Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Uncovering Noun-Noun Compound Relations by Gamification

Can relations described by English nounnoun compounds be adequately captured by prepositions? We attempt to answer this question in a data-driven way, using gamification to annotate a set of about a thousand noun-noun compound examples. Annotators could make a choice out of five prepositions generated with the help of paraphrases found in the Google ngram corpus. We show that there is substantial agreement among the players of our linguistic annotation game, and that their answers differ in about 50% of raw frequency counts of the Google n-gram corpus. Prepositions can be used to describe the majority of the implicit relations present in noun-noun compounds, but not all relations are captured by natural prepositions and some compounds are not easy to paraphrase with the use of a preposition.
The user as a learning component in a data system during the change-over and use periods

This experimental study consisted of two successive stages: 1) the change-over from a manual to a computerized data system including the first months use, and 2) a programming course for users after one year's use of the new data system. A department in a welfare office acquired ready-made application software to support its functions. Findings from the first stage cover among other things: a) the pros and cons for starting a new system at a certain instant of time compared with gradual transition, b) the regulating effects of a small number of terminals and COM devices on users' work, c) improvements in manual working methods made by users during the first months use. In order to encourage user growth at work on data-processing a programming course was organized for them. Most clerks passed the program comprehension test and some of them constructed small simple programs. The course had a positive influence on their work by giving a more structured image of the computerized part of the system.
Deep Habits in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve

We derive and estimate a New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) in a model where consumers are assumed to have deep habits. Habits are deep in the sense that they apply to individual consumption goods instead of aggregate consumption. This alters the NKPC in a fundamental manner as it introduces expected and contemporaneous consumption growth as well as the expected marginal value of future demand as additional driving forces for inflation dynamics. We construct the driving process in the deep habits NKPC by using the model's optimality conditions to impute time series for unobservable variables. The resulting series is considerably more volatile than unit labor cost. General Methods of Moments (GMM) estimation of the NKPC shows an improved fit and a much lower degree of indexation than in the standard NKPC. Our analysis also reveals that the crucial parameters for the performance of the deep habit NKPC are the habit parameter and the substitution elasticity between differentiated products. The results are broadly robust to alternative specifications.
Towards Validating Complexity-Based Metrics for Software Product Line Architectures

Software product line (PL) is an approach that focuses on software reuse and has been successfully applied for specific domains. The PL architecture (PLA) is one of the most important assets, and it represents commonalities and variabilities of a PL. The analysis of the PLA, supported by metrics, can be used as an important indicator of the PL quality and return on investment (ROI). This paper presents the replication of a controlled experiment for validating complexity metrics for PLAs. In particular, in this replication we are focused on evaluating how subjects less-qualified than the subjects from the original experiment evaluate complexity of a PLA by means of generated specific products. It was applied a PLA variability resolution model of a given PL to a sample of subjects from at least basic knowledge on UML modeling, PL and variability management. Apart of the selection of different subjects, the same original experiment conditions were kept. The proposed PLA complexity metrics were experimentally validated based on their application to a set of 35 derived products from the Arcade Game Maker (AGM) PL. Normality tests were applied to the metrics observed values, thus, pointing out their non-normality. Therefore, the non-parametric Spearman's correlation ranking technique was used to demonstrate the correlation between the CompPLA metric and the complexity rate given by the subjects to each derived product. Such a correlation was strong and positive. The results obtained in this replication shown that even less-qualified subjects, compared to the subjects from the original experiment, are able to rate the complexity of a PLA by means of its generated products, thus corroborating the results of the original experiment and providing more evidence that the composed metric for complexity (CompPLA) can be used as a relevant indicator for measuring the complexity of PLA based on their derived products.
Orientation dependence of coupling between Lamb and shear horizontal waves in (1-x)Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-xPbTiO3 single crystal plates

The orientation dependence of coupling between Lamb and shear horizontal (SH) waves in [001]<inf>c</inf> and [011]<inf>c</inf> poled (1-x)Pb(Mg<inf>1/3</inf>Nb<inf>2/3</inf>)O<inf>3</inf>-xPbTiO<inf>3</inf> (PMN-xPT) single crystal plates has been studied theoretically. For a [001]<inf>c</inf> polarized PMN-PT crystals plate there is no coupling between Lamb and SH waves when θ = nπ/4 (n = 0,1, 2, …),and the strongest coupling occurs when θ = (2n +1)π/8 . For a [011]<inf>c</inf> polarized PMN-PT crystal plate, the decoupling and strongest coupling happen when θ = nπ/2 and θ = (2n +1)π/4 , respectively. Guided wave propagation for coupled and decoupled cases and for symmetric and antisymmetric modes are calculated explicitly. The results are useful for the design of guided wave devices using PMN-xPT single crystals.
TESTS OF GAUSSIAN TEMPORAL FACTOR LOADINGS IN FINANCIAL APT

