Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multilingual Deep Learning

Resource fortunate languages such as English, French, Chinese, etc. clearly overshadow many not-so-fortunate languages in terms of both (i) the number of NLP tools available and (ii) the quality of these tools. One solution to alleviate this problem is to collect more annotated resources for these languages, but this is often not feasible due to the cost, time, and effort involved. A more feasible option is to use cross language learning which aims to use annotated resources available in some resource fortunate language to bring NLP capability to a less fortunate language. In this work, we propose such a cross language learning framework which has its origins in deep learning. The idea is to learn a shared deep representation for two languages (say, L1 and L2) to represent data from the two languages in a common space. Once such a shared representation is learned training data available in L1 can be projected to this space and the resulting representation can be used for training a model. Similarly, test data from L2 can be projected to this space and the resulting representation can be fed to the trained model for inference. We evaluate the proposed framework on two tasks, viz., cross language sentiment analysis and cross language transliteration equivalence. The experimental results show that the performance of the proposed framework is comparable to state-of-the-art approaches for these tasks.
Offshoring and manufacturing wages in sub-Saharan African countries

Anhand von UNIDO Africa Investor Survey 2010 - Daten ueber die verarbeitende Industrie in 20 Subsahara-afrikanischen Laendern wird der Effekt des Imports intermediaerer Gueter und Exports von Fertigguetern auf die Loehne von ProduktionsarbeiterInnen, Loehne von technischen, administrativen und leitenden Angestellten sowie auf relative Loehne auf Firmenebene mittels OLS und Quantilregression untersucht. Die Ergebnisse weisen auf eine deutlich positive Beziehung zwischen Handel und Loehnen von ProduktionsarbeiterInnen, Loehnen von Angestellten und relativen Loehnen hin. Die geschaetzten Effekte von Importen koennen zum groesten Teil durch Produktivitaetsunterschiede erklaert werden, waehrend die fuer Exporte gefundenen Effekte mit Firmengroese und Produktivitaet in Relation stehen. Beide Effekte unterscheiden sich stark ueber die Quantile der Lohnverteilung hinweg. Mit Hilfe von Zerlegungen wird getestet, ob ein moeglicher Skill Bias im Handel zu unterschiedlichen Lohnsetzungsfunktionen fuer handel- bzw. nicht handeltreibende Firmen fuehrt. Die empirischen Befunde deuten stark auf Unterschiede zugunsten von Angestellten in handeltreibenden Firmen hin. Die Analyse gibt jedoch keinen genauen Aufschluss darueber, ob Handel Loehne beeinflusst oder ob die Gruende, aus denen Firmen hoehere Loehne zahlen, ebenso dazu fuehren, dass Firmen mit hoeheren Lohnniveaus eher Handel treiben.
Sociodemographic, home environment and parental influences on total and device-specific screen viewing in children aged 2 years and below: an observational study

Objective This study aimed to investigate total and device-specific screen viewing (SV) and its determinants in children aged 2 years and below. Design Cross-sectional study conducted in February 2014. Setting Well-child clinics in Singapore national polyclinics. Participants Parents of children (Singapore citizens or permanent residents) aged 2 years and below were enrolled during routine clinic visits. Out of 794 eligible parent–child dyads, 725 (91.3%) provided informed consent and were included in the analysis. Main outcome measures Device-specific information on SV and determinants was ascertained using interviewer-administered survey questionnaires. The prevalence and duration of aggregate and device-specific SV were reported. Associations with potential determinants were investigated using multiple logistic regression analysis. A p value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results The prevalence of daily SV and SV ≥2 h/day constituted 53.5% and 16.3%, respectively. The majority of children aged 18–24 months (88.2%) engaged in daily SV. TVs and mobile devices were the most commonly used screen devices, followed by computers and video consoles. In multivariable analysis, younger child age, Chinese ethnicity and setting rules on time of SV were strongly and consistently associated with lower levels of any SV and SV ≥2 h/day. Parental knowledge of SV recommendations and less parental SV were additionally associated with lower levels of SV ≥2 h/day. The number of screen devices was not associated with children's SV. Conclusions In contrast to recommendations, SV prevalence in children aged less than 2 years is high and appears to increase steadily across age groups. TVs and mobile devices are most frequently used. Improving parental knowledge of SV recommendations, reducing parental SV and especially the implementation of strict rules on SV time could be successful strategies to reduce SV in young children.
Antimicrobial Metabolites from the Endophytic Fungus Pichia guilliermondii Isolated from Paris polyphylla var. yunnanensis

