Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recursive neural network based semantic navigation of an autonomous mobile robot through understanding human verbal instructions

In this research, we aim to implement the ability to navigate through unknown environments according to some given instructions on mobile robots. We proposed a Recursive Neural Network model, which takes the user instructions and data acquired by laser range finder as input, and outputs control velocities to make the mobile robot navigate in an unknown indoor environment. Instructions are using commonly verbal expressions, and instead of establishing models to represent the semantic meanings, we use the concept of word vectors to feed the information directly into the neural network models. Using human-controlled navigating records as training data, robots learn how to execute navigations according to various of different instructions. Experiments were conducted under both simulation and real world environments, and results show that the robot can successfully navigate to the goal positions without having any prior knowledge about the environments.
The Curative Outcome of Radioimmunotherapy in a Mouse Breast Cancer Model Relies on mTOR Signaling

Radiotherapy is a successful treatment modality for localized cancer. Our group has been exploring radiotherapy in combination with immunotherapy (radioimmunotherapy) to enhance systemic antitumor responses. Previously, we have shown that when local radiotherapy was combined with monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) (that enable T-cell responses by engaging costimulation [anti (α)-CD137] and blocking coinhibition [α-PD-1], up to 100% of mice bearing established syngeneic AT-3 mammary tumors were cured, but single modality treatments were not curative. Here, we investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying responses to this radioimmunotherapy approach. We observed that inhibition of signaling through the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway during the first 10 days of treatment severely impaired the curative effect of radioimmunotherapy, at least in part by reducing MHC class I expression on tumor cells, reducing dendritic cell (DC) activation status and CD8+ T-cell function. This data indicates that the efficacy of this type of radioimmunotherapy approach involves mTOR signaling and therefore, mTOR inhibitory drugs may impede the efficacy of similar radioimmunotherapy approaches in humans.
The effect of commercial conjugated linoleic acid products on experimental periodontitis and diabetes mellitus in Wistar rats

Abstract Objective: The aim of present study was to determine the effects of conjugated linoleic acid enriched milk on alveolar bone loss, hyperglycaemia, oxidative stress and apoptosis in ligature-induced periodontal disease in diabetic rat model. Methods: Wistar rats were divided into six experimental groups: 1; non-ligated (NL, n = 6) group, 2; ligature only (LO, n = 6) group, 3; streptozotocin only (STZ, n = 8) group, 4; STZ and ligature (STZ + L, n = 8) group, 5; ligature and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) (L + CLA, n = 8) group, 6; STZ, ligature and CLA group (STZ + L + CLA, n = 8) group. Diabetes mellitus was induced by 60 mg/kg streptozotocin. Rats were fed with CLA enriched milk for four weeks. Silk ligatures were placed at the gingival margin of lower first molars of mandibular quadrant. The study duration was four weeks after diabetes induction and the animals were sacrificed at the end of this period. Changes in alveolar bone levels were clinically measured and tissues were histopathologically examined. Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and Bax protein expressions, serum interleukin-1β (IL-1β), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and triglyceride levels and tartrate resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP)+ osteoclast numbers were also evaluated. Results: At the end of four weeks, alveolar bone loss was significantly higher in the STZ + LO group compared to the other groups (p < .05). CLA decreased alveolar bone loss in L + CLA and STZ + L + CLA groups. CLA significantly decreased TRAP + osteoclast numbers and increased osteoblastic activity compared to the STZ + L group (p < .05). Diabetes and CLA increased Bax protein levels (p < .05) however CLA had no effect on iNOS expression (p > .05). Conclusion: Within the limits of this study, commercial CLA product administration in addition to diet significantly reduced alveolar bone loss, increased osteoblastic activity and decreased osteoclastic activity in the diabetic Wistar rats.
Predictive value of cardiac troponin T in pediatric patients at risk for myocardial injury.

BACKGROUND Biochemical markers have not been routinely used in children at risk for myocardial damage. Yet, because of somatic growth and the duration of survival, a low level of myocardial damage may ultimately be of more consequence in children than in adults. METHODS AND RESULTS We investigated the utility of cardiac troponin T (cTnT) blood levels (CARDIAC T ELISA Troponin T, Boehringer Mannheim Corp) in 51 consecutively sampled patients from 1 day to 34 years of age (median=5.7 years) undergoing cardiovascular (n=19) or noncardiovascular (n=17) surgery or who received doxorubicin for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) (n=15). Minimum detectable cTnT elevations were 0.03 ng/mL. cTnT was measurable in children of all ages with myocyte damage. In patients who underwent cardiovascular surgery, a correlation was noted between a score of increasing surgical severity and the mean level of postoperative cTnT (r=.79, P<.0001). Postoperative cTnT levels were elevated in children who completed cardiovascular surgery with an open chest compared with those with a closed chest (P=.0083). In addition, cTnT levels before cardiovascular surgery predicted postoperative survival (P=.007). cTnT elevations were observed after initial doxorubicin therapy for ALL. The magnitude of elevation predicted left ventricular dilatation (r=.80 when variables were treated as continuous, P=.003) and wall thinning (r=.61, P=.044) 9 months later. CONCLUSIONS Elevations of blood cTnT in children relate to the severity of myocardial damage and predict subsequent subclinical and clinical cardiac morbidity and mortality.
Marine biofouling field tests, settlement assay and footprint micromorphology of cyprid larvae of Balanus amphitrite on model surfaces

