Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Open-Domain Neural Dialogue Systems

In the past decade, spoken dialogue systems have been the most prominent component in today’s personal assistants. A lot of devices have incorporated dialogue system modules, which allow users to speak naturally in order to finish tasks more efficiently. The traditional conversational systems have rather complex and/or modular pipelines. The advance of deep learning technologies has recently risen the applications of neural models to dialogue modeling. Nevertheless, applying deep learning technologies for building robust and scalable dialogue systems is still a challenging task and an open research area as it requires deeper understanding of the classic pipelines as well as detailed knowledge on the benchmark of the models of the prior work and the recent state-of-the-art work. Therefore, this tutorial is designed to focus on an overview of the dialogue system development while describing most recent research for building task-oriented and chit-chat dialogue systems, and summarizing the challenges. We target the audience of students and practitioners who have some deep learning background, who want to get more familiar with conversational dialogue systems.
Adaptive settings for the nearest-neighbor particle tracking algorithm

BACKGROUND The performance of the single particle tracking (SPT) nearest-neighbor algorithm is determined by parameters that need to be set according to the characteristics of the time series under study. Inhomogeneous systems, where these characteristics fluctuate spatially, are poorly tracked when parameters are set globally. RESULTS We present a novel SPT approach that adapts the well-known nearest-neighbor tracking algorithm to the local density of particles to overcome the problems of inhomogeneity. CONCLUSIONS We demonstrate the performance improvement provided by the proposed method using numerical simulations and experimental data and compare its performance with state of the art SPT algorithms. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION The algorithms proposed here, are released under the GNU General Public License and are freely available on the web at http://sourceforge.net/p/adaptivespt. CONTACT javier.mazzaferri@gmail.com SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Dzongkha Word Segmentation

Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan, is continuous in written form and it fails to mark the word boundary. Dzongkha word segmentation is one of the fundamental problems and a prerequisite that needs to be solved before more advanced Dzongkha text processing and other natural language processing tools can be developed. This paper presents our initial attempt at segmenting Dzongkha sentences into words. The paper describes the implementation of Maximal Matching (Dictionary based Approach) followed by bigram techniques (Non-dictionary based Approach) in segmenting the Dzongkha scripts. Although the used techniques are basic and naive, it provides a baseline of the Dzongkha word segmentation task. Preliminary experimental results show percentage of segmentation accuracy. However, the segmentation accuracy is dependent on the type of document domain and size and quality of the lexicon and the corpus. Some of the related issues for future directions are also discussed.
A Novel Design Methodology of the On-Chip Power Distribution Network Enhancing the Performance and Suppressing EMI of the SoC

The novel design methodology of the on-chip power distribution network (PDN) is presented in this paper. The low-impedance lossy line (LILL) technology is used for the on-chip PDN instead of the on-chip capacitors. The on-chip PDN improves the performance of the SoC and suppresses the electromagnetic interference (EMI) of the SoC. The solitary electromagnetic wave (SEMW) concept is proposed. The SEMW is generated by the on-chip inverter, and its waveform is similar to a half-wave of a sinusoidal. An analysis of the effect of the SEMW concept, SPICE simulation result, and an example of the on-chip LILL structure, and the parallel-plate ceramic (PPC) LILL for on-board PDN are presented.
Identification of clusters in the Web graph based on link topology

The Web graph has recently been used to model the link structure of the Web. The studies of such graphs can yield valuable insights into Web algorithms for crawling, searching and discovery of Web communities. This paper proposes a new approach to clustering the Web graph. The proposed algorithm identifies a small subset of the graph as "core" members of clusters, and then incrementally constructs the clusters by a selection criterion. Two qualitative criteria are proposed to measure the quality of graph clustering. We have implemented our algorithm and tested a set of arbitrary graphs with good results. Applications of our approach include graph drawing and Web visualization.
Studying social interactions through immersive virtual environment technology: virtues, pitfalls, and future challenges

The goal of the present review is to explain how immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) can be used for the study of social interactions and how the use of virtual humans in immersive virtual environments can advance research and application in many different fields. Researchers studying individual differences in social interactions are typically interested in keeping the behavior and the appearance of the interaction partner constant across participants. With IVET researchers have full control over the interaction partners, can standardize them while still keeping the simulation realistic. Virtual simulations are valid: growing evidence shows that indeed studies conducted with IVET can replicate some well-known findings of social psychology. Moreover, IVET allows researchers to subtly manipulate characteristics of the environment (e.g., visual cues to prime participants) or of the social partner (e.g., his/her race) to investigate their influences on participants’ behavior and cognition. Furthermore, manipulations that would be difficult or impossible in real life (e.g., changing participants’ height) can be easily obtained with IVET. Beside the advantages for theoretical research, we explore the most recent training and clinical applications of IVET, its integration with other technologies (e.g., social sensing) and future challenges for researchers (e.g., making the communication between virtual humans and participants smoother).
In vitro characterization of Synechocystis CYP120A1 revealed the first nonanimal retinoic acid hydroxylase