The main difficulty of financial APT analysis concerns identifying unambiguously the hidden statistical factors. Lack of effective techniques to retrieve the true factors often leads to inappropriate interpretation of the underlying factor structure. In literature, PCA and MLFA, assuming multivariate Gaussian distributions, and ICA, assuming non-Gaussian distributions, are used to extract factors and determine the corresponding factor loadings. Recently, a new technique called TFA is proposed in [1, 2] which seeks to solve the problem of rotation indeterminacy encountered in conventional factor analysis. In this paper we will focus on statistical tests and inference on the APT temporal factor loadings recovered by TFA.
Stochastic analysis of chain based file distribution architectures with heterogeneous peers

Performance analysis of P2P systems is necessary to understand the real impact on the network of such applications. In this paper we study the performance that can be achieved by a simple file distribution architecture in a heterogeneous environment, i.e., when the access links of peers have randomly distributed capacities. The distribution architecture is a chain, where each peer downloads the content from exactly one node and uploads the content to exactly one node. Our analysis starts from a complete knowledge about peers, so that we can derive analytically the deterministic behavior and use the results as reference. We then remove part of the knowledge a peer has about its neighbors and derive the performance that can be obtained in such an environment. Results show that, if peers have sufficient information about neighbors, they can be organized in such a way that slow peers obtain near optimal performance without affecting faster peers. On the other hand, if peers do not know neighbor characteristics, slow peers have a significant impact on global performance, and other, more sophisticated, distribution architectures are required to maintain proper scalability.
A high-speed logic circuit family with interdigitated array structure for deep sub-micron IC design

This paper presents a new high-speed logic circuit family based on an interdigitated array structure for deep sub-micron IC design. The circuit family consists of a comparator, a priority encoder, and an incrementor for 128-bit data processing. The proposed circuit includes three schemes: 1) a divided column scheme, 2) a programmable sense-amplifier activation scheme, and 3) an interdigitated column scheme. These schemes achieved a 22.2% delay reduction and a 37.5% chip area reduction over the conventional high-speed array logic circuit in a 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS technology with a supply voltage of 1.2 V. A module generator of the logic circuit family was also developed to enhance the process portability for IP-based design.
Uniqueness of the Axionic Kerr Black Hole

Under the axisymmetry and under the invarance of simultaneous inversion of time and azimuthal angle, we show that the axionic Kerr black hole is the ${\it unique}$ stationary solution of the minimal coupling theory of gravity and the Kalb-Ramond field, which has a regular event horizon, is asymptotically flat and has a finite axion field strength at event horizon.
Cross species amplification of Adzuki Bean derived microsatellite markers in Asian Vigna species

The Vigna is one of the important genus of grain legumes which forms the source of dietary protein and seven species of this genus, are domesticated as food crops in Asia. In recent years, molecular marker technology has greatly accelerated breeding programs for the improvement of various crops. Among the different DNA markers, microsatellite or simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are the markers of choice for various genetic studies due to their co-dominant nature, loci specificity and high reproducibility. To date, only few reports are available on isolation and development of microsatellite markers in some of the Vigna species. Therefore, the available SSR markers from other Vigna species should be validated for their transferability and utility in those species in which they are unavailable. In the present study, a set of 40 microsatellite primers pairs derived from adzuki bean (Vigna angularis) were used to assess the transferability and tested for their ability to amplify microsatellite loci in different species of Asian Vigna. The materials for this study included eleven different genotypes belonging to seven species of Asian Vigna such as V. mungo var silvestris, V. mungo, V. umbellata, V. trilobata, V. aconitifolia, V. radiata var sublobata and V. radiata. All the 40 SSR primer pairs showed cross species amplification and produced a total of 158 alleles in the genotypes studied. The percentage of amplification varied for each species which ranged from 37.5% (V. trilobata-2) to 100% (V mungo var silvestris and V. mungo), while others showed more than 50% amplification. Apart from amplification, sufficient levels of polymorphism were also observed between cultivated blackgram and greengram and their progenitors V. mungo var silvestris and V. radiata var sublobata respectively. These findings suggest that microsatellite markers from adzuki bean could be used in genomic studies of other Vigna species and thus aid in their improvement.
Escherichia coli Biofilms Have an Organized and Complex Extracellular Matrix Structure

