Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ethnic Differences in Display Rules Are Mediated by Perceived Relationship Commitment

This study investigated whether Asian Americans and European Americans differ in how to express and modify their perceived emotions in various relationships, and whether those ethnicity differences are mediated by self-reported ratings of perceived relationship commitment to the interactants. Seventy-four Asian American and 84 European American students at San Francisco State University participated in the study. Asian Americans and European Americans differently endorsed the expressivity and modification of their emotional expressions; Asian Americans endorsed the expression of their emotions less than European Americans, but endorsed the modification of their expressions more. Those findings were significantly related to ratings of perceived commitment to the interactants, and the perceived relationship commitment ratings mediated the ethnic group differences on endorsed expressivity. We concluded that some ethnic group differences in display rules for emotional expressions were accounted for by ethnic group differences in perceived relationship commitment.
Modelling of pedestrian groups and application to group recognition

In analysing the movement and interaction of pedestrians it is very important to take into account the social groups they form. In this paper we describe the work we have done on the modelling of the spatial formations of socially interacting groups of pedestrians. We than explain the application of the obtained statistical models to the automatic detection of pedestrians who are in a group. The results show that a high detection accuracy can be achieved.
Adoptive Immunotherapy for EBV-associated Malignancies

Latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection is associated with a diverse group of malignancies including Burkitt's lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), and lymphoproliferative disease (LPD). EBV proteins expressed in these malignancies provide targets for the adoptive immunotherapy with antigen-specific cytotoxic T cells (CTL) and EBV-specific CTL have been used successfully for the prophylaxis and treatment of EBV-LPD post hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). The clinical experience with EBV-specific CTL for other EBV-associated malignancies such as Hodgkin's disease and NPC is limited and the results obtained so far indicate that EBV-specific CTL are less effective than for EBV-LPD post HSCT. Decreased CTL efficacy most likely reflect immune evasion strategies by tumor cells such as down regulation of immunodominant EBV proteins and secretion of inhibitory cytokines. To overcome these immune evasion strategies a number of approaches have been developed including targeting CTL to subdominant EBV antigens and genetically modifying CTL to increase their potency.
Adverse Remodeling of the Left Atrium in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation: When Is the Tipping Point in Which Structural Changes Become Permanent?

A tipping point is a critical point in an ongoing event or situation that leads to a new irreversible change. Understanding the tipping point at which the effect of disease processes that provoke atrial fibrillation (AF) result in permanent irreversible substrate changes to the atrium is of critical importance. If lifestyle changes and pharmacologic therapies are to be used, they need to be introduced before the tipping point is reached to allow maximal benefit and in some cases reverse the natural history of atrial fibrillation.1 The tipping point of irreversible change to the atrium is unknown. In general, treatments for AF work better when delivered earlier in the disease state.2,3 In fact, within our system we can measure deleterious changes in outcomes after AF ablation with delays as little as 6 months from the initial diagnosis of AF.2 Studies such as these suggest time is tissue. Left atrial remodeling is the adaptation of cardiac myocytes over time due to exposure to stressors such as tachycardia or volume/pressure overload. Electrical remodeling can manifest as early as 30 minutes after exposure to rate-related stress.4 These electrical changes to the atrium early on reverse almost immediately if the stress is removed. Structural changes also develop relatively quickly. Within 5 weeks zones of slow conduction and fibrosis can develop.5 As stress exposure continues, atrial collagen synthesis and degradation are increased in a state of dynamic remodeling.6 In this state, atrial myocytes hypertrophy to adapt to the stress in order to maintain hemostasis. This results in functional stiffening of the atrium.6 As adaptive processes fail, progressive atrial dilatation occurs with atrial thinning, fibrosis, and cellular apoptosis. The left atrium then loses contractile function and biochemical adaptation.7 We have learned that atrial reverse remodeling is possible. Since structural changes of the atrium develop within weeks of exposure to stressors, this reversible remodeling likely
An Architecture for Exporting Environment Awareness to Mobile Computing Applications

In mobile computing, factors such as add-on hardware components and heterogeneous networks result in an environment of changing resource constraints. An application in such a constrained environment must adapt to these changes so that available resources are properly utilized. We propose an architecture for exporting awareness of the mobile computing environment to an application. In this architecture, a change in the environment is modeled as an asynchronous event that includes information related to the change. Events are typed and are organized as an extensible class hierarchy so that they can be handled at different levels of abstraction according to the requirement of each application. We also compare two approaches to structure an adaptive application. One addresses the problem of incorporating adaptiveness into legacy applications, while the other considers the design of an application with adaptiveness in mind.
When Recurrent Neural Networks meet the Neighborhood for Session-Based Recommendation

