Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fuzzy RBF neural network control for networked control systems based on modified Smith predictor

Network delay highly degrades the control performance of networked control systems (NCS). Aiming to random and uncertain network delay, time-variant or nonlinear controlled plant and imprecise Smith predictor models, a novel approach is proposed that modified Smith predictor combined with fuzzy radial basis function neural network (FRBFNN). This approach can identify the controlled plant on-line, timely adjusts the weights of the adaptive controller. Because modified Smith predictor does not include network delays, therefore, it is no need for measuring, identifying or estimating network delays on-line. It is applicable to some occasions that network delays are larger than one, even tens of sampling periods. Based on CSMA/CD (Ethernet) and CSMA/AMP (CAN Bus), the simulation results show that modified Smith dynamic predictor combined with FRBFNN is effective.
The Abiotic Internet: Internet Mediation Through Organizational Practice at Na-Me-Res

ing the risks and vulnerabilities facing Aboriginal men in Toronto illuminates a matrix of social, economic and cultural characteristics that can lead one into, compound, and ultimately 51 reify homelessness as a normalized living experience. Aboriginal men face a multiplicity of interrelated risk factors that include a lack of transportation, substance and alcohol abuse, mental health issues, and barriers to employment and education. If homelessness is not prevented, the absence of secure and stable housing has been shown to compound and exasperate these risk factors (Skye, 2013). Once an individual is homeless, the stigmatization of “being homeless” can negatively mediate encounters with public and private service providers, while exposure to violence and abuse in and out of shelters becomes increasingly likely. As feelings of hopelessness develop, a sense of powerlessness in one’s ability to extricate themselves also begins to emerge. Antipathy towards the homeless, reflected through contacts with healthcare providers, education providers, police, courts, and the general public itself, has an anchoring effect on the homeless which can reify negative self characterizations, and further obviate feelings of self empowerment. 4.1. 3 Aboriginal Social Services in Toronto – A Needs Based Ecosystem While homeless Aboriginal men are not precluded from accessing non-Aboriginal focused social services, the living experience of being a homeless Aboriginal man in Toronto constitutes a unique intersection between the general stigmatization accompanying homelessness, and the systemic racism faced by Aboriginal peoples in general. The conflation of these institutional biases plays a key role in preventing Aboriginal men from seeking out support from nonAboriginal service providers and, in the case of institutional care, exposes them to an increased risk of violence, abuse and self harm (Chartrand & Mckay, 2006; Patrick, 2014). The risk factors that inform poverty and homelessness within urban Aboriginal communities are neither discrete, nor reconcilable by any single outreach agency. The increasing numbers of Aboriginal peoples residing in Toronto throughout the 1980’s, accompanied by a greater understanding of the
Detecting irony and sarcasm in microblogs: The role of expressive signals and ensemble classifiers

The automatic detection of sarcasm and irony in user generated contents is one of the most challenging task of Natural Language Processing. In this paper we address this problem by introducing Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA), an ensemble approach to take into account several classifiers according to their reliabilities and their marginal probability predictions. The impact of the most used expressive signals (pragmatic particles and POS tags) have been evaluated in baseline models (traditional classifiers and majority voting) as well as in the proposed BMA approach. Experimental results highlight two main findings: (1) not all the features are equally able to characterize sarcasm and irony and (2) BMA not only outperforms traditional state of the art models, but is also able to ensure notable generalization capabilities both on ironic and sarcastic text.
Analysis of a novel highly metastatic melanoma cell line identifies osteopontin as a new lymphangiogenic factor

Tumor cell invasion and metastasis are hallmarks of malignancy. Despite recent advances in the understanding of lymphatic spread, the mechanisms by which tumors metastasize to sentinel/distant lymph nodes and beyond are poorly understood. To gain new insights into this complex process, we established highly metastatic melanoma cell lines by in vivo passaging the B16 parental cell line through the lymphatic system. In this study we characterized morphology, rate of cell proliferation, colony formation, migration, tumorigenicity, lymph flow, and capacities to induce tumor- and sentinel lymph node-lymphangiogenesis. Furthermore, microarray-based comparative analysis between parental and passaged cell lines was performed to identify specific gene expression profiles. The most differentially expressed gene was SPP (osteopontin), a secreted glycophosphoprotein which is known to be involved in cancer metastasis. Overexpression of osteopontin in B16 F1-variant was confirmed by western blot analysis and quantitative RT-PCR. Treatment of cultured lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) with osteopontin promoted cell migration mediated by the integrin α9 pathway. Our results identify osteopontin as a novel lymphangiogenic factor.
Estimation of Missing Facial Views

