Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hypergraph-Partitioning-Based Decomposition for Parallel Sparse-Matrix Vector Multiplication

In this work, we show that the standard graph-partitioning-based decomposition of sparse matrices does not reflect the actual communication volume requirement for parallel matrix-vector multiplication. We propose two computational hypergraph models which avoid this crucial deficiency of the graph model. The proposed models reduce the decomposition problem to the well-known hypergraph partitioning problem. The recently proposed successful multilevel framework is exploited to develop a multilevel hypergraph partitioning tool PaToH for the experimental verification of our proposed hypergraph models. Experimental results on a wide range of realistic sparse test matrices confirm the validity of the proposed hypergraph models. In the decomposition of the test matrices, the hypergraph models using PaToH and hMeTiS result in up to 63 percent less communication volume (30 to 38 percent less on the average) than the graph model using MeTiS, while PaToH is only 1.3-2.3 times slower than MeTiS on the average.
Can distributional approaches improve on Good Old-Fashioned Lexical Semantics?

In this position paper, I discuss some linguistic problems that computational work on lexical semantics has attempted to address in the past and the implications for alternative models which incorporate distributional information. I concentrate in particular on phenomena involving count/mass distinctions, where older approaches attempted to use lexical semantics in their models of syntax. I outline methods by which the earlier models allowed the transmission of information between lexical items (regular polysemy and inheritance) and address the possibility that similar techniques could usefully be incorporated into distributional models.
Attentional Phenotypes for the Analysis of Higher Mental Function

We outline a strategy to relate normal cognitive processes to candidate genes. First, brain imaging is used to specify a cognitive process “attention” in terms of the neural networks involved. Next, evidence is presented showing that the operation of each network involves a dominant neuromodulator. Then we discuss development of a task designed to measure the efficiency of each network in normal individuals and consider evidence on the independence, reliability, and heritability of the networks. DNA from cheek swabs of subjects who performed the task are then used to examine candidate polymorphisms in genes related to the transmitters. We then examine the ability of these candidate alleles to predict the efficiency of relevant networks. This process has demonstrated that candidate genes are related to specific networks of attention to a greater degree than to overall performance as measured by reaction time and accuracy. These findings require replication and possible extension to other cognitive processes.
Well-Being and Institutional Care in Older Adults: Cross-Sectional and Time Effects of Provided and Received Support

Background The aim of the study was to examine the cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of provided and received support on older adults’ subjective well-being (positive affect and depression) and to examine whether being a recipient of institutional care moderates these effects. Methods Social support (provided and received), positive affect, and depressive symptoms were assessed twice (at baseline and 1 month later) for 277 older adults (age 77.39 ± 9.20 years, 67.50% women, 65% residents of an institutional care facility). Findings Two structural equation models were analyzed: cross-sectional (at baseline) and longitudinal (after 1 month). The first model revealed a significant positive relationship between providing and receiving support and positive affect, and a negative relationship between receiving support and depression. However, being a recipient of institutional care appeared to be a significant moderator in the longitudinal model. Specifically, the findings indicated effects of both providing and receiving support on positive affect but only for noninstitutionalized older adults. Discussion Although both types of support may be beneficial for older adults, their effects depend on the nature of social exchange and the dimensions of well-being. This suggests that such factors should be systematically investigated in future research.
Thermal degradation and biodegradability of poly (lactic acid)/corn starch biocomposites

Thermal degradation and biodegradability of poly (lactic acid) (PLA) and poly (lactic acid)/corn starch (PLA/CS) composites with and without lysine diisocyanate (LDI) were evaluated by thermogravimetric analysis measurement and enzymatic degradation using Proteinase K and burial tests, respectively. Thermal stability was decreased by addition of CS and the composites with LDI showed higher thermal degradation temperature than those without LDI. In enzymatic biodegradation, the weight remaining of all samples decreased almost linearly with time. The addition of CS resulted in a faster rate of degradation and the composites with LDI were more difficult to degrade than those without it. In the composite without LDI, the degradation was faster at the interface between PLA and CS, showing deep and wide clearance, but degradation starting at the interface was not clearly observed in the composite with LDI. There was no considerable difference in molecular weight and distribution of the samples after enzymatic degradation. The lactic acid content of the water-soluble product obtained after enzymatic degradation increased with degradation time. In burial tests, pure PLA was little degraded but the composites gradually degraded. The degradation of the composite without LDI was faster than that of the composite with LDI. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 100: 3009–3017, 2006
Spatio-Temporal Learning With the Online Finite and Infinite Echo-State Gaussian Processes

