Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coral Reef Benthic Video Surveys Facilitate Long-Term Monitoring in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands: Toward an Optimal Sampling Strategy

ABSTRACT This study describes a step-by-step process used to design an effective benthic video survey component of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands long-term monitoring program. Documenting abundance of major benthic groups at relatively large spatial scales, at the appropriate localities, can empower monitoring programs with the capacity to detect changes over time and assess whether management practices are working. Most pertinent to any long-term monitoring program is the overriding question: do we have enough information, or statistical power, to detect changes if changes occur? To assess the power of our benthic video surveys to detect change in coral cover and diversity we varied (1) transect lengths, (2) number of transects, (3) number of frames per transect, and (4) number of data points per frame. Five replicated 50-m transects yielded the most consistent estimates with the highest statistical power, compared with more numerous replicates of shorter (35-m and 15-m) transects. Increasing the number of frames analyzed per 50-m transect yielded greater power than increasing the number of data points per frame, but increasing the number of data points was more effective at estimating species richness. The greatest power of detecting a change in the benthos at each site, within a feasible sampling period, was evident using 5 by 50 m random transects, extracting 60 frames per transect, and analyzing five data points on each frame. This optimal sampling strategy was tested at 23 other long-term monitoring sites and yielded 90% power to detect a 20–30% relative change in dominant benthos abundance estimates (benthos >20% coverage). Our study addresses the sampling unit, accuracy, and ways to improve estimates, but this does not remove the onus of concisely stated questions for monitoring programs pertaining to management.
Acquiring and Generalizing Causal Inference Rules from Deverbal Noun Constructions

This paper presents a novel approach for inducing causal rules by using deverbal nouns as a clue for finding causal relations. We collect verbs and their deverbal forms from FrameNet, and extract pairs of sentences in which event verbs and their corresponding deverbal forms co-occur in documents. The most challenging part of this work is to generalize an instance of causal relation into a rule. This paper proposes a method to generalize and constrain causal rules so that the obtained rules have the high chance of applicability and reusability. In order to find a suitable constraint for a causal rule, we utilize relation instances extracted by an open-information extractor, and build a classifier to choose the most suitable constraint. We demonstrate that deverbal nouns provide a good clue for causal relations and that the proposed method can induce causal rules from deverbal noun constructions.
Adaptive wireless-network testbed for cognitive radio technology

Coordination is expected between mobile terminals, base stations/access points, and spectrum-management servers in cognitive-enabled wireless networks. A testbed for cognitive radio needs to deal with these components to verify low-level configuration protocols and functions on cognitive-radio devices, and to evaluate high-level network protocols and throughputs including new MACs designed for cognitive radio using various applications running on large numbers of nodes. We propose a testbed for an adaptive wireless network under which terminals communicate using both real cognitive-radio devices and those virtually configured. All the stacks from the MAC to the application layer are programmable conforming to the common interface for the MIRAI Cognitive Radio Execution Framework (MIRAI-CREF). The configuration for the physical layer is selected from either a real device or a software-defined pseudo device, which together provide real physical-layer phenomena dependent on device implementations and scalability in the number of nodes. The testbed works with the two physical-layer configurations mixed at the same time. The testbed is flexible enough to configure cognitive-radio device functions and protocols. It is also intended to be used not only by local users but also remote users via the Internet to evaluate protocols and various cognitive features.
The INSTANCE project: operating system enhancements to support multimedia servers

Traditional operating systems do not provide adequate support for large scale multimedia-on-demand servers. The objective of the INSTANCE project [10] is to identify and eliminate possible bottlenecks of traditional operating systems used in most server based systems. So far, we have developed with three possible orthogonal system improvements: network level framing, integrated error management, and a zero-copy-one-copy memory architecture.
Typical versus Worst Case Design in Networking

Networking research has a strong inclination toward designing systems for the worst case scenarios. On the face of it, this seems reasonable – designing for the worst case gives strong guarantees on the system. However, this often comes with a sacrifice for the typical case performance. Drawing from our experience, this paper argues and gives evidence of the enormous benefits of typical case design in performance, cost, and complexity. We use examples to illustrate that it is possible to design for the typical case without overly hurting the worst case: sizing router buffers for the typical case means orders of magnitude reduction in buffer size, lower network delay and jitter, and a simplified router architecture, all without sacrificing link utilization; a congestion control algorithm designed for the typical case can finish flows several orders of magnitude faster than the existing and the newly proposed algorithms.
Variable metric forward–backward splitting with applications to monotone inclusions in duality

We propose a variable metric forward–backward splitting algorithm and prove its convergence in real Hilbert spaces. We then use this framework to derive primal-dual splitting algorithms for solving various classes of monotone inclusions in duality. Some of these algorithms are new even when specialized to the fixed metric case. Various applications are discussed.
Allopurinol and mortality in hyperuricaemic patients.

