Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toward Language-independent Morphological Segmentation and Part-of-speech Induction toward Language-independent Morphological Segmentation and Part-of-speech Induction

v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are so many people who helped me complete this thesis, it becomes nearly impossible for me to enlist everyone's name and contributions in a single paragraph. Special thanks to my family, specially my mom and dad and my elder brother Rajib, for being part of every bit of my life: their endless motivations, constant mental support and unconditional love were instrumental in whatever I have achieved so far. I still remember, every time I gave them a phone call out of frustrations and bruised state-of-the-mind, their only reply to me was: " There is always a next time, son, your good days are just ahead ". They truly are the part and parcel of my good and bad days. There is no doubt my advisor, Dr. Vincent Ng, comes right next. I would always be grateful for his insightful advices, encouragements and guidance needed to cross the final hurdles. He gave me the independence to pursue my own research, and at the same time provided ideas and support, whenever needed. I still remember the night, when I was writing the paper on the submission date of the NAACL and Dr Ng. was with me all night helping with the writing and inserting all the missing " the "-s in between, and still found some time after the submission (at 5 am in the morning) to discuss what I could have done better and how. I was privileged to work with someone of such knowledge and expertise. I would also like to thank the Dallas Bangladeshi community, who gave me the necessary support such as transportation to the Walmart and Dollar (50 cents for students, though) movie theatre on Tuesday. Special thanks to all my roommates including Mehedy vi Masud, Vinod Prakash, and specially Numair " vhai " , who has been my best friend in Dallas. My life in Dallas would have been very different without this special person. Dallas helped me several times in creating the annotated Bengali datasets. Finally, all my friends back home and here in USA deserve special thanks. They are the ones who are always there to spend the time with, and share my joys and sorrows. In the end, I would like to thank almighty God for giving me the strength to achieve whatever I have achieved so far.
Structure of Polymer Brushes in Cylindrical Tubes: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation

AbstractMolecular Dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained bead-spring model ofﬂexible macromolecules tethered with one end to the surface of a cylindricalpore are presented. Chain length N and grafting density σ are varied over awide range and the crossover from “mushroom” to “brush” behavior is studiedfor three pore diameters. The monomer density proﬁle and the distribution ofthe free chain ends are computed and compared to the corresponding modelof polymer brushes at ﬂat substrates. It is found that there exists a regime ofN and σ for large enough pore diameter where the brush height in the poreexceeds the brush height on the ﬂat substrate, while for large enough N andσ (and small enough pore diameters) the opposite behavior occurs, i.e. thebrush is compressed by conﬁnement. These ﬁndings are used to discuss thecorresponding theories on polymer brushes at concave substrates. 1 Introduction By special endgroups ﬂexible macromolecules can be tethered to a substrate via itschain end. In a dilute solution under good solvent conditions using a non-adsorbingsubstrate surface that repels the monomers one thus obtains a “mushroom” conﬁgu-ration of the polymer [1, 2]. If one grafts many such polymer chains on the substrate,such that the polymer coils in their mushroom conﬁguration would strongly overlapeach other, excluded volume interactions reduce this overlap by leading to stronglystretched conﬁgurations of the coils, the so-called “polymer brushes” [2, 3]. In thisway, the substrate is coated with a polymeric layer of height h proportional to thechain length N of these endgrafted polymers [2, 3, 4, 5]. Of course, the distinctionbetween ”mushrooms” and ”brushes” is not a completely sharp one, but rather thesestates of a surface coated by endgrafted polymers are separated by broad crossoverregime where the coils overlap weakly and get more and more stretched as withincreasing grafting density the overlap increases.Since such polymer brushes ﬁnd important applications such as colloid stabiliza-
A Serious Game for Inculcating Islamic Values in Children

Instilling Islamic values in our children has become a key concern as they become more acquisitive and fixated on carving a path towards academic and financial success. Serious Games can be an ideal medium for inculcating Islamic values such as sociability, responsibility, compassion, forgiveness etc. As such, Shimpai Muyou! serious game has been developed to prepare children for real life challenges through constructive discussion and feedback to change relationships in positive ways. The architecture consists of two mutually interacting layers: Instructional Mode and Narrative Mode. To measure success in Shimpai Muyou! environment three types of data gathering techniques have been used including Participant Observation, Classroom Discussion Forums and Log File Analysis supplemented by Interviews. Findings from the early prototype evaluation are promising, but indicate the critical need for a broader investigation to establish Shimpai Muyou! as a useful addition to the range of approaches teachers use to build Islamic morals in children.
Dissecting Oxygenic Photosynthesis : The Evolution of the “ Z ”-Scheme for Thylakoid Reactions

