Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
User-oriented document clustering: a framework for learning in information retrieval

In information retrieval, cluster analysis is an important tool employed to enhance both efficiency and effectiveness of the retrieval process. Most clustering algorithms have difficulty in reflecting the closeness of documents as perceived by the user. A two phase scheme for document clustering, whose results reflect the “conceptual” clusters that are perceived by the user of the retrieval system, is proposed. Since the clusters obtained by this scheme are not characterized in terms of the document representations, a strategy for cluster searching is also developed. Both the proposed document clustering scheme and document searching strategy are experimentally evaluated using a test collection from the SMART system. The preliminary experimental results obtained are very encouraging.
A Score Test for Discreteness in GARCH Models

The standard continuous-state GARCH model is misspecified if applied to returns calculated from discrete price series. We propose a modiÞcation of the above model for handling such cases, by modeling the dependent variable as an unobservable stochastic variable with certain observed outcomes. We further construct a score test that can be used to check if the proposed model differ significantly from the one we would have if all variables were observed, i.e. an underlying latent GARCH model. Using price data from some Australian stocks with high tick size to price ratios, we find the important result that in no case does the proposed model differ significantly from an unobservable continuous-state GARCH model.
Visual quality metrics and human perception: an initial study on 2D projections of large multidimensional data

Visual quality metrics have been recently devised to automatically extract interesting visual projections out of a large number of available candidates in the exploration of high-dimensional databases. The metrics permit for instance to search within a large set of scatter plots (e.g., in a scatter plot matrix) and select the views that contain the best separation among clusters. The rationale behind these techniques is that automatic selection of "best" views is not only useful but also necessary when the number of potential projections exceeds the limit of human interpretation. While useful as a concept in general, such metrics received so far limited validation in terms of human perception. In this paper we present a perceptual study investigating the relationship between human interpretation of clusters in 2D scatter plots and the measures automatically extracted out of them. Specifically we compare a series of selected metrics and analyze how they predict human detection of clusters. A thorough discussion of results follows with reflections on their impact and directions for future research.
Measuring progress in multirobot research with rating methods - the RoboCup example

Rating the intelligence of artificially made systems is important for measuring progress in scientific and engineering methods. Unfortunately, there is currently no universal agreement about what is considered an intelligent system, and how to measure its intelligence. This research focus on measuring the progress in the robotic technologies deployed for the RoboCup competitions, since one of the original premises of those competitions was to advance the development of intelligent robotic systems. A method used for rating the competence of human chess players is adapted for measuring the advancement in the competence of robotic teams. The results indicate significant yearly improvements in the capabilities of the robotic teams. The same method can be used to indirectly quantify the benefits in specific technology choices.
On mean free path statistics of relativistic heavy ions in nuclear emulsion

We survey at the general level, and in a rather wide and historical context, some less known mathematical details of various mean free path statistics in nuclear emulsion as applied to relativistic projectile fragmentations. A number of comments are provided on Feller's paradox, ordered, censored, and truncated statistics, Erlang and Poisson observers of nuclear emulsion. All these issues are related to the statistical approaches used about a decade ago at Berkeley Bevalac for anomalons, some of which should be considered as standard methods for mean free paths' estimators of relativistic heavy ions.
Zero Forcing in General Two-Hop Relay Networks

In this paper, we investigate four different two-hop amplify and forward relay networks, which differ on the processing capabilities at the source, relay, and destination nodes. We derive new exact outage probability expressions where zero-forcing processing is performed at the following four areas: (1) source and relay; (2) relay; (3) relay and destination; and (4) destination nodes only. We show that, depending on the particular scheme, adding source, relay, and/or destination nodes can be either beneficial or detrimental to the outage probability. We confirm our results through comparison with Monte Carlo simulations.
Restoring Specific Lactobacilli Levels Decreases Inflammation and Muscle Atrophy Markers in an Acute Leukemia Mouse Model