Retinoids are C20 apocarotenoids that have various important functions in metazoans. In addition, several findings suggest their occurrence in eubacteria, including cyanobacteria. It has been shown that the Synechocystis cytochrome P450 enzyme CYP120A1 is a retinoic acid‐binding polypeptide. In this work, we determined the reaction catalyzed by CYP120A1 and investigated its substrate specificity in vitro. CYP120A1‐containing microsomes generated in yeast converted all‐trans‐retinoic acid into a compound exhibiting higher polarity in HPLC analysis. Liquid chromatography–MS analysis suggested the introduction of a single hydroxyl group, and NMR analysis of the purified product revealed C16 or C17 as the reaction site. Incubations with cis‐retinoic acids, retinal, 3(R)‐OH‐retinal, retinol, β‐apo‐13‐carotenone (C18) and β‐apo‐14′‐carotenal (C22) resulted in the formation of the corresponding hydroxyl derivatives, as suggested by HPLC and liquid chromatography–MS analyses. Comparisons of the relative product amounts revealed the highest conversion rate for all‐trans‐retinoic acid, followed by β‐apo‐13‐carotenone (C18). As shown by real‐time RT‐PCR, CYP120A1 is expressed under normal growth conditions and is slightly induced by high‐intensity light. Our work provides the first enzymatic study of a cyanobacterial cytochrome P450, showing it to be the first nonanimal retinoic acid‐metabolizing enzyme characterized so far. Moreover, the CYP120A1‐catalyzed reaction represents a novel modification of retinoids.
Measuring resonances of the vocal tract using frequency sweeps at the lips

Precise measurement of the resonances of the human vocal tract is important in the research of acoustical phonetics. It has also significant applications in speech therapy and language learning - providing feedback about the shape of the vocal tract and position of the tongue. This paper investigates a novel method of measuring these resonances using linear frequency sweeps at the lips. To investigate the effectiveness of the method, tests have been completed on constructed tube models of the vocal tract and also human subjects for six English vowels. The precision of the measurement in the current implementation is shown to be superior compared to traditional electro-larynx method.
Balance diagnostics for comparing the distribution of baseline covariates between treatment groups in propensity-score matched samples

The propensity score is a subject's probability of treatment, conditional on observed baseline covariates. Conditional on the true propensity score, treated and untreated subjects have similar distributions of observed baseline covariates. Propensity‐score matching is a popular method of using the propensity score in the medical literature. Using this approach, matched sets of treated and untreated subjects with similar values of the propensity score are formed. Inferences about treatment effect made using propensity‐score matching are valid only if, in the matched sample, treated and untreated subjects have similar distributions of measured baseline covariates. In this paper we discuss the following methods for assessing whether the propensity score model has been correctly specified: comparing means and prevalences of baseline characteristics using standardized differences; ratios comparing the variance of continuous covariates between treated and untreated subjects; comparison of higher order moments and interactions; five‐number summaries; and graphical methods such as quantile–quantile plots, side‐by‐side boxplots, and non‐parametric density plots for comparing the distribution of baseline covariates between treatment groups. We describe methods to determine the sampling distribution of the standardized difference when the true standardized difference is equal to zero, thereby allowing one to determine the range of standardized differences that are plausible with the propensity score model having been correctly specified. We highlight the limitations of some previously used methods for assessing the adequacy of the specification of the propensity‐score model. In particular, methods based on comparing the distribution of the estimated propensity score between treated and untreated subjects are uninformative. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Overdiagnosis of heart failure in primary care: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND Access to echocardiography in primary care is limited, but is necessary to accurately diagnose heart failure (HF). AIM To determine the proportion of patients with a GP's diagnosis of HF who really have HF. DESIGN AND SETTING A cross-sectional study of patients in 30 general practices with a GP's diagnosis of heart failure, based on the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC) code K77, between June and November 2011. METHOD Electronic medical records of the patients' GPs were scrutinised for information on the diagnosis. An expert panel consisting of two cardiologists and an experienced GP used all available diagnostic information, and established the presence or absence of HF according to the criteria of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) HF guidelines. RESULTS In total, 683 individuals had a GP's diagnosis of HF. The mean age was 77.9 (SD 11.4) years, and 42.2% were male. Of these 683, 79.6% received cooperative care from a cardiologist. In 73.5% of cases, echocardiography was available for panel re-evaluation. Based on consensus opinion of the panel, 434 patients (63.5%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 59.9 to 67.1) had definite HF, of which 222 (32.5%, 95% CI = 30.9 to 34.1) had HF with a reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), 207 (30.3%, 95% CI = 29.0 to 31.6) had HF with a preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), and five (0.7%, 95% CI = 1.2 to 2.6) had isolated right-sided HF. In 17.3% of cases (95% CI = 14.4 to 20.0), the panel considered HF absent, and in 19.2% (95% CI = 16.3 to 22.2) the diagnosis remained uncertain. CONCLUSION More than one-third of primary care patients labelled with HF may not have HF, and such overdiagnosis may result in inadequate patient management.
Robust dynamic hand gesture recognition system with sparse steric haar-like feature for human robot interaction