We describe a method for estimating new facial views from a single 2D face image. A model has been generated which incorporates two facial views, a frontal view and a 30 degree rotated view. Appearance models for each view of shape and texture have been combined using further principal components analysis to form a multiple view model. Presented with a novel face image in a frontal view, we can then use the multiple view model to generate an estimate of the same face as seen from a different viewpoint. The method is general and could also be applied to any object class in which the texture and shape of the constituent objects exhibits significant correlation.
Quantifying Cancer Absolute Risk and Cancer Mortality in the Presence of Competing Events after a Myotonic Dystrophy Diagnosis

Recent studies show that patients with myotonic dystrophy (DM) have an increased risk of specific malignancies, but estimates of absolute cancer risk accounting for competing events are lacking. Using the Swedish Patient Registry, we identified 1,081 patients with an inpatient and/or outpatient diagnosis of DM between 1987 and 2007. Date and cause of death and date of cancer diagnosis were extracted from the Swedish Cause of Death and Cancer Registries. We calculated non-parametric estimates of absolute cancer risk and cancer mortality accounting for the high non-cancer competing mortality associated with DM. Absolute cancer risk after DM diagnosis was 1.6% (95% CI=0.4-4%), 5% (95% CI=3-9%) and 9% (95% CI=6-13%) at ages 40, 50 and 60 years, respectively. Females had a higher absolute risk of all cancers combined than males: 9% (95% CI=4-14), and 13% (95% CI=9-20) vs. 2% (95%CI= 0.7-6) and 4% (95%CI=2-8) by ages 50 and 60 years, respectively) and developed cancer at younger ages (median age =51 years, range=22-74 vs. 57, range=43-84, respectively, p=0.02). Cancer deaths accounted for 10% of all deaths, with an absolute cancer mortality risk of 2% (95%CI=1-4.5%), 4% (95%CI=2-6%), and 6% (95%CI=4-9%) by ages 50, 60, and 70 years, respectively. No gender difference in cancer-specific mortality was observed (p=0.6). In conclusion, cancer significantly contributes to morbidity and mortality in DM patients, even after accounting for high competing DM mortality from non-neoplastic causes. It is important to apply population-appropriate, validated cancer screening strategies in DM patients.
Occlusion handling using discriminative model of trained part templates and conditional random field

Occlusion handling is crucial for developing ADAS in urban environment. Deformable Part Models (DPM) have already demonstrated state of art results in object detection. However, they fail to handle the occlusion due to inaccurate scores for part detectors when some object parts are occluded and not visible. To handle the imperfectness of part detectors in occlusion, we propose a two layers classifier using DPM and conditional random field (CRF). We use parts contextual information and their spatial configuration from DPM to train and optimize CRF parameters. Occlusion states are defined based on visibility of parts and considered as latent variables in CRF. To learn CRF parameters, stochastic gradient descent with belief propagation is used to optimize CRF objective function for latent variables. Experimental results on recorded data in real urban environment and PASCAL VOC dataset prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach to handle difficult occlusion situations.
Estimating Machine Translation Post-Editing Effort with HTER

Although Machine Translation (MT) has been attracting more and more attention from the translation industry, the quality of current MT systems still requires humans to post-edit translations to ensure their quality. The time necessary to post-edit bad quality translations can be the same or even longer than that of translating without an MT system. It is well known, however, that the quality of an MT system is generally not homogeneous across all translated segments. In order to make MT more useful to the translation industry, it is therefore crucial to have a mechanism to judge MT quality at the segment level to prevent bad quality translations from being post-edited within the translation workflow. We describe an approach to estimate translation post-editing effort at sentence level in terms of Human-targeted Translation Edit Rate (HTER) based on a number of features reflecting the difficulty of translating the source sentence and discrepancies between the source and translation sentences. HTER is a simple metric and obtaining HTER annotated data can be made part of the translation workflow. We show that this approach is more reliable at filtering out bad translations than other simple criteria commonly used in the translation industry, such as sentence length.
Adducin forms a bridge between the erythrocyte membrane and its cytoskeleton and regulates membrane cohesion.

The erythrocyte membrane skeleton is the best understood cytoskeleton. Because its protein components have homologs in virtually all other cells, the membrane serves as a fundamental model of biologic membranes. Modern textbooks portray the membrane as a 2-dimensional spectrin-based membrane skeleton attached to a lipid bilayer through 2 linkages: band 3-ankyrin-beta-spectrin and glycophorin C-protein 4.1-beta-spectrin. (1-7) Although evidence supports an essential role for the first bridge in regulating membrane cohesion, rupture of the glycophorin C-protein 4.1 interaction has little effect on membrane stability. (8) We demonstrate the existence of a novel band 3-adducin-spectrin bridge that connects the spectrin/actin/protein 4.1 junctional complex to the bilayer. As rupture of this bridge leads to spontaneous membrane fragmentation, we conclude that the band 3-adducin-spectrin bridge is important to membrane stability. The required relocation of part of the band 3 population to the spectrin/actin junctional complex and its formation of a new bridge with adducin necessitates a significant revision of accepted models of the erythrocyte membrane.
Hubble Space Telescope imaging of the CFRS and LDSS redshift surveys—IV. Influence of mergers in the evolution of faint field galaxies from z∼1