From a primitive beginning we have come to our present understanding of what is going on in the thylakoid membranes. We start our overview with the determination of the size of the photosynthetic unit. This unit gave the concept of light absorbing antenna and the reaction centers, where the primary photochemistry takes place. We continue with the determination of the maximum quantum yield and the realization that two light reactions and two photosystems are involved in oxygenic photosynthesis. This is then followed by the discovery of the “period four oxygen clock” and the structure of the oxygen-evolving center. After a brief mention of the various protein components in the thylakoid membrane and a comparison of the two photosystem complexes, we provide here a summary and the evolution of the so-called “Z” scheme for the electron flow from water to the pyridine nucleotide NADP, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate. We conclude with a picture of the thylakoid membrane domains in the chloroplast, and the intricate machinery where all the reactions from water to NADP reduction takes place. Our chapter is not a review, but a viewpoint that we favour.
Robust audio hashing for audio identification

We propose and evaluate three new perceptual audio hash functions. These hash functions are based on a concise description of the time-frequency characteristics. This information can be extracted from the time series of frame-by-frame fundamental period or from the singular value decomposition of the mel frequency cepstral parameters. Experiments show that the proposed perceptual hash functions are both robust and unique.
A Novel Framework for Test Domain Reduction using Extended Finite State Machine

Test case generation is an expensive, tedious, and error- prone process in software testing. In this paper, test case generation is accomplished using an Extended Finite State Machine (EFSM). The proper domain representative along the specified path is selected based on fundamental calculus approximation. The pre/post-conditions of class behavior is derived from a continuous or piece-wise continuous function whose values are chosen from partitioned subdomains. Subsequent test data for the designated class can be generated from the selected test frames. In so doing, the domain is partitioned wherein reduced test cases are generated, yet insuring complete test coverage of the designated test plan. The proposed modeling technique will be conducive toward a new realm of test domain analysis. Its validity can also be procedurally proved by straightforward mathematical principles.
The Approach: Integrating Design and Formal Verification of Java Card Programs

This paper reports on the ongoing KeY project aimed at bridging the gap between (a) object-oriented software engineering methods and tools and (b) deductive verification for the development of JAVA CARD programs. In particular, we describe a Dynamic Logic for JAVA CARD and outline a sequent calculus for this logic that axiomatises JAVA CARD and is used in the verification component of the KeY system.
A high-performance microarchitecture with hardware-programmable functional units

This paper explores a novel way to incorporate hardware-programmable resources into a processor microarchitecture to improve the performance of general-purpose applications. Through a coupling of compile-time analysis routines and hardware synthesis tools, we automatically configure a given set of the hardware-programmable functional units (PFUs) and thus augment the base instruction set architecture so that it better meets the instruction set needs of each application. We refer to this new class of general-purpose computers as programmable instruction set computers (PRISC). Although similar in concept, the PRISC approach differs from dynamically programmable microcode because in PRISC we define entirely-new primitive datapath operations. We concentrate on the microarchitectural design of the simplest form of PRISC-a RISC microprocessor with a single PFU that only evaluates combinational functions. We briefly discuss the operating system and the programming language compilation techniques that are needed to successfully build PRISC and, we present performance results from a proof-of-concept study. With the inclusion of a single 32-bit-wide PFU whose hardware cost is less than that of a 1 kilobyte SRAM, our study shows a 22% improvement in processor performance on the SPECint92 benchmarks.
Renoprotective and antioxidant effects of Saururus chinensis Baill in rats fed a high-fructose diet

This study investigated the preventive effect of Saururus chinensis Baill against renal damage induced by a high-fructose diet in rats. The rats (n = 30) were fed either a cornstarch-based (65%), high-fructose (65%), or high-fructose (64.5%) diet with 0.5% S. chinensis Baill extract for 10 weeks. Twenty-four hour urine collections were obtained and the animals were sacrificed after an overnight fast. Serum urea and creatinine and urine albumin were measured using colorimetric methods, and creatinine clearance was determined. In addition, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), reduced glutathione (GSH), and the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) in the kidney were determined. Kidney samples were also examined histologically. The fructose-fed rats showed renal dysfunction, indicated by decreased creatinine clearance, increased albumin in the urine, and increased urea and creatinine in the serum. These renal function parameters were comparable to control levels in rats that consumed S. chinensis Baill. Fructose consumption increased renal TBARS and reduced GSH and SOD activity, whereas these levels were near-normal in the rats consuming S. chinensis Baill. The kidneys of fructose-fed rats showed glomerular basement membrane thickening, mesangial matrix expansion, and tubule dilation. These pathological changes were not seen in the rats that consumed S. chinensis Baill. Therefore, S. chinensis Baill effectively alleviated fructose-induced renal damage in these rats, at least partially due to antioxidant activity.
Variational Approach for Restoring Blurred Images with Cauchy Noise