Hand gesture is an effective and natural way for human-robot interaction (HRI). This paper presents a robust dynamic hand gesture recognition system with a RGB-D sensor. In order to automatically recognize hand gesture from color and depth sequences, where noise and occlusion are common problems, we extract steric Haar-like features to robustly represent the complicated spatial information of the hand. A novel feature selection approach, which takes the advantage of class separability measure, is employed to effectively ferret out the most discriminative features. We also use sparse coding method to encode these features so that it is less prone to over-fitting even when only limited amount of training data are available. Generally speaking, spare Steric Haar-like (SSH) features are efficient to compute by using the self-padding integral volume, in addition to the advantage of robustness to noise and occlusion. These crucial features significantly improve the performance of tracking and classification. Experiments with a public dynamic hand gesture dataset and a self-built hand gesture dataset show the superiority of the proposed system compared with the state-of-the-art approaches.
CCK-induced activation of the ERK signaling pathway

Babic T, Townsend RL, Patterson LM, Sutton GM, Zheng H, Berthoud HR. Phenotype of neurons in the nucleus of the solitary tract that express CCK-induced activation of the ERK signaling pathway. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 296: R845–R854, 2009. First published January 28, 2009; doi:10.1152/ajpregu.90531. 2008. —The satiating potency of CCK has been well characterized, including its mediation by capsaicin-sensitive vagal primary afferents. We have previously shown that peripherally administered CCK activates the MAPK-signaling cascade in a population of nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS) neurons and that preventing ERK1/2 phosphorylation partly attenuates CCK’s satiating potency. The aim of this study was to identify the neurochemical phenotypes of the NTS neurons that exhibit CCK-induced activation of ERK1/2. Using confocal microscopy, we demonstrate that intraperitoneal CCK administration increases the number of neurons that express phosphorylated ERK1/2 (pERK1/2) in the medial and commissural subnuclei of the NTS and that CCK-induced expression of ERK1/2 is increased in tyrosine hydroxylase-immunoreactive neurons. Using Western blot analysis, we show that the robust increase in tyrosine hydroxylase phosphorylation obtained with intraperitoneal CCK is significantly attenuated in rats pretreated with the ERK-pathway blocker U0126 injected into the 4th ventricle. In addition, CCK injections increased pERK1/2 expression in POMC neurons in the NTS. In contrast, only the rare GAD67, neuronal nitric oxide synthase, and leptin-responsive neuron exhibited CCK-induced pERK immunoreactivity. We conclude that activation of POMC-immunoreactive neurons and tyrosine hydroxylase activity via the ERK-signaling pathway in the NTS likely contributes to CCK’s satiating effects.
Micro-structured optical coatings: periodic-array enhanced functionalities

Optical metasurfaces, two-dimensional counterparts of the metamaterials, are comprised of arrays of subwavelength engineered inclusions that can locally modify optical field and light–matter interactions, thus offering fascinating possibilities to realize unprecedented photonic phenomena. Here, a micro-structured optical coating or a hybrid multilayer structure is proposed. It is easy to achieve phase control over 2π by changing the geometric parameter, which is used to design gradient metasurface exhibiting anomalous reflection for linearly polarized light (1μm). By arranging the arrays elaborately, the efficiency can reach as high as 93.6%. Besides, reflective metalens taking advantage of the Pancharatnam-Berry phase is demonstrated. The electric field distribution unambiguously indicates that the metalens can focus the plane wave with high efficiency (60.3%). Such structure may find various potential applications in nanophotonics because of their high freedom to design metasurfaces.
Hatch Dates, Growth, Survival, and Overwinter Mortality of Age-0 Alewives in Lake Michigan: Implications for Habitat-Specific Recruitment Success

