Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Split-Emit Process for Natural Language Generation

There have been plenty of non-statistical Natural Language Generation (NLG) methods in both top-down manner (Dymetman& Isabelle, 1988; Wedekind, 1988) and bottom-up manner (Shieber et al., 1990). As Van Noord (1994) summarized, the main problem of top-down approaches is the possibility of infinite recursion during generation, and the main problems of bottom-up approaches is the severe restriction on possible grammars and rather inefficient processing. Unlike parsing, for which word order is given, NLG may encounter factorial number of possible word orders (Carroll et al., 1999). This leads to potentially exponential time complexity even with carefully designed algorithm on packed chart. The fact that many arcs generated are never used in a full derivation tree has a significant effect on scalability. Recent statistical NLG works (Langkilde, 2000; White & Baldridge, 2003; Nakanishi et al., 2005; White et al., 2007) use packed charts to sum out all possible parse trees during training, and to find best parse tree during generation. Miyao & Tsujii (2005) report only 418 out of 500 randomly sampled sentences were successfully generated with a HPSG grammar trained on Penn TreeBank, and some of them take extremely long time to generate. White et al. (2007) report that only 22% of test sentences are successfully generated with a CCG grammar trained from Penn TreeBank, and the search exceeds time limit for 68% of the sentences. Therefore, for most of the sentences, they need to apply post processing to concatenate text fragments into a sentence. These results expose a dilemma of the need of a less permissive grammar to restrict search space to be affordable, and the need of a more permissive grammar to accept more unseen sentences. In this proposal, we present a fast top-down statistical generation algorithm with permissive CFG grammar. The algorithm, called Split-Emit, can be considered as a reversed shift-reduce algorithm—with two operations split and emit as opposed to reduce and shift. It starts with the whole semantics and split it recursively, and has O(n) generation complexity with respect to size of the input semantics. In order to avoid the possible infinite recursion we add constraint to the split process which forbids the generation of node that already exists. To our knowledge, this is the first statistical top-down generator.
An Approximation to the Adaptive Exponential Integrate-and-Fire Neuron Model Allows Fast and Predictive Fitting to Physiological Data

For large-scale network simulations, it is often desirable to have computationally tractable, yet in a defined sense still physiologically valid neuron models. In particular, these models should be able to reproduce physiological measurements, ideally in a predictive sense, and under different input regimes in which neurons may operate in vivo. Here we present an approach to parameter estimation for a simple spiking neuron model mainly based on standard f–I curves obtained from in vitro recordings. Such recordings are routinely obtained in standard protocols and assess a neuron’s response under a wide range of mean-input currents. Our fitting procedure makes use of closed-form expressions for the firing rate derived from an approximation to the adaptive exponential integrate-and-fire (AdEx) model. The resulting fitting process is simple and about two orders of magnitude faster compared to methods based on numerical integration of the differential equations. We probe this method on different cell types recorded from rodent prefrontal cortex. After fitting to the f–I current-clamp data, the model cells are tested on completely different sets of recordings obtained by fluctuating (“in vivo-like”) input currents. For a wide range of different input regimes, cell types, and cortical layers, the model could predict spike times on these test traces quite accurately within the bounds of physiological reliability, although no information from these distinct test sets was used for model fitting. Further analyses delineated some of the empirical factors constraining model fitting and the model’s generalization performance. An even simpler adaptive LIF neuron was also examined in this context. Hence, we have developed a “high-throughput” model fitting procedure which is simple and fast, with good prediction performance, and which relies only on firing rate information and standard physiological data widely and easily available.
INTRA-SYLLABLE DEPENDENT PHONETIC MODELING FOR CHINESE SPEECH RECOGNITION

A novel acoustic modeling method for Chinese speech recognition based on Intra-Syllable Dependent Phone (ISDP) set is proposed and practiced. The ISDP set extends the traditional phone set based on the intra-syllable information of Chinese phonetic knowledge. The acoustic models based on ISDP set (ISDPMs) have the following features: One, they are suitable for the case of a rather small scale of training data. Two, this scheme is an integration form of tri-phone modeling and syllable modeling. The mixed Gaussian densities are used to describe the feature space of each ISDP and the Viterbi algorithm is adopted for decoding process. In addition, the ISDP-syllable search tree is designed and presented to reduce the decoding complexity. Our Experimental result shows that the ISDP modeling is more flexible and faster than Syllable Modeling meanwhile it causes no much deduction of the performance.
How Well Did the Kyoto Protocol Work? A Dynamic-GMM Approach with External Instruments