OBJECTIVES While studies have suggested that gout and hyperuricaemia are associated with the risk of premature death, none has investigated the role of urate-lowering therapy on this critical outcome. We examined the impact of allopurinol, the most commonly used urate-lowering drug, on the risk of mortality in hyperuricaemic patients. METHODS From a population of hyperuricaemic veterans of [serum urate level >416 micromol/l (7.0 mg/dl)] at least 40 years of age, we compared the risk of death between incident allopurinol users (n = 2483) and non-users (n = 7441). We estimated the multivariate mortality hazard ratio (HR) of allopurinol use with Cox proportional hazards models. RESULTS Of the 9924 veterans (males, 98% and mean age 62.7 years), 1021 died during the follow-up. Patients who began treatment with allopurinol had worse prognostic factors for mortality, including higher BMI and comorbidities. After adjusting for baseline urate levels, allopurinol treatment was associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality (HR 0.78; 95% CI 0.67, 0.91). Further adjustment with other prognostic factors did not appreciably alter this estimate (HR 0.77; 95% CI 0.65, 0.91). The mean change from baseline in serum urate within the allopurinol group was -111 micromol/l (-1.86 mg/dl). Adjusting for baseline urate level, allopurinol users had a 40 micromol/l (0.68 mg/dl) lower follow-up serum urate value than controls (95% CI -0.55, -0.81). CONCLUSION Our findings indicate that allopurinol treatment may provide a survival benefit among patients with hyperuricaemia.
Alter Making Work System Principles Visible in Systems Analysis Making Work System Principles Visible and Usable in Systems Analysis and Design

With the increasing integration between information systems and the work systems they support, methods that focus on computerized aspects of information systems but skim over the work system are increasingly inadequate. To address work system issues, systems analysis and design methods should apply general principles that help in assessing likely positive and negative impacts of conceivable changes in the information system and/or work system. Such principles apply to the operation of systems in organizations, not to processes for analyzing systems. This paper presents a set of work system principles and gives initial examples illustrating how EMBA students have applied those principles within preliminary analyses of real world systems in business organizations. The principles come from a variety of sources including the sociotechnical literature, TQM, and comments about previous sets of principles. Future research will attempt to improve the set of principles through additional literature searches and through feedback from users.
Industrial Policy and Development: A Political Economy Perspective

This paper draws on five arguments to discuss the role of industrial policy in development. First, from a theoretical point of view, there are good grounds to believe that industrial policy can play an important role in promoting development. Second, there are certainly examples where industrial policy has played this role. Third, for every such example, there are others where industrial policy has been a failure and may even have impeded development. Fourth, the difference between these second and third cases resides in the politics of policy. Industrial policy has been successful when the policy makers have either directly wished for industrialization to succeed or have been forced to pursue it through the incentives generated by political institutions or the wider environment. If the aim is to help poor countries industrialize, these arguments imply that we need to stop thinking of industrial policy in normative terms and instead begin to develop a satisfactory positive approach.
Identification of protein complexes algorithm based on random walk model

Advanced technologies are producing large-scale protein-protein interaction data at an ever increasing pace. Finding protein-protein interaction complexes from large PPI networks is a fundamental problem in bioinformatics. In order to solve the set contains false negative and false positive noise data of protein data, we develop the graph model for limitation of structural protein complex. We proposed a RWSPFinder protein complexes identification algorithm based on random walk model, Based on the random walk algorithm to predict protein network that exists on the network of protein interaction data, the false negative or false-positive noise data can be removed. According to the GO ontology for computing semantic similarity between protein complexes, ultimately determine the identification of protein complexes. The algorithm is not sensitive to the input parameters, the experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Color Discrimination in the Tufted Capuchin Monkey, Sapajus spp