ABSTRA C T Hubble Space Telescope images of a sample of 285 galaxies with measured redshifts from the Canada‐France Redshift Survey (CFRS) and Autofib‐Low Dispersion Spectrograph Survey (LDSS) redshift surveys are analysed to derive the evolution of the merger fraction out to redshifts z , 1. We have performed visual and machine-based merger identifications, as well as counts of bright pairs of galaxies with magnitude differences dm # 1:5 mag. We find that the pair fraction increases with redshift, with up to ,20 per cent of the galaxies being in physical pairs at z , 0:75‐1. We derive a merger fraction varying with redshift as /O1a zU 3:2^0:6 , after correction for line-of-sight contamination, in excellent agreement with the merger fraction derived from the visual classification of mergers for which ma 3:4 ^ 0:6. After correcting for seeing effects on the ground-based selection of survey galaxies, we conclude that the pair fraction evolves as/O1a zU 2:7^0:6 . This implies that an average L* galaxy will have undergone 0.8‐1.8 merger events from za 1t oza 0, with 0.5 to 1.2 merger events occuring in a 2-Gyr time-span at around z , 0:9. This result is consistent with predictions from semi-analytical models of galaxy formation. From the simple coaddition of the observed luminosities of the galaxies in pairs, physical mergers are computed to lead to a brightening of 0.5 mag for each pair on average, and a boost in star formation rate of a factor of 2, as derived from the average [O ii] equivalent widths. Mergers of galaxies are therefore contributing significantly to the evolution of both the luminosity function and luminosity density of the Universe out to z , 1.
Genetic Correction of Stem Cells in the Treatment of Inherited Diseases and Focus on Xeroderma Pigmentosum

Somatic stem cells ensure tissue renewal along life and healing of injuries. Their safe isolation, genetic manipulation ex vivo and reinfusion in patients suffering from life threatening immune deficiencies (for example, severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID)) have demonstrated the efficacy of ex vivo gene therapy. Similarly, adult epidermal stem cells have the capacity to renew epidermis, the fully differentiated, protective envelope of our body. Stable skin replacement of severely burned patients have proven life saving. Xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) is a devastating disease due to severe defects in the repair of mutagenic DNA lesions introduced upon exposure to solar radiations. Most patients die from the consequences of budding hundreds of skin cancers in the absence of photoprotection. We have developed a safe procedure of genetic correction of epidermal stem cells isolated from XP patients. Preclinical and safety assessments indicate successful correction of XP epidermal stem cells in the long term and their capacity to regenerate a normal skin with full capacities of DNA repair.
Strategic Alliances: Trading Ownership for Capabilities

type="main"> Increases in alliance activity between research-intensive firms and incumbents is puzzling because it is challenging to contract upon highly uncertain R&D activities. Our paper extends prior research by exploring the relationship between firm capabilities and gains from trading ownership rights. This link is important because the allocation of ownership rights has been shown to influence alliance outcomes. Using data based on a survey of biotechnology firms, we find that both current and future capabilities provide strong explanatory power for understanding firm valuation of ownership rights. These ownership rights are ultimately allocated across firms in order to maximize their gains from trade.
CoDEN : A Hardware / Software CoDesign Emulation Platform for SSD-Accelerated Near Data Processing

