Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
UWB at SemEval-2016 Task 7: Novel Method for Automatic Sentiment Intensity Determination

We present a novel method for determining sentiment intensity. The main goal is to assign a phrase a score from 0 to 1 which indicates the strength of its association with positive sentiment. The proposed model uses a rich set of features with Gaussian processes regression model that computes the ﬁ-nal score. The system was evaluated on the data from 7th task of SemEval 2016. Our regression model trained on the development data reached Kendall rank correlation of 0.659 on general English phrases and 0.414 on English Twitter test data.
Comparison of different techniques to measure body composition in moderately active adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the differences in the estimate of body fat percentage (%FM) and the amount (kg) of fat free mass (FFM) by different methods in 26 moderately active adolescents very similar in age, body fatness, and training status. METHODS: Mean (SD) age was 16.7 (0.9) years, height was 177.0 (5.1) cm, and weight 68.0 (5.2) kg. %FM was assessed using dual-energy x ray absorptiometry (DXA) and two skinfold prediction equations: that of Slaughter et al (%FM Sla) and that of Deurenberg et al (%FM Deu). In the same way, FFM was measured using DXA and different impedance equations: those of Suprasongsin et al (FFM Sup), Schaefer et al (FFM Sch), Houtkooper et al (FFM Hou), and Deurenberg et al (FFM Deu). To determine the interchangeability of the different methods of measuring %FM and FFM, one way analysis of variance, standard error (SE), and coefficient of variation (CV%) ((SD/mean) x 100) were used. RESULTS: On average, no significant statistical differences were observed between the values determined for %FM: DXA value, 11.7 (5.4%); %FM Sla, 10.9 (4.0)%; %FM Deu, 11.5 (2.3)%. On the other hand, SE and CV% between each pair of the three methods used showed very large variability. With regard to the measurement or prediction of FFM, the mean value measured by DXA was significantly higher than that predicted by the equation of Sch (+7.2 kg, p < 0.001), Deu (+3.2 kg, p < 0.001), and Hou (+2.6 kg, p < 0.001), whereas it was lower than that predicted by the equation of Sup (-1.6 kg, p < 0.05). The Hou and Deu values were the only two that, on average, did not differ in a statistically significant way, although they showed the highest CV%. CONCLUSIONS: In our sample of moderately active adolescents the estimated values for %FM and FFM appear to be highly dependent on method.
Academic Panel: "Can Self-Managed Systems Be Trusted?"

Trust can be defined as to have confidence or faith in; a form of reliance or certainty based on past experience; to allow without fear; believe; hope: expect and wish; and extend credit to. The issue of trust in computing has always been a hot topic, especially notable with the proliferation of services over the Internet, which has brought the issue of trust and security right into the ordinary home. Autonomic computing brings its own complexity to this. With systems that self-manage, the internal decision making process is less transparent and the ‘intelligence’ possibly evolving and becoming less tractable. Such systems may be used from anything from environment monitoring to looking after Granny in the home and thus the issue of trust is imperative. To this end, we have organised this panel to examine some of the key aspects of trust. The first section discusses the issues of self-management when applied across organizational boundaries. The second section explores predictability in self-managed systems. The third part examines how trust is manifest in electronic service communities. The final discussion demonstrates how trust can be integrated into an autonomic system as the core intelligence with which to base adaptivity choices upon.
The Effects of Collateral on SME Performance in Japan

This paper examines how collateral and personal guarantees affect firms' ex-post performance employing the propensity score matching estimation approach. Based on a unique firm-level panel data set of more than 500 small-and-medium-sized borrower firms in Japan, we find the following. (1) The increase in profitability and reduction in riskiness of borrowers that provide collateral to lenders are more sizeable than of borrowers that do not. (2) On the other hand, the lending attitude and monitoring frequency of borrowers' main bank do not change significantly at the time of collateral being pledged. (3) The increase in profitability of collateralized borrowers is driven by cost reductions rather than by sales growth. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that by providing collateral, borrowers curb their own incentives for moral hazard in order to further enhance their creditworthiness.
Motor unit number index (MUNIX)

