Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epidermal RAF prevents allergic skin disease

The RAS pathway is central to epidermal homeostasis, and its activation in tumors or in Rasopathies correlates with hyperproliferation. Downstream of RAS, RAF kinases are actionable targets regulating keratinocyte turnover; however, chemical RAF inhibitors paradoxically activate the pathway, promoting epidermal proliferation. We generated mice with compound epidermis-restricted BRAF/RAF1 ablation. In these animals, transient barrier defects and production of chemokines and Th2-type cytokines by keratinocytes cause a disease akin to human atopic dermatitis, characterized by IgE responses and local and systemic inflammation. Mechanistically, BRAF and RAF1 operate independently to balance MAPK signaling: BRAF promotes ERK activation, while RAF1 dims stress kinase activation. In vivo, JNK inhibition prevents disease onset, while MEK/ERK inhibition in mice lacking epidermal RAF1 phenocopies it. These results support a primary role of keratinocytes in the pathogenesis of atopic dermatitis, and the animals lacking BRAF and RAF1 in the epidermis represent a useful model for this disease. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.14012. 001
Hybridization of CMOS with CNT-based Complementary Nano Electro-Mechanical Switch for Low-Leakage and Robust Embedded Memory Design

In the nanometer era of VLSI technology, exponential increase in leakage power with technology scaling has become a major design concern. Embedded Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) is a major part of modern nanoelectronic systems. However, over the years, the integration density of SRAM has increased steadily along with associated increase in leakage power and decrease in robustness. The decrease in robustness often manifests itself as “failures” in basic memory operations like read, write and hold. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), in recent times, have generated a lot of interest because of their exceptional electrical, mechanical and thermal properties, which have motivated investigations on building nano electromechanical system (NEMS) switches with them. In this paper, we propose integration of a specific CNT-based NEMS complementary switch with CMOS SRAM cells to achieve significant decrease in memory leakage power (~19X) and increase in robustness due to bitline leakage reduction (~55X).
A comparative study of two different techniques for evaluating service quality: A case study of Howrah Railway Station, India

Purpose – The conventional methods of evaluating service quality analyze data obtained in ordinal scale that assumes scale continuum. The purpose of this paper is to compare the control boundary model with a proposed method that uses law of categorical judgment, which converts data into interval scale. In this paper, the advantages of using the law of categorical judgment over the control boundary model, a method which uses the data directly, is presented by analyzing customer response data obtained to evaluate quality of service in the Howrah Railway Station, a major railway terminal in eastern India.Design/methodology/approach – Law of categorical judgment has been used for data conversion to interval scale and a comparative analysis is made with the results obtained from control boundary model.Findings – The results obtained from the two techniques show that the proposed method of evaluation is more suitable to the context.Research limitations/implications – The work is limited to the subjective evalua.
An exploration of the attitudes and expectations of educators towards learners who are deprived as a result of poverty.

The present study explored the attitudes and the expectations that educators have towards learners who are deprived by poverty. The influence of the educators' race and gender on these attitudes and expectations was explored as well as the relationship between indigent learners and their educators. The challenges that face educators on a daily basis, make teaching a particularly daunting task. In addition educators have the complex task of teaching learners who come from a diverse range of home backgrounds. These stressors combine to create a complicated learning environment. The interplay between home environmental risk factors, teacher support and learner achievement and performance is of utmost importance for eventual school success and a positive self-perception for the learner. This study was conducted by using a survey questionnaire which was completed by 53 educators (Indian and African), and semi-structured interviews with 12 indigent learners. The researcher was able to determine the emergent attitudes and expectations of educators according to the educator's race and gender. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 indigent learners to determine their relationship with their teachers and their self-perceptions. The responses to the interviews were qualitatively analysed. The findings of this study have indicated that generally, educators have positive attitudes towards indigent learners. They are supportive of these learners and try, in most instances, to plan lessons in a manner that would benefit the disadvantaged learner. With regard to race and gender, African male educators were the highest number that perceived indigent learners negatively, while African female educators appear to be the most sympathetic and held the least negative views on indigent learners. Results also indicated that the majority of educators had formed pre-conceived expectations about learner's abilities based on variables such as the home background, knowledge of siblings performances in school, dress and speech. Although African male educators had the most negative attitudes towards indigent learners, they (African male educators) also held the
Sequence assembly with CAFTOOLS.

