, Park2, and Dlg1 and the components of the Ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis (Anapc1, Rnf7, Huwe1, Park2). The Abcg1–U2af1 region is undeniably encompassing dosage-sensitive genes or elements whose change in copy number directly affects learning and memory, synaptic function, and autistic related behavior.
Numerical derivation of fading-memory polynomial and sinusoidal filters for discrete-time control systems

Fading-memory polynomial (FMP) filters are useful as lag and lead compensators in control systems. It is shown that these recursive filters, with an infinite impulse response (IIR), need not be derived analytically using the orthogonal discrete Laguerre polynomials and that numerical matrix inversion is sufficient for low-order filters. This then enables the discounted least-squares approach, used in the design procedure, to be generalized to products of any family of weighting functions and any family of regressor functions (e.g. complex sinusoids), for which simple Z-transforms exist. In this introductory treatment, the fading-memory filters are derived and their use as lag and lead compensators is illustrated using simulation.
Probabilistic timing analysis of distributed real-time automotive systems

Probabilistic Timing Analysis of Distributed Real-time Automotive Systems by Haibo Zeng Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering-Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California, Berkeley Professor Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Chair Distributed architectures supporting the execution of real-time applications are common in automotive systems. Many applications, including most of those developed for active safety and chassis systems, do not impose hard real-time deadlines. Nevertheless, they are sensitive to the latencies of the end-to-end computations from sensors to actuators. We believe a characterization of the timing metrics that, not only provides the worst case bound, but assigns a probability to each possible latency value, is very desirable to estimate the quality of an architecture configuration. In this dissertation, we present stochastic analysis frameworks that calculate the probability distributions of response times for software tasks and messages, and end-to-end latencies in a Controller Area Network based system for the performance evaluation of automotive distributed architectures. Also, the regression technique is used to quickly characterize the message response time probability distribution, which is suitable when only part of the message set is known as in the early design stage. The applicability of the analysis frameworks is validated by either simulation, or trace data extracted
A 6b 100MS/s 0.28mm2 5mW 0.18um CMOS F/I ADC with a Novel Folder Reduction Technique

In this paper, CMOS analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with a 6-bit 100 MSPS at 1.8 V is described. The architecture of the proposed ADC is based on a folding type ADC using resistive interpolation technique for low power consumption. Further, the number of folding blocks (NFB) is decreased by half of them, compared to the conventional ones. With the clock speed of 100 MSPS, the ADC achieves an effective resolution bandwidth (ERBW) of 50 MHz, while consuming only 4.5 mW of power. The measured result of figure-of-merit (FoM) is 0.93 pJ/convstep. The active chip occupies an area of 0.28 mm2 in 0.18 mum CMOS technology.
COMBINING MOLECULAR DOCKING WITH RECEPTOR DOMAIN MOTIONS: SIMULATIONS OF BINDING OF ATP TO CA-ATPase

Motivation: Most molecular docking algorithms consider only flexibility of ligand molecules while receptor is held rigid. At the same time it becomes evident that receptor’s flexibility is indispensable for obtaining correct structures of protein-ligand complexes via docking simulations. Results: To study the effect of receptor flexibility we used the ATP – Ca-ATPase complex. In experimental structures of the complex ATP-analogues simultaneously interact with two active sites which are situated in different protein domains. In the apoform the distance between these sites is too large and standard docking protocols fail to reproduce the experimental structure. We used molecular dynamics simulations of nucleotide-binding part of Ca-ATPase to study its domain motions and generate a representative ensemble of the receptor conformations. This approach allowed correct prediction of the structure of the complex based on the apo-structure of the Ca-ATPase. Availability: http://model.nmr. ru.
FAS Engagement Induces the Maturation of Dendritic Cells (Dcs), the Release of Interleukin (Il)-1β, and the Production of Interferon γ in the Absence of IL-12 during Dc–T Cell Cognate Interaction

Ligation of the Fas (CD95) receptor leads to an apoptotic death signal in T cells, B cells, and macrophages. However, human CD34+–derived dendritic cells (DCs) and mouse DCs, regardless of their maturation state, are not susceptible to Fas-induced cell death. This resistance correlates with the constitutive expression of the Fas-associated death domain–like IL-1β–converting enzyme (FLICE)-inhibitory protein (FLIP) ligand. We demonstrate a new role of Fas in DC physiology. Engagement of Fas on immature DCs by Fas ligand (FasL) or by anti-Fas antibodies induces the phenotypical and functional maturation of primary DCs. Fas-activated DCs upregulate the expression of the major histocompatibility complex class II, B7, and DC–lysosome-associated membrane protein (DC-LAMP) molecules and secrete proinflammatory cytokines, in particular interleukin (IL)-1β and tumor necrosis factor α. Mature DCs, if exposed to FasL, produce even higher amounts of IL-1β. Importantly, it is possible to reduce the production of IL-1β and interferon (IFN)-γ during DC–T cell interaction by blocking the coupling of Fas–FasL with a Fas competitor. Finally, during cognate DC–T cell recognition, IL-12 (p70) could not be detected at early or late time points, indicating that Fas-induced, IFN-γ secretion is independent of IL-12.
LAN based real time audio-graphics conferencing system

LANBRETA-GCS, an LAN-based real-time audio-graphics teleconferencing system, is presented. The environment which the system is being implemented is introduced, and the specification decisions are justified. Although LANBRETA-GCS is being implemented in a local area network environment, utilizing an IBM token ring and the functions of DOS, NETBIOS, and the PC LAN program, its implementation is much more general. The organization of the system, to handle conferencing groups or individual messages, is described. <<ETX>>
Altenkirch, Thorsten and Kaposi, Ambrus (2016) Type theory in type theory using quotient inductive types. In: POPL '16 The 43rd Annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, 20-22 January 2016, St Petersburg, Florida, United States of America