The surface-recorded compound muscle action potential (CMAP) and electromyographic (EMG) interference pattern is used to compute the motor unit number index (MUNIX). The MUNIX demonstrated all known changes in the number of motor units in normal subjects, and in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In normal subjects MUNIX decreased slightly with age and showed excellent reproducibility. In many ALS patients MUNIX was reduced even when the CMAP was normal. Lower MUNIX values were seen in weaker muscles. This is a noninvasive method that requires minimal electrical stimulation. It is performed in less than 5 min. This makes it suitable for serial EMG investigations.
Hierarchical memory scheduling for multimedia MPSoCs

Optimizing memory system performance is critical for delivering high system performance for multimedia applications since they are usually memory intensive. As the number of IP cores in a multimedia MPSoC (Multi-Processor System-on-Chip) continues to increase, system performance will be eventually limited by the memory system. In this paper, we tackle the memory performance issue of multimedida MPSoCs through intelligent memory access scheduling. We observe that since memory resources are shared by all processing elements in an MPSoC, interferences among requests from different IP cores cause not only delay in memory accesses but also unfair DRAM accesses among IPs. Traditional memory scheduling policies that only emphasize on maximizing memory system throughput do not take into account these interferences. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a hierarchical memory scheduling policy to minimize interferences among requests. The experimental results show that the proposed scheduling policy improves system throughput by 21% compared to FR-FCFS (first-ready first-come-first-serve) on an MPSoC for mobile phones with QoS guarantee.
An Algebraic Description of Painted Digital Pictures

An algebraic system for binary digital pictures has already been described, along with the definition of the four arithmetic rules. In this paper, an extension of the binary algebraic system to a 2n-valued one is first proposed. It then becomes evident that this extended algebraic system satisfies several properties including those of a ring. An example of a 2n-valued model, an eight-valued algebraic system, is introduced and applied to painted digital pictures. Pictorial operations such as multiple arrangement, enlargement, differentiation, integration, and color changes are then dealt with by the combinations of the four arithmetic rules.
GPA-MDS: A Visualization Approach to Investigate Genetic Architecture among Phenotypes Using GWAS Results

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified tens of thousands of genetic variants associated with hundreds of phenotypes and diseases, which have provided clinical and medical benefits to patients with novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Recently, there has been accumulating evidence suggesting that different complex traits share a common risk basis, namely, pleiotropy. Previously, a statistical method, namely, GPA (Genetic analysis incorporating Pleiotropy and Annotation), was developed to improve identification of risk variants and to investigate pleiotropic structure through a joint analysis of multiple GWAS datasets. While GPA provides a statistically rigorous framework to evaluate pleiotropy between phenotypes, it is still not trivial to investigate genetic relationships among a large number of phenotypes using the GPA framework. In order to address this challenge, in this paper, we propose a novel approach, GPA-MDS, to visualize genetic relationships among phenotypes using the GPA algorithm and multidimensional scaling (MDS). This tool will help researchers to investigate common etiology among diseases, which can potentially lead to development of common treatments across diseases. We evaluate the proposed GPA-MDS framework using a simulation study and apply it to jointly analyze GWAS datasets examining 18 unique phenotypes, which helps reveal the shared genetic architecture of these phenotypes.
Linear Reranking Model for Chinese Pinyin-to-Character Conversion

Pinyin-to-character conversion is an important task for Chinese natural language processing tasks. Previous work mainly focused on n-gram language models and machine learning approaches, or with additional hand-crafted or automatic rule-based post-processing. There are two problems unable to solve for word n-gram language model: out-of-vocabulary word recognition and long-distance grammatical constraints. In this study, we proposed a linear reranking model trying to solve these problems. Our model uses minimum error learning method to combine different sub models, which includes word and character n-gram LMs, part-of-speech tagging model and dependency model. Impact of different sub models on the conversion are fully experimented and analyzed. Results on the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese show that our new model outperforms word n-gram language model.
Bubbles as payo s at in nity

