Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Iterated learning framework for unsupervised part-of-speech induction

Computational approaches to linguistic analysis have been used for more than half a century. The main tools come from the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and are based on rule-based or corpora-based (supervised) methods. Despite the undeniable success of supervised learning methods in NLP, they have two main drawbacks: on the practical side, it is expensive to produce the manual annotation (or the rules) required and it is not easy to find annotators for less common languages. A theoretical disadvantage is that the computational analysis produced is tied to a specific theory or annotation scheme. Unsupervised methods offer the possibility to expand our analyses into more resourcepoor languages, and to move beyond the conventional linguistic theories. They are a way of observing patterns and regularities emerging directly from the data and can provide new linguistic insights. In this thesis I explore unsupervised methods for inducing parts of speech across languages. I discuss the challenges in evaluation of unsupervised learning and at the same time, by looking at the historical evolution of part-of-speech systems, I make the case that the compartmentalised, traditional pipeline approach of NLP is not ideal for the task. I present a generative Bayesian system that makes it easy to incorporate multiple diverse features, spanning different levels of linguistic structure, like morphology, lexical distribution, syntactic dependencies and word alignment information that allow for the examination of cross-linguistic patterns. I test the system using features provided by unsupervised systems in a pipeline mode (where the output of one system is the input to another) and show that the performance of the baseline (distributional) model increases significantly, reaching and in some cases surpassing the performance of state-of-the-art part-of-speech induction systems. I then turn to the unsupervised systems that provided these sources of information (morphology, dependencies, word alignment) and examine the way that part-of-speech information influences their inference. Having established a bi-directional relationship between each system and my part-of-speech inducer, I describe an iterated learning method, where each component system is trained using the output of the other system in each iteration. The iterated learning method improves the performance of both component systems in each task. Finally, using this iterated learning framework, and by using parts of speech as the central component, I produce chains of linguistic structure induction that combine all
Vibration Analysis of Piezoelectric Microcantilever Sensors

The main objective of this dissertation is to comprehensively analyze vibration characteristics of microcantilever-based sensors with application to ultra small mass detection and low dimensional materials characterization. The first part of this work focuses on theoretical developments and experimental verification of piezoelectric microcantilevers, commercially named Active Probes, which are extensively used in most today’s advanced Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) systems. Due to special geometry and configuration of Active Probes, especially multiple jump discontinuities in their cross-section, a general and comprehensive framework is introduced for forced vibration and modal analysis of discontinuous flexible beams. More specifically, a general formulation is obtained for the characteristics matrix using both boundary and continuity conditions. The formulation is then reduced to the special case of Active Probes with intentional geometrical discontinuities. Results obtained from experiment are compared with the commonly used uniform beam model as well as the proposed discontinuous beam model. It is demonstrated that a significant enhancement on sensing accuracy of Active Probes can be achieved using the proposed discontinuous beam model compared to a uniform model when a multiple-mode operation is desired. In the second part of this dissertation, a comprehensive dynamic model is proposed for vector Piezoforce Microscopy (PFM) system under applied electrical loading. In general, PFM is considered as a suspended microcantilever beam with a tip mass in contact with a piezoelectric material. The material properties are expressed in two forms; Kelvin-Voigt model for viscoelstic representation of the material and
Galectin-3 Is a Target for Proteases Involved in the Virulence of Staphylococcus aureus

ABSTRACT Staphylococcus aureus is a major cause of skin and soft tissue infection. The bacterium expresses four major proteases that are emerging as virulence factors: aureolysin (Aur), V8 protease (SspA), staphopain A (ScpA), and staphopain B (SspB). We hypothesized that human galectin-3, a β-galactoside-binding lectin involved in immune regulation and antimicrobial defense, is a target for these proteases and that proteolysis of galectin-3 is a novel immune evasion mechanism. Indeed, supernatants from laboratory strains and clinical isolates of S. aureus caused galectin-3 degradation. Similar proteolytic capacities were found in Staphylococcus epidermidis isolates but not in Staphylococcus saprophyticus. Galectin-3-induced activation of the neutrophil NADPH oxidase was abrogated by bacterium-derived proteolysis of galectin-3, and SspB was identified as the major protease responsible. The impact of galectin-3 and protease expression on S. aureus virulence was studied in a murine skin infection model. In galectin-3+/+ mice, SspB-expressing S. aureus caused larger lesions and resulted in higher bacterial loads than protease-lacking bacteria. No such difference in bacterial load or lesion size was detected in galectin-3−/− mice, which overall showed smaller lesion sizes than the galectin-3+/+ animals. In conclusion, the staphylococcal protease SspB inactivates galectin-3, abrogating its stimulation of oxygen radical production in human neutrophils and increasing tissue damage during skin infection.
NUMARCK: Machine Learning Algorithm for Resiliency and Checkpointing

