Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Searching semantically similar questions from a large community-based question archive

This paper provides a novel and totally statistical method to search similar questions from a large question archive for a given queried question. Firstly, a word relevance model is trained based on the whole question archive which is made up of millions of natural language questions proposed by users on the web. The word relevance model is utilized to find most semantically related words to a specific word. Secondly, in order to find semantically similar questions for a queried question, each non-stop word in a question is expanded with the help of word relevance model and represented as a word vector. Elements of the vector include the word itself and some semantically related words to it. Elements of the word vector are weighted by combining both classical IR term weighting method and word transformation probability learned from the relevance model. Then the question is mapped to a question vector as the normalized center of the word vectors representing these words contained in it. The problem of question retrieval can be solved by comparing the similarity between question vectors. The method is actually a simple question expansion based Kernel approach. Experimental results indicate the proposed method outperforms the baseline methods such as Vector Space Model (VSM) and Language Model for Information Retrieval (LMIR).
Changes in Plasma Progesterone Levels in the Caudal Vena Cava and the Jugular Vein and Luteinizing Hormone Secretion Pattern After Feeding in Lactating and Non-lactating Dairy Cows

Abstract The present study was designed to assess progesterone profiles at the secreted (caudal vena cava) and circulating levels (jugular vein) and luteinizing hormone (LH) secretion pattern in lactating and non-lactating cows with reference to feeding. Four lactating and four non-lactating cycling Holstein cows were examined. Blood samples were collected simultaneously from the caudal vena cava (via a catheter inserted from the coccygeal vein) and the jugular vein every 15 min for 12 h (0500–1700 h) during the functional luteal phase. Cows were fed 50% of the daily diet 6 h after the start of blood sampling. During the 12-h sampling period, mean progesterone concentrations in the caudal vena cava did not differ between lactating and non-lactating cows (49.0 ± 2.9 and 53.3 ± 3.7 ng/ml; mean ± SE), whereas mean progesterone concentrations in the jugular vein in lactating cows were higher than those in non-lactating cows (6.4 ± 0.1 and 5.6 ± 0.1 ng/ml, P < 0.001). Lactating cows had a higher frequency of LH pulses than non-lactating cows (7.0 ± 0.7 and 4.3 ± 0.9 pulses/12 h, P<0.05). The influence of feeding was not observed on LH profiles but was observed on progesterone profiles in both veins. Progesterone concentrations in the caudal vena cava increased after feeding in both groups. Progesterone concentrations in the jugular vein decreased after feeding in lactating cows but not in non-lactating cows. These results indicate the difference in feeding-related changes in progesterone dynamics between lactating and non-lactating cows.
Design of a High Performance Dynamically Extensible Router

This paper describes the design, implementation and performance of an open, high performance, dynamically extensible router under development at Washington University in St. Louis. This router supports the dynamic installation of software and hardware plugins in the data path of application data flows. It provides an experimental platform for research on programmable networks, protocols, router software and hardware design, network management, quality of service and advanced applications. It is designed to be flexible, without sacrificing performance. It supports gigabit links and uses a scalable architecture suitable for supporting hundreds or even thousands of links. The system’s flexibility makes it an ideal platform for experimental research on dynamically extensible networks that implement higher level functions in direct support of individual application sessions.
The pressure and a possible hidden Hagedorn transition at large-N

In the first part of this contribution we present a numerical study motivated by recent attempts to understand the nonperturbative aspects of QCD at temperatures T~ a few times the deconfinement temperature Tc. We focus on the pure gauge theory, and ask whether the deficit in pressure and entropy, with respect to their free-gas values, is particular to SU(3). We find that the deficit in SU(4),SU(8) for T>= 2Tc,1.6 Tc, respectively, is remarkably close to that of SU(3). This suggests a similar deficit for SU(oo), which is fortunate since this theory is simpler, and can serve to constrain the possible dynamics underlying the deficits. In the second part we seek for signs of a Hagedorn temperature T_H in pure lattice SU(N) gauge theories with N=8,10,12. Since one expects T_H>Tc, we measure masses of strings in the metastable confined phase above Tc, and extrapolatethem to zero to estimate T_H. For SU(12) we find that T_H/Tc=1.116(9), when we extrapolate with a critical exponentof the three dimensional XY model, which seems to be preferred over a mean field exponent by our data.
Eye-movement studies of visual face perception