This paper was circulated under the title \Stochastic bubbles in Markov economies. " We acknowledge with gratitude numerous conversations with Mark Fisher, the editorial advice of David Levine and the useful comments of anonymous referees. This paper should not be interpreted as reeecting the views of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or its staa. Bubbles as payoos at innnity Summary. We deene rational bubbles to be securities with payoos occurring in the innnitely distant future and investigate the behavior of bubble values. We extend our analysis to a setting of uncertainty. In an innnite horizon arbitrage-free model of asset prices, we interpret the money market account as the value of a particular bubble; a similar interpretation holds for other assets related to the state-price deeator and to payoos on bonds maturing in the distant future. We present three applications of this characterization of bubbles.
Detection of botnet collusion by degree distribution of domains

Malicious botnets threaten the Internet by DDoS-attacks, spam, information theft and other criminal activities. They are using increasingly sophisticated techniques to hide the Command and Control traffic. Many existing detection techniques can be defeated by encryption, tunneling in popular protocols, delays, and flow perturbation. We introduce a new DNS-based detection approach, that detects botnet collusion by anomalies in the degree distribution of visited domains, without any assumption about message content and statistical properties of the traffic. The proposed technique is difficult to evade, without major changes in the bot Command and Control Infrastructure or reduced utility. We evaluate evasion possibilities, derive a theoretical model of the detector performance and test the detector with a combination of captured Internet traffic and simulated botnet-traffic.
Downlink performance and capacity of distributed antenna systems in a multicell environment

Distributed antenna systems (DAS) have been widely implemented in state-of-the art cellular communication systems to cover dead spots. Recent academic studies have shown that in addition to coverage improvements, DAS can also have potential advantages such as reduced power and increased system capacity in a single cell environment. This paper analytically quantifies downlink capacity of multicell DAS for two different transmission strategies: selection diversity (where just one or two of the distributed antennas are used) and blanket transmission (where all antennas in the cell broadcast data). Simple repeaters are a special case of our analysis. A generalized information theoretic analysis is provided to illuminate the fundamental limits of such systems in the cellular context. The results show that DAS reduces other-cell interference in a multicell environment and hence significantly improves capacity (by about 2x), with particularly large improvements for users near cell boundaries. Less obviously, from a communication theory standpoint, it is shown that selection diversity is preferable to blanket transmission in terms of achievable ergodic capacity. For blanket transmission, we show that the optimal transmission strategy is just phase steering due to the per antenna module power constraints in DAS
Improving restore speed for backup systems that use inline chunk-based deduplication

Slow restoration due to chunk fragmentation is a serious problem facing inline chunk-based data deduplication systems: restore speeds for the most recent backup can drop orders of magnitude over the lifetime of a system. We study three techniques--increasing cache size, container capping, and using a forward assembly area-- for alleviating this problem. Container capping is an ingest-time operation that reduces chunk fragmentation at the cost of forfeiting some deduplication, while using a forward assembly area is a new restore-time caching and prefetching technique that exploits the perfect knowledge of future chunk accesses available when restoring a backup to reduce the amount of RAM required for a given level of caching at restore time. We show that using a larger cache per stream--we see continuing benefits even up to 8 GB--can produce up to a 5-16X improvement, that giving up as little as 8% deduplication with capping can yield a 2-6X improvement, and that using a forward assembly area is strictly superior to LRU, able to yield a 2-4X improvement while holding the RAM budget constant.
International Information and Library Review: A Ten Year Bibliometric Study