For the past few decades, solid state disks (SSDs) significantly revamped their internal system architecture by employing more compute resources, multiple data channels, and tens or hundreds of non-volatile memory (NVM) packages. These ample internal resources in turn enable modern SSDs to accelerate near data processing. While the prior simulation-based work uncovered potential benefits of offloading the computation from a host to the SSDs, their analytical models make several assumptions that ignore not only detailed system parameters ranging from different micro-architectures through varying number of cores to deep memory hierarchy, but also a wide spectrum of device parameters such as emerging NVM technologies in SSDs. In this work, we propose a novel hardware/software co-design emulation platform, which not only offers flexible/scalable design space that can employ a broad range of SSD controller and firmware policies, but also capture the details of entire software/hardware stacks for SSD-accelerated near data processing. Our comprehensive evaluation results show that the near-data processing bandwidth of twenty different kernel functions we implemented can be as high as 2 GB/sec.
The Effectiveness of Psychosocial Interventions for Reducing Psychological Harm in Children and Adolescents who have Experienced Trauma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The Effectiveness of Psychosocial Interventions for Reducing Psychological Harm in Children and Adolescents who have Experienced Trauma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Tiffany Sagle Advisor: University of Guelph 2013 Dr. Michèle Preyde Traumatic experiences can have a profound and lasting impact on the mental health of children and adolescents. In this meta-analysis, psychosocial interventions for children and adolescents who have been exposed to traumatic experiences were systematically reviewed. Twelve main intervention components were identified. Of the main intervention components, cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) was the most common and the most effective at reducing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) /Post-traumatic Stress Symptoms (PTSS) in children and adolescents. These findings on the effectiveness of CBT add to the findings of previous reviews on intervention effectiveness on alleviating trauma symptoms in children and adolescents. Components of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Exposure Therapy, Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), MeditationRelaxation Therapy, Family-Focused Therapy, Psychological Debriefing, Resiliency-Focused Therapy, Sensory Therapy, Psychoeducational Therapy, Time-Limited Dynamic Therapy (TLDP-A), and general unspecific counselling were used in the various treatments. Taking into account methodological quality, there was evidence for effectiveness for school-based and sexual trauma-based interventions in alleviating trauma symptoms. More research is needed to understand the effect of methodological quality on effect sizes based on intervention type. The implications for researchers and clinicians are discussed.
CREB Protein Expressed Differently in the Frontal Cortices of Datura stramonium Treated Rats: Implication for Addiction and Neurodegeneration

Background: cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) is one of the cellular transcription factors found in neurons. CREB is also important for the survival of neurons, and has an important role in the development of drug addiction. Datura stramonium (DS) is a tropical ubiquitous plant commonly used to increase the intoxication of certain beverages for recreational purposes. The seeds of this plant are very toxic and may produce addiction on prolong usage. This research investigated the effects of administration of high doses of DS seeds on the expression of CREB protein in both male and female rats’ frontal cortices and its implication in addiction and neurodegeneration. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted with a total of 24 male and female Wistar rats weighing 200 g - 250 g. The rats were divided into three groups of 8 rats each. Each group was further divided into four sub-groups of 2 rats each. Ethanolic dried seed extract of DS was diluted in normal saline and administered intraperitoneally (i.p.) to the treatment groups. The treated sub-groups received 750 mg/kg of DS extract once in group 1, twice in group 2 and thrice in group 3 daily for 4 weeks respectively, while the control sub-groups received i.p. normal saline concurrently for the same duration of time. The rats were euthanized and an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was computed to detect a significant main difference of DS effect on CREB expression for each group, while post hoc Bonferroni Test compared CREB protein expression between male and female groups. Result: There were significant differences in the expression of CREB protein between the sub-groups and between the male and female rats of treated sub-group (p DS administration for a prolong time may affect the expressions of CREB protein differently in male and female treated rats which may consequently lead to addiction and neurodegeneration affecting frontal cortex neurons.
Chromosomes with Two Intact Axial Cores Are Induced by G2 Checkpoint Override: Evidence That DNA Decatenation Is not Required to Template the Chromosome Structure

Here we report that DNA decatenation is not a physical requirement for the formation of mammalian chromosomes containing a two-armed chromosome scaffold. 2-aminopurine override of G2 arrest imposed by VM-26 or ICRF-193, which inhibit topoisomerase II (topo II)–dependent DNA decatenation, results in the activation of p34cdc2 kinase and entry into mitosis. After override of a VM-26–dependent checkpoint, morphologically normal compact chromosomes form with paired axial cores containing topo II and ScII. Despite its capacity to form chromosomes of normal appearance, the chromatin remains covalently complexed with topo II at continuous levels during G2 arrest with VM-26. Override of an ICRF-193 block, which inhibits topo II–dependent decatenation at an earlier step than VM-26, also generates chromosomes with two distinct, but elongated, parallel arms containing topo II and ScII. These data demonstrate that DNA decatenation is required to pass a G2 checkpoint, but not to restructure chromatin for chromosome formation. We propose that the chromosome core structure is templated during interphase, before DNA decatenation, and that condensation of the two-armed chromosome scaffold can therefore occur independently of the formation of two intact and separate DNA helices.
A Framework for Sustainable Implementation of E-Medicine in Transitioning Countries

Organizations in developed countries such as the United States of America and Canada face difficulties and challenges in technology transfer from one organization to another; the complexity of problems easily compounds when such transfers are attempted from developed to developing countries due to differing socioeconomic and cultural environments. There is a gap in the formation of research and education programs to address technology transfer issues that go beyond just transferring the technologies to sustaining such transfers for longer periods. This study examined telemedicine transfer challenges in three Sub-Sahara African countries and developed a framework for sustainable implementation of e-medicine. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. The study findings indicate that e-medicine sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa is affected by institutional factors such as institutional environment and knowledge management practices; technical factors such as the technological environment and technology transfer project environment; social environmental factors such as social environment and donor involvement. These factors were used to model the proposed framework.