Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A method based on rules and machine learning for logic form identification in Spanish†

Abstract Logic Forms (LF) are simple, first-order logic knowledge representations of natural language sentences. Each noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjunction generates a predicate. LF systems usually identify the syntactic function by means of syntactic rules but this approach is difficult to apply to languages with a high syntax flexibility and ambiguity, for example, Spanish. In this study, we present a mixed method for the derivation of the LF of sentences in Spanish that allows the combination of hard-coded rules and a classifier inspired on semantic role labeling. Thus, the main novelty of our proposal is the way the classifier is applied to generate the predicates of the verbs, while rules are used to translate the rest of the predicates, which are more straightforward and unambiguous than the verbal ones. The proposed mixed system uses a supervised classifier to integrate syntactic and semantic information in order to help overcome the inherent ambiguity of Spanish syntax. This task is accomplished in a similar way to the semantic role labeling task. We use properties extracted from the AnCora-ES corpus in order to train a classifier. A rule-based system is used in order to obtain the LF from the rest of the phrase. The rules are obtained by exploring the syntactic tree of the phrase and encoding the syntactic production rules. The LF algorithm has been evaluated by using shallow parsing with some straightforward Spanish phrases. The verb argument labeling task achieves 84% precision and the proposed mixed LFi method surpasses 11% a system based only on rules.
Contribution of dihydrocodeine and dihydromorphine to analgesia following dihydrocodeine administration in man: a PK-PD modelling analysis.

AIMS It is not clear whether the analgesic effect following dihydrocodeine (DHC) administration is due to either DHC itself or its metabolite, dihydromorphine (DHM). We examined the relative contribution of DHC and DHM to analgesia following DHC administration in a group of healthy volunteers using a PK-PD link modelling approach. METHODS A single oral dose of DHC (90 mg) was administered to 10 healthy volunteers in a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. A computerized cold pressor test (CPT) was used to measure analgesia. On each study day, the volunteers performed the CPT before study medication and at 1.25, 2.75, 4.25 and 5.75 h postdose. Blood samples were taken at 0.25 h (predose) and then at half hourly intervals for 5.75 h postdose. PK-PD link modelling was used to describe the relationships between DHC, DHM and analgesic effect. RESULTS Mean pain AUCs following DHC administration were significantly different to those following placebo administration (P = 0.001). Mean pain AUC changes were 91 score x s(-1) for DHC and -17 score x s(-1) for placebo (95% CI = +/- 36.5 for both treatments). The assumption of a simple linear relationship between DHC concentration and effect provided a significantly better fit than the model containing DHM as the active moiety (AIC = 4.431 vs 4.668, respectively). The more complex models did not improve the likelihood of model fits significantly. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that the analgesic effect following DHC ingestion is mainly attributed to the parent drug rather than its DHM metabolite. It can thus be inferred that polymorphic differences in DHC metabolism to DHM have little or no effect on the analgesic affect.
Daily variations in 2-[125I]melatonin specific binding in the golden hamster retina

Daily variations in melatonin content and 2-[125I]melatonin specific binding in retinas of golden hamsters were studied. Both parameters showed significant variations throughout the 24 h period. Maximal specific binding was observed at 24.00 h, while melatonin content peaked at 04.00 h. Saturation studies performed at 12.00 and 24.00 h indicated that the maximal concentration of 2-[125I]melatonin binding sites (Bmax) was significantly higher at 24.00 h than at 12.00 h, whereas the dissociation constant (Kd) remained unchanged. As 2-[125I]melatonin specific binding decreased at times when retinal melatonin content was high, these findings suggest that daily variations in retinal melatonin levels may be implicated in the regulation of the density of melatonin binding sites, probably through mechanisms of up- and down-regulation induced by melatonin on its own binding sites.
High expression of stem cell marker ALDH1 is associated with reduced BRCA1 in invasive breast carcinomas.

BACKGROUND Cancer stem cells (CSC) have been described in a variety of malignancies, including breast carcinomas. Among several markers, aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1) has been identified as reliable for breast cancer stem cells. Knockdown of BRCA1 in primary breast epithelial cells leads to an increase in cells expressing ALDH1. METHODS We examined 127 breast carcinomas for expression of ALDH1, using immunohistochemistry and correlated with clinicopathological parameters as well as the BRAC1 status. RESULTS Comparing the results for both ALDH1 and BRCA1 expression showed a significant inverse association between the two, indicating that reduced BRCA1 was more often seen in breast cancer cells expressing ALDH1 (p-value = 0.044). A total of 24/110 (22%) of tumours displayed the ALDH1 + / BRCA1 -/low phenotype, which showed a trend for a relation with a high grade (p-value= 0.056). Cytoplasmic expression of ALDH1 was not correlated with tumour characteristics. CONCLUSION Taken together, our findings suggest that increased ALDH1 is inversely correlated with decreased BRCA1 in a series of unselected breast carcinomas. Therefore, ALDH1 positive (cancer stem) cells with reduced BRCA1 phenotype may indicate a subset of patients for whom specific targeting of the CSC marker ALDH1 and more aggressive adjuvant treatment is appropriate.
The war on meaninglessness: A counter-terrorist self through an absent terrorist other