The restoration of images degraded by blurring and noise is one of the most important tasks in image processing. In this paper, based on the total variation (TV) we propose a new variational method for recovering images degraded by Cauchy noise and blurring. In order to obtain a strictly convex model, we add a quadratic penalty term, which guarantees the uniqueness of the solution. Due to the convexity of our model, the primal dual algorithm is employed to solve the minimization problem. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method for simultaneously deblurring and denoising images corrupted by Cauchy noise. Comparison with other existing and well-known methods is provided as well.
REAL-TIME DECENTRALIZED NEURAL BACKSTEPPING CONTROL: APPLICATION TO A TWO DOF ROBOT MANIPULATOR

This paper presents a discrete-time decentralized control scheme for tra- jectory tracking of a two degrees of freedom (DOF) robot manipulator. A high order neural network (HONN) is used to approximate a decentralized control law designed by the backstepping technique as applied to a block strict feedback form (BSFF). The neural network learning is performed on-line by Kalman ltering. The controllers are designed for each joint using only local angular position and velocity measurements. These simple local joint controllers allow trajectory tracking with reduced computations. The proposed scheme is implemented in real-time to control a two DOF robot manipulator. Keywords: Decentralized control, High-order neural networks, Extended Kalman lter, Backstepping
A Target-Oriented Phonotactic Front-End for Spoken Language Recognition

This paper presents a strategy to optimize the phonotactic front-end for spoken language recognition. This is achieved by selecting a subset of phones from an existing phone recognizer's phone inventory such that only the phones that best discriminate each of the target languages are selected. Each such phone subset will be used to construct a target-oriented phone tokenizer (TOPT). In this study, we examine different approaches to construct such phone tokenizers for the front-end of a parallel phone recognizers followed by vector space modeling (PPR-VSM) system. We show that the target-oriented phone tokenizers derived from language-specific phone recognizers are more effective than the original parallel phone recognizers. Our experimental results also show that the target-oriented phone tokenizers derived from universal phone recognizers achieve better performance than those derived from language-specific phone recognizers. Using the proposed target-oriented phone tokenizers as the phonotactic front-end, the language recognition system performance is significantly improved without the need for additional training samples. We achieve an equal error rate (EER) of 1.27%, 1.42% and 2.73% on the NIST 1996, 2003 and 2007 LRE databases respectively for 30-s closed-set tests. This system is one of the subsystems in IIR's submission to NIST 2007 LRE.
Pea2 protein of yeast is localized to sites of polarized growth and is required for efficient mating and bipolar budding

Saccharomyces cerevisiae exhibits polarized growth during two phases of its life cycle, budding and mating. The site for polarization during vegetative growth is determined genetically: a and alpha haploid cells exhibit an axial budding pattern, and a/alpha diploid cells exhibit a bipolar pattern. During mating, each cell polarizes towards its partner to ensure efficient mating. SPA2 is required for the bipolar budding pattern (Snyder. M 1989. J. Cell Biol. 108:1419-1429; Zahner, J.A., H.A. Harkins, and J.R. Pringle. 1996. Mol. Cell. Biol. 16:1857-1870) and polarization during mating (Snyder, M., S. Gehrung, and B.D. Page. 1991. J. Cell Biol. 114: 515-532). We previously identified mutants defective in PEA2 and SPA2 which alter cell polarization in the presence of mating pheromone in a similar manner (Chenevert, J., N. Valtz, and I. Herskowitz. 1994. Genetics, 136:1287-1297). Here we report the further characterization of these mutants. We have found that PEA2 is also required for the bipolar budding pattern and that it encodes a novel protein with a predicted coiled-coil domain. Pea2p is expressed in all cell types and is localized to sites of polarized growth in budding and mating cells in a pattern similar to Spa2p, Pea2p and Spa2p exhibit interdependent localization: Spa2p is produced in pea2 mutants but fails to localize properly; Pea2p is not stably produced in spa2 mutants. These results suggest that Pea2p and Spa2p function together as a complex to generate the bipolar budding pattern and to guarantee proper polarization during mating.
Demystifying sparse rectified auto-encoders

Auto-Encoders can learn features similar to Sparse Coding, but the training can be done efficiently via the back-propagation algorithm as well as the features can be computed quickly for a new input. However, in practice, it is not easy to get Sparse Auto-Encoders working; there are two things that need investigating: sparsity constraint and weight constraint. In this paper, we try to understand the problem of training Sparse Auto-Encoders with L1-norm sparsity penalty, and propose a modified version of Stochastic Gradient Descent algorithm, called Sleep-Wake Stochastic Gradient Descent (SW-SGD), to solve this problem. Here, we focus on Sparse Auto-Encoders with rectified linear units in the hidden layer, called Sparse Rectified Auto-Encoders (SRAEs), because such units compute fast and can produce true sparsity (exact zeros). In addition, we propose a new reasonable way to constrain SRAEs' weights. Experiments on MNIST dataset show that the proposed weight constraint and SW-SGD help SRAEs successfully learn meaningful features that give excellent performance on classification task compared to other Auto-Encoder variants.
TWO COMPUTATIONAL PROCESS MODELS OF ACTIVITY-TRAVEL BEHAVIOR1