Deep learning methods have led to substantial progress in various application fields of AI, and in recent years a number of proposals were made to improve recommender systems with artificial neural networks. For the problem of making session-based recommendations, i.e., for recommending the next item in an anonymous session, Hidasi et al.~recently investigated the application of recurrent neural networks with Gated Recurrent Units (GRU4REC). Assessing the true effectiveness of such novel approaches based only on what is reported in the literature is however difficult when no standard evaluation protocols are applied and when the strength of the baselines used in the performance comparison is not clear. In this work we show based on a comprehensive empirical evaluation that a heuristics-based nearest neighbor (kNN) scheme for sessions outperforms GRU4REC in the large majority of the tested configurations and datasets. Neighborhood sampling and efficient in-memory data structures ensure the scalability of the kNN method. The best results in the end were often achieved when we combine the kNN approach with GRU4REC, which shows that RNNs can leverage sequential signals in the data that cannot be detected by the co-occurrence-based kNN method.
Computer Discrimination of Atrial Fibrillation and Regular Atrial Rhythms from Intra‐Atrial Electrograms

Reliable detection of atrial fibrillation from intra‐atrial data is an important requirement for automatic implantable anti‐tachycardia devices. Simultaneous filtered and unfiltered intra‐atrial electrograms were recorded from patients in regular rhythms (12 sinus rhythms and six regular atrial tachycardias) and atrial fibrillation (nine rhythms). Each rhythm was broken down into consecutive 4‐second data segments for analysis by atrial rate calculation, power spectrum analysis and amplitude probability density function generation. Significant differences were found between regular rhythms and atrial fibrillation for atrial rate, for the percentage of the total power in the 4–9 hertz band and for amplitude probability density close to the isoelectric region. There was no overlap for any of these three parameters. For each method of analysis, algorithms were generated to discriminate individual data segments from regular rhythms and atrial fibrillation with high sensitivity and specificity. Comparable results were found when sinus rhythm was excluded from the analysis. Characteristics of intra‐atrial recordings during atrial fibrillation were remarkably similar to previously published reports of intra‐ventricular recordings during ventricular fibrillation. Each of the three methods of analysis may provide an algorithm for accurate detection of atrial fibrillation by anti‐tachycardia devices.
Transcriptional Organization of the czcHeavy-Metal Homeostasis Determinant from Alcaligenes eutrophus

ABSTRACT The Czc system of Alcaligenes eutrophus mediates resistance to cobalt, zinc, and cadmium through ion efflux catalyzed by the CzcCB2A cation-proton antiporter. DNA sequencing of the region upstream of the czcNICBADRS determinant located on megaplasmid pMOL30 revealed the 5′ end of czcN and a gene for a MgtC-like protein which is transcribed in the orientation opposite that of czc. Additional open reading frames upstream of czc had no homologs in the current databases. Using oligonucleotide-probed Northern blotting experiments, a 500-nucleotide czcN message and a 400-nucleotideczcI message were found, and the presence of 6,200-nucleotide czcCBA message (D. Van der Lelie et al., Mol. Microbiol. 23:493–503, 1997) was confirmed. Induction ofczcN, czcI, czcCBA, andczcDRS followed a similar pattern: transcription was induced best by 300 μM zinc, less by 300 μM cobalt, and only slightly by 300 μM cadmium. Reverse transcription-PCR gave evidence for additional continuous transcription from czcN toczcC and from czcD to czcS, but not between czcA and czcD nor betweenczcS and a 131-amino-acid open reading frame followingczcS. The CzcR putative response regulator was purified and shown to bind in the 5′ region of czcN. A reporter strain carrying a czcNIC-lacZ-czcBADRS determinant on plasmid pMOL30 was constructed, as were ΔczcR and ΔczcS mutants of this strain and of AE128(pMOL30) wild type. Experiments on (i) growth of these strains in liquid culture containing 5 mM Zn2+, (ii) induction of the β-galactosidase in the reporter strains by zinc, cobalt, and cadmium, and (iii) cDNA analysis of czcCBA mRNA synthesis under inducing and noninducing conditions showed that the CzcRS two-component regulatory system is involved in Czc regulation.
Non-Arteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy (NAION): A Review and Update on Animal Models

ABSTRACT Non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) is a relatively common optic neuropathy in adults over the age of 50, typically causing sudden, painless, unilateral vision loss and always resulting in swelling of the optic nerve head. Though several anatomic and vascular risk factors have been identified, much remains unknown about its pathophysiology and there is no proven treatment. This article reviews the risk factors, clinical presentation, and therapies that have been investigated for NAION. In addition, we provide an update from recent rodent and primate models, which offer new insight into the pathophysiology of this disease and provide a platform for treatment trials.
In Vitro Fertilization of Preovulatory Oocytes and Embryo Transfer in Infertile Patients Treated with Clomiphene and Human Chorionic Gonadotropin