Three steroids and one nordammarane triterpenoid were isolated for the first time from the endophytic fungus Pichia guilliermondii Ppf9 derived from the medicinal plant Paris polyphylla var. yunnanensis. By means of physicochemical and spectrometric analysis, they were identified as ergosta-5,7,22-trienol (1), 5α,8α-epidioxyergosta-6,22-dien-3β-ol (2), ergosta-7,22-dien-3β,5α,6β-triol (3), and helvolic acid (4). Both micro-dilution-colorimetric and spore germination assays were employed to evaluate their antimicrobial activity. Among them, helvolic acid (4) exhibited the strongest antibacterial activity against all test bacteria, with MIC values ranging from 1.56 µg/mL to 50 µg/mL, and IC50 values from 0.98 µg/mL to 33.19 µg/mL. It also showed strong inhibitory activity on the spore germination of Magnaporthe oryzae with an IC50 value of 7.20 µg/mL. Among the three steroids, 5α,8α-epidioxyergosta-6,22-dien-3β-ol (2) exhibited relatively strong antimicrobial activity. The results suggest that the endophytic fungus Pichia guillermondii Ppf9 could be a candidate for producing helvolic acid, and the metabolites from this fungus could be potentially developed as antimicrobial agents in the future.
Algorithms for o -line clock synchronisation

O -line clock synchronisation algorithms, in which synchronisation is performed by adjusting a collection of recorded timestamps, is suitable for use with many monitors for distributed systems. O -line synchronisation can often achieve very good synchronisation without the need for extra messages. The work described here builds on earlier work in this area [4] by introducing new synchronisation algorithms, developing ways of evaluating algorithms, and performing an extensive set of experiments based on ve di erent algorithms and a considerable amount of data collected by a monitor for Amoeba. The best algorithms achieve excellent synchronisation, and are used in the Amoeba monitor.
An open-label trial of rituximab therapy in pulmonary alveolar proteinosis

Rituximab, a monoclonal antibody directed against the B-lymphocyte antigen CD20, has shown promise in several autoimmune disorders. Pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) is an autoimmune disorder characterised by autoantibodies to granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF). An open-label, proof-of-concept phase II clinical trial was conducted in 10 PAP patients. The intervention consisted of two intravenous infusions of rituximab (1,000 mg) 15 days apart. Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid and peripheral blood samples were collected. The primary outcome was improvement in arterial blood oxygenation. Both arterial oxygen tension and alveolar–arterial oxygen tension difference in room air improved in seven out of the nine patients completing the study. Lung function and high-resolution computed tomography scans, which were secondary outcomes, also improved. Peripheral blood CD19+ B-lymphocytes decreased from mean±sem 15±2% to <0.05% (n=10) 15 days post-therapy. This decrease persisted for 3 months in all patients; at 6 months, CD19+ B-cells were detected in four out of seven patients (5±2%). Total anti-GM-CSF immunoglobulin (Ig)G levels from baseline to 6 months were decreased in BAL fluids (n=8) but unchanged in sera (n=9). In this PAP cohort: 1) rituximab was well-tolerated and effectively ameliorated lung disease; and 2) reduction in anti-GM-CSF IgG levels in the lung correlated with disease changes, suggesting that disease pathogenesis is related to autoantibody levels in the target organ.
Lodged in the throat: internal infinities and AdS/CFT