Atomic force microscopy (AFM), laboratory settlement assays and field tests were used to correlate cyprid footprint (FP) morphology with the behaviour of cyprids on different substrata. AFM imaging under laboratory conditions revealed more porous and larger FPs on glass exposing a CH3-surface than on aminosilane functionalised (NH2-) surfaces. The secreted FP volume was found to be similar on both substrata (2.1–2.6 μm3). Laboratory settlement assays and marine field tests were performed on three substrata, viz. untreated clean glass, NH2-glass, and CH3-glass. The results distinguished settlement preferences for NH2-glass and untreated glass over CH3-terminated surfaces, suggesting that cyprids favour settling on hydrophilic over hydrophobic surfaces. On combining observations from different length scales, it is speculated that the confined FP size on NH2-glass may induce a higher concentration of the settlement inducing protein complex. Settlement may be further facilitated by a stronger adherence of FP adhesives to the NH2-surface via Coulombic interactions.
Causes and Impacts of Foreign and Domestic Institutional Investors’ Herding in the Taiwan Stock Market

ABSTRACT This study examines whether herding exists among foreign institutional investors (FIIs), what is the cause of their herding, and whether both foreign and domestic institutional investors are more likely to follow their similar types in the Taiwan stock market. By testing the cross-sectional dependence for FIIs’ stocks in two adjacent months, we demonstrate that the FIIs’ cascades mainly result from their herding. We find little evidence that FIIs’ herding behavior is driven by habit investing. The momentum trading of FIIs is found to account for little of their herding. Moreover, investigative herding, rather than informational cascades is the main reason for FIIs’ herding. One of our contributions may be to find that FIIs’ cascades mainly resulting from their herding does not change in the bullish and bearish Taiwan stock market. This study further finds that FIIs and dealers are more likely to follow similar-type institutions than different-type institutions, respectively.
Adolescent adherence to psychosocial treatment: Mental health clinicians' perspectives on barriers and promoters

Abstract Poor adolescent adherence to mental health psychosocial treatment significantly undermines effectiveness. Approximately one-third of all youth drop out or prematurely terminate from psychosocial treatment. This study examined youth adherence to psychosocial treatment from the perspective of community-based mental health clinicians (n =34) interviewed across three focus groups. A grounded theory analysis was applied to investigate the promoters and barriers influencing adolescent adherence to treatment. Clinicians identified four domains (adolescent, family, clinician, and agency) that serve as promoters and barriers to adherence. Barriers to adherence were located primarily in adolescent and family domains, whereas promoters were attributed within the clinician domain. Understanding of the complex influences on adolescent adherence may facilitate increased awareness and intervention options for clinicians.
Dynamic Coattention with Sentence Information

Machine reading comprehension involves teaching a computer to read a document and then answer questions related to that document. State of the art results on this task are dominated by Neural Networks. Several of the most successful of these have tended to use some sort of attention mechanism to capture relevant information from the document and the question at the same time. We explore some of the parameter choices made by one recent paper and attempt to extend the results by creating a hierarchical encoder based on sentence information.
Epidemiological Trends in Cervical Spine Surgery for Degenerative Diseases Between 2002 and 2009

Study Design. Retrospective analysis of a population-based database. Objective. To investigate national epidemiological trends of cervical spine surgical procedures from 2002–2009. Summary of Background Data. Anterior cervical fusion (ACF), posterior cervical fusion (PCF), and posterior cervical decompression (PCD) are procedures routinely performed for cervical degenerative pathology. Studies regarding epidemiological trends of these procedures is currently lacking in the literature. Methods. Data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project was obtained for each year between 2002 and 2009. Patients undergoing ACF, PCF, and PCD for the diagnosis of cervical radiculopathy and myelopathy were identified. Demographics, costs, and mortality were assessed in the surgical subgroups. A P value of 0.001 was used to denote significance. Results. An estimated 1,323,979 cervical spine surgical procedures were performed between 2002 and 2009. There was a significant upward trend in the mean age of patients undergoing cervical spine surgery during this time period. ACF and PCF cohorts demonstrated statistically significant increases in comorbidities and costs from 2002–2009. The PCF group had the greatest mortality, comorbidities, costs, and longest hospitalizations compared with ACF and PCF cohorts across all time periods. Conclusion. Our study demonstrates that cervical spine surgical procedures have increased between 2002 and 2009 (P = 0.001). The primary increase in volume is due to the increasing number of ACFs. Despite older patients with more comorbidities undergoing ACF and PCF procedures, mortality has not changed. However, this patient population trended significant increases in costs during this time period. We hypothesize that these increased costs are due to an increased comorbidity burden in patients undergoing ACF or PCF. Results of this study can be used to set benchmarks for future epidemiological investigations in cervical spine surgery. Level of Evidence: 4
Journalism in Turkey and the Gezi Park Protest: Power and Agency in the Media Sphere