This paper assesses the impact of the Kyoto Protocol on CO2 emissions. With this aim a dynamic panel data model is estimated for a cross-section of 213 countries over the period 1960 to 2009. The model, based on a STIRPAT approach, also integrates the EKC approach and specifically considers the endogeneity of the policy variable. To sort out causality the number of financed CDM projects is used as an external instrument. The main results indicate that obligations from the Kyoto Protocol have a measurable reducing effect on CO2 emissions and indicate that a treaty often seen as "failed" in fact may be producing some non-trivial effects.
A linear filtering approach to the computation of discrete Fourier transform

It is shown in this paper that the discrete equivalent of a chirp filter is needed to implement the computation of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) as a linear filtering process. We show further that the chirp filter should not be realized as a transversal filter in a wide range of cases; use instead of the conventional FFT permits the computation of the DFT in a time proportional to N \log_{2} N for any N, N being the number of points in the array that is transformed. Another proposed implementation of the chirp filter requires N to be a perfect square. The number of operations required for this algorithm is proportional to N^{3/2} .
rog foams and natural protein surfactants

Biological foams contain a cocktail of unusual proteins with diverse properties. Natural foam proteins have surfactant properties equal to or better than conventional detergents. They reveal new physical principles based on conformational change at interfaces. They illustrate alternative surfactant mechanisms not available to conventional detergents. Can act synergistically to form and stabilize bio-compatible, hydrated foam structures. g r a p h i c a l a b s t r a c t
TESTING MONOTONICITY OF REGRESSIONBy

We consider the problem of testing monotonicity of the regression function in a nonparametric regression model. We introduce test statistics that are functionals of a certain natural U-process. We study the limiting distribution of these test statistics through strong approximation methods and the extreme value theory for Gaussian processes. We show that the tests are consistent against general alternatives.
Visual Analytics Solutions as &#x2018;off-the-Shelf&#x2019; Libraries

Visual Analytics has brought forward many solutions to different tasks such as exploring topics, understanding user and customer behavior, comparing genomes, or detecting anomalies. Many of these solutions, if not most, are standalone applications with technological contributions which cannot be easily taken for: reuse in other domains, further improvement, benchmarking, or integration and deployment alongside other solutions. The latter can prove specially helpful for exploratory data analysis. This often leads researchers to re-implement solutions and thus to a suboptimal use of skills and resources. This paper discusses further the lack of off-the-shelf libraries for Visual Analytics, and proposes the creation of pluggable libraries on top of existing technologies such as Spark and Zeppelin. We provide an illustrative example of a pluggable, Visual Analytics library using these technologies.
A New Validity Index of Fuzzy c-Means Clustering

FCM algorithm is an important algorithm in fuzzy pattern identification. It has significant application value in theory and practice. And whether clustering results are reasonable or not is belongs to cluster validity problem. In this paper, based on the Shannon entropy and fuzzy variation theory, considering the geometry structure information of data sets, we give a new cluster validity function. Experimental results show that the new method has good classification performance.
Dynamic cluster assignment mechanisms

Clustered microarchitectures are an effective approach to reducing the penalties caused by wire delays inside a chip. Current superscalar processors have in fact a two-cluster microarchitecture with a naive code partitioning approach: integer instructions are allocated to one cluster and floating-point instructions to the other. This partitioning scheme is simple and results in no communications between the two clusters (just through memory) but it is in general far from optimal because she workload is not evenly distributed most of the time. In fact, when the processor is running integer programs, the workload is extremely unbalanced since the FP cluster is not used at all. In this work we investigate run-time mechanisms that dynamically distribute the instructions of a program among these two clusters. By optimizing the trade-off between inter-cluster communication penalty and workload balance, the proposed schemes can achieve an average speed-up of 36% for the SpecInt95 benchmark suite.
Antibiotics alone for uncomplicated acute appendicitis in high operative risk adult patients: analytical review of RCTs and proposal of evidence based treatment decision

Background: Clinical trials have so far shown controversial results as regards the standard of care for treating uncomplicated acute appendicitis (uC-AA). High operational risk adult patients (HORAP) could represent selected patients where primary antibiotic conservative therapy (pACT or A) could be indicated. Methods: We carried a comprehensive search of the PubMed searching engine in the English language scientific literature from 1995 to 2015, using medical subject headings “antibiotics”, “uncomplicated appendicitis”, “appendicectomy”, “conservative treatment”, “surgery” and “randomized clinical trial”. All RCTs comparing the outcomes of pACT versus primary surgical open or laparoscopic appendectomy (pSOLA or S) as primary treatment options for uC-AA were identified. Inclusion criteria for our analytical review were RCTs evaluating outcomes in terms of or related to all of the following four parameters: treatment efficacy, post therapeutic/operative complications, in hospital length of stay (LOS) and recurrence. Results: The conclusion of all five RCTs considered antibiotics alone in the treatment of AA as an efficient and non inferior therapeutic option respect to surgery. Primary ACT was characterised by a higher LOS, a higher rate of recurrence and a lower rate of postoperative complication than pSOLA. Conclusions: Based on the current body of evidence, an appropriate pACT could be a rational tailored primary treatment option for CT proven uC-AA in HORAP. Accurate diagnoses and surgical risk stratification in patients with uC-AA could aid decision making for target therapy. However, results of large sample prospective multicenter RCTs are required to routinely recommend pACT for uC-AA in the clinical practice. (www.actabiomedica.it)
Opportunistic Two-Stage Feedback and Scheduling for MIMO Downlink Systems