The present study evaluated the efficacy of an adapted version of the Mollon-Reffin test for the behavioral investigation of color vision in capuchin monkeys. Ten tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp., formerly referred to as Cebus apella) had their DNA analyzed and were characterized as the following: one trichromat female, seven deuteranope dichromats (six males and one female), and two protanope males, one of which was identified as an “ML protanope. ” For their behavioral characterization, all of the subjects were tested at three regions of the Commission International de l'Eclairage (CIE) 1976 u′v′ diagram, with each test consisting of 20 chromatic variation vectors that were radially distributed around the chromaticity point set as the test background. The phenotypes inferred from the behavioral data were in complete agreement with those predicted from the genetic analysis, with the threshold distribution clearly differentiating between trichromats and dichromats and the estimated confusion lines characteristically converging for deuteranopes and the “classic” protanope. The discrimination pattern of the ML protanope was intermediate between protan and deutan, with confusion lines horizontally oriented and parallel to each other. The observed phenotypic differentiation confirmed the efficacy of the Mollon-Reffin test paradigm as a useful tool for evaluating color discrimination in nonhuman primates. Especially noteworthy was the demonstration of behavioral segregation between the “classic” and “ML” protanopes, suggesting identifiable behavioral consequences of even slight variations in the spectral sensitivity of M/L photopigments in dichromats.
RNA secondary structure prediction by centroids in a Boltzmann weighted ensemble.

Prediction of RNA secondary structure by free energy minimization has been the standard for over two decades. Here we describe a novel method that forsakes this paradigm for predictions based on Boltzmann-weighted structure ensemble. We introduce the notion of a centroid structure as a representative for a set of structures and describe a procedure for its identification. In comparison with the minimum free energy (MFE) structure using diverse types of structural RNAs, the centroid of the ensemble makes 30.0% fewer prediction errors as measured by the positive predictive value (PPV) with marginally improved sensitivity. The Boltzmann ensemble can be separated into a small number (3.2 on average) of clusters. Among the centroids of these clusters, the "best cluster centroid" as determined by comparison to the known structure simultaneously improves PPV by 46.5% and sensitivity by 21.7%. For 58% of the studied sequences for which the MFE structure is outside the cluster containing the best centroid, the improvements by the best centroid are 62.5% for PPV and 31.4% for sensitivity. These results suggest that the energy well containing the MFE structure under the current incomplete energy model is often different from the one for the unavailable complete model that presumably contains the unique native structure. Centroids are available on the Sfold server at http://sfold.wadsworth. org.
A Model for ROI of IT investment in e-Governance projects

In the era of Information Technology enabled society, heavy investment is not an afterthought of government. As there is a demand from both side of the Government System i.e citizen and Government resulted in increase of these projects at a rapid pace. On one hand government is increasing the investment one the other hand time has come to show the return on investment of these projects for which reasons are many. On the other hand available literatures are few and hardly any concrete steps are taken to investigate in to the return on investment of these projects in Indian context. So there is need for investigation in to the issue. In this paper an attempt has been made to consolidate literature available in the above area and will compare and suggest a model for calculation of return on investment.
Extensible Knowledge Representation: the Case of Description Reasoners

This paper offers an approach to extensible knowledge representation and reasoning for the Description Logic family of formalisms. The approach is based on the notion of adding new concept constructors, and includes a heuristic methodology for specifying the desired extensions, as well as a modularized software architecture that supports implementing extensions. The architecture detailed here falls in the normalize-compared paradigm, and supports both intentional reasoning (subsumption) involving concepts, and extensional reasoning involving individuals after incremental updates to the knowledge base. The resulting approach can be used to extend the reasoner with specialized notions that are motivated by specific problems or application areas, such as reasoning about dates, plans, etc. In addition, it provides an opportunity to implement constructors that are not currently yet sufficiently well understood theoretically, but are needed in practice. Also, for constructors that are provably hard to reason with (e.g., ones whose presence would lead to undecidability), it allows the implementation of incomplete reasoners where the incompleteness is tailored to be acceptable for the application at hand.
A Predictive and Synchronized Neighborhood Tracking Scheme for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), nodes mobility causes network topologies to change dynamically over time, which complicates important tasks such as broadcasting and routing. Neighborhood tracking is a task to determine the neighborhood local view of a mobile node in time which can facilitate the forwarding decision in the design of network protocols. In this paper, we propose a predictive synchronization solution to construct the updated and synchronized local view. Based on neighbors' historical information extracted from "Hello" messages, a node can track its time difference with any neighbor. Then the node can predict each neighbor's future location at the same time based on certain mobility prediction model to construct synchronized neighborhood view by collecting predicted locations. Simulation results validate the accuracy of our proposed tracking schemes.
Teaching Robots Generalizable Hierarchical Tasks Through Natural Language Instruction

