Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NULL PRONOMINALS WITHlN NPs AND THE SYNTAX OF DPs

In Giorgi and Longobardi (forthcoming) we have provided some arguments in favor of the presence within NPs of syntactically active empty categories with the function of pronominal subjects. In order to strengthen our conclusion we will present here empirical evidence suggesting that such elements exist and may naturally fall into the already established theory of empty categories. In particular we will show that their distribution and Interpretation äs subjects of NPs closely resembles the one found in infinitival clauses, therefore further confirming our main claim that the structure of NPs is governed by roughly the same general principles governing sentential structures. The null element in subjectposition, in fact, will be shown to have the same control properties äs PRO in sentences and we will conclude, therefore, that it is precisely PRO, a possibility already suggested in Chomsky (1981). We will first give a set of additional arguments in favor of the idea that, when necessary, an empty subject can be syntactically represented within NPs; later, we will suggest that with a subset of Nouns it must obligatorily be represented, namely with the class of Nouns with unaffected objects in Anderson's (1979) sense. Finally, we will also discuss some evidence pointing to the existence of another empty pronominal in object position with properties rather similar to those of the empty object of Verbs identified by Rizzi (1986).
A low-phase noise 12 GHz digitally controlled oscillator in 65 nm CMOS for a FMCW radar frequency synthesizer

This paper presents a power-efficient low-phase noise digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) implemented in a 65 nm CMOS technology. The DCO is designed for a 12 GHz frequency synthesizer covering up to 1GHz of frequency sweep range demanded by the frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar. The realized DCO circuit is designed to meet the stringent phase noise specifications of less than −110dBc/Hz @ 1MHz, required by the high resolution industrial indoor secondary FMCW radar system. The 12 GHz frequency synthesizer is based on a fractional-N all digital phased looked-loop (ADPLL) achieving a tuning range of 18.8 % using an 8-bit capacitive DAC array. This way, the DCO reliably covers up to 1GHz of frequency sweep range plus PVT variations. The low-power design achieves a phase noise performance of better than −112.3 dBc/Hz at a 1MHz offset. In summary, the DCO achieves a best in class figure of merit (FOMT) value of −186.7 dB with largest tuning range of 18.8 %, while only consuming 16.4 mW.
Two signals mediate nuclear localization of influenza virus (A/WSN/33) polymerase basic protein 2

Polymerase basic protein 2 (PB2), a component of the influenza virus polymerase complex, when expressed alone from cloned cDNA in the absence of other influenza virus proteins, is transported into the nucleus. In this study, we have examined the nuclear translocation signal of PB2 by making deletions and mutations in the PB2 sequence. Our studies showed that two distant regions in the polypeptide sequence were involved in the nuclear translocation of PB2. In one region, four basic residues (K-736 R K R) played a critical role in the nuclear translocation of PB2, since the deletion or mutation of these residues rendered the protein totally cytoplasmic. However, seven residues (M K R K R N S) of this region, including the four basic residues, failed to translocate a cytoplasmic reporter protein into the nucleus, suggesting that these sequences were necessary but not sufficient for nuclear translocation. Deletion of another region (amino acids 449 to 495) resulted in a mutant protein which was cytoplasmic with a perinuclear distribution. This novel phenotype suggests that a perinuclear binding step was involved prior to translocation of PB2 across the nuclear pore and that a signal might be involved in perinuclear binding. Possible involvement of these two signal sequences in the nuclear localization of PB2 is discussed.
Comparison of VBM and DBM Methods by Study of Blind Men's Brain Structures

Many studies have already demonstrated structural brain differences among different patient populations using the morphometric analysis techniques. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and deformation-based morphometry (DBM) are the two widely used methods. This paper mainly compared the difference of the two methods and analyzed the reason why many researches exist differences in the experimental results focused on the same disease. The blind men's brain structures were analyzed using both VBM and DBM. The results based on the two methods exactly evaluated our analysis and provided evidence for the functional relevance of cross-modal plasticity studies.
Aided Listener Preferences in Laboratory Versus Real‐World Environments