Successful biological systems adapt to change. In this paper, we are principally concerned with adaptive systems that operate in environments where data arrives sequentially and is multivariate in nature, for example, sensory streams in robotic systems. We contribute two reservoir inspired methods: 1) the online echostate Gaussian process (OESGP) and 2) its infinite variant, the online infinite echostate Gaussian process (OIESGP) Both algorithms are iterative fixed-budget methods that learn from noisy time series. In particular, the OESGP combines the echo-state network with Bayesian online learning for Gaussian processes. Extending this to infinite reservoirs yields the OIESGP, which uses a novel recursive kernel with automatic relevance determination that enables spatial and temporal feature weighting. When fused with stochastic natural gradient descent, the kernel hyperparameters are iteratively adapted to better model the target system. Furthermore, insights into the underlying system can be gleamed from inspection of the resulting hyperparameters. Experiments on noisy benchmark problems (one-step prediction and system identification) demonstrate that our methods yield high accuracies relative to state-of-the-art methods, and standard kernels with sliding windows, particularly on problems with irrelevant dimensions. In addition, we describe two case studies in robotic learning-by-demonstration involving the Nao humanoid robot and the Assistive Robot Transport for Youngsters (ARTY) smart wheelchair.
Vesicular Glutamate Transporter VGLUT2 Expression Levels Control Quantal Size and Neuropathic Pain

Uptake of l-glutamate into synaptic vesicles is mediated by vesicular glutamate transporters (VGLUTs). Three transporters (VGLUT1–VGLUT3) are expressed in the mammalian CNS, with partial overlapping expression patterns, and VGLUT2 is the most abundantly expressed paralog in the thalamus, midbrain, and brainstem. Previous studies have shown that VGLUT1 is necessary for glutamatergic transmission in the hippocampus, but the role of VGLUT2 in excitatory transmission is unexplored in glutamatergic neurons and in vivo. We examined the electrophysiological and behavioral consequences of loss of either one or both alleles of VGLUT2. We show that targeted deletion of VGLUT2 in mice causes perinatal lethality and a 95% reduction in evoked glutamatergic responses in thalamic neurons, although hippocampal synapses function normally. Behavioral analysis of heterozygous VGLUT2 mice showed unchanged motor function, learning and memory, acute nociception, and inflammatory pain, but acquisition of neuropathic pain, maintenance of conditioned taste aversion, and defensive marble burying were all impaired. Reduction or loss of VGLUT2 in heterozygous and homozygous VGLUT2 knock-outs led to a graded reduction in the amplitude of the postsynaptic response to single-vesicle fusion in thalamic neurons, indicating that the vesicular VGLUT content is critically important for quantal size and demonstrating that VGLUT2-mediated reduction of excitatory drive affects specific forms of sensory processing.
[Surgical management of chronic refractory pain after TVT treatment for stress urinary incontinence].

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the results of surgical treatment of iatrogenic pelviperineal pain following TVT treatment for stress urinary incontinence (SUI). MATERIAL AND METHODS Eight patients developed chronic pain after TVT that was refractory to symptomatic medical treatment. Pain was characterized by clinical interview and clinical examination and an aetiological assessment demonstrated the role of TVT in pathogenesis of the pain. TVT was removed by open surgery or by laparoscopy. Pain and continence were evaluated postoperatively. RESULTS TVT was completely (n = 3) or partially (n = 5) removed. With a mean follow-up of 31 months, no patient has experienced pain recurrence. Five patients have remained continent and 3 patients were treated for recurrent urinary incontinence. CONCLUSION Although medical treatment may be disappointing, surgical resection provides good results on refractory pain, but preservation of continence is inconstant.
MicroRNA 17-92 Cluster Mediates ETS1 and ETS2-Dependent RAS-Oncogenic Transformation

The ETS-family transcription factors Ets1 and Ets2 are evolutionarily conserved effectors of the RAS/ERK signaling pathway, but their function in Ras cellular transformation and biology remains unclear. Taking advantage of Ets1 and Ets2 mouse models to generate Ets1/Ets2 double knockout mouse embryonic fibroblasts, we demonstrate that deletion of both Ets1 and Ets2 was necessary to inhibit HrasG12V induced transformation both in vitro and in vivo. HrasG12V expression in mouse embryonic fibroblasts increased ETS1 and ETS2 expression and binding to cis-regulatory elements on the c-Myc proximal promoter, and consequently induced a robust increase in MYC expression. The expression of the oncogenic microRNA 17-92 cluster was increased in HrasG12V transformed cells, but was significantly reduced when ETS1 and ETS2 were absent. MYC and ETS1 or ETS2 collaborated to increase expression of the oncogenic microRNA 17-92 cluster in HrasG12V transformed cells. Enforced expression of exogenous MYC or microRNA 17-92 rescued HrasG12V transformation in Ets1/Ets2-null cells, revealing a direct function for MYC and microRNA 17-92 in ETS1/ETS2-dependent HrasG12V transformation.
Approximate Hamming Distance in a Stream