This thesis investigates factors influencing eye-movement patterns during face perception, the relationship of eye-movement patterns to facial recognition performance, and methodological considerations impacting the detection of differences in eye-movement patterns. In particular, in the first study (chapter 2), in which the basis of the other-race effect was investigated, differences in eyemovement patterns during recognition of own- versus other-race (African, Chinese) faces were found for Caucasian participants. However, these eyemovement differences were subtle and analysis-dependent, indicating that the discrepancy in prior reports regarding the presence or absence of such differences are due to variability in statistical sensitivity of analysis methods across studies. The second and third studies (chapters 3 and 4) characterized visuomotor factors, specifically pre-stimulus start position and distance, which strongly influence subsequent eye-movement patterns during face perception. An overall bias in fixation patterns to the opposite side of the face induced by start position and an increasing undershoot of the first ordinal fixation with increasing start distance were found. These visuomotor influences were not specific to faces and did not depend on the predictability of the location of the upcoming stimulus. These findings highlight the relevance, not only of stimulus and task factors, but also robust and characteristic visuomotor factors, in the interpretation of eye-movements as indices of visual attention. The final study (chapter 5) investigated individual differences as a factor in eye-movements to faces. The prevalence of different kinds of patterns and the impact of various stimulus, task, and visuomotor factors on the discriminability and consistency of individual eye-movement patterns were measured. The methodological strengths and limitations of the use of discrimination index and discrimination accuracy measures of the similarity of eye-movement patterns were also examined. Together these findings uncover neglected factors important to the interpretation of eye-movement patterns in studies of visual cognition.
Bottom-Up Assembly of Hydrogels from Bacteriophage and Au Nanoparticles: The Effect of Cis- and Trans-Acting Factors

Hydrogels have become a promising research focus because of their potential for biomedical application. Here we explore the long-range, electrostatic interactions by following the effect of trans-acting (pH) and cis-acting factors (peptide mutation) on the formation of Au-phage hydrogels. These bioinorganic hydrogels can be generated from the bottom-up assembly of Au nanoparticles (Au NP) with either native or mutant bacteriophage (phage) through electrostatic interaction of the phage pVIII major capsid proteins (pVIII). The cis-acting factor consists of a peptide extension displayed on the pVIII that mutates the phage. Our results show that pH can dictate the direct-assembly and stability of Au-phage hydrogels in spite of the differences between the native and the mutant pVIII. The first step in characterizing the interactions of Au NP with phage was to generate a molecular model that identified the charge distribution and structure of the native and mutant pVIII. This model indicated that the mutant peptide extension carried a higher positive charge relative to the native pVIII at all pHs. Next, by monitoring the Au-phage interaction by means of optical microscopy, elastic light scattering, fractal dimension analysis as well as Uv-vis and surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy, we show that the positive charge of the mutant peptide extension favors the opposite charge affinity between the phage and Au NP as the pH is decreased. These results show the versatility of this assembly method, where the stability of these hydrogels can be achieved by either adjusting the pH or by changing the composition of the phage pVIII without the need of phage display libraries.
Effects of low myoplasmic Mg2+ on calcium binding by parvalbumin and calcium uptake by the sarcoplasmic reticulum in frog skeletal muscle