A wearable, fully digital, personal processing unit developed for the study of hearing aid fitting and digital signal-processing techniques was utilized in a preliminary study of hearing aid fitting validation. In a modified single-subject, multiple-baseline control design, 12 hearing-impaired listeners indicated their preferences for monaurally aided frequency response alternatives during an initial laboratory session, a real-world session, and a final laboratory session. Listeners' preferences, based on listening to connected speech, were stored in each environment by the personal processing unit. Within blocks of 3 each, subjects were time-lagged with respect to the number of trials to criterion. Subjects participated in 1 of 4 listening conditions, classified according to laboratory stimulus materials: speech recorded in an audiometric sound room in quiet or noise, and speech recorded in a reverberant room in quiet or noise. When compared with preferences obtained in the initial laboratory session, preferences obtained during the final laboratory session agreed better with those obtained in the real world. Overall, however, preferences under laboratory conditions were only fair predictors of preferences under everyday conditions. Results reveal the potential of harnessing the programming and storage capabilities of digital signal-processing technology in implementing new hearing aid fitting strategies.
Measurement Results for the Comparison of Multiple and Single Polarized MIMO Channels in LOS, NLOS, Indoor and Outdoor Scenarios

This paper presents measurement results at 2.3 GHz for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems applying multiple polarized antenna arrays and single polarized uniform linear arrays (ULAs). The measurements were taken indoor in two different buildings, outdoor between a base station on the rooftop and a mobile station in a car, as well as between two mobile stations in two cars (C2C). Measured values for the channel pathloss, the cross-polarization discrimination (XPD), the co-polarization power ratio (CPR) and the normalized channel capacity or bandwidth efficiency of many different scenarios are presented. Systems with two co-polarized, co-located antenna elements (Cross) at both link ends and systems with three perpendicularly polarized, co-located antenna elements (Tripod) are further investigated and compared to the corresponding ULA with varying inter-array antenna distance. It figures out that 2x2 MIMO systems with Cross antennas outperform single polarized ones with respect to the achievable bandwidth efficiency in LOS environments with few multipath components. In most other cases, the ULAs performs better than the Cross or the Tripod, due to the larger amount of received power.
[Sensitivity to chemotherapeutic drugs of polyploid tumor cells induced by a spindle poison nocodazole].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the changes of drug sensitivity of spindle poison-induced polyploid tumor cells to chemotherapeutic agents and its possible mechanism. METHODS Nocodazole in a dose of 100 ng/ml was used to induce polyploidization in a breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 cells. The polyploid cells (T-MDA-MB-231) were sorted by flow cytometry. The morphological changes and proliferation of T-MDA-MB-231 cells were compared with that of MDA-MB-231 cells. The cell growth inhibition was assessed by MTT assay. The cells were treated with paclitaxel, docetaxel, vincristine, epirubicin, 5-Fu, VP16 and oxaliplatin, respectively. Those cells were labeled with annexin V-FITC/PI and analyzed by flow cytometry. Bcl-2 was knocked down in T-MDA-MB-231 cells using SiRNA and their growth inhibition was evaluated by MTT assay to evaluate the reversing effect of Bcl-2-silencing on drug resistance. RESULTS The polyploid T-MDA-MB-231 cells grew in vitro continuously and maintained constant DNA content. They had a larger cell size, and grew more slowly than MDA-MB-231 cells. The IC(50(s)) of T-MDA-MB-231 cells were significantly higher than that of the MDA-MB-231 cells: paclitaxel: (6.37 ± 0.07) vs. (2.05 ± 0.83) µmol/L; docetaxel: (32.98 ± 1.48) vs. (11.95 ± 0.98) µmol/L; vincristine: (35.28 ± 1.66) vs. (14.58 ± 0.94) µmol/L; oxaliplatin: (19.07 ± 0.45) vs. (9.75 ± 1.05) µmol/L; 5-Fu: (85.49 ± 3.21) vs. (31.35 ± 1.51) µmol/L; and epirubicin: (0.53 ± 0.06) vs. (0.15 ± 0.01) µmol/L, (all P < 0.05). The IC(50(s)) of VP16 in T-MDA-MB-231 cells was (2.85 ± 0.50)µmol/L, significantly lower than the (12.20 ± 1.55) µmol/L in MDA-MB-231 cells (P < 0.05), and that of T-MDA-MB-231 cells after Bcl-2-knocked down by siRNA was (19.59 ± 0.48) µmol/L, significantly higher than the (12.20 ± 1.55) µmol/L in the MDA-MB-231 cells (P < 0.05). The IC(50(s)) of docetaxel of T-MDA-MB-231 cells after Bcl-2-knocked down by siRNA was (21.52 ± 0.68) µmol/L, significantly decreased and lower than that before Bcl-2 silencing (32.98 ± 1.48) µmol/L. CONCLUSIONS Our results indicate that polyploid tumor cells induced by spindle poison Nocodazole are more resistant to most of chemotherapeutic drugs. Downregulation of Bcl-2 increases the sensitivity of polyploid cells to docetaxel. The high expression of Bcl-2 may be one of the drug resistance mechanisms of polyploid tumor cells. The polyploid tumor cells are relatively sensitive to VP16, suggesting that VP16 might be an effective candidate drug for treatment of chemoresistant polyploid tumors.
Adviser for Energy Consumption Management: Green Energy Conservation