ABSTRACT Bacterial biofilms are ubiquitous in nature, and their resilience is derived in part from a complex extracellular matrix that can be tailored to meet environmental demands. Although common developmental stages leading to biofilm formation have been described, how the extracellular components are organized to allow three-dimensional biofilm development is not well understood. Here we show that uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) strains produce a biofilm with a highly ordered and complex extracellular matrix (ECM). We used electron microscopy (EM) techniques to image floating biofilms (pellicles) formed by UPEC. EM revealed intricately constructed substructures within the ECM that encase individual, spatially segregated bacteria with a distinctive morphology. Mutational and biochemical analyses of these biofilms confirmed curli as a major matrix component and revealed important roles for cellulose, flagella, and type 1 pili in pellicle integrity and ECM infrastructure. Collectively, the findings of this study elucidated that UPEC pellicles have a highly organized ultrastructure that varies spatially across the multicellular community. IMPORTANCE Bacteria can form biofilms in diverse niches, including abiotic surfaces, living cells, and at the air-liquid interface of liquid media. Encasing these cellular communities is a self-produced extracellular matrix (ECM) that can be composed of proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids. The ECM protects biofilm bacteria from environmental insults and also makes the dissolution of biofilms very challenging. As a result, formation of biofilms within humans (during infection) or on industrial material (such as water pipes) has detrimental and costly effects. In order to combat bacterial biofilms, a better understanding of components required for biofilm formation and the ECM is required. This study defined the ECM composition and architecture of floating pellicle biofilms formed by Escherichia coli. Bacteria can form biofilms in diverse niches, including abiotic surfaces, living cells, and at the air-liquid interface of liquid media. Encasing these cellular communities is a self-produced extracellular matrix (ECM) that can be composed of proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids. The ECM protects biofilm bacteria from environmental insults and also makes the dissolution of biofilms very challenging. As a result, formation of biofilms within humans (during infection) or on industrial material (such as water pipes) has detrimental and costly effects. In order to combat bacterial biofilms, a better understanding of components required for biofilm formation and the ECM is required. This study defined the ECM composition and architecture of floating pellicle biofilms formed by Escherichia coli.
Resuscitating Real Business Cycles

The Real Business Cycle (RBC) research program has grown spectacularly over the last decade, as its concepts and methods have diffused into mainstream macroeconomics. Yet, there is increasing skepticism that technology shocks are a major source of business fluctuations. This chapter exposits the basic RBC model and shows that it requires large technology shocks to produce realistic business cycles. While Solow residuals are sufficiently volatile, these imply frequent technological regress. Productivity studies permitting unobserved factor variation find much smaller technology shocks, suggesting the imminent demise of real business cycles. However, we show that greater factor variation also dramatically amplifies shocks: a RBC model with varying capital utilization yields realistic business cycles from small, nonnegative changes in technology.
The Type IIb SN 2008ax: spectral and light curve evolution

We present spectroscopy and photometry of the He-rich supernova (SN) 2008ax. The early-time spectra show prominent P-Cygni H lines, which decrease with time and disappear completely about 2 months after the explosion. In the same period He I lines become the most prominent spectral features. SN 2008ax displays the ordinary spectral evolution of a Type IIb supernova. A stringent pre-discovery limit constrains the time of the shock breakout of SN 2008ax to within only a few hours. Its light curve, which peaks in the B band about 20 d after the explosion, strongly resembles that of other He-rich core-collapse supernovae. The observed evolution of SN 2008ax is consistent with the explosion of a young Wolf-Rayet (of WNL type) star, which had retained a thin, low-mass shell of its original H envelope. The overall characteristics of SN 2008ax are reminiscent of those of SN 1993J, except for a likely smaller H mass. This may account for the findings that the progenitor of SN 2008ax was a WNL star and not a K supergiant as in the case of SN 1993J, that a prominent early-time peak is missing in the light curve of SN 2008ax, and that H alpha is observed at higher velocities in SN 2008ax than in SN 1993J.
The dialog module of the speech recognition and dialog system EVAR

This article describes the dialog module of EVAR. The dialog is seen as a sequence of dialog acts uttered by the system and the user. From a corpus of real human-human dialogs a model was extracted. The model covers all sequences of dialog acts observed in the corpus. Each dialog act is modelled as a set of pragmatic, semantic and syntactic concepts. The properties of the concepts and the current dialog state are used to identify the actual dialog act. Each user utterance is interpreted by the system and the system reacts with the appropriate dialog act. After the user has deened his request completly, the system starts a database query and nally generates a synthesized natural language answer. The answer generation is realised with sentence masks, where the information from the database enquiry is lled in at the appropriate slots. A dialog memory which allows the interpretation of elliptical sentences and proforms is updated after each utterance.
The mutant Moonwalker TRPC3 channel links calcium signaling to lipid metabolism in the developing cerebellum