This thesis will examine the Turkish media during the Gezi Park protest in Turkey in the summer of 2013. What started out as a peaceful protest that began because of environmental reasons, spiraled into a larger protest against the government more generally. What was unusual about the protest, that makes Gezi Park an interesting object of study, is that the mainstream Turkish media completely ignored the protest, barely reported on it, or contributed to the dissemination of disinformation. The lack of coverage and disinformation that was spread within the Turkish media frustrated the public and social media ended up playing a central role in providing the Turkish people with updates. The lack of coverage within Turkish mainstream media was also in stark contrast to the coverage that did occur in international media and alternative media in Turkey. This thesis investigates the reasons for the lack of coverage in Turkish mainstream media and whose legacy the media serves. It will examine what constrains and enables Turkish journalists, the role social media plays in a country where journalists face corporate and political restrictions, as well as the role international media and alternative media play in the media ecosystem. This research stems from semi-structured interviews conducted with journalists working in Turkey. As theoretical frameworks, this paper will mobilize Castells’ (2012) theory of communication power, as well as the theory of structuration (Giddens, 1984; Mosco, 2009).
An Algorithm for Identifying the Learning Patterns in Big Data

Divide-and-Conquer is probably the most commonly used strategy to deal with a big data that is too big to be loaded into any computing system's memory as a whole for analysis. It partitions such a big dataset into many smaller subsets that can be loaded into computer memory separately to induce models, which can be combined by machine learning ensemble methods. However, it is not clear that how the size of subsets may affect the learning performance of individual models and their ensemble. This paper proposes an ensemble based algorithm to quickly detect their relational patterns in terms of ensemble accuracy and the size of partitioned data subset. An ensemble framework of the algorithm is implemented and tested on 12 relatively big benchmark datasets. The experimental results indicate that it is able to identify the relation patterns accurately and efficiently in less than 10 steps. The identified patterns show that in most cases it is not necessary to use the whole big dataset for analysis as few smaller subsets are already sufficiently representative of the underlying problem, which is obviously a useful knowledge in big data analysis.
Design and exposure of wireless communication and power charging systems: Design rules, levels of exposure, challenges in exposure assessment and compliance testing

Wireless communication systems for voice and data have permeated all aspects of our lives in the past two decades. In a few years, it is expected that wireless power transfer systems will also be ubiquitous. This talk will 1) address the challenges posed by the design and exposure assessment of these sources, 2) report on the results of most recent studies, and 3) discuss novel and future measurement and computational technologies to overcome the limitations in compliance testing and the exposure assessment of wireless devices.
The Impact of Exchange Rates and Interest Rates on Bank Stock Returns: Evidence from U.S. Banks

Abstract This paper examines the mean, volatility spillovers and response asymmetries between short-term and long-term interest rates, exchange rates and portfolios of money center, large and medium-sized banks in the U.S. I use the multivariate version of Nelson’s (1991) Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroscedastic (EGARCH) model. Results indicate mean and volatility spillovers from short-term interest rates and exchange rates and long-term interest rates and exchange rates to three bank portfolios. Results also show response asymmetries from short-term interest rates and exchange rates and long-term interest rates and exchange rates to all the three bank portfolios. These findings have important implications for bankers in terms of devising different hedging strategies against interest rates and exchange rate risks.
LA-LLC: Inter-Core Locality-Aware Last-Level Cache to Exploit Many-to-Many Traffic in GPGPUs

The reply network is a severe performance bottleneck in General Purpose Graphic Processing Units (GPGPUs), as the communication path from memory controllers (MC) to cores is often congested. In this paper, we find that instead of relying on the congested communication path between MCs and cores, the unused core-to-core communication path can be leveraged to transfer data blocks between cores. We propose the inter-core Locality-Aware Last-Level Cache (LA-LLC), which requires only few bits per cache block and enables a core to fetch shared data from another core's private cache instead of the LLC. Leveraging inter-core communication, LA-LLC transforms few-to-many traffic to many-to-many traffic, thereby mitigating the reply network bottleneck. For a set of applications exhibiting varying degrees of inter-core locality, LA-LLC reduces memory access latency and increases performance by 21.1 percent on average and up to 68 percent, with negligible hardware cost.
The Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Children with Chronic Medical Conditions