The study intends to examine the publication patterns of International Information and Library Review from 2004 to 2013 and to predict the impact and influence of this established journal in the field of library and information science over the last decade. The study finds that International Information and Library Review has published the majority of papers in single authorship mode followed by in two-authorship mode while, contributions in three authorship and more than three-authorship mode are found less. The degree of collaboration in International Information and Library Review publications is found to be 0.45, indicating less intensity of collaborative trend of research. The study reveals that the University of Pittsburgh of the United States is the top performer with 12 authors followed by University of Wisconsin Milwaukee of the United States (10 authors), Universiteit van Pretoria of South Africa and University of the Punjab Lahore of Pakistan (7 authors each). In regard to geographical distribution of contributions, the United States is represented by contributions from 63 authors followed by India with 61 authors. Interestingly, 22 countries like, Argentina, Bhutan, Brazil, Cuba, and others have contributed one paper each. The study further reveals that Britz, J. J. of South Africa is identified as the most prolific author with a significant contribution of five papers followed by Bagheri, M. of Iran, Megnigbeto, E. of Benin, and Tuamsuk, K. of Thailand (four papers each). Moreover, the 2013 impact factor of International Information and Library Review based on records of Scopus citations is 0.588 and immediacy index is 0.09.
The hepatic phosphatidylcholine transporter ABCB4 as modulator of glucose homeostasis

The hepatic phosphatidylcholine (PC) transporter ATP‐binding cassette (ABC) B4 flops PC from hepatocytes into bile, and its dysfunction causes chronic cholestasis and fibrosis. Because a nuclear receptor‐dependent PC pathway has been determined to exert antidiabetic effects, we now analyzed the role of ABCB4 in glucose metabolism. We bred congenic Abcb4‐knockout (Abcb4–/–) mice on the fibrosis‐susceptible BALB/cJ background. Knockout mice and wild‐type controls were phenotyped by measuring plasma glucose concentrations, intraperitoneal glucose tolerance, hepatic RNA expression profiles, and liver histology. In addition, 4 procholestatic ABCB4 gene variants were correlated with blood glucose levels in 682 individuals from 2 independent European cohorts. Systemic glucose levels differ significantly between Abcb4–/– mice and wild‐type controls, and knockout mice display improved glucose tolerance with significantly lower area under the curve values on intraperitoneal glucose challenge. Of note, hepatic expression of the antidiabetic nuclear receptor 5A2 (LRH‐1) is induced consistently in Abcb4–/– mice, and its specific rare PC ligands are detected in liver by mass spectrometry imaging. In humans, serum glucose levels are associated significantly with the common ABCB4 variant c.711A>T. In summary, ABCB4 might play a critical role in glucose homeostasis in mice and humans. We speculate that the effects could be mediated via LRH‐1‐dependent PC pathways. —Hochrath, K. , Krawczyk, M. , Goebel, R. , Langhirt, M. , Rathkolb, B. , Micklich, K. , Rozman, J., Horsch, M. , Beckers, J., Klingenspor, M. , Fuchs, H. , Gailus‐Durner, V. , Wolf, E. , Acalovschi, M. , Volmer, D. A. , Hrabě de Angelis, M. , Lammert, F. The hepatic phosphatidylcholine transporter ABCB4 as modulator of glucose homeostasis. www.fasebj. org FASEB J. 26, 5081–5091 (2012). www.fasebj. org
On overlay multicast tree construction and maintenance

Overlay multicast tree construction and maintenance is a major challenge in designing application layer multicast protocols. In this paper, we focus on improving the joining and maintenance procedures of an overlay multicast tree. Unlike the existing direct-tree protocols, our proposed overlay multicast tree protocol (OMTP) has the following characteristics. First, by leveraging on the IP hierarchical addressing locality, we can speed up the formation of overlay multicast tree and enhance the efficiency of the tree maintenance. Second, we take both bandwidth availability and round-trip-time (RTT) into consideration when a newcomer selects its parent node. Finally, an effective mechanism is designed to disperse the simultaneous rejoin crowds in the tree repair phase. Simulation results show that with our proposed protocol, the join latency can be reduced by as large as 50% as compared with a popular direct-tree protocol HMTP
CEO DUALITY AND FIRM PERFORMANCE IN BRAZIL: EVIDENCE FROM 2008