The effects of low intracellular free Mg2+ on the myoplasmic calcium removal properties of skeletal muscle were studied in voltage-clamped frog skeletal muscle fibers by analyzing the changes in intracellular calcium and magnesium due to membrane depolarization under various conditions of internal free [Mg2+]. Batches of fibers were internally equilibrated with cut end solutions containing two calcium indicators, antipyrylazo III (AP III) and fura-2, and different concentrations of free Mg2+ (25 microM-1 mM) obtained by adding appropriate total amounts of ATP and magnesium to the solutions. Changes in AP III absorbance were used to monitor [Ca2+] and [Mg2+] transients, whereas fura-2 fluorescence was mostly used to monitor resting [Ca2+]. Shortly after applying an internal solution containing less than 60 microM free Mg2+ to the cut ends of depolarized fibers most of the fibers exhibited spontaneous repetitive movements, suggesting that free internal Mg2+ might affect the activity of the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) calcium channels at rest. The spontaneous contractions generally subsided. In polarized fibers the maximal amplitude of the calcium transient elicited by a depolarizing pulse was about the same whatever the internal [Mg2+], but its decay after the end of the pulse slower in low [Mg2+]. In low [Mg2+] (less than 0.14 mM), the mean rate constant of decay obtained from fitting a single exponential plus a constant to the decay of the calcium transients was approximately 30% of its value in the control fibers (1 mM internal [Mg2+]). A model characterizing the main calcium removal properties of a frog skeletal muscle fiber, including the SR pump and the Ca-Mg sites on parvalbumin, was fitted to the decay of the calcium transients. Results of the fits show that in low internal [Mg2+] the slowing of the decay of the calcium transient can be well predicted by both a decreased rate of SR calcium uptake and an expected decreased resting magnesium occupancy of parvalbumin leading to a reduced contribution of parvalbumin to the overall rate of calcium removal. These results are thus consistent with the known properties of parvalbumin as a Ca-Mg buffer and furthermore suggest that in an intact portion of a muscle fiber, the activity of the SR calcium pump can be affected by the level of free Mg2+.
Crowdsourcing-based multimedia subjective evaluations: a case study on image recognizability and aesthetic appeal

Research on Quality of Experience (QoE) heavily relies on subjective evaluations of media. An important aspect of QoE concerns modeling and quantifying the subjective notions of 'beauty' (aesthetic appeal) and 'something well-known' (content recognizability), which are both subject to cultural and social effects. Crowdsourcing, which allows employing people worldwide to perform short and simple tasks via online platforms, can be a great tool for performing subjective studies in a time and cost-effective way. On the other hand, the crowdsourcing environment does not allow for the degree of experimental control which is necessary to guarantee reliable subjective data. To validate the use of crowdsourcing for QoE assessments, in this paper, we evaluate aesthetic appeal and recognizability of images using the Microworkers crowdsourcing platform and compare the outcomes with more conventional evaluations conducted in a controlled lab environment. We find high correlation between crowdsourcing and lab scores for recognizability but not for aesthetic appeal, indicating that crowdsourcing can be used for QoE subjective assessments as long as the workers' tasks are designed with extreme care to avoid misinterpretations.
Image-based Face Recognition: Issues and Methods 1

As one of the most successful applications of image analysis and understanding, face recognition has recently gained signiicant attention, especially during the past several years. There are at least two reasons for such a trend: the rst is the wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications and the second is the availability of feasible technologies after 35 years of research. Moreover, recent signiicant advances in multimedia processing has also helped to advance the applications of face recognition technology. Among the diverse contents of multimedia, face objects are particularly important. For example, a database software capable of searching for face objects or a particular face object is very useful. Another example is a security system that is able to automatically track human objects, and report their IDs. Though tracking and recognizing face objects is a routine task for humans, building such a system is still an active research. Among many proposed face recognition schemes, image based approaches are possibly the most promising ones. However, the 2D images/patterns of 3D face objects can dramatically change due to lighting and viewing variations. Hence, illumination and pose problems present signiicant obstacles for wide applications of this type of approaches. In this chapter, we rst review existing methods extensively. And then we propose using a generic 3D model to enhance existing systems. More speciically, we use the 3D model to synthesize the so-called prototype image from a given image acquired under diierent lighting and viewing conditions. The advantages of this approach are computational simplicity and system robustness which are essential for many real applications.
Activity Detection from Email Meta-Data Clustering