This contribution shall focus on post-9/11 port security, its policing actors and how their occupational, counter-terrorist identity is (re)established. The empirical context of this study is that of operational port police officers and security officers who construct port security in the ports of Rotterdam and Hamburg. Drawing from a multi-sited, ethnographic fieldwork study, specific attention is paid to how operational staff, employed in a highly securitized realm saturated with War on Terror governance, (re)establish their occupational identity through the terrorist other without having ever been confronted, face-to-face, with terrorism. Instead of fighting in a global War on Terror, and given the way they construe their identity through the terrorist other, they endure an everyday War on Meaninglessness.
Automatic gain control for parametric array loudspeakers

Parametric array loudspeaker (PAL) modulates the audio input on an ultrasonic carrier and relies on airborne nonlinear acoustic effects to generate the audible sound output. The sound output is mainly confined in the beam of the ultrasonic carrier and thus shows a pronounced directivity. There are three parameters that together influence the output volume of a PAL. They are the input level, modulation index, and ultrasound level. In existing PALs, the volume knob is associated with the ultrasound level, while the modulation index is either fixed in the circuit or rarely adjustable by another knob. In this paper, an automatic gain control is proposed to improve the sound quality of the PAL by minimizing the modulation index, maintaining the output-to-input ratio, and ensuring the ultrasound level within the safety range. Simulation and measurement results validate that the proposed approach leads to a reduction in the average total harmonic distortion (THD) level by more than one third for all the tested modulation methods.
Fashion Consumers’ Purchase Decision-Making Styles Related to the Enneagram Core Values and Self-Construal Levels

This study investigated a conceptual framework of fashion consumers` purchase decision-making styles related to behavioral typology of personality. In response to critiques on fragmented and varied use of personality measurements, this study selectively tested and verified an alternative typological model of Enneagram value systems and self-construal levels that could explain the fashion consumers` typological propensities in purchase decision-making. One hundred-item measurement scale for the fashion consumers` purchase decision-making styles was developed based on the extensive literature. Three groups of fashion major students, a total of 107 participants, who respectively participated in 2-hour-long Enneagrams seminars from spring 2013 to fall 2014, were asked to re-sentence the question items to clearly reflect their Enneagram personality to make purchase decisions. Participants described their propensities in their own words about the most comfortable state during the 5-step processes of the purchase decision making process. The revised scale was distributed to 423 participants in January 2016, and the results verified the group differences in various styles in the process of purchase decision-making corresponding to the typological variables discussed in Enneagram. The correlation between Enneagram core values embodied by fashion consumers during the stages of purchase decision-making in extensive levels of self-construal were verified in the context of their fashion decision making. This study found the possibility of the typological approach toward Enneagram types of personality to be applicable to explain and predict peculiar facets of fashion consumers` purchase decision-making styles.
Non-Gaussian component analysis using Density Gradient Covariance matrix

High dimensional data are often modeled by signal plus noise where the signal belongs to a low dimensional manifold contaminated with high dimensional noise. Estimating the signal subspace when the noise is Gaussian and the signal is non-Gaussian is the main focus of this paper. We assume that the Gaussian noise variance can be high, so standard denoising approaches like Principal Component Analysis fail. The approach also differs from standard Independent Component Analysis in that no independent signal factors are assumed. This model is called non-Gaussian subspace/component analysis (NGCA). The previous approaches proposed for this subspace analysis use the fourth cumulant matrix or the Hessian of the logarithm of characteristic functions, which both have some practical and theoretical issues. We propose to use sample Density Gradient Covariances, which are similar to the Fisher information matrix for estimating the non-Gaussian subspace. Here, we use nonparametric kernel density estimator to estimate the gradients of density functions. Moreover, we extend the notion of non-Gaussian subspace analysis to a supervised version where the label or response information is present. For the supervised non-Gaussian subspace analysis, we propose to use conditional density gradient covariances which are computed by conditioning on the discretized response variable. A non-asymptotic analysis of density gradient covariance is also provided which relates the error of estimating the population DGC matrix using sample DGC to the number of dimensions and the number of samples.
Wanna improve process mining results?