The increased power consumption of High Performance Computing (HPC) systems together with the rising electricity costs make energy efficiency one of the top priorities when designing and expanding modern HPC data centers. This dissertation proposes a framework, referred to as Energy Consumption Management Adviser (ECMA), for monitoring all the relevant data center components and for predicting the power/energy consumption of various applications. This will allow HPC data centers to use advanced power and energy capping for the reduction of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
Post-fundoplication contrast studies: is there room for improvement?

OBJECTIVE Since the mid-1990s, laparoscopic fundoplication for gastro-oesophageal reflux disease has become the surgical procedure of choice. Several surgical groups perform routine post-operative contrast studies to exclude any (asymptomatic) anatomical abnormality and to expedite discharge from hospital. The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy and interobserver reliability for surgeons and radiologists in contrast study interpretation. METHODS 11 surgeons and 13 radiologists (all blinded to outcome) retrospectively reviewed the contrast studies of 20 patients who had undergone a laparoscopic fundoplication. Each observer reported on fundal wrap position, leak or extravasation of contrast and contrast hold-up at the gastro-oesophageal junction (on a scale of 0-4). A κ coefficient was used to evaluate interobserver reliability. RESULTS Surgeons were more accurate than radiologists in identifying normal studies (specificity = 91.6% vs 78.9%), whereas both groups had similar accuracy in identifying abnormal studies (sensitivity = 82.3% vs 85.2%). There was higher agreement amongst surgeons than amongst radiologists when determining wrap position (κ = 0.65 vs 0.54). Both groups had low agreement when classifying a wrap migration as partial or total (κ = 0.33 vs 0.06). Radiologists were more likely to interpret the position of the wrap as abnormal (relative risk = 1.25) while surgeons reported a greater degree of hold-up of contrast at the gastro-oesophageal junction (mean score = 1.17 vs 0.86). CONCLUSION Radiologists would benefit from more information about the technical details of laparoscopic anti-reflux surgery. Standardised protocols for performing post-fundoplication contrast studies are needed.
Efficient Skyline Computation for Large Volume Data in MapReduce Utilising Multiple Reducers