The Moonwalker (Mwk) mouse is a model of dominantly inherited cerebellar ataxia caused by a gain-of-function mutation in the transient receptor potential (TRP) channel TRPC3. Here, we report impairments in dendritic growth and synapse formation early on during Purkinje cell development in the Mwk cerebellum that are accompanied by alterations in calcium signaling. To elucidate the molecular effector pathways that regulate Purkinje cell dendritic arborization downstream of mutant TRPC3, we employed transcriptomic analysis of developing Purkinje cells isolated by laser-capture microdissection. We identified significant gene and protein expression changes in molecules involved in lipid metabolism. Consistently, lipid homeostasis in the Mwk cerebellum was found to be disturbed, and treatment of organotypic cerebellar slices with ceramide significantly improved dendritic outgrowth of Mwk Purkinje cells. These findings provide the first mechanistic insights into the TRPC3-dependent mechanisms, by which activated calcium signaling is coupled to lipid metabolism and the regulation of Purkinje cell development in the Mwk cerebellum.
Teplice program--the impact of air pollution on human health.

The aim of the Teplice Program is to investigate and assess the impact of air pollution on the health of the population in the district of Teplice, Czech Republic. Characterization of the air pollutants demonstrated unusually high concentrations during winter inversions of fine particles dominated by acidic sulfates, genotoxic organic compounds, and toxic trace elements. The major source of airborne fine particles is the burning of coal for heating and power. Human exposure and biomarker studies demonstrated large seasonal variations in air pollution within the Teplice District and higher seasonal average pollution levels than the comparative district, Prachatice. Personal exposures to fine particles and organic carcinogens [e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)] were correlated with excretion of PAH metabolites in urine, several trace metals in blood, and DNA adducts in white blood cells. Respiratory and neurobehavioral studies of school children were conducted using questionnaires and clinical measures. A significantly higher prevalence of adverse respiratory symptoms and decreased lung function were found in the Teplice district than in Prachatice. The neurobehavioral studies indicated significantly higher teacher referrals for clinical assessment in Teplice, but the majority of objective performance measures did not differ. Reproductive studies were conducted in both males and females. A study of the effects of exposure on pregnancy and birth found an excess prevalence of low birth weight and premature births in Teplice; these adverse effects were more common in infants conceived in the winter and whose mothers were smokers. Based on questionnaires and medical examination, the reproductive development of young men was not different between districts and seasons, however, measures of semen quality suggest that exposure to high levels of air pollution are associated with transient decrements in semen quality.
A Model of Heteroassociative Memory: Deciphering Surprising Features and Locations

The identiﬁcation of surprising or interesting locations in an environment is an important problem in the ﬁelds of robotics (localisation, mapping and exploration), architecture (wayﬁnding, design), navigation (landmark identiﬁcation) and computational creativity. Despite this familiarity, existing studies are known to rely either on human studies (in architecture and navigation) or complex feature intensive methods (in robotics) to evaluate surprise. In this paper, we propose a novel het-eroassociative memory architecture that remembers input patterns along with features associated with them. The model mimics human memory by comparing and associating new patterns with existing patterns and features, and provides an account of surprise experienced. The application of the proposed memory architecture is demonstrated by identifying monotonous and surprising locations present in a Google Sketchup model of an environment. An inter-disciplinary approach combining the proposed memory model and isovists (from architecture) is used to perceive and remember the structure of different locations of the model environment. The experimental results reported describe the behaviour of the proposed surprise identiﬁcation technique, and illustrate the universal applicability of the method. Finally, we also describe how the memory model can be modi-ﬁed to mimic forgetfulness.
Enhancing on farm and regional irrigation management using MABIA-Region tool

The study represents a diagnostical analysis of the water use at a farm level, which is a necessary step in the development and implementation of strategies to improve the management of irrigation water at an irrigation district scale. The work has focused on a case study, namely the irrigated district of Cherfech located in the governorate of Ariana, 25 km away from Tunis. The analysis concerns 63 farms covering an area of 850 ha during the 2010-2011 crop season. The achievement of this analysis was made possible using the MABIA-REGION software. Thus, daily Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration (ET0), effective precipitation (PE), dual crop coefficients (Kc=Ke+Kcb), potential and actual crop evapotranspiration (ETc and ETa) and net and gross irrigation requirements (NIR and GIR) were estimated for the different study levels (plot, farm and district) using spatially distributed parameters on the climate, crop, soil characteristics, irrigation system, growing season and basic irrigation management practice. These different outputs were also spatially represented using the GIS-Mod tool implemented in MABIA-REGION. The results obtained show that the irrigation's practice was seasonally variable. Thus, during the winter season, the irrigations practiced was far exceeded the irrigation water requirement estimated by MABIA-Region. While during the summer season, the irrigations carried have merely covered 44% of irrigation water requirements. Also, the study reveals a high variability in the practice of irrigation between different cultures and different farms.