Samdup DZ, Smith RG, Song SI: The use of complementary and alternative medicine in children with chronic medical conditions. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 2006;85:842–846. Objectives:The objectives of this study were to examine whether progressive medical conditions lead to greater use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as compared with more stable conditions, to see whether disease severity influences CAM use, and to identify the main motivations behind CAM use. Methods:Subjects were selected from outpatient clinics at Hotel Dieu Hospital. Surveys were conducted by mail and telephone. Medical diagnosis and severity were obtained from medical files. Statistical tests included &khgr;2, Kruskal-Wallis, and correlations. Results:One hundred ninety-four children were surveyed. The “progressive” group included 15 patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and 22 patients with cystic fibrosis. The “nonprogressive” group included 85 patients with cerebral palsy (CP), 49 with diabetes mellitus, and 23 with spina bifida. Twenty-three percent were using CAM. CP had the highest use; diabetes mellitus had the lowest. Popular therapies included massage and dietary/herbal remedies. Progressiveness had no impact on CAM use. Within the CP group, greater disease severity was associated with higher use (P < 0.001). The main reason for CAM use was to complement conventional medicine. Conclusions:Disease progressiveness had no impact on CAM use, but severity within the CP group did. Complementing conventional medicine was the main motive. Understanding the reasons and patterns of use of CAM is beneficial in efforts to improve the care of children with chronic medical conditions.
Phenotypic modulation of human articular chondrocytes by bistratene A.

Chondrocytes undergo phenotypic alterations following extended periods in monolayer culture, i.e., they become bipolar and flattened, proliferate, and synthesise type I as opposed to type II collagen. This process has been termed chondrocyte dedifferentiation. Bistratene A is a macrolide polyether that specifically activates the delta isoform of protein kinase C (PKCdelta) in some cell types. Here, we show that dedifferentiated human articular chondrocytes became rounded and underwent cell growth arrest after treatment with bistratene A. In addition, bistratene A-treated chondrocytes became more immunopositive for type II collagen, but less immunopositive for type I collagen. These phenotypic changes were associated with a prior and extensive disruption of actin microfilaments and translocation of PKCdelta to the nuclear membrane. Concurrent treatments of chondrocytes with a specific inhibitor of PKCdelta, rottlerin, partially blocked the morphological effects of bistratene A.
Neisseria gonorrhoeae effectively blocks HIV‐1 replication by eliciting a potent TLR9‐dependent interferon‐α response from plasmacytoid dendritic cells

Clinical and epidemiological research provides evidence for a positive correlation between Neisseria gonorrhoeae infection and HIV transmission; however, mechanistic studies examining this relationship have yielded conflicting results. To explore this interaction, we exposed ex vivo cultured peripheral blood cells from acute HIV+ individuals to N. gonorrhoeae. Unexpectedly, we observed a profound inhibition in HIV‐1 replication in the ex vivo cultures, and this was recapitulated when peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from healthy donors were co‐infected with HIV‐1 and N. gonorrhoeae. Next, we established that gonococcal‐infected PBMCs liberated a soluble factor that effectively blocked HIV‐1 replication. Cytokine analyses and antibody blocking experiments revealed that the type I interferon, interferon‐α (IFNα), was expressed upon exposure to N. gonorrhoeae and was responsible for the inhibition of HIV‐1. Intracellular staining, TLR9‐blocking and cell depletion‐based studies demonstrated that the IFNα was elicited by plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) in a TLR9‐dependent manner. The pDC response to N. gonorrhoeae was unexpected given pDCs more established role in innate defence against intracellular pathogens, suggesting this may be a bacterial immune evasion strategy. In the context of HIV, this overcomes the virus's otherwise effective avoidance of the interferon response and represents a previously unrecognized intersection between these two sexually transmitted pathogens.
The Development and Psychometric Evaluation of a New Measure of Dissociative Activities

The psychometric properties of a new measure of dissociative behaviors, the Scale of Dissociative Activities (SODAS), were evaluated. Undergraduates (n = 533) completed the SODAS, 2 other established self-report measures of dissociative behaviors, and a measure of socially desirable responding. A randomly selected subset of participants (n = 100) also participated in an additional reliability and validity follow-up study. The SODAS was found to be internally consistent (Α = .95) and temporally stable (r = .77) over an average 38-day interval. The validity of the SODAS was established by a moderately low negative correlation with social desirability, high correlations with other self-report measures of dissociation, and moderate to high correlations with samples of dissociative activities assessed in naturalistic environments with experience sampling methodology. Overall, the SODAS compared favorably to other existing self-report measures of dissociative behaviors. Directions for future research on the SODAS are discussed.