The gut microbiota has recently been proposed as a novel component in the regulation of host homeostasis and immunity. We have assessed for the first time the role of the gut microbiota in a mouse model of leukemia (transplantation of BaF3 cells containing ectopic expression of Bcr-Abl), characterized at the final stage by a loss of fat mass, muscle atrophy, anorexia and inflammation. The gut microbial 16S rDNA analysis, using PCR-Denaturating Gradient Gel Electrophoresis and quantitative PCR, reveals a dysbiosis and a selective modulation of Lactobacillus spp. (decrease of L. reuteri and L. johnsonii/gasseri in favor of L. murinus/animalis) in the BaF3 mice compared to the controls. The restoration of Lactobacillus species by oral supplementation with L. reuteri 100-23 and L. gasseri 311476 reduced the expression of atrophy markers (Atrogin-1, MuRF1, LC3, Cathepsin L) in the gastrocnemius and in the tibialis, a phenomenon correlated with a decrease of inflammatory cytokines (interleukin-6, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, interleukin-4, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, quantified by multiplex immuno-assay). These positive effects are strain- and/or species-specific since L. acidophilus NCFM supplementation does not impact on muscle atrophy markers and systemic inflammation. Altogether, these results suggest that the gut microbiota could constitute a novel therapeutic target in the management of leukemia-associated inflammation and related disorders in the muscle.
Stylized facts of asset returns: Case of BELEX

This paper represents a study of the time series of stock market indexes at Belgrade Stock Market. Statistical analysis of this data is performed and a set of stylized empirical facts is presented. Various statistical properties of stock market indexes returns are described: lack of normality, correlation in the return series, and some non-linear tests. Our description emphasizes properties common to a wide variety of emerging and developing markets. We show statistical properties of Belgrade stock market, which significantly invalidate many of the common statistical approaches used to study financial data sets and examine some of the statistical problems encountered in each case.
Do parties matter in delegation? Partisan preferences and the creation of regulatory agencies in Europe

The ideological orientation of parties in government has not been prominently featured in explaining the rise of regulatory agencies. This paper argues that theories based on political uncertainty and credible commitment can yield meaningful predictions regarding the relationship between government preferences and the establishment of regulatory agencies, when ideological orientation is linked with notions of party competence and issue ownership. The empirical section tests three such hypotheses with data on the establishment of 110 regulatory agencies in 20 European democracies between 1980 and 2009, thus providing one of the most comprehensive cross-national analyses of agency creation to date. The results show that ideologically extreme cabinets are more likely to establish regulatory agencies and that right-wing governments create more agencies in the economic than in the social domain. These findings partly qualify the view on the scarce relevance of government preferences in explaining the rise of the agency model in regulation and that the emulation mechanism of the diffusion process is the dominant force behind agencification.
Optimal Fiscal Policy of a Monetary Union Member

In this essay we study the optimal non-coordinated fiscal policy in a monetary union, where a common and independent monetary authority commits to optimally set the union-wide nominal interest rate. The national governments in the monetary union implement independent fiscal policies by choosing the level of government expenditures. We show that under a non-coordinated optimal fiscal policy rule government spending should react counter cyclically to the local output gap and inflation, while the union-wide aggregate fluctuations are stabilized by the common monetary policy. We also show that the spillovers caused by asymmetric shocks depend on the relative size of the country subject to these shocks.
Project Proposal : Implementing Dynamic Time Warping Through Relational Algebra Extensions to Perform Alignment Microarray Gene Expression Data

Analyzing multiple microarray experimental data sets, which are comprised of levels of gene expression, induces several challenges. Of particular interest to biologists are genes that are differentially expressed, that is, significantly altered up or down levels over time, which may lead to identification of disease involved genes. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is a computational method that has the ability to align time-oriented microarray gene expression data and capture patterns that are useful in the identification of differentially expressed genes. Microarray analysis tools limit ability to ask novel and complex question by a computer scientist to assist life science research. The expressive power of relational databases can remove these limitations. However, DTW operations are not currently available in relational databases. We propose an approach, using relational algebra extensions, to implement DTW in relational databases. This will enhance the computer scientists to provide information to life scientist, which can lead to the identification of disease involved genes.
Modulation of cell cycle progression by CTLA4‐CD80/CD86 interactions on CD4+ T cells depends on strength of the CD3 signal: critical role for IL‐2