Data check pointing is an important fault tolerance technique in High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. As the HPC systems move towards exascale, the storage space and time costs of check pointing threaten to overwhelm not only the simulation but also the post-simulation data analysis. One common practice to address this problem is to apply compression algorithms to reduce the data size. However, traditional lossless compression techniques that look for repeated patterns are ineffective for scientific data in which high-precision data is used and hence common patterns are rare to find. This paper exploits the fact that in many scientific applications, the relative changes in data values from one simulation iteration to the next are not very significantly different from each other. Thus, capturing the distribution of relative changes in data instead of storing the data itself allows us to incorporate the temporal dimension of the data and learn the evolving distribution of the changes. We show that an order of magnitude data reduction becomes achievable within guaranteed user-defined error bounds for each data point. We propose NUMARCK, North western University Machine learning Algorithm for Resiliency and Check pointing, that makes use of the emerging distributions of data changes between consecutive simulation iterations and encodes them into an indexing space that can be concisely represented. We evaluate NUMARCK using two production scientific simulations, FLASH and CMIP5, and demonstrate a superior performance in terms of compression ratio and compression accuracy. More importantly, our algorithm allows users to specify the maximum tolerable error on a per point basis, while compressing the data by an order of magnitude.
Microbial degradation of alkylbenzenesulphonates. Metabolism of homologues of short alkyl-chain length by an Alcaligenes sp.

1. An organism isolated from sewage and identified as an Alcaligenes sp. utilized benzenesulphonate, toluene-p-sulphonate or phenylethane-p-sulphonate as sole source of carbon and energy for growth. Higher alkylbenzenesulphonate homologues and the hydrocarbons, benzene, toluene, phenylethane and 1-phenyldodecane were not utilized. 2. 2-Phenylpropanesulphonate was metabolized to 4-isopropylcatechol. 3. 1-Phenylpropanesulphonate was metabolized to an ortho-diol, which was tentatively identified, in the absence of an authentic specimen, as 4-n-propylcatechol. 4. In the presence of 4-isopropylcatechol, which inhibited catechol 2,3-dioxygenase, 4-ethylcatechol accumulated in cultures growing on phenylethane-p-sulphonate. 5. Authentic samples of catechol, 3-methylcatechol, 4-methylcatechol, 4-ethylcatechol and 3-isopropylcatechol were oxidized by heat-treated extracts to the corresponding 2-hydroxyalkylmuconic semialdehydes. Ring cleavage occurred between C-2 and C-3. 6. The catechol derived from 1-phenylpropanesulphonate was oxygenated by catechol 2,3-dioxygenase to a compound with all the properties of a 2-hydroxyalkylmuconic semialdehyde, but it was not rigorously identified. 7. The catechol 2,3-dioxygenase induced by growth on benzenesulphonate, toluene-p-sulphonate or phenylethane-p-sulphonate showed a constant ratio of specific activities with catechol, 3-methylcatechol, 4-methylcatechol and 4-ethylcatechol that was independent of the growth substrate. At 60 degrees C, activity towards these substrates declined at an identical first-order rate. 8. Enzymes of the ;ortho' pathway of catechol metabolism were present in small amounts in cells grown on benzenesulphonate, toluene-p-sulphonate or phenylethane-p-sulphonate. 9. The catechol 1,2-dioxygenase oxidized the alkylcatechols, but the rates and the total extents of oxidation were less than for catechol itself. The oxidation products of these alkylcatechols were not further metabolized.
Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects

Telephone call centers are an integral part of many businesses, and their economic role is significant and growing. They are also fascinating sociotechnical systems in which the behavior of customers and employees is closely intertwined with physical performance measures. In these environments traditional operational models are of great value--and at the same time fundamentally limited--in their ability to characterize system performance.We review the state of research on telephone call centers. We begin with a tutorial on how call centers function and proceed to survey academic research devoted to the management of their operations. We then outline important problems that have not been addressed and identify promising directions for future research.
Slipping of carbon nanotubes in a rubber matrix

The interactions of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and carbon black (CB) with rubber matrices are of great interest. Although both belong to the carbon filler family, their interactions are different. In this study the adhesion of CNTs, if any, with natural rubber (NR) was examined. Scanning electron microscopy examinations made on cryogenically fractured surfaces of a crosslinked NR sample containing 7% by weight of CNTs showed that the CNT bundles emerged from the side surface (narrowed by Poisson's ratio) and slowly slid back in when the deformation was removed. The protruded lengths were many times larger than the nanotube bundle diameters. This extensive slipping out of CNTs from the rubber matrix suggests that interfacial interactions between CNTs and NR are quite weak. In contrast, relatively strong interactions were found between CB and rubber, indicated by the large amount of bound rubber formation. Reinforcement of rubber by CNTs is therefore attributed to the large aspect ratio of CNT bundles. Physical entanglement with rubber molecules is then able to generate effective load transfer, replacing the strong adhesion found with CB. Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry
Clonal Relationships among ShigellaSerotypes Suggested by Cryptic Flagellin Gene Polymorphism