Abstract Alewives Alosa pseudoharengus are key components of Laurentian Great Lakes ecosystems and spawn in multiple habitat types. Exploration of alewife early life history dynamics within these different habitats should help identify important recruitment processes. During 2001-2003, we quantified physical (temperature, transparency) and biotic (chlorophyll a, zooplankton densities) habitat factors and collected age-0 alewives (using ichthyoplankton nets and trawls) in a nearshore region of Lake Michigan and Muskegon Lake, Michigan (a drowned river mouth lake connected to Lake Michigan). We characterized alewife hatch dates, individual condition, growth, mortality, and size-dependent overwinter survival to infer differences in habitat-specific recruitment success. Temperature, turbidity, chlorophyll-a concentrations, and densities of zooplankton prey were consistently higher in Muskegon Lake than in nearshore Lake Michigan. On average, young alewives in Muskegon Lake hatched earlier, grew faster, were i.
Saturation properties of the Archontis dynamo

This paper discusses the generation and subsequent non-linear limiting of magnetic fields by motions in a periodic flow driven by a force whose components are proportional to (sin z, sin x, sin y). This problem was originally studied by Archontis; the purpose of the present work is to remove certain complications present in the original model in order to understand better the underlying physical mechanism which limits the total magnetic energy growth. At high Reynolds numbers the resulting dynamos end up with almost equal total magnetic and kinetic energies, and thus yield fields strong enough to be astrophysically relevant. Until now, the existence of such dynamos has been doubted, so this demonstration of an example appears very important. At least up to Reynolds numbers of 800, these solutions are laminar and attracting. We then present an argument showing that any stationary, incompressible dynamo can be used to create a family of solutions with an arbitrary ratio of magnetic to kinetic energies in the limit of large Reynolds numbers. The stability of such solutions is also discussed.
iTRAQ-Based Proteomics Reveals Novel Biomarkers for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a gradual lung disease with a survival of less than 5 years post-diagnosis for most patients. Poor molecular description of IPF has led to unsatisfactory interpretation of the pathogenesis of this disease, resulting in the lack of successful treatments. The objective of this study was to discover novel noninvasive biomarkers for the diagnosis of IPF. We employed a coupled isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ)-liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) approach to examine protein expression in patients with IPF. A total of 97 differentially expressed proteins (38 upregulated proteins and 59 downregulated proteins) were identified in the serum of IPF patients. Using String software, a regulatory network containing 87 nodes and 244 edges was built, and the functional enrichment showed that differentially expressed proteins were predominantly involved in protein activation cascade, regulation of response to wounding and extracellular components. A set of three most significantly upregulated proteins (HBB, CRP and SERPINA1) and four most significantly downregulated proteins (APOA2, AHSG, KNG1 and AMBP) were selected for validation in an independent cohort of IPF and other lung diseases using ELISA test. The results confirmed the iTRAQ profiling results and AHSG, AMBP, CRP and KNG1 were found as specific IPF biomarkers. ROC analysis indicated the diagnosis potential of the validated biomarkers. The findings of this study will contribute in understanding the pathogenesis of IPF and facilitate the development of therapeutic targets.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR SECTION B OF INVENTION DISCLOSURE IMPLICIT ASSESSMENT OF MULTIFACTOR TRAITS ("Multifactor Trait IAT") Inventor:

The Multifactor Trait IAT (MFT–IAT) is designed for implicit assessment of traits that are currently assessed in explicit (self-report) form by multi-item personality inventories. The most widely used such inventories include one known popularly as the “Big Five” and the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The problem in developing Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures of these traits is that, in most such inventories, each distinct major trait involves the contrast of a positive pole (e.g., agreeable) with a negative pole (e.g., disagreeable). When such positive–negative contrasts are used in the IAT, the IAT is effectively converted to an implicit measure of self-esteem rather than an implicit measure of association of self with the more specific target trait. The MFT–IAT’s solution to this problem is to provide a test construction strategy that will generally enable contrasting each focal trait of a multifactor collection with the full set of other like-valenced traits in the collection. The problem solved by this invention arises frequently when attempting to construct an implicit measure of personality traits using the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Traits are personal characteristics that are assumed (a) to be characteristic of individuals and (b) variable across individuals. Alternately stated, trait names identify dimensions along which persons differ. These dimensions are also known as individual difference dimensions. For example, self-esteem designates an individual difference dimension, or trait, for which people can differ by having more or less positive attitude toward self. Explicit self-esteem is often measured by self-report measures (e.g., Rosenberg, 1965), whereas implicit self-esteem can be measured by the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald & Farnham, 2000). There are other procedures for measuring implicit selfesteem than the IAT. However, no other procedure is as psychometrically strong (Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000). The IAT’s method of assessing implicit selfesteem is shown schematically in Figure 1.