We present an internal formalisation of a type heory with dependent types in Type Theory using a special case of higher inductive types from Homotopy Type Theory which we call quotient inductive types (QITs). Our formalisation of type theory avoids referring to preterms or a typability relation but defines directly well typed objects by an inductive definition. We use the elimination principle to define the set-theoretic and logical predicate interpretation. The work has been formalized using the Agda system extended with QITs using postulates.
Performance Comparison of Intrusive Objective Speech Intelligibility and Quality Metrics for Cochlear Implant Users

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of six intrusive objective measures as intelligibility predictors of degraded speech for cochlear implant (CI) users. Three practical environmental degradation scenarios are considered: reverberation alone, additive noise alone, and noise-plus-reverberation. A subjective intelligibility test was performed with eleven cochlear implant users and objective measures were evaluated using four performance metrics: Pearson, Spearman rank, and sigmoid-fitted correlation coefficients, and the root mean square error. It was observed that existing metrics performed well in the noise-alone scenarios, but obtained lower performance in the reverberationalone scenario and in many cases, unacceptable results in the noise-plus-reverberation scenario. It is concluded that further work is still needed in order to accurately predict speech intelligibility ratings for CI users, particularly in environments corrupted by reverberation.
Joint Social and Physical Clustering Scheme for Device-to-Device Communications

This paper proposes a novel clustering scheme by incorporating both social and physical relationships among wireless terminals for Device-to-Device (D2D) communications. Given the explosive growth of online social networking activities, social interactions among mobile users and people's social behaviors can have strong impact on the efficiency of D2D cluster communications. We exploit the well known Chinese Restaurant Process (CRP) to characterize the formation of our D2D link-based clusters by taking into account both the physical and social relationships among nodes. Numerical results demonstrate the advantages of our proposed scheme over other existing schemes in terms of system throughput and energy efficiency.
On-Line Validation of Partially Occluded Images over a Dictionary of Objects with Holes

A partially occluded image is composed of members of a finite set of objects, with some of the appearing objects being partially occluded by others. Validating occluded images distinguishes whether a given image can be covered by the members of a finite set of objects, where both the image and the object range over identical alphabet. The algorithm presented here validates a one-dimensional image x of length n, over a given set of objects all of equal length and each composed of two parts separated by a transparent hole.
The Influence of Arginine on the Response of Enamel Matrix Derivative (EMD) Proteins to Thermal Stress: Towards Improving the Stability of EMD-Based Products

In a current procedure for periodontal tissue regeneration, enamel matrix derivative (EMD), which is the active component, is mixed with a propylene glycol alginate (PGA) gel carrier and applied directly to the periodontal defect. Exposure of EMD to physiological conditions then causes it to precipitate. However, environmental changes during manufacture and storage may result in modifications to the conformation of the EMD proteins, and eventually premature phase separation of the gel and a loss in therapeutic effectiveness. The present work relates to efforts to improve the stability of EMD-based formulations such as Emdogain™ through the incorporation of arginine, a well-known protein stabilizer, but one that to our knowledge has not so far been considered for this purpose. Representative EMD-buffer solutions with and without arginine were analyzed by 3D-dynamic light scattering, UV-Vis spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy at different acidic pH and temperatures, T, in order to simulate the effect of pH variations and thermal stress during manufacture and storage. The results provided evidence that arginine may indeed stabilize EMD against irreversible aggregation with respect to variations in pH and T under these conditions. Moreover, stopped-flow transmittance measurements indicated arginine addition not to suppress precipitation of EMD from either the buffers or the PGA gel carrier when the pH was raised to 7, a fundamental requirement for dental applications.
Deletion and Complementation of the Mating Type (MAT) Locus of the Wheat Head Blight Pathogen Gibberella zeae

ABSTRACT Gibberella zeae, a self-fertile, haploid filamentous ascomycete, causes serious epidemics of wheat (Triticum aestivum) head blight worldwide and contaminates grain with trichothecene mycotoxins. Anecdotal evidence dating back to the late 19th century indicates that G. zeae ascospores (sexual spores) are a more important inoculum source than are macroconidia (asexual spores), although the fungus can produce both during wheat head blight epidemics. To develop fungal strains to test this hypothesis, the entire mating type (MAT1) locus was deleted from a self-fertile (MAT1-1/MAT1-2), virulent, trichothecene-producing wild-type strain of G. zeae. The resulting MAT deletion (mat1-1/mat1-2) strains were unable to produce perithecia or ascospores and appeared to be unable to mate with the fertile strain from which they were derived. Complementation of a MAT deletion strain by transformation with a copy of the entire MAT locus resulted in recovery of production of perithecia and ascospores. MAT deletion strains and MAT-complemented strains retained the ability to produce macroconidia that could cause head blight, as assessed by direct injection into wheat heads in greenhouse tests. Availability of MAT-null and MAT-complemented strains provides a means to determine the importance of ascospores in the biology of G. zeae and perhaps to identify novel approaches to control wheat head blight.
A Query by Humming System using MPEG-7 Descriptors

Query by Humming (QBH) is a method for searching in a multimedia database system containing meta data descriptions of songs. The database can be searched by hummed queries, this means that a user can hum a melody into a microphone which is connected to the computer hosting the system. The QBH system searches the database for songs which are similar to the input query and presents the result to the user as a list of matching songs. This paper presents a modular QBH system using MPEG-7 descriptors in all processing stages. Due to the modular design all components can easily be substituted. The system is evaluated by changing parameters defined by the MPEG-7 descriptors.