ABSTRACT The presence of cryptic fliC alleles in the genomes of 120 strains representative of the four Shigella species was investigated. One fragment was obtained by PCR amplification offliC, with a size varying from 1.2 to 3.2 kbp, depending on the species or serotype. After digestion with endonucleaseHhaI, the number of fragments in patterns varied from three to nine, with sizes of between 115 and 1,020 bp. Patterns sharing most of their bands were grouped to constitute an F type. A total of 17 different F types were obtained from all strains included in this study. A unique pattern was observed for each the following serotypes:Shigella dysenteriae 1, 2, 8, and 10 and S. boydii 7, 13, 15, 16, and 17. On the contrary, S. dysenteriae serotype 13 and S. sonnei biotype e were each subdivided into two different F types. S. flexneriserotypes 3a and X could be distinguished from the cluster containingS. flexneri serotypes 1 to 5 and Y. S. flexneriserotype 6 clustered with S. boydii serotypes 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, and 18 and S. dysenteriae serotypes 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 12. Two other clusters were outlined: one comprisingS. dysenteriae serotypes 3, 12, 13 (strain CDC598-77), 14, and 15 and the other one joining S. boydii serotypes 5 and 9. None of the 17 fliC patterns was found in the fliC HhaI pattern database previously described for Escherichia coli. Overall, this work supports the hypothesis thatShigella evolved from different ancestral strains ofE. coli. Moreover, the method outlined here is a promising tool for the identification of some clinically importantShigella strains as well as for confirmation of atypical isolates as Shigella spp.
Stochastic location optimization in a dynamic environment

Existing location optimization solutions only consider the positioning of resouces/seeds at the best location in a target area by minimizing a certain metric over distance. In reality, what really matters is time. In this paper, the location optimization problem is formulated as the expected response time minimization problem rather than a distance minimization problem. Moreover, we propose an algorithm that takes into consideration various stochastic factors which affect the location optimization problem, such as non-uniform probability distribution of the demands, road congestion level, and vehicles' maximum speed. Our proposed algorithm shows promising performance when the disparity among vehicle capabilities (e.g., maximum speed) are large and the environment constraints (e.g., traffic jam) are taken into consideration.
Tomographic Imaging of Fluorophore Embedded in, Biological Tissue Based on Ultrasound Tagging Technique

We report a study for the development of the technique of fluorescence tomography in living body for assays of biological function. Ultrasonic modulation of light using focused ultrasound is applied for imaging of fluorophore in light-scattering media. The embedded fluorescent microspheres in porcine muscle with 20 mm-depth was imaged.
A mapping-enhanced linked data inspection and querying support system using dynamic ontology matching

Supporting heterogeneous ontologies is an important issue on retrieving from and linking to linked data stored in various SPARQL endpoints via SPARQL queries. There are several approaches to support the coding process of a SPARQL query for users who are unfamiliar to code it. On the use of some ontology mapping-based support approaches on SPARQL-based query systems, we often assume that the users already have appropriate weighted ontology mappings for the ontologies used in the query. In this paper, we present ontology mapping inspection mechanisms for mapping-enhanced SPARQL queries to widely retrieve various data from Linked Open Data (LOD). Our dynamic ontology mapping adaptation technique complements the used incomplete ontology mappings by dynamically detecting and adding missing mappings to include the correspondences between entities of terms in heterogeneous ontologies.
Research for Damping Behavior and Microstructure of Interpenetrating Polymer Networks Based on Multi-Components

Based on the molecule design and energy absorption theory of polymer macromolecule materials, we synthesized a kind of multicomponents interpenetrating polymer network(IPN) which composed of polyurethane(PU), epoxy(EP) and unsaturated polymer resin(UPR). In order to further widen the damping temperature region of polymer materials, we introduced the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) into polyurethane(PU). Because of solubility parameter difference between PDMS and PU, we synthesized PDMS modified PU by blocking and grafting PDMS chain into PU main chain firstly. Then, a serious of interpenetrating polymer networks (IPN) which composed of PDMS-PU, EP and UPR were designed and synthesized. The damping performance and microstructure were characterized by using the spectrum of dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) and the scanning electron microscope(SEM) respectively. The tested result indicated that the multicomponents IPN which modified by PDMS has wider temperature range and higher damping loss factor, and the PDMS grafting PU/EP/UPR shows good damping performance and microphase compatibility specially.
The impact of tetrahedral capping groups and device processing conditions on the crystal packing, thin film features and OFET hole mobility of 7,14-bis(ethynyl)dibenzo[b,def]chrysenes