In the context of AdS3/CFT2, we address spacetimes with a certain sort of internal infinity as typified by the extreme BTZ black hole. The internal infinity is a null circle lying at the end of the black hole's infinite throat. We argue that such spacetimes may be described by a product CFT of the form CFTL⊗CFTR, where CFTR is associated with the asymptotically AdS boundary while CFTL is associated with the null circle. Our particular calculations analyze the CFT dual of the extreme BTZ black hole in a linear toy model of AdS3/CFT2. Since the BTZ black hole is a quotient of AdS3, the dual CFT state is a corresponding quotient of the CFT vacuum state. This state turns out to live in the aforementioned product CFT. We discuss this result in the context of general issues of AdS/CFT duality and entanglement entropy.
Repetitive Hole‐Mask Colloidal Lithography for the Fabrication of Large‐Area Low‐Cost Plasmonic Multishape Single‐Layer Metasurfaces

A novel fabrication method, multiple repetitions of hole‐mask colloidal nanolithography, is introduced to create single‐layer metasurfaces with complex, multishape plasmonic nanostructures that exhibit desired optical functionalities. Large‐area and low‐cost fabrication of different samples with independently tunable resonances are demonstrated. These single‐layer metasurfaces may find applications as multiline surface‐enhanced infrared absorption and broadband substrates. This fabrication method is particularly suited for the creation of large‐area, single‐layer C3‐rotationally symmetric, 3D chiral metasurfaces, and this approach circumvents common problems with elliptical birefringence and can be utilized for interaction with chiral substances.
A Continuous Injection Plasma Model for the X-Ray/Radio Knots in Kiloparsec-Scale Jets of Active Galactic Nuclei

We consider the evolution of a spherically expanding plasma cloud, where there is a continuous injection of nonthermal electrons. We compute the time-dependent electron distribution and resultant photon spectra taking into account synchrotron, adiabatic, and inverse Compton cooling. This model is different from previous works where, instead of a continuous injection of particles, a short injection period was assumed. We apply this model to the radio/optical knots in the large-scale jets of active galactic nuclei, detected in X-rays by Chandra, and find that the overall broadband spectral features can be reproduced. It is shown that for some sources, constraints on the X-ray spectral index (by a longer Chandra observation) will be able to differentiate between the different models. This in turn will put a strong constraint on the acceleration mechanism active in these sources.
1 CSCR 004 : First Year Report

The aim of my PhD research is focused on Text Mining (TM), one major school in Knowledge Discovery in Data (KDD), and in particular the classification / categorization of documents utilizing novel algorithms for the identification of hidden patterns, rules, regularities and trends within these documents. Two significant techniques of Data Mining (DM), another well-known KDD school, are involved to support this research, especially when dealing with very large document-bases: Association Rule Mining (ARM) and Classification Rule Mining (CRM). In order to employ DM techniques in Text Classification (TC), applying a combination of various Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques in the stage of Text Pre-processing (TPP) is considered necessary. In this report, I would like to clearly state the area of my PhD research, describe in details about the work that I have completed so far, and the items of work that I am going to pursue during the forthcoming year. This report will also include a timetabled plan for completion of my PhD thesis, and a list of my academic activities during the first year of my PhD studies.
COMPARISON OF MAPMAKING METHODS FOR MOBILE ROBOTS

The problem of creating the map of an unknown environment by mobile robot control system is considered using range readings obtained by ultrasonic range finder. A grid-based representation of a robot working space is chosen. The goal is the determination of occupied and empty areas in the working environment, which is not a simple problem due the uncertainty introduced by the sensory system. Three different algorithms for map generation based on probability theory, the Dempster– Shafer theory of evidence and fuzzy set theory are compared. Experimental examples of occupancy grids, built from real data recorded in an office-like environment, are presented. K e y w o r d s: ultrasonic sensor, occupancy grid
Non Linear Image Restoration in Spatial Domain

In the present work, a novel image restoration method from noisy data samples is presented. The restoration was performed by using some heuristic approach utilizing data samples and smoothness criteria in spatial domain. Unlike most existing techniques, this approach does not require prior modelling of either the image or noise statistics. The proposed method works in an interactive mode to find the best compromise between the data (mean square error) and the smoothing criteria. The method has been compared with the shrinkage approach, Wiener filter and Non Local Means algorithm as well. Experimental results showed that the proposed method gives better signal to noise ratio as compared to the previously proposed denoising solutions. Furthermore, in addition to the white Gaussian noise, the effectiveness of the proposed technique has also been proved in the presence of multiplicative noise.
Soluble IL6R represents a miR-34a target: potential implications for the recently identified IL-6R/STAT3/miR-34a feed-back loop