Large-scale genomic sequencing requires a software infrastructure to support and integrate applications that are not directly compatible. We describe a suite of software tools built around the Common Assembly Format (CAF), a comprehensive representation of a sequence assembly as a text file. These tools form the backbone of sequencing informatics at the Sanger Centre and the Genome Sequencing Center. The CAF format is intentionally flexible, and our Perl and C libraries, which parse and manipulate it, provide powerful tools for creating new applications as well as wrappers to incorporate other software. The tools are available free by anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.sanger. ac.uk/pub/badger/.
The SUN workstation architecture

The Sun workstation is a personal computer system that combines graphics and networking capabilities with powerful local processing. The workstation has been developed for research in VLSI design automation, text processing, distributed operating systems and programming environments. Clusters of Sun workstations are connected via a local network sharing a network-based file system. The Sun workstation is based on a Motorola 6800 processor, has a 1024 by 800 pixel bitmap display, and uses Ethernet as its local network. The hardware supports virtual memory management, a "RasterOP" mechanism for high-speed display updates, and data-link-control for the Ethernet. The entire workstation electronics consists of 260 chips mounted on three 6.75 by 12 inch PC boards compatible with the IEEE 796 Bus (Intel Multibus). In addition to implementing a workstation, the boards have been configured to serve as network nodes for file servers, printer servers, network gateways, and terminal concentrators. The report discusses the architecture and implementation of the Sun workstation, gives the background and goals of the project, contemplates future developments, and describes in detail its three main components: the processor, graphics, and Ethernet boards.
Relativistic jet-motion in the core of the radio-loud quasar J1101+7225

Multi-epoch GHz Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) data of the radio-loud quasar J1101+7225 were analyzed to estimate the proper motion of extended optically thin jet components. Two components separated from the core could be mapped at 1.66 GHz, which is consistent with earlier observations. In one case we found evidence of high apparent super- luminal motion (β app = 22.5 ± 4) at large (deprojected) distances to the core (22 mas ∼ 4kpc, at z = 1.46). Typically in other quasars such high separation velocities are only found much closer to the core component. Furthermore the Doppler factor, the magnetic field strength, and the angular size of the optically thick core were derived using published X-ray data. Analysis of 5 GHz VLBI data reveals the existence of further jet components within the central 5 mas. Additionally the data published so far on the GHz-spectrum were discussed at all angular resolutions. J1101+7225 turns out to he a standard quasar for studying different aspects of radio jet kinematics out to kpc-scales.
Some emergent discourse connectives in English : grammaticalization via rhetorical patterns

Some emergent discourse connectives in English. Grammaticalization via rhetorical patterns Diana Lewis D.Phil Worcester College Trinity Term, 2000 Discourse connectives are metatextual comments that signal discourse coherence relations. They can be realized by sentence adverbials that have their roots in verb phrase adverbials and have followed a path of development that is well attested both for English and cross-linguistically. This study investigates how and why it occurs. It claims that the development belongs to a wider phenomenon of unidirectional internal semantic change, that this change involves context-induced reinterpretation, and that both the immediate discourse context and the wider rhetorical context can be instrumental in bringing it about. Using diachronic and synchronic data in a corpus-linguistic approach, the frequency and distribution of the adverbials after all, in fact, at least and of course are investigated. These are found to follow similar paths of development at different rates and to varying extents. Each undergoes some increase in frequency, subjectification and abstraction, shift of discourse plane and categorial reanalysis. Each acquires at least one connective function to express rhetorical relations such as concession, contrast, justification or elaboration. These relations are defined using the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory. The analysis identifies, in the history of the expressions, contexts of co-occurrence with particular relations that are argued to generate connective implicatures which later crystallize. During long periods the expressions may have stable but defeasible implicatures in the relevant contexts. These contexts include rhetorical structures spanning two or more clause complexes and often consisting of quasi-conventional sequences of rhetorical relations typical of argumentation. They may be described as incipient discourse constructions or rhetorical idioms. The emergence of new discourse connectives is seen to share many of the features attested in the grammaticalization of lexical material. It is argued that these phenomena are best accounted for in a single, usage-based theory of internal semantic change.
A Density-ratio Framework for Statistical Data Processing

In statistical pattern recognition, it is important to avoid density estimation since density estimation is often more difficult than pattern recognition itself. Following this idea—known as Vapnik’s principle, a statistical data processing framework that employs the ratio of two probability density functions has been developed recently and is gathering a lot of attention in the machine learning and data mining communities. The purpose of this paper is to introduce to the computer vision community recent advances in density ratio estimation methods and their usage in various statistical data processing tasks such as nonstationarity adaptation, outlier detection, feature selection, and independent component analysis.
Microstrip Transmission Line Method for Broadband Permittivity Measurement of Dielectric Substrates