This research investigates the relationship between CEO duality and the performance of Brazilian firms in 2008. While CEO duality has been the dominant board leadership structure of US corporations, Brazilian firms typically separate the roles of CEO and chairperson. During 2008, some Brazilian firms such as Sadia S/A (a multinational food processing company) adopted a dual leadership structure in an attempt to respond to the global systemic crisis. Using agency and stewardship theory perspectives, we tested our hypotheses with data of Brazilian listed companies. The empirical results indicate that companies where the CEO and chairperson are the same person have significantly higher performance (ROE). We also found a positive association between CEO duality and all other firm performance measures (ROA, ROC, MTBV), although the results were not statistically significant for these.
Angiotensin II Facilitates Breast Cancer Cell Migration and Metastasis

Breast cancer metastasis is a leading cause of death by malignancy in women worldwide. Efforts are being made to further characterize the rate-limiting steps of cancer metastasis, i.e. extravasation of circulating tumor cells and colonization of secondary organs. In this study, we investigated whether angiotensin II, a major vasoactive peptide both produced locally and released in the bloodstream, may trigger activating signals that contribute to cancer cell extravasation and metastasis. We used an experimental in vivo model of cancer metastasis in which bioluminescent breast tumor cells (D3H2LN) were injected intra-cardiacally into nude mice in order to recapitulate the late and essential steps of metastatic dissemination. Real-time intravital imaging studies revealed that angiotensin II accelerates the formation of metastatic foci at secondary sites. Pre-treatment of cancer cells with the peptide increases the number of mice with metastases, as well as the number and size of metastases per mouse. In vitro, angiotensin II contributes to each sequential step of cancer metastasis by promoting cancer cell adhesion to endothelial cells, trans-endothelial migration and tumor cell migration across extracellular matrix. At the molecular level, a total of 102 genes differentially expressed following angiotensin II pre-treatment were identified by comparative DNA microarray. Angiotensin II regulates two groups of connected genes related to its precursor angiotensinogen. Among those, up-regulated MMP2/MMP9 and ICAM1 stand at the crossroad of a network of genes involved in cell adhesion, migration and invasion. Our data suggest that targeting angiotensin II production or action may represent a valuable therapeutic option to prevent metastatic progression of invasive breast tumors.
Activation in Context: Differential Conclusions Drawn from Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analyses of Adolescents’ Cognitive Control-Related Neural Activity

Although immature cognitive control, subserved by late-developing prefrontal regions, has been proposed to underlie increased risk taking during adolescence, it remains unclear what patterns of PFC activation represent mature brain states: more or less activation? One challenge to drawing cogent conclusions from extant work stems from its reliance on single-time point neuroimaging and cross-sectional comparisons, which are ill-suited for assessing the complex changes that characterize adolescence. This necessitates longitudinal fMRI work to track within-subject changes in PFC function and links to risk-taking behavior, which can serve as an external marker for maturation of neural systems involved in cognitive control. In the current study, 20 healthy adolescents (13 males) completed a go/nogo task during two fMRI scans, once at age 14 years and again at age 15 years. We found that the association between cognitive control-related VLPFC activation and risk-taking behavior reversed when examining wave 1 (W1) versus longitudinal change (W2 > W1) and wave 2 (W2) in neural activation, such that increased VLPFC activation at W1 was associated with lower risk taking, whereas longitudinal increases in cognitive control-related VLPFC activation as well as heightened VLPFC activation at W2 were associated with greater risk taking. Several steps were taken to disentangle potential alternative accounts that might explain these disparate results across time. Findings highlight the necessity of considering brain-behavior relationships in the context of ongoing developmental changes and suggests that using neuroimaging data at a single time point to predict behavioral changes can introduce interpretation errors when failing to account for changes in neural trajectories.