We propose an opportunistic two-stage feedback and scheduling algorithm that is based upon zero-forcing beamforming with semi-orthogonal user selection (ZFBF-SUS) to reduce its feedback load. In an SUS algorithm, a base station schedules semi-orthogonal users using the feedback of all users' channel information. However, such feedback overhead significantly increases with the number of users. To reduce the feedback load of ZFBF-SUS systems, the proposed two-stage feedback scheme opportunistically and separately exploits the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and orthogonality in each stage such that only a fraction of users feed back their channel information. Based on this opportunistic feedback scheme, we decouple the entire process of the SUS into two sub-processes. The proposed two-stage feedback and scheduling scheme effectively exclude the inappropriate users for ZFBF transmission in both feedback and scheduling periods, and thus save the scarce resources consumed for the feedback process. We derive an analytical expression for the average number of feedback bits of the proposed system and optimize it in an averaged sense. Further, the sum-rate of the proposed system is theoretically investigated. Both analytical and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves the performance of conventional ZFBF-SUS systems with a significantly reduced number of feedback bits.
Semantic Vectors: an Information Retrieval Scenario

In this paper we exploit Semantic Vectors to develop an IR system. The idea is to use semantic spaces built on terms and documents to overcome the problem of word ambiguity. Word ambiguity is a key issue for those systems which have access to textual information. Semantic Vectors are able to dividing the usages of a word into dierent meanings, discriminating among word meanings based on information found in unannotated corpora. We provide an in vivo evaluation in an Information Retrieval scenario and we compare the proposed method with another one which exploits Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD). Contrary to sense discrimination, which is the task of discriminating among dierent meanings (not necessarily known a priori), WSD is the task of selecting a sense for a word from a set of predened possibilities. The goal of the evaluation is to establish how Semantic Vectors aect the retrieval performance.
Amyloid precursor protein ( APP ) contributes to pathology in the SOD 1 G 93 A mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the progressive loss of motor neurons is accompanied by extensive muscle denervation, resulting in paralysis and ultimately death. Upregulation of amyloid beta (A4) precursor protein (APP) in muscle fibres coincides with symptom onset in both sporadic ALS patients and the SOD1 mouse model of familial ALS. We have further characterized this response in SOD1 mice and also revealed elevated levels of b-amyloid (Ab) peptides in the SOD1 spinal cord, which were predominantly localized within motor neurons and their surrounding glial cells. We therefore examined the effect of genetic ablation of APP on disease progression in SOD1 mice, which significantly improved multiple disease parameters, including innervation, motor function, muscle contractile characteristics, motor unit and motor neuron survival. These results therefore strongly suggest that APP actively contributes to SOD1-mediated pathology. Together with observations from ALS cases, this study indicates that APP may contribute to human ALS pathology.
Ehlers‐Danlos syndrome – a historical review

Ehlers‐Danlos syndrome is an inherited heterogeneous group of connective tissue disorders, characterized by abnormal collagen synthesis, affecting skin, ligaments, joints, blood vessels and other organs. It is one of the oldest known causes of bruising and bleeding and was first described by Hipprocrates in 400 BC. Edvard Ehlers, in 1901, recognized the condition as a distinct entity. In 1908, Henri‐Alexandre Danlos suggested that skin extensibility and fragility were the cardinal features of the syndrome. In 1998, Beighton published the classification of Ehlers‐Danlos syndrome according to the Villefranche nosology. From the 1960s the genetic make up was identified. Management of bleeding problems associated with Ehlers‐Danlos has been slow to progress.
Gradient Histogram Background Modeling for People Detection in Stationary Camera Environments