Information workers in a large enterprise often deal with large volumes of e-mail traffic every day. In such a scenario, automatic detection of activities that they are involved in has many potential uses, and even presenting users with a summary of their current set of activities was found to be of value in itself. In this paper, we describe the problem of automatically detecting user activities from e-mails, while using only meta-data of e-mails, i.e., we do not process email contents. We present a novel two stage algorithm for automatic activity detection from users' e-mails: We first represent the e-mail dataset as a rectangular matrix using features such as other e-mails, people involved, and names of the documents attached in the e-mails. We next represent the emails in latent feature space using SVD, followed by further dimensionality reduction using t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor embedding(t-SNE). We then cluster e-mails using density based clustering algorithm in t-SNE space. In the second stage we merge these clusters based on group properties and a community detection algorithm on the graph of clusters, to yield our set of automatically detected activities. We analyse public e-mail datasets and present benchmarks of our approach on real-life datasets collected from our target users, and also compare our algorithm with alternative approaches as well as those published in recent literature.
Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms

Business intelligence (BI) platforms enable all types of users from IT staff to consultants to business users to build applications that help organizations learn about and understand their business. Gartner defines a BI platform as a software platform that delivers the 14 capabilities listed below. These capabilities are organized into three categories of functionality: integration, information delivery and analysis. Information delivery is the core focus of most BI projects today, but we are seeing an increased interest in deployments of analysis to discover new insights, and in integration to implement those insights.
Cloning and Characterization of TaTGW-7A Gene Associated with Grain Weight in Wheat via SLAF-seq-BSA

Thousand-grain weight (TGW) of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) contributes significantly to grain yield. In the present study, a candidate gene associated with TGW was identified through specific-locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) of DNA bulks of recombinant inbred lines (RIL) derived from the cross between Jing 411 and Hongmangchun 21. The gene was located on chromosome 7A, designated as TaTGW-7A with a complete genome sequence and an open reading frame (ORF). A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was present in the first exon between two alleles at TaTGW-7A locus, resulting in a Val to Ala substitution, corresponding to a change from higher to lower TGW. Cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS) (TGW7A) and InDel (TG9) markers were developed to discriminate the two alleles TaTGW-7Aa and TaTGW-7Ab for higher and lower TGW, respectively. A major QTL co-segregating with TaTGW-7A explained 21.7–27.1% of phenotypic variance for TGW in the RIL population across five environments. The association of TaTGW-7A with TGW was further validated in a natural population and Chinese mini-core collections. Quantitative real-time PCR revealed higher transcript levels of TaTGW-7Aa than those of TaTGW-7Ab during grain development. High frequencies of the superior allele TaTGW-7Aa for higher TGW in Chinese mini-core collections (65.0%) and 501 wheat varieties (86.0%) indicated a strong and positive selection of this allele in wheat breeding. The molecular markers TGW7A and TG9 can be used for improvement of TGW in breeding programs.
A Homologue of the Recombination-dependent Growth Gene, Rdgc, Is Involved in Gonococcal Pilin Antigenic Variation Reca-dependent Homologous Recombination, Several Attributes of This System Suggest That Both General And