A skyline query is useful for extracting a complete set of interesting tuples from a large data set according to multiple criteria. The sizes of data sets are constantly increasing and the architecture of backends are switching from single node environments to cluster oriented setups. Previous work has presented ways to run the skyline query in these setups using the MapReduce framework, but the parallel possibilities are not taken advantage of since a significant part of the query is always run serially. In this paper, we propose the novel algorithm MapReduce Grid Partitioning Multiple Reducers Skyline (MR-GPMRS) that runs the entire query in parallel. This means that MR-GPMRS scales well for large data sets and large clusters. We demonstrate this using experiments showing that MR-GPMRS runs several times faster than the alternatives for large data sets with high skyline percentages.
Extraction of a temporal conceptual model from a relational database

Related to the problem of temporal database design, a relational target model has been designed from a temporal conceptual model. Extraction of the temporal conceptual model from a relational model is called the reverse engineering of the relational model. Solving this problem will facilitate an upgraded temporal information system. In this research, we construct a conceptual model which has been used to design the temporal relational model. This approach of extraction is based on characteristics of the set of attributes, the primary key, and the set of foreign keys of the relational schema in the temporal relational model. Thereby, we propose conversion rules relating to the identification of the components existing within the temporal conceptual model accordingly.
Validity of the Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX). Ratings by patients with brain injury and their therapists

Abstract Objective: This study investigated the validity of the DEX-Questionnaire (both completed by patients, DEX-Self and by therapists, DEX-TH), included in the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS), at identifying differences in the severity of dysexecutive symptoms according to lesion location. It also examined the strength of associations of the DEX-Self and the DEX-TH reports with the sub-tests of the BADS as well as two other real-life executive tasks, the Everyday Description Task and the Twenty Question Test. Methods: This study compared 30 patients with anterior lesions (AL) to 22 patients with posterior lesions (PL). Twenty-nine healthy participants and their relatives were included as controls. Results: Significant group differences were found only on the DEX-TH, but not on the DEX-Self, indicating poor insight in patients with AL. The DEX-TH were revealed accurate in detecting more severe dysexecutive symptoms in the AL group. Furthermore, only the DEX-TH reportings were significantly correlated with the above executive tests. Multiple regression analysis showed that the Modified Six Elements Test, a sub-test of the BADS, predicted DEX-TH as accurately as the total BADS. Conclusion: The DEX-TH reportings and the MSET can provide valuable information about the severity of daily executive dysfunctioning, with implications for cognitive rehabilitation.
TREC video retrieval evaluation: a case study and status report

The TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation is a multiyear, international effort, funded by the US Advanced Research and Development Agency (ARDA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to promote progress in content-based retrieval from digital video via open, metrics-based evaluation. Now beginning its fourth year, it aims over time to develop both a better understanding of how systems can effectively accomplish such retrieval and how one can reliably benchmark their performance. This paper can be seen as a case study in the development of video retrieval systems and their evaluation as well as a report on their status to-date. After an introduction to the evolution of the evaluation over the past three years, the paper reports on the most recent evaluation TRECVID 2003: the evaluation framework — the 4 tasks (shot boundary determination, high-level feature extraction, story segmentation and typing, search), 133 hours of US television news data, and measures —, the results, and the approaches taken by the 24 participating groups.
Minimum Thickness of Cut in Nanomachining Using Atomic Force Microscopy

The relation between minimum thickness of cut (MTC) and the extreme machining accuracy attainable for a specific cutting condition by Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has been discussed. A mechanical model was used to describe qualitatively the minimum thickness of cut during nanometric cutting process. Mechanical response of aluminum and copper on nanoscratching has been studied. The analysis of the corresponding experimental results comparing with the mechanical model calculation shows that the minimum thickness of cut obtained by experiments is coincident with theoretical results well.
Sigma H-directed transcription of citG in Bacillus subtilis