The growing interest in process mining is fueled by the increasing availability of event data. Process mining techniques use event logs to automatically discover process models, check conformance, identify bottlenecks and deviations, suggest improvements, and predict processing times. Lion's share of process mining research has been devoted to analysis techniques. However, the proper handling of problems and challenges arising in analyzing event logs used as input is critical for the success of any process mining effort. In this paper, we identify four categories of process characteristics issues that may manifest in an event log (e.g. process problems related to event granularity and case heterogeneity) and 27 classes of event log quality issues (e.g., problems related to timestamps in event logs, imprecise activity names, and missing events). The systematic identification and analysis of these issues calls for a consolidated effort from the process mining community. Five real-life event logs are analyzed to illustrate the omnipresence of process and event log issues. We hope that these findings will encourage systematic logging approaches (to prevent event log issues), repair techniques (to alleviate event log issues) and analysis techniques (to deal with the manifestation of process characteristics in event logs).
Calcium Intake and Body Composition in African-American Children and Adolescents at Risk for Overweight and Obesity

This study examined the role of calcium intake on body composition in 186 African-American adolescents at risk for overweight and obesity. The average weight of 89.8 kg ± 23.6 (SD) had a mean BMI z score of 2.2. Females with a calcium intake of <314 mg/day had higher percent fat mass compared to those with the highest calcium intakes that were ≥634 mg/day. Compared to those with a low calcium intake (<365 mg/day), those with the highest calcium intake of >701 mg/day had higher intake of thiamin, folate, cobalamin, vitamin D, phosphorus, iron, zinc.
Sexual and individual foraging segregation in Gentoo penguins Pygoscelis papua from the Southern Ocean during an abnormal winter

Knowledge about sexual segregation and gender-specific, or indeed individual specialization, in marine organisms has improved considerably in the past decade. In this context, we tested the “Intersexual Competition Hypothesis” for penguins by investigating the feeding ecology of Gentoo penguins during their austral winter non-breeding season. We considered this during unusual environmental conditions (i.e. the year 2009 had observations of high sea surface and air temperatures) in comparison with the long term average at Bird Island, South Georgia. Through conventional (i.e. stomach contents) and stable isotopic values from red blood cells, plasma and feathers of both male and female Gentoo penguins, we showed that there were significant differences between sexes, with males feeding mainly on fish (54% by mass) followed by crustaceans (38%) whereas females fed mainly on crustaceans (89% by mass) followed by fish (4%). Themisto gaudichaudii was the most important crustacean prey for males (64% by mass; 82% by number; 53% by frequency of occurrence) and females (63% by mass; 77% by number; 89% by frequency of occurrence), contrasting with all previous studies that found Antarctic krill Euphausia superba were generally the main prey. Stable isotopic data showed that, in terms of habitat use (based on δ 13C), there were significant differences in short-term carbon signatures between males and females (based on plasma and red blood cells), suggesting that both sexes explored different habitats, with females exploring more offshore pelagic waters and males feeding more in coastal benthic waters. Based on δ 15N, males fed on significantly higher trophic level than females (based on plasma and red blood cells), in agreement with our diet results. , Thus, Gentoo penguins behave in a similar manner to other non-breeding penguins species (e.g. king, macaroni and rockhopper penguins), albeit at a smaller spatial scale (as they do not disperse as these other penguins do), in that they have a wider habitat and trophic niche during the Antarctic Winter (in comparison to Summer). We also detected individual specialization in feeding/trophic levels for each gender, with certain males feeding mainly on fish and certain females mainly on crustaceans, which may be driven the prevailing environmental conditions that lead individuals to search for alternative prey, and cause sexual diet segregation. Our results provide further information to help improve understanding about sexual segregation and individual specialization of marine organisms, while contributing valuable information on the winter diet for Antarctic monitoring programs and for modelling Antarctic marine food webs.
Complete mitochondrial genome reveals the phylogenetic relationship of sable Martes zibellina linkouensis

abstract Over-hunting of the sable (Martes zibellina) in China since the 1950s has resulted in a dramatic decline of sable population size; and owing to effective conservation measures in recent years, sable populations in some areas are going through a rapid recovery. We first determined and annotated the whole mtDNA genome of the Lesser Khingan Mountains sable M. zibellina linkouensis to better understand the evolutionary relationship of this subspecies. The complete mitogenome is 16 460 bp in length, including 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and 1 control region. We built the phylogenetic tree of three sable subspecies in Northeast China and other 10 species of Mustelinae.
Spatio-temporal Human-Object Interactions for Action Recognition in Videos