Cytotoxic T‐lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA4) is a well‐studied T cell costimulatory receptor that is known to inhibit T cell activation. In this study, the relationship between strength of the first signal and costimulatory interactions on primary mouse CD4+ T cells was investigated. CTLA4‐CD80/CD86 interactions differentially modulate T cell cycling based on the mode of CD3 signal: Activation with plate‐bound (pb) anti‐CD3 generates a strong signal compared with a weak signal with soluble (sol) anti‐CD3, resulting in approximately sevenfold higher amounts of interleukin (IL)‐2 and an increase in cell cycling. Activation of T cells with sol anti‐CD3 (weak signal) together with CTLA4‐CD80/CD86 blockade lowers IL‐2 production and cell cycling, demonstrating an enhancing role for these interactions. Conversely, blockade of CTLA4‐CD80/CD86 interactions on T cells activated with pb anti‐CD3 (strong signal) increases proliferation, which is consistent with CTLA4 as a negative regulator. Also, coculture of T cells with Chinese hamster ovary cells expressing CD80 or CD86 demonstrates that the strength of the primary signal plays an important role. It is important that modulation of IL‐2 amounts leads to distinct alterations in the functional effects of CTLA4‐CD80/CD86 interactions. On increasing IL‐2 amounts, activation of T cells stimulated with sol anti‐CD3 (weak signal) and CTLA4‐CD80/CD86 blockade is greater compared with control. Concurrently, neutralization of IL‐2 greatly reduces activation of T cells stimulated with pb anti‐CD3 (strong signal) and CTLA4‐CD80/CD86 blockade compared with control. These results underscore the importance of strength of first signal, CTLA4‐CD80/CD86 interactions, and IL‐2 amounts in modulating primary CD4+ T cell responses.
Tagging Icelandic text: A linguistic rule-based approach

The Icelandic language is a morphologically complex language, for which a large tagset has been created. This paper describes the design of a linguistic rule-based system for part-of-speech tagging Icelandic text. The system contains two main components: a disambiguator, IceTagger, and an unknown word guesser, IceMorphy. IceTagger uses a small number of local elimination rules along with a global heuristics component. The heuristics guess the functional roles of the words in a sentence, mark prepositional phrases, and use the acquired knowledge to force feature agreement where appropriate. IceMorphy is used for guessing the tag profile for unknown words and for automatically filling tag profile gaps in the lexicon. Evaluation shows that IceTagger achieves 91.54% accuracy, a substantial improvement on the highest accuracy, 90.44%, obtained using three state-of-the-art data-driven taggers. Furthermore, the accuracy increases to 92.95% by using IceTagger along with two data-driven taggers in a simple voting scheme. The development time of the tagging system was only seven man-months, which can be considered a short development period for a linguistic rule-based system.
Identifying Sets of Favorable Projections for Few-View Low-Dose Cone-Beam CT Scanning

— Cone-beam computed tomography is beginning to emerge as a widely used technique for medical imaging. However, here has been growing concerns with regards to the X-ray dose delivered to the patient. Low dose CT has thus been gaining substantial interest. It can be achieved by lowering the X-ray dose per projection and/or reducing the number of projections acquired. In this work we focus on the latter and provide some new insight on how to identify favorable (or salient) views that maximize the information used within an iterative reconstruction framework. Based on prior knowledge on the object to be scanned, we propose an optimization framework that can automatically identify a minimal set of projections that can capture the salient object features. Our results indicate that these generalized views result in better image quality than evenly distributed projections. I. INTRODUCTION Cone-beam CT has emerged as a major X-ray imaging modality both in terms of image quality and scan time. A popular cone-beam CT reconstruction method is the FDK [1] algorithm, which provides high resolution results but requires several hundreds of patient X-ray projections. With the growing concern about the potential risk of X-ray radiation exposure to the human body, dose reduction in cone-beam scanning (and other modalities) has become a significant research topic. Dose reduction usually involves lowering the X-ray energy per projection and/or reducing the total number of projections. Both methods typically suffer from low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the reconstructions. Iterative reconstruction schemes, matched with suitable regularization methods were shown to cope well with these few-view or high-noise scenarios [2][3][4]. The work presented here focuses on one specific low-dose CT measure: reducing the number of projections. It capitalizes on the fact that in standard radiography physicians and X-ray technologists typically have a good idea, often based on standards, at what patient orientation the radiograph should be taken to reveal the desired insight. We denote these views as salient views. We propose to formalize and generalize the concept of salient views for CT reconstruction, and use iterative CT reconstruction to cope with the potentially irregular and sparse view distribution. To identify the salient views we analyze prior reconstructions, locate the salient features, and determine the projection(s) at which these features differentiate best. Once the salient views are obtained, we use a set-covering framework to accelerate the search for the optimal scanning configuration and trajectory that covers all of these views.
Separate and Dominate: Feminism and Racism after the War on Terror

When the French government passed a ban on the veil in 2011, surprisingly few French feminists spoke out against the racist measure. Christine Delphy - the sociologist whom Simone de Beauvoir once described as "France's most exciting feminist writer" - was one of the notable few. Castigating humanitarian liberals for demanding cultural assimilation of the women they were purporting to save, Delphy showed how criminalizing Islam in the name of feminism was fundamentally paradoxical. Dominating Others is Delphy's manifesto against this tendency, and for a fluid understanding of political identity that does not place different political struggles in a false opposition. Dismantling the absurd claim that Afghanistan was invaded to save women, alongside the notion that homosexuals and immigrants alike should reserve their self-expression for private settings, Dominating Others is a call for a true universalism that sacrifices no one at the expense of others.
The morphology of dunes