This paper presents a novel microstrip transmission line method for broadband relative permittivity measurement of planar dielectric substrate materials. The method requires three sets of S-parameter measurements of the microstrip line together with an obstacle in three equidistant positions over the line. The measurement and simulation results for the broadband relative permittivity of high-frequency substrates, TLX-8, RF60A, CER10, and the widely used FR4 are presented. The errors are calculated based on the manufacturers' data sheet value. Both the simulation and measurement results are found to be within 16% of the data sheet values for CER10 and 10% for all other substrates. The proposed method can minimize errors due to the nonreproducibility of connectors and impedance mismatch problems, prevalent in transmission line methods. However, the method is highly sensitive to the positioning of the obstacle, which can be overcome through the use of high accuracy obstacle positioning methods.
Business model for developing world municipal broadband network - a case study

A viable business model is key for the financial and operational sustainability of community broadband network. Using the public-private-partnership approach, stakeholder analysis and the business model canvas tool, we demonstrate a business model that can guarantee financial and operational sustainability of community networks in rural developing regions. The business model has been validated in a local broadband communication network built in rural Tanzania.
Identifying treatments, groups and outcomes in medical abstracts

Detecting and extracting treatments, treatment groups and outcomes is a key step in generating summaries of medical research papers. We describe initial results in applying named-entity recognition methods to the task of extracting such entities from BMJ abstracts. Re-sults are promising, showing that a conditional random ﬁeld approach using word and semantic features appears to be more useful for recognizing treatments and outcomes than features based on word shape.
Home Truths: Property Ownership and Housing Wealth in Australia

It's the Great Australian Dream: to own your own home. A staggering 85 per cent of Australians attempt it at some stage in their lives; the highest percentage in the world. Government policies, the economy and local geographical factors affect the housing choices of different generations, from the 'safe and sound' postwar generation and the 'Baby Boomers' to 'Generation X'. This thought-provoking book raises issues vital for any consideration of equity in Australian society.
A Gaussian Artificial Immune System for Multi-Objective optimization in continuous domains

This paper proposes a Multi-Objective Gaussian Artificial Immune System (MOGAIS) to deal effectively with building blocks (high-quality partial solutions coded in the solution vector) in multi-objective continuous optimization problems. By replacing the mutation and cloning operators with a probabilistic model, more specifically a Gaussian network representing the joint distribution of promising solutions, MOGAIS takes into account the relationships among the variables of the problem, avoiding the disruption of already obtained high-quality partial solutions. The algorithm was applied to three benchmarks and the results were compared with those produced by state-of-the-art algorithms.
Learning Representations from Deep Networks Using Mode Synthesizers

Deep learning Networks play a crucial role in the evolution of a vast number of current machine learning models for solving a variety of real world non-trivial tasks. Such networks use big data which is generally unlabeled unsupervised and multi-layered requiring no form of supervision for training and learning data and has been used to successfully build automatic supervisory neural networks. However the question still remains how well the learned data represents interestingness, and their effectiveness i.e. efficiency in deep learning models or applications. If the output of a network of deep learning models can be beamed unto a scene of observables, we could learn the variational frequencies of these stacked networks in a parallel and distributive way.This paper seeks to discover and represent interesting patterns in an efficient and less complex way by incorporating the concept of Mode synthesizers in the deep learning process models
Managing downside risk in financial markets : theory, practice and implementation

List of contributors Preface Applications of downside risk - From alpha to omega (Frank A. Sortino) The Dutch view: developing a strategic benchmark in an ALM framework (Robert van der Meer) The consultant/financial planner's view: a new paradigm for advising individual accounts (Sally Atwater) The mathematician's view: modelling uncertainty with the three parameter lognormal (Hal Forsey) A software developer's view: using Post-Modern Portfolio Theory to improve investment performance measurement (Brian M. Rom and Kathleen W. Ferguson) An evaluation of value at risk and the information ratio (for investors concerned with downside risk) (Joseph Messina) A portfolio manager's view of downside risk (Neil Riddles) Underlying theory - Investment risk: a unified approach to upside and downside returns (Leslie A. Balzer) Lower partial-moment capital asset pricing models: a re-examination (Stephen E. Satchell) Preference functions and risk-adjusted performance measures (Auke Plantinga and Sebastiaan de Groot) Building a mean-downside risk portfolio frontier (Gustavo M. de Athayde) FARM: a financial actuarial risk model (Robert S. Clarkson) Appendix: The Forsey-Sortino model tutorial Index.
Solving dense symmetric indefinite systems using GPUs