Neisseria gonorrhoeae pilin undergoes high-frequency changes in primary amino acid sequence that aid in the avoidance of the host immune response and alter pilus expression. The pilin amino acid changes reflect nucleotide changes in the expressed gene, pilE, which result from nonreciprocal recombination reactions with numerous silent loci, pilS. A series of mini-transposon insertions affecting pilin antigenic variation were localized to three genes in one region of the Gc chromosome. Mutational analysis with complementation showed that a Gc gene with sequence similarity to the Escherichia coli rdgC gene is involved in pilus-dependent colony phase variation and in pilin antigenic variation. Furthermore, we show that the Gc rdgC homologue is transcriptionally linked in an operon with a gene encoding a predicted GTPase. The inability to disrupt expression of this gene suggests it is an essential gene (engA, essential neisserial GTPase). While some of the transposon mutations in rdgC and insertions in the 5Ј-untranslated portion of engA showed a growth defect, all transposon insertions investigated conferred an aberrant cellular morphology. Complementation analysis showed that the growth deficiencies are due to the interruption of RdgC expression and not that of EngA. The requirement of RdgC for efficient pilin variation suggests a role for this protein in specialized DNA recombination reactions. T HE obligate human pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae Antigenic variation of pilin can confer changes in pilus-dependent colony morphology (Hagblö m et al. 1985; (the gonococcus, Gc) expresses type IV pili, which Haas and Meyer 1986; Swanson et al. 1986; Long et are filamentous, surface-exposed organelles essential al. 1998), which reflect a phase switch between a number for full infectivity (Kellogg et al. 1963; Swanson et al. of states of pilus expression (Swanson and Barrera 1987). Gc pili are required for both adherence to the 1983; Haas and Meyer 1986; Long et al. 1998), al-urogenital epithelium (Swanson 1973) and for full though colony morphology phase switches can also oc-DNA transformation competence (Sparling 1966; Sei-cur by means independent of antigenic variation fert et al. 1990). The pilus is composed primarily of pilus antigenic variation occurs when DNA sequences In Gc, DNA recombination is required for natural from one of several silent pilin gene copies (pilS) are DNA transformation, DNA repair, and pilus antigenic transferred unidirectionally to replace variable se-variation, and all the processes are mediated by RecA quences within the pilE gene (Hagblö m et al. RecA promotes DNA renatu-Cla DNA repeat, located at the …
Improved measurement of vibration amplitude in dynamic optical coherence elastography

Abstract: Optical coherence elastography employs optical coherence tomography (OCT) to measure the displacement of tissues under load and, thus, maps the resulting strain into an image, known as an elastogram. We present a new improved method to measure vibration amplitude in dynamic optical coherence elastography. The tissue vibration amplitude caused by sinusoidal loading is measured from the spread of the Doppler spectrum, which is extracted using joint spectral and time domain signal processing. At low OCT signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the method provides more accurate vibration amplitude measurements than the currently used phase-sensitive method. For measurements performed on a mirror at OCT SNR = 5 dB, our method introduces <3% error, compared to >20% using the phase-sensitive method. We present elastograms of a tissue-mimicking phantom and excised porcine tissue that demonstrate improvements, including a 50% increase in the depth range of reliable vibration amplitude measurement.
Inflation Persistence

This paper examines the concept of inflation persistence in macroeconomic theory. It begins with a definition of persistence, emphasizing the difference between reduced-form and structural persistence. It then examines a number of empirical measures of reduced-form persistence, considering the possibility that persistence may have changed over time. The paper then examines the theoretical sources of persistence, distinguishing "intrinsic" from "inherited" persistence, and deriving a number of analytical results on persistence. It summarizes the implications for persistence from the literature on "sticky-information" models, learning models, and so-called "trend inflation models," providing some new results throughout.
Efficiently Mining Unordered Trees

Frequent tree patterns have many applications in different domains such as XML document mining, user web log analysis, network routing and bioinformatics. In this paper, we first introduce three new tree encodings and accordingly present an efficient algorithm for finding frequent patterns from rooted unordered trees with the assumption that children of every node in database trees are identically labeled. Then, we generalize the method and propose the UITree algorithm to find frequent patterns from rooted unordered trees without any restriction. Compared to other algorithms in the literature, UItree manages occurrences of a candidate tree in database trees more efficiently. Our extensive experiments on both real and synthetic datasets show that UITree significantly outperforms the most efficient existing works on mining unordered trees.