We previously reported that IL-6R, STAT3 and miR-34a form a positive feedback-loop, which promotes epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), invasion, and metastasis of colorectal cancer (CRC) [1]. In that study only the membrane-bound form of the IL-6R was shown to be repressed by miR-34a. Here, we show that also the mRNA encoding the soluble IL6R (s-IL-6R) is directly targeted and repressed by miR-34a. Accordingly, the concentration of s-IL6R protein was decreased in conditioned media of CRC cell lines ectopically expressing miR-34a. The s-IL-6R mediates IL-6 trans-signaling, which also affects cells that do not express the IL-6R. Since IL-6 trans-signaling is involved in numerous inflammatory disease states these findings may be relevant for future therapeutic approaches.
MESHMd1- a middleware for self-organization in ad hoc networks

The maturing domain of ad hoc networking still holds some major challenges on its way to commercial exploitation. The dynamic and decentralized nature of ad hoc networks calls for new paradigms in the design of distributed applications. Most notably, there is a need for self-organization mechanisms in the middleware layer to enable medium-scale and large-scale distributed applications. In this paper we present NESHMd1, a middleware platform for ad hoc networks that is built on mobile agents and tuple space technology. MESHMd1 provides basic building blocks for the implementation of self-organizing distributed applications for ad hoc networks. Unlike other middleware platforms, MESHMd1 puts a high emphasis on mobility awareness, decoupling and bio-inspired coordination primitives. We discuss the aspects of ad hoc networking and self-organization and derive the basic architecture of MESHMd1 before we present our prototype implementation.
Conformational dynamics of nonsynonymous variants at protein interfaces reveals disease association

Recent studies have shown that the protein interface sites between individual monomeric units in biological assemblies are enriched in disease‐associated non‐synonymous single nucleotide variants (nsSNVs). To elucidate the mechanistic underpinning of this observation, we investigated the conformational dynamic properties of protein interface sites through a site‐specific structural dynamic flexibility metric (dfi) for 333 multimeric protein assemblies. dfi measures the dynamic resilience of a single residue to perturbations that occurred in the rest of the protein structure and identifies sites contributing the most to functionally critical dynamics. Analysis of dfi profiles of over a thousand positions harboring variation revealed that amino acid residues at interfaces have lower average dfi (31%) than those present at non‐interfaces (50%), which means that protein interfaces have less dynamic flexibility. Interestingly, interface sites with disease‐associated nsSNVs have significantly lower average dfi (23%) as compared to those of neutral nsSNVs (42%), which directly relates structural dynamics to functional importance. We found that less conserved interface positions show much lower dfi for disease nsSNVs as compared to neutral nsSNVs. In this case, dfi is better as compared to the accessible surface area metric, which is based on the static protein structure. Overall, our proteome‐wide conformational dynamic analysis indicates that certain interface sites play a critical role in functionally related dynamics (i.e., those with low dfi values), therefore mutations at those sites are more likely to be associated with disease. Proteins 2015; 83:428–435. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Contributions of the high-RMS-level segments to the intelligibility of mandarin sentences

Recent evidence suggests that segments carrying more spectral changes [e.g., consonant-vowel boundaries in the middle root-mean-square (RMS) level segments] are important to predict the intelligibility of English sentences. Nevertheless, considering the difference between Mandarin and English languages, it is hypothesized that the high-RMS-level segments might provide more perceptual information to the intelligibility of Mandarin speech. Two studies were conducted in this paper to assess the relative contributions of the high-RMS-level segments to the intelligibility of Mandarin sentences, i.e., speech perception and intelligibility prediction. Results show that 1) Mandarin sentences containing the high-RMS-level (i.e., above the overall RMS level of the whole utterance) segments are more intelligible (i.e., recognition rate up to 91%) than those with the middle-RMS-level segments; and 2) the high-RMS-level segments, which carry more vowel and tonal information, contribute more in predicting the intelligibility of Mandarin sentences in noise.
On Convergence Analysis of Iterative Smoothing Methods for a Class of Nonsmooth Convex Minimization Problems