TE D PR OO Abstract The motion of dunes and their morphology is a fascinating, largely unexplored subject. Already the barchan, the simplest moving dune, poses many questions. We will present some results of field measurements on desert and costal dunes. Then we will present a model which consists of three coupled equations of motion for the topography, the shear stress of the wind and the sand flux. These evolution equations are verified on the experimental data and new possibilities of simulations of dunes are put in perspective. r 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Estimation of the mouth features using deformable templates

Automatic estimation of mouth features is one of the important topics for face recognition and model-based coding of videophone sequences. An automatic mouth feature estimation algorithm which uses deformable templates is developed. Here, the mouth features are represented by the corner points of the mouth as well as the so called lip outline parameters. The lip outline parameters describe the opening of the mouth and the thickness of the lips. Compared to previous works, simplified cost functions are introduced. Furthermore, an algorithm for automatic determination of whether the mouth is open or closed is developed. Experimental results obtained with typical videophone sequence are given to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. It is shown that in about 37% of the images the mouth features could be automatically estimated, which can be used e.g. for improving face modelling in a model-based coder.
Toward Natural Language Computation I

A computer programming system called the "Natural Language Computer" (NLC) is described which allows a user to type English commands while watching them executed on sample data appearing on a display screen. Direct visual feedback enables the user to detect most misinterpretation errors as they are made so that incorrect or ambiguous commands can be retyped or clarified immediately. A sequence of correctly executed commands may be given a name and used as a subroutine, thus extending the set of available operations and allowing larger English-language programs to be constructed hierarchically. In addition to discussing the transition network syntax and procedural semantics of the system, special attention is devoted to the following topics: the nature of imperative sentences in the matrix domain; the processing of non-trivial noun phrases; conjunction; pronominals; and programming constructs such as "if", "repeat", and procedure definition.
Process tracking for dynamic tuning applications on the grid

The computational resources need by the scientific community to solve problems is beyond the current available infrastructure. Performance requirements are needed due constant research progress, new problems studies or detail increase of the current ones. Users create new wide distributed systems such as computational Grids to achieve desired performance goals. Grid systems are generally built on top of available computational resources as cluster, parallel machines or storage devices distributed within different organizations and those resources are interconnected by a network. Application tuning on Grid environment is a hard task due system characteristics like multi-cluster job distribution among different local schedulers and dynamic network bandwidth behavior. We had a Monitoring, Analysis and Tuning Environment (MATE) that allows dynamic performance tuning applications within a cluster. Due to the many software layers present on the grid, similar job submission may execute on different places. To tune application jobs, our tool needs to locate and follow the jobs execution within the system. We call this a process tracking problem. This paper presents MATE integration to the Grid and the two process tracking approaches implemented in order to solve the
Asymmetric Bidirectional Transcription from the FSHD-Causing D4Z4 Array Modulates DUX4 Production

Facioscapulohumeral Disease (FSHD) is a dominantly inherited progressive myopathy associated with aberrant production of the transcription factor, Double Homeobox Protein 4 (DUX4). The expression of DUX4 depends on an open chromatin conformation of the D4Z4 macrosatellite array and a specific haplotype on chromosome 4. Even when these requirements are met, DUX4 transcripts and protein are only detectable in a subset of cells indicating that additional constraints govern DUX4 production. Since the direction of transcription, along with the production of non-coding antisense transcripts is an important regulatory feature of other macrosatellite repeats, we developed constructs that contain the non-coding region of a single D4Z4 unit flanked by genes that report transcriptional activity in the sense and antisense directions. We found that D4Z4 contains two promoters that initiate sense and antisense transcription within the array, and that antisense transcription predominates. Transcriptional start sites for the antisense transcripts, as well as D4Z4 regions that regulate the balance of sense and antisense transcripts were identified. We show that the choice of transcriptional direction is reversible but not mutually exclusive, since sense and antisense reporter activity was often present in the same cell and simultaneously upregulated during myotube formation. Similarly, levels of endogenous sense and antisense D4Z4 transcripts were upregulated in FSHD myotubes. These studies offer insight into the autonomous distribution of muscle weakness that is characteristic of FSHD.