One of the big challenges of today person detectors is the decreasing of the false positive rate. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to customize person detectors in static camera scenarios in order to reduce this rate. This scheme includes background modeling for subtraction based on gradient histograms and MeanShift clustering. Our experiments show that the detection improved compared to using only the output from the pedestrian detector reducing 87% of the false positives and therefore the overall precision of the detection was increased significantly.
The prospective impact of food pricing on improving dietary consumption: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background While food pricing is a promising strategy to improve diet, the prospective impact of food pricing on diet has not been systematically quantified. Objective To quantify the prospective effect of changes in food prices on dietary consumption. Design We systematically searched online databases for interventional or prospective observational studies of price change and diet; we also searched for studies evaluating adiposity as a secondary outcome. Studies were excluded if price data were collected before 1990. Data were extracted independently and in duplicate. Findings were pooled using DerSimonian-Laird's random effects model. Pre-specified sources of heterogeneity were analyzed using meta-regression; and potential for publication bias, by funnel plots, Begg's and Egger's tests. Results From 3,163 identified abstracts, 23 interventional studies and 7 prospective cohorts with 37 intervention arms met inclusion criteria. In pooled analyses, a 10% decrease in price (i.e., subsidy) increased consumption of healthful foods by 12% (95%CI = 10–15%; N = 22 studies/intervention arms) whereas a 10% increase price (i.e. tax) decreased consumption of unhealthful foods by 6% (95%CI = 4–8%; N = 15). By food group, subsidies increased intake of fruits and vegetables by 14% (95%CI = 11–17%; N = 9); and other healthful foods, by 16% (95%CI = 10–23%; N = 10); without significant effects on more healthful beverages (-3%; 95%CI = -16-11%; N = 3). Each 10% price increase reduced sugar-sweetened beverage intake by 7% (95%CI = 3–10%; N = 5); fast foods, by 3% (95%CI = 1–5%; N = 3); and other unhealthful foods, by 9% (95%CI = 6–12%; N = 3). Changes in price of fruits and vegetables reduced body mass index (-0.04 kg/m2 per 10% price decrease, 95%CI = -0.08–0 kg/m2; N = 4); price changes for sugar-sweetened beverages or fast foods did not significantly alter body mass index, based on 4 studies. Meta-regression identified direction of price change (tax vs. subsidy), number of intervention components, intervention duration, and study quality score as significant sources of heterogeneity (P-heterogeneity<0.05 each). Evidence for publication bias was not observed. Conclusions These prospective results, largely from interventional studies, support efficacy of subsidies to increase consumption of healthful foods; and taxation to reduce intake of unhealthful beverages and foods. Use of subsidies and combined multicomponent interventions appear most effective.
Security Analysis and Enhancement for Prefix-Preserving Encryption Schemes

Prefix-preserving encryption (PPE) is an important type of encryption scheme, having a wide range of applications, such as IP addresses anonymization, prefix-matching search, and rang search. There are two issues in PPE schemes, security proof and single key requirement. Existing security proofs for PPE only reduce the security of a real PPE scheme to that of the ideal PPE object by showing their computational indistinguishability [1, 14]. Such security proof is incomplete since the security of the ideal encryption object is unknown. Also, existing prefix-preserving encryption schemes only consider a single encryption key, which is infeasible for a practical system with multiple users (Implying that all users should have the single encryption key in order to encrypt or decrypt confidential data). In this paper we develop a novel mechanism to analyze the security of the ideal PPE object. We follow the modern cryptographic approach and create a new security notion IND-PCPA. Then, we show that such weakened security notion is necessary and the ideal PPE object is secure under IND-PCPA. We also design a new, security-enhanced PPE protocol to support its use in multi-user systems, where no single entity in the system knows the PPE key. The protocol secret shares and distributes the PPE key to a group of key agents and let them “distributedly encrypt” critical data. We develop a novel distributed PPE algorithm and the corresponding request and response protocols. Experimental results show that the protocol is feasible in practical systems.
Evaluation of the expression of P-glycoprotein in propoxur-resistant Caco-2 cells.

UNLABELLED There is a great concern about the effect of propoxur, as one of the more common N-methyl carbamate pesticides, on human health due to its extensive use in agricultural and non-agricultural applications. Caco-2 cells became resistant to propoxur, and the resistance was confirmed through MTT assay. Then the cell membrane integrity and P-glycoprotein expression were measured by LDH assay and western blot analysis, respectively and compared to the parent cells. Contrary to what was expected, the expression of P-glycoprotein in propoxur resistant cells was lower than parent cells. CONCLUSION This study indicates that the resistance to propoxur may not be related to P-glycoprotein expression directly, since P-glycoprotein expression has decreased in these cells.
Quantifying cerebrovascular reactivity in anterior and posterior cerebral circulations during voluntary breath holding

What is the central question of this study? We developed and validated a ‘stimulus index’ (SI; ratio of end‐tidal partial pressures of CO2 and O2) method to quantify cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) in anterior and posterior cerebral circulations during breath holding. We aimed to determine whether the magnitude of CVR is correlated with breath‐hold duration. What is the main finding and its importance? Using the SI method and transcranial Doppler ultrasound, we found that the magnitude of CVR of the anterior and posterior cerebral circulations is not positively correlated with physiological or psychological break‐point during end‐inspiratory breath holding. Our study expands the ability to quantify CVR during breath holding and elucidates factors that affect break‐point.