The ultimate goal of travel behavior analysis is to gain a full understanding of why people travel and to develop quantitative capabilities that facilitate the prediction of travel behavior. Toward this end, the individual’s travel behavior has been examined in connection with her activity engagement, with the recognition that travel demand is a derived demand. Studies from this viewpoint are referred to as “activity-based analyses of travel behavior” (for reviews, see Damm 1983; Jones et al., 1983; Kitamura, 1988; Jones et al., 1990; Axhausen & Gärling, 1992; Gärling et al., 1994; Ettema, 1996; and Kurani and Kitamura, 1996). Along with the recent developments of micro-simulation model systems of travel behavior, the activity-based analysis of travel behavior is now entering the stage of large-scale application to travel demand forecasting and policy analysis. This is of particular significance because of the following shifts in the focus of urban transportation planning.
Local learning projections

This paper presents a Local Learning Projection (LLP) approach for linear dimensionality reduction. We first point out that the well known Principal Component Analysis (PCA) essentially seeks the projection that has the minimal global estimation error. Then we propose a dimensionality reduction algorithm that leads to the projection with the minimal local estimation error, and elucidate its advantages for classification tasks. We also indicate that LLP keeps the local information in the sense that the projection value of each point can be well estimated based on its neighbors and their projection values. Experimental results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Radiometric resolution enhancement by lossy compression as compared to truncation followed by lossless compression

Recent advances in imaging technology make it possible to obtain imagery data of the Earth at high spatial, spectral and radiometric resolutions from Earth orbiting satellites. The rate at which the data is collected from these satellites can far exceed the channel capacity of the data downlink. Reducing the data rate to within the channel capacity can often require painful trade-offs in which certain scientific returns are sacrificed for the sake of others. In this paper we model the radiometric version of this form of lossy compression by dropping a specified number of least significant bits from each data pixel and compressing the remaining bits using an appropriate lossless compression technique. We call this approach 'truncation followed by lossless compression' or TLLC. We compare the TLLC approach with applying a lossy compression technique to the data for reducing the data rate to the channel capacity, and demonstrate that each of three different lossy compression techniques (JPEG/DCT, VQ and Model-Based VQ) give a better effective radiometric resolution than TLLC for a given channel rate.
Deep Sequencing of the Murine Igh Repertoire Reveals Complex Regulation of Nonrandom V Gene Rearrangement Frequencies

A diverse Ab repertoire is formed through the rearrangement of V, D, and J segments at the IgH (Igh) loci. The C57BL/6 murine Igh locus has >100 functional VH gene segments that can recombine to a rearranged DJH. Although the nonrandom usage of VH genes is well documented, it is not clear what elements determine recombination frequency. To answer this question, we conducted deep sequencing of 5′-RACE products of the Igh repertoire in pro-B cells, amplified in an unbiased manner. Chromatin immunoprecipitation–sequencing results for several histone modifications and RNA polymerase II binding, RNA-sequencing for sense and antisense noncoding germline transcripts, and proximity to CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) and Rad21 sites were compared with the usage of individual V genes. Computational analyses assessed the relative importance of these various accessibility elements. These elements divide the Igh locus into four epigenetically and transcriptionally distinct domains, and our computational analyses reveal different regulatory mechanisms for each region. Proximal V genes are relatively devoid of active histone marks and noncoding RNA in general, but having a CTCF site near their recombination signal sequence is critical, suggesting that being positioned near the base of the chromatin loops is important for rearrangement. In contrast, distal V genes have higher levels of histone marks and noncoding RNA, which may compensate for their poorer recombination signal sequences and for being distant from CTCF sites. Thus, the Igh locus has evolved a complex system for the regulation of V(D)J rearrangement that is different for each of the four domains that comprise this locus.
A Comparison of Recognition for Off-line Myanmar Handwriting and Printed Characters

We propose a system to recognize off-line Myanmar handwriting and printed characters, the language used by the majority of Myanmar. This system is based on the use of discrete hidden Markov models. Myanmar handwriting and printed characters or words were chosen for the study. After preprocessing step, the characters are auto-segmented using recursive algorithm as sequences of connected neighbors along lines and curves. The unknown Myanmar characters and words are first pre-classified into one of known character groups, based on the structural properties of the text line. The hidden Markov models classifier is then proposed for the final recognition. All the characters were written by the different writers on a preformatted paper. The method recognizes the Myanmar handwriting in print style. The system was trained and tested Myanmar characters images. All the characters were written by 5 different writers on a preformatted paper. A comparison results have shown 92.1% recognition rate for the handwriting and 97% recognition rate for the printed characters