The RNA polymerase sigma factor sigma H is essential for the onset of endospore formation in Bacillus subtilis. sigma H also is required for several additional stationary-phase-specific responses, including the normal expression of several genes that are required for the development of competence for DNA uptake. It is necessary to identify the genes that are transcribed by sigma H RNA polymerase (E sigma H) in order to understand the role of this sigma factor during the transition from exponential growth to stationary phase. Feavers et al. (Mol. Gen. Genet. 211:465-471, 1988) proposed that citG, the structural gene for fumarase, is transcribed from two promoters, one of which (citGp2 [P2]) may be used by E sigma H. It is likely that the citGp2 promoter is used by E sigma H because we found that this promoter was used accurately in vitro by E sigma H and directed expression of xylE in vivo. This xylE expression was dependent on spo0H, the structural gene for sigma H, and was independent of the citGp1 promoter. Comparison of the nucleotide sequences of several sigma H-dependent promoters showed that these sequences were similar at two regions approximately 10 and 35 base pairs upstream from the start points of transcription. These sequences may signal recognition of these promoters by E sigma H. Primer extension analyses were used to examine transcription from three sigma H-dependent promoters during growth and sporulation. The citGp2 promoter appeared to be active during the middle and late stages of exponential growth, whereas activation of the spoIIA promoter was delayed until after the end of exponential growth. Evidently, promoters used by E sigma H can display different temporal patterns of expression.
State of the art and current limits of musculo-skeletal models for clinical applications

Etat de l’art et limites actuelles des modeles musculo-squelettiques pour les applications cliniques La prediction des forces musculo-tendineuses developpees au cours des tâches de la vie courante est essentielle pour acceder au controle du mouvement et aux forces de reaction articulaire. Elle permet d’ameliorer le diagnostic et le suivi du traitement des desordres neurologiques et orthopediques. La mesure directe des forces musculo-tendineuses est difficilement realisable et la redondance inherente au systeme musculo-squelettique induit un nombre d’equations d’equilibre insuffisant pour calculer ces forces. Plusieurs methodes ont ete proposees pour resoudre ce probleme, mais elles requierent de nombreux parametres d’entree, pour la plupart difficiles ou impossibles a ajuster a un sujet specifique. Ces methodes vont etre decrites et leurs limites soulignees. Quoi qu’il en soit, de nouveaux developpements sont necessaires avant que les forces musculo-tendineuses predites par les modeles puissent etre utilisees dans le cadre d’applications cliniques.
Effect of ginseng extract supplementation on testicular functions in diabetic rats.

OBJECTIVE It was aimed to investigate the effect of standardized ginseng extract on fertility parameters in diabetic rats. METHODS Thirty male rats were randomly allocated into three groups of 10 rats each: 1. controls, 2. diabetes (D) and 3. diabetes + ginseng (DG). The latter two groups were rendered diabetic by i.p. injection of streptozotocin (STZ; 50 mg/kg). Standardized ginseng extract (Dansk Droge A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark) was administered per os (100 mg/kg BW) by stomach tube daily for 90 days starting one week after STZ. Ninety days post STZ the rats were sacrificed, and testis, epididymis, prostate, and seminal vesicles were weighed and subjected to histological examination. In addition, spermiogram, testicular enzyme markers, intratesticular steroid hormonal profile and testicular antioxidant status were estimated. RESULTS The administration of ginseng extract resulted in a significant improvement of fertility parameters and testicular antioxidants together with a decrease in malondialdehyde and testicular pathological signs including degenerative changes of the seminiferous tubules. CONCLUSION Ginseng extract may be a beneficial adjuvant therapy for diabetics suffering from infertility as a complication.
A P2P hierarchical clustering live video streaming system

This paper describes P2broadcast, a novel live video streaming system for P2P networks which organizes peers into hierarchical clusters to reduce startup latency and the service interruption probability. P2broadcast has two key features: highly available and efficient join, and low service interruption probability. The highly available and efficient join algorithm uses RTT of two peers as a hint of available bandwidth between them. As a consequence, the startup latency can be shortened and overhead can be reduced. In addition, P2broadcast constructs a "short and wide" overlay tree which reduces the probability of service interruption due to the leave or failure of a peer. Our simulation results show that P2broadcast outperforms in startup latency and service interrupt probability over existing approaches in the literature.