Natural language provides a convenient means of communicating information, and as such, is an ideal medium for enabling nonexpert users to teach robots novel tasks. However, in order to take advantage of natural language, a series of challenges must first be overcome. These challenges include the need to a) generalize learnt tasks to novel scenarios without retraining, b) resolve problems encountered during task execution, and c) derive implicit information from knowledge about the domain. To solve these challenges, this paper presents a novel approach to learning complex hierarchical tasks through natural language instruction, which not only allows learnt tasks to be generalized to novel situations without the need for retraining, but also enables an agent to derive implicit information from domain knowledge. Additionally, the approach presented in this paper enables the agent to infer task properties, such as preconditions and effects, directly from the explanation of the task flow. The authors validate the approach by demonstrating an implementation of the algorithms both on a simulated agent, as well as a Baxter robot. In each case, the agent is provided with a small set of primitive tasks for manipulating its workspace. From these primitives, the authors demonstrate the ability to teach the agent increasing complex tasks, including tasks of table cleaning, solely through natural language instructions.
Updating in Local Computation

Local computation on covering join trees provides a solution for query answering in several different fields, such as relational databases, belief functions, constraint satisfaction, Gaussian potentials and many more. The algebraic structure behind is a generic framework for information processing known as valuation algebras [5]. In this paper we discuss how new information pieces can be added to the old information, i.e. how to use former computed results to answer the queries in the new situation. A task which will be referred to as updating. The domains of the new information pieces are possibly not covered by any node of the join tree. Since the construction of a new covering join tree may be computationally expensive and makes it harder or even impossible to reuse already available results, we introduce several methods to modify join trees locally. We will see that this enables updating approaches for all well-known architectures for local compuation like Shenoy-Shafer, Lauritzen-Spiegelhalter and HUGIN.
TL-PLSA: Transfer Learning between Domains with Different Classes

A new transfer learning method is presented in this paper, addressing a particularly hard transfer learning problem: the case where the target domain shares only a subset of its classes with the source domain and only unlabeled data are provided for the target domain. This is a situation that occurs frequently in real-world applications, such as the multiclass document classification problems that motivated our work. The proposed approach is a transfer learning variant of the Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) model that we name TL-PLSA. Unlike most approaches in the literature, TL-PLSA captures both the difference of the domains and the commonalities of the class sets, given no labelled data from the target domain. We perform experiments over three different datasets and show the difficulty of the task, as well as the promising results that we obtained with the new method.
Interplay between Ca2+ cycling and mitochondrial permeability transition pores promotes reperfusion-induced injury of cardiac myocytes

Uncontrolled release of Ca2+ from the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) contributes to the reperfusion‐induced cardiomyocyte injury, e.g. hypercontracture and necrosis. To find out the underlying cellular mechanisms of this phenomenon, we investigated whether the opening of mitochondrial permeability transition pores (MPTP), resulting in ATP depletion and reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation, may be involved. For this purpose, isolated cardiac myocytes from adult rats were subjected to simulated ischemia and reperfusion. MPTP opening was detected by calcein release and by monitoring the ΔΨm. Fura‐2 was used to monitor cytosolic [Ca2+]i or mitochondrial calcium [Ca2+]m, after quenching the cytosolic compartment with MnCl2. Mitochondrial ROS [ROS]m production was detected with MitoSOX Red and mag‐fura‐2 was used to monitor Mg2+ concentration, which reflects changes in cellular ATP. Necrosis was determined by propidium iodide staining. Reperfusion led to a calcein release from mitochondria, ΔΨm collapse and disturbance of ATP recovery. Simultaneously, Ca2+ oscillations occurred, [Ca2+]m and [ROS]m increased, cells developed hypercontracture and underwent necrosis. Inhibition of the SR‐driven Ca2+ cycling with thapsigargine or ryanodine prevented mitochondrial dysfunction, ROS formation and MPTP opening. Suppression of the mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake (Ru360) or MPTP (cyclosporine A) significantly attenuated Ca2+ cycling, hypercontracture and necrosis. ROS scavengers (2‐mercaptopropionyl glycine or N‐acetylcysteine) had no effect on these parameters, but reduced [ROS]m. In conclusion, MPTP opening occurs early during reperfusion and is due to the Ca2+ oscillations originating primarily from the SR and supported by MPTP. The interplay between Ca2+ cycling and MPTP promotes the reperfusion‐induced cardiomyocyte hypercontracture and necrosis. Mitochondrial ROS formation is a result rather than a cause of MPTP opening.