The initial stage of an ongoing program for in vitro fertilization of human eggs and the transfer of cultured embryos into the uteri of women with occluded fallopian tubes is described. All women included in the program had ovulatory menstrual cycles and were given a 5-day course of clomiphene citrate to induce stimulated ovarian follicular development. A marked increase in urinary estrogen excretion was used for timing the administration of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which was injected 19 to 36 hours before follicles were aspirated during laparoscopy or laparotomy. In the 27 patients treated, an average of 5.7 follicles was aspirated per patient and yielded an average of one preovulatory egg per patient. The mean duration of the luteal phase was 13.4 days and increased significantly to a mean of 16.4 days (P
Character-Level Convolutional Networks for Arithmetic Operator Character Recognition

Computer-assisted instruction systems have been broadly applied to help students solve math problems, One of the challenges of intelligent instruction systems is how to make the machine automatically understand and recognize arithmetic operator characters. In this paper, we study the problem of automatic recognition of arithmetic operator characters based on character-level convolutional networks. Our work consists of three parts. The first part is to generate training data and test data for our convolutional neural network. The second is to split the input data into character-level and convert each character to a vector by using word embedding technology. The last step is to train our convolutional network and analyze the accuracy of recognitions of our proposed convolutional network. The experimental results show that our proposed network can correctly classify the arithmetic operator characters.
Preparation of biodegradable PLA/PLGA membranes with PGA mesh and their application for periodontal guided tissue regeneration

A biodegradable polylactic acid (PLA)/poly(glycolide-co-lactide) copolymer (PLGA) membrane with polyglycolic acid (PGA) mesh was prepared to aid the effective regeneration of defective periodontal tissues. The microporous membrane used in this study consists of biodegradable polymers, and seems to have a structure to provide appropriate properties for periodontal tissue regeneration. Based on the albumin permeation test, it is known that the biodegradable membrane exhibits the suitable permeability of nutrients. The membrane maintained its physical integrity for 6–8 weeks, which could be sufficient to retain space in the periodontal pocket. Cell attachment and cytotoxicity tests were performed with respect to the evaluation of biocompatibility of the membrane. As a result, the membrane did not show any cytotoxicity. The safety and therapeutic efficacies of the biodegradable membranes were confirmed in animal tests.
A Cache-Based Natural Language Model for Speech Recognition

Speech-recognition systems must often decide between competing ways of breaking up the acoustic input into strings of words. Since the possible strings may be acoustically similar, a language model is required; given a word string, the model returns its linguistic probability. Several Markov language models are discussed. A novel kind of language model which reflects short-term patterns of word use by means of a cache component (analogous to cache memory in hardware terminology) is presented. The model also contains a 3g-gram component of the traditional type. The combined model and a pure 3g-gram model were tested on samples drawn from the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen (LOB) corpus of English text. The relative performance of the two models is examined, and suggestions for the future improvements are made. >
Improved JPDA for fast fault detection

Regarding faults as dynamic modes which observe through the multi-sensors, with probabilistic data association based on multi-sensor, we obtain the fast fault detection results according to the association probability and threshold values. Joint Probabilistic Data Association (JPDA) algorithm is one of the effective ways for single-sensor multi-target tracking. Based on the analysis of JPDA algorithm, we improve the JPDA algorithm: first, we propose an approximation method for constructing the confirmation matrix through removing the small probability events using the right threshold values, and then, we present the mathematical division of the confirmation matrix according to the intersection area of the association gate of fault targets to be tracked; lastly, we compute the association probability of fault targets through attenuating the value of the public measurement. The simulation results show preliminarily that our improved JPDA algorithm saves the computing time greatly, and effectively meet the requirements of fast and real-time fault detection.
Psychological and Social Influences on Blog Writing: An Online Survey of Blog Authors in Japan

We conducted a questionnaire survey of personal blog authors (N = 1,434) and examined two hypothesized models using structural equation modeling to clarify the psychological and social process associated with why authors continue to write their blogs. Two final models with good fit were obtained. It was confirmed that being satisfied with benefits to self, relationships with others, and skill in handling information had significant positive effects on the intention to continue blog writing. The psychological traits of private self-consciousness, reassurance-seeking, and information need were hypothesized to be effective in establishing consciousness of the benefits; these also had significant positive effects. In contrast, only positive feedback had a significant influence on satisfaction related to information handling skill, whereas both negative and positive feedback had significant influences on satisfaction related to information handling skill. This suggests that communication with readers who gave positive feedback strongly encouraged blog authors to continue writing. Similarities and differences between the two models and recommendations for further theoretical development are discussed.
Passivity-based and standard PI controls application to wind energy conversion system