A series of tetrahedrally capped acetylene dibenzochrysene derivatives were modelled and then synthesised resulting in compounds with very similar electronic properties, but differing physical properties depending on the capping group. By varying the size of the tetrahedral capping group we have undertaken a study on the relationship between the molecular structure and charge mobility in organic transistors. Thin film characterisation techniques (near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and X-ray diffraction) were coupled with organic field effect transistor (OFET) hole mobility data to explore the interplay between molecular structure, molecular packing, substrate dielectrics and transistor hole mobility. Using this strategy we identified a lead compound, TMS-DBC 2b, that has a one-dimensional slipped stack packing motif with a high degree of π–π overlap that produces hole mobilities as high as 0.012 cm2 V−1 s−1 when deposited on SiO2-ODTS substrates. Further refinement of the substrate temperature and deposition rate results in TMS-DBC 2b achieving hole mobilities as high as 1.17 cm2 V−1 s−1. These results show that subtle modification of the tetrahedral capping groups can alter the crystal packing and thin film microstructure of these angular dibenzochrysene materials, which dramatically influences the hole mobility in transistors. Further refinement of the device processing conditions on the lead compound results in a significant increase in transistor mobility.
Synthesis and self-assembly of complex hollow materials

Hollow materials with interiors or voids and pores are a class of lightweight nanostructured matters that promise many future technological applications, and they have received significant research attention in recent years. On the basis of well-known physicochemical phenomena and principles, for example, several solution-based protocols have been developed for the general preparation of these complex materials under mild reaction conditions. This article is thus a short introductory review on the synthetic aspects of this field of development. The synthetic methodologies can be broadly divided into three major categories: (i) template-assisted synthesis, (ii) self-assembly with primary building blocks, and (iii) induced matter relocations. In most cases, both synthesis and self-assembly are involved in the above processes. Further combinations of these methodologies appear to be very important, as they will allow one to prepare functional materials at a higher level of complexity and precision. The synthetic strategies are introduced through some simple case studies with schematic illustrations. Salient features of the methods developed have been summarized, and some urgent issues of this field have also been indicated.
Minority carrier mobility measurement in HgCdTe with light-modulated Hall effect

The light modulated Hall measurement system was set up in order to measure the minority carrier mobility of the p-type HgCdTe material. Minority carrier mobility is one of the main parameters for HgCdTe infrared photodetectors, because it determines the diffusion length of minority carriers, which plays a big role in the performance of optoelectronic devices. Therefore, it is important to get the minority carrier mobility in HgCdTe, so as to evaluate the material property before fabrication of photodetectors. By adding a modulated laser to the Hall system, the modulated Hall voltage was measured on p-type Hg1-xCdxTe(x=0.233) sample over a range of 0-1.8T in the magnetic field at temperature of 75K. The modulated signal is generated by the movement of excess photocarriers in the magnetic field, so it has a relationship with the magnetic field, the photogenerated carrier concentration and the electron and hole mobilities. Since the majority concentration and mobility can be derived from the Hall effect, the minority mobility and the photogenerated carrier concentration were obtained from fitting the light-modulated Hall voltage ▵VH as a function of the magnetic field B. As compared to the references, the minority mobility we have obtained is reasonable, so the light-modulated Hall effect is an effective way to obtain the minority carrier mobility.
Do predictions of visual perception aid design?

Understanding and exploiting the abilities of the human visual system is an important part of the design of usable user interfaces and information visualizations. Designers traditionally learn qualitative rules of thumb for how to enable quick, easy, and veridical perception of their design. More recently, work in human and computer vision has produced more quantitative models of human perception, which take as input arbitrary, complex images of a design. In this article, we ask whether models of perception aid the design process, using our tool DesignEye as a working example of a perceptual tool incorporating such models. Through a series of interactions with designers and design teams, we find that the models can help, but in somewhat unexpected ways. DesignEye was capable of facilitating A/B comparisons between designs, and judgments about the quality of a design. However, overall “goodness” values were not very useful, showed signs of interfering with a natural process of trading off perceptual vs. other design issues, and would likely interfere with acceptance of a perceptual tool by professional designers. Perhaps most surprisingly, DesignEye, by providing in essence a simple visualization of the design, seemed to facilitate communication about not only perceptual aspects of design, but also about design goals and how to achieve those goals. We discuss resulting design principles for making perceptual tools useful in general.