This paper studies the performance of different algorithms for solving a dense symmetric indefinite linear system of equations on multicore CPUs with a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). To ensure the numerical stability of the factorization, pivoting is required. Obtaining high performance of such algorithms on the GPU is difficult because all the existing pivoting strategies lead to frequent synchronizations and irregular data accesses. Until recently, there has not been any implementation of these algorithms on a hybrid CPU/GPU architecture. To improve their performance on the hybrid architecture, we explore different techniques to reduce the expensive data transfer and synchronization between the CPU and GPU, or on the GPU (e.g., factorizing the matrix entirely on the GPU or in a communication‐avoiding fashion). We also study the performance of the solver using iterative refinements along with the factorization without pivoting combined with the preprocessing technique based on random butterfly transformations, or with the mixed‐precision algorithm where the matrix is factorized in single precision. This randomization algorithm only has a probabilistic proof on the numerical stability, and for this paper, we only focused on the mixed‐precision algorithm without pivoting. However, they demonstrate that we can obtain good performance on the GPU by avoiding the pivoting and using the lower precision arithmetics, respectively. As illustrated with the application in acoustics studied in this paper, in many practical cases, the matrices can be factorized without pivoting. Because the componentwise backward error computed in the iterative refinement signals when the algorithm failed to obtain the desired accuracy, the user can use these potentially unstable but efficient algorithms in most of the cases and fall back to a more stable algorithm with pivoting only in the case of the failure. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Deregulated Cdc6 inhibits DNA replication and suppresses Cdc7-mediated phosphorylation of Mcm2–7 complex

Mcm2–7 is recruited to eukaryotic origins of DNA replication by origin recognition complex, Cdc6 and Cdt1 thereby licensing the origins. Cdc6 is essential for origin licensing during DNA replication and is readily destabilized from chromatin after Mcm2–7 loading. Here, we show that after origin licensing, deregulation of Cdc6 suppresses DNA replication in Xenopus egg extracts without the involvement of ATM/ATR-dependent checkpoint pathways. DNA replication is arrested specifically after chromatin binding of Cdc7, but before Cdk2-dependent pathways and deregulating Cdc6 after this step does not impair activation of origin firing or elongation. Detailed analyses revealed that Cdc6 deregulation leads to strong suppression of Cdc7-mediated hyperphosphorylation of Mcm4 and subsequent chromatin loading of Cdc45, Sld5 and DNA polymerase α. Mcm2 phosphorylation is also repressed although to a lesser extent. Remarkably, Cdc6 itself does not directly inhibit Cdc7 kinase activity towards Mcm2–4–6–7 in purified systems, rather modulates Mcm2–7 phosphorylation on chromatin context. Taken together, we propose that Cdc6 on chromatin acts as a modulator of Cdc7-mediated phosphorylation of Mcm2–7, and thus destabilization of Cdc6 from chromatin after licensing is a key event ensuring proper transition to the initiation of DNA replication.
A novel low power hybrid flipflop using sleepy stack inverter pair

This paper presents a low power hybrid flip flop using sleepy stack inverter pair for retaining the logic level till the end of evaluation and pre-charge phase of the flip flop. The sleepy stack inverter pairs are efficient in leakage power reduction and overall power dissipation as the technology scales down to 90nm and below. The performance of the proposed flip flop was compared with the conventional dual dynamic node pulsed hybrid flip flop (DDFF) which uses conventional static CMOS inverter pairs in cadence virtuoso 90nm tool. It shows 20% reduction in total power consumed with 89% reduction in leakage power at its output node. T flip flop, SR flip flop and JK flip flop were designed using this proposed D flip flop and its performance was compared with flip flops designed using DDFF. As the proposed flip flops have improved performance in terms of leakage power, total power and power delay product at high speed, it can be widely used in high performance applications.
Pronominal anaphora resolution for text summarisation

The assumption of term-based summarisation method is that the importance of a sentence can be determined by the importance of the words it contains. One drawback of these methods is that they usually consider the words in isolation, ignoring relations such as anaphoric links between them. This paper investigates to what extent the integration of pronominal anaphora resolution into the summarisation process can improve the informativeness of the automatically produced summaries. Evaluation of three anaphora resolution methods plus three baselines on a corpus of journal articles shows that anaphora resolution can have a beneficial effect on informativeness. In addition, one experiment which uses a simulated anaphora resolver with predefined accuracy is performed in order to demonstrate that term-based summarisation can benefit from anaphora resolution, but that high accuracy methods are necessary.