We introduce a new method for representing the dynamics of human-object interactions in videos. Previous algorithms tend to focus on modeling the spatial relationships between objects and actors, but ignore the evolving nature of this relationship through time. Our algorithm captures the dynamic nature of human-object interactions by modeling how these patterns evolve with respect to time. Our experiments show that encoding such temporal evolution is crucial for correctly discriminating human actions that involve similar objects and spatial human-object relationships, but only differ on the temporal aspect of the interaction, e.g. answer phone and dial phone We validate our approach on two human activity datasets and show performance improvements over competing state-of-the-art representations.
Power processing circuits for vibration-based energy harvesters

In this paper the behavior of a piezo-electric vibration-driven energy harvester is assessed with different power processing circuits. Firstly, a general model for vibration-driven harvesters is described. Using this model, an optimal linear resistive load for the harvester can be analytically calculated. As the vibration-based harvester provides varying AC power, while electronic loads need a stable DC power supply, it is useful to analyze the harvester behavior when connected to a non-linear AC-DC rectifier. Using the same general model, an optimal DC voltage load can be calculated for every frequency. The difference between the optimal output power flow from the harvester to both load circuits depends on the coupling coefficient of the harvester device. To validate previous conclusions, two power processing circuits are designed and built, the first emulating a resistive input impedance and the second with a constant input voltage. A piezo-electric bimorph is taken as energy harvesting device. A buck-boost DC-DC converter without input filter capacitor, operating in discontinuous conduction mode, is shown to have a resistive input impedance. A buck converter with input filter capacitor is used to evaluate the rectifier load-case. Simulations and experimental validation show that the efficiency of the overall system, harvester device with power processing circuit, increases if the power processing circuit has a fixed DC-voltage as input.
Enhancing Performance of NoC-Based Architectures Using Heuristic Virtual-Channel Sharing Approach

This paper presents a novel virtual-channel (VC) sharing technique for NoC architecture. The proposed architecture improves the utilization of resources to enhance the performance with minimal overheads. A heuristic approach towards the proper VC sharing strategy is proposed, which is performed by an adaptive algorithm that configures the VC sharing based on link load parameters. Architectural design to realize the adaptive VC sharing in generic router is elaborated. The technique can be applied to any NoC architecture, including 3-D NoCs. Extensive quantitative experiments with synthetic and real benchmarks, including an integrated video conference application, demonstrate considerable improvement in area and power efficiency compared to existing VC-based 2D/3D NoC architectures.
Chaotic population dynamics and the evolution of ageing

Problem: Genetic and demographic studies suggest that ageing is an adaptive genetic program, but population genetic analysis indicates that the benefit of ageing to the group is too slow and too diffuse to offset its individual cost. Premise: Demographic homeostasis is a major target of natural selection at the group level, with a strength that can compete with the imperative to higher individual reproductive value. Hypothesis: Ageing has evolved based on its contribution to stabilizing population dynamics, helping prevent population growth overshoot, exhaustion of ecological resources, and local extinction. Model: Asexual individuals carrying a mutable ageing gene are tracked on a geographic grid with slow migration between neighbouring sites. Birth rate is constant; death probability for individuals is the sum of two terms: (1) a logistic crowding term proportional to the local site population and (2) a Gompertz ageing term, in which mortality increases exponentially with age at a rate that is governed by the individual’s gene. The logistic crowding term is computed with a time delay that simulates the momentum of population growth, and causes solutions to undergo chaotic population fluctuations if net growth rates are excessive. Results: Within each site, individual selection pushes life spans progressively longer. Once life spans have increased at a site, its population may fluctuate to extinction. Shorter-lived individuals re-seed it from neighbouring sites. The result is a dynamic steady state in which ageing is selected without pleiotropy.
Retinal vein occlusion, homocysteine, and methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase genotype.

PURPOSE The aim of this case-control study was to investigate the relationship between homocysteine (tHcy), 5,10 methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) C677T genotype, folate and vitamin B12 status, and retinal vein occlusion (RVO). METHODS Subjects with RVO (n = 106) were recruited from outpatient and inpatient sources. Controls (n = 98) were selected to achieve a similar age and sex distribution. Full ocular examination was performed and medical history was taken for each study participant. Plasma and serum samples were analyzed for tHcy level and folate and vitamin B12 status, and extracted DNA was assessed for the MTHFR C677T genotype. RESULTS There was no significant difference in plasma tHcy level or thermolabile MTHFR allele frequency between subjects and controls. Similarly, there was no significant difference in folate or vitamin B12 status between subjects and controls. MTHFR genotype did not affect folate or vitamin B12 concentrations in subjects or controls. However, tHcy was significantly higher in thermolabile homozygotes than in nonthermolabile homozygotes (ratio of geometric means, 1.35; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04-1.74; P = 0.024). CONCLUSIONS Hyperhomocysteinemia, the MTHFR C677T mutation, and folate and vitamin B12 status are not important risk factors for RVO in this population.