The controller design for wind energy conversion systems (WECS) is complicated considering the highly nonlinear properties of electric machines and power converters. Targeting at a controller for WECS, this article adopts a passivity-based PI control (PI-PBC) method, to which the stability can be analytically guaranteed. Then, a comparative study between the proposed method and a standard PI is provided. The wind energy system consists of a wind turbine, a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG), a pulse width modulation (PWM) rectifier, a dc load and an equivalent distributed energy storage device, which is formed with a dc source with internal resistor. The generator rotational velocity is regulated at maximum power point (MPPT) for the investigated wind turbine.
A Drosophila Gain-of-Function Screen for Candidate Genes Involved in Steroid-Dependent Neuroendocrine Cell Remodeling

The normal functioning of neuroendocrine systems requires that many neuropeptidergic cells change, to alter transmitter identity and concentration, electrical properties, and cellular morphology in response to hormonal cues. During insect metamorphosis, a pulse of circulating steroids, ecdysteroids, governs the dramatic remodeling of larval neurons to serve adult-specific functions. To identify molecular mechanisms underlying metamorphic remodeling, we conducted a neuropeptidergic cell-targeted, gain-of-function genetic screen. We screened 6097 lines. Each line permitted Gal4-regulated transcription of flanking genes. A total of 58 lines, representing 51 loci, showed defects in neuropeptide-mediated developmental transitions (ecdysis or wing expansion) when crossed to the panneuropeptidergic Gal4 driver, 386Y-Gal4. In a secondary screen, we found 29 loci that produced wing expansion defects when crossed to a crustacean cardioactive peptide (CCAP)/bursicon neuron-specific Gal4 driver. At least 14 loci disrupted the formation or maintenance of adult-specific CCAP/bursicon cell projections during metamorphosis. These include components of the insulin and epidermal growth factor signaling pathways, an ecdysteroid-response gene, cabut, and an ubiquitin-specific protease gene, fat facets, with known functions in neuronal development. Several additional genes, including three micro-RNA loci and two factors related to signaling by Myb-like proto-oncogenes, have not previously been implicated in steroid signaling or neuronal remodeling.
Improved Reliability of Power Modules: A Review of Online Junction Temperature Measurement Methods

Power electronic systems play an increasingly important role in providing high-efficiency power conversion for adjustable-speed drives, power-quality correction, renewable-energy systems, energy-storage systems, and electric vehicles. However, they are often presented with demanding operating environments that challenge the reliability aspects of power electronic techniques. For example, increasingly thermally stressful environments are seen in applications such as electric vehicles, where ambient temperatures under the hood exceed 150 °C, while some wind turbine applications can place large temperature cycling conditions on the system. On the other hand, safety requirements in the aerospace and automotive industries place rigorous demands on reliability.
Toward a framework for preparing and executing adaptive grid programs

This paper describes the program execution framework being developed by the Grid Application Development Software (GrADS) Project. The goal of this framework is to provide good resource allocation for Grid applications and to support adaptive reallocation if performance degrades because of changes in the availability of Grid resources. At the heart of this strategy is the notion of a configurable object program, which contains, in addition to application code, strategies for mapping the application to different collections of resources and a resource selection model that provides an estimate of the performance of the application on a specific collection of Grid resources. This model must be accurate enough to distinguish collections of resources that will deliver good performance from those that will not. The GrADS execution framework also provides a contract monitoring mechanism for interrupting and remapping an application execution when performance falls below acceptable levels.
Functional Domains of the TOL Plasmid Transcription Factor XylS

ABSTRACT The alkylbenzoate degradation genes of Pseudomonas putida TOL plasmid are positively regulated by XylS, an AraC family protein, in a benzoate-dependent manner. In this study, we used deletion mutants and hybrid proteins to identify which parts of XylS are responsible for the DNA binding, transcriptional activation, and benzoate inducibility. We found that a 112-residue C-terminal fragment of XylS binds specifically to the Pm operator in vitro, protects this sequence from DNase I digestion identically to the wild-type (wt) protein, and activates the Pm promoter in vivo. When overexpressed, that C-terminal fragment could activate transcription as efficiently as wt XylS. All the truncations, which incorporated these 112 C-terminal residues, were able to activate transcription at least to some extent when overproduced. Intactness of the 210-residue N-terminal portion was found to be necessary for benzoate responsiveness of XylS. Deletions in the N-terminal and central regions seriously reduced the activity of XylS and caused the loss of effector control, whereas insertions into the putative interdomain region did not change the basic features of the XylS protein. Our results confirm that XylS consists of two parts which probably interact with each other. The C-terminal domain carries DNA-binding and transcriptional activation abilities, while the N-terminal region carries effector-binding and regulatory functions.