We consider the problem of minimizing a convex objective which is the sum of a smooth part and a non-smooth part. Inspired by various application, we focus on the case when the non-smooth part is a max function. In this paper, we consider to solve such problems using iterative smoothing-gradient methods. We conduct run-time complexity and convergence analysis of smoothing algorithms.
Semi-Supervised Semantic Tagging of Conversational Understanding using Markov Topic Regression

Finding concepts in natural language utterances is a challenging task, especially given the scarcity of labeled data for learning semantic ambiguity. Furthermore, data mismatch issues, which arise when the expected test (target) data does not exactly match the training data, aggravate this scarcity problem. To deal with these issues, we describe an efficient semisupervised learning (SSL) approach which has two components: (i) Markov Topic Regression is a new probabilistic model to cluster words into semantic tags (concepts). It can efficiently handle semantic ambiguity by extending standard topic models with two new features. First, it encodes word n-gram features from labeled source and unlabeled target data. Second, by going beyond a bag-of-words approach, it takes into account the inherent sequential nature of utterances to learn semantic classes based on context. (ii) Retrospective Learner is a new learning technique that adapts to the unlabeled target data. Our new SSL approach improves semantic tagging performance by 3% absolute over the baseline models, and also compares favorably on semi-supervised syntactic tagging.
Comment Psychosine , Cytokinesis , and Orphan Receptors : Unexpected Connections

One of the most exciting aspects of modern cell biology is the potential to make connections between disparate areas of research, and thus open up new lines of enquiry. Two recent papers have done just this (Kanazawa et al., 2000; Im et al., 2001, this issue). Building on the biochemical defect in an inherited metabolic disease (Suzuki, 1998), these papers reveal an unexpected connection between lipid mediators , G protein–coupled receptor (GPCR) 1 signaling, and cytokinesis mechanism. Globoid cell leukodystrophy (GLD), or Krabbe's disease , is a severe, inherited, metabolic disorder in which normal myelin formation is blocked, and multinucleate " globoid cells " accumulate in the brain. The primary defect is an absence of the lipid-degrading enzyme galactoce-ramidase, which cleaves the galactose headgroup from ga-lactoceramide (Fig. 1). Galactoceramidase-deficient mice and dogs provide models for human GLD (Suzuki, 1998). Unlike some other lipidoses, the primary substrate of the missing enzyme, galactoceramide, does not accumulate. Instead, a related lipid metabolite, psychosine (Fig. 1), accumulates in the brain (Svennerholm et al., 1980). Suzuki (1998) hypothesized that psychosine is normally broken down by galactoceramidase, and that in its absence psy-chosine accumulates, causing death of oligodendrocytes. These are the cells that normally synthesize galactocer-amide during myelination, so their death would account for the absence of galactoceramide buildup, and also GLD pathology. This " psychosine hypothesis " has stood the test of time, though the mechanism by which psychosine might mediate toxic effects was unknown. The multinucleate globoid cells in GLD are thought to derive from microglia and macrophages (Kanazawa et al., 2000), but the reason they accumulate was unknown. To test the hypothesis that accumulated psychosine might trigger formation of multinucleate globoid cells, Kanazawa et al. (2000) treated several cell lines with psy-chosine at concentrations relevant to GLD. They found that a premonocyte-like cell line, U937, responded by becoming multinucleate over a few days. Cytochemistry and time-lapse imaging of dividing cells showed that psycho-sine did not induce cell fusion; rather, it blocked cytokine-sis, uncoupling mitosis from cell division. This discovery is the first reported inhibition of cytokinesis by a physiologically occurring small molecule, and a large step forward in understanding the pathogenesis of GLD. However, it was not clear how the target of psychosine might be discovered. Psychosine is a lysolipid, with detergent-like properties , so its target might in principle be some aspect of membrane biophysics rather than a specific protein. While hunting …