We consider the problem of computing a (1+epsilon)-approximation of the Hamming distance between a pattern of length n and successive substrings of a stream. We first look at the one-way randomised communication complexity of this problem. We show the following: - If Alice and Bob both share the pattern and Alice has the first half of the stream and Bob the second half, then there is an O(epsilon^{-4}*log^2(n)) bit randomised one-way communication protocol. - If Alice has the pattern, Bob the first half of the stream and Charlie the second half, then there is an O(epsilon^{-2}*sqrt(n)*log(n)) bit randomised one-way communication protocol. We then go on to develop small space streaming algorithms for (1 + epsilon)-approximate Hamming distance which give worst case running time guarantees per arriving symbol. - For binary input alphabets there is an O(epsilon^{-3}*sqrt(n)*log^2(n)) space and O(epsilon^{-2}*log(n)) time streaming (1 + epsilon)-approximate Hamming distance algorithm. - For general input alphabets there is an O(epsilon^{-5}*sqrt(n)*log^4(n)) space and O(epsilon^{-4}*log^3(n)) time streaming (1 + epsilon)-approximate Hamming distance algorithm.
Techno‐economic evaluation of a two‐step biological process for hydrogen production

An integrated biological process for the production of hydrogen based on thermophilic and photo‐heterotrophic fermentation was evaluated from a technical and economic standpoint. Besides the two fermentation steps the process also includes pretreatment of the raw material (potato steam peels) and purification of hydrogen using amine absorption. The study aimed neither at determining the absolute cost of biohydrogen nor at an economic optimization of the production process, but rather at studying the effects of different parameters on the production costs of biohydrogen as a guideline for future improvements. The effect of the key parameters, hydrogen productivity and yield and substrate concentration in the two fermentations on the cost of the hydrogen produced was studied. The selection of the process conditions was based mainly on laboratory data. The process was simulated by use of the software Aspen Plus and the capital costs were estimated using the program Aspen Icarus Process Evaluator. The study shows that the photo‐fermentation is the main contributor to the hydrogen production cost mainly because of the cost of plastic tubing, for the photo‐fermentors, which represents 40.5% of the hydrogen production cost. The costs of the capital investment and chemicals were also notable contributors to the hydrogen production cost. Major economic improvements could be achieved by increasing the productivity of the two fermentation steps on a medium‐term to long‐term scale. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog. , 2010
Very low bit-rate video coding using an extended arbitrary-shaped pattern selection algorithm

Very low bit-rate video coding using patterns to represent moving regions in macroblocks exhibits good potential for improved coding efficiency. Recently an Arbitrary Shaped Pattern Selection (ASPS) algorithm was presented, that used a dynamically extracted set of same sized patterns, which were based on actual video content. This algorithm however, like other pattern matching algorithms failed to capture a large number of active-region macroblocks (RMB) that cover partial moving objects in a video sequence. As the size of the moving object may vary, superior coding performance is achievable by using dynamically extracted patterns of a different size instead of a fixed size. This paper, proposes an Extended Arbitrary Shaped Pattern Selection (EASPS) algorithm that uses two different user-selected pattern sizes for very low bit rate coding. Experimental results show that EASPS exhibits significant improved performance compared with other pattern matching algorithms, including the low-bit rate video coding standard H.263.
Using network theory to identify disease outbreaks of unknown etiology

The identification of undiagnosed disease outbreaks is critical for mobilizing efforts to prevent widespread transmission of novel virulent pathogens. Recent developments in online surveillance systems allow for the rapid communication of the earliest reports of emerging infectious diseases and tracking of their spread. The efficacy of these programs, however, is inhibited by the anecdotal nature of informal reporting and uncertainty of pathogen identity in the early stages of emergence. We developed theory to connect disease outbreaks of known etiology in a network using an array of properties including symptoms, seasonality and case-fatality ratio. We tested the method with 125 reports of outbreaks of ten known infectious diseases causing encephalitis in South Asia, and showed that different diseases frequently form distinct clusters within the networks and the approach can correctly identify unknown disease outbreaks with an average sensitivity of 76% and specificity of 88%. Outbreaks of some diseases, such as Nipah virus encephalitis, were well identified (sensitivity = 100%, PPV = 80%), whereas others (e.g., Chandipura encephalitis) were more difficult to distinguish. These results suggest that unknown outbreaks in resource-poor settings could be evaluated in real-time, potentially leading to more rapid responses and reducing the risk of an outbreak becoming a pandemic.
Early Syllabic Segmentation of Fluent Speech by Infants Acquiring French

Word form segmentation abilities emerge during the first year of life, and it has been proposed that infants initially rely on two types of cues to extract words from fluent speech: Transitional Probabilities (TPs) and rhythmic units. The main goal of the present study was to use the behavioral method of the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP) to investigate again rhythmic segmentation of syllabic units by French-learning infants at the onset of segmentation abilities (around 8 months) given repeated failure to find syllabic segmentation at such a young age. The second goal was to explore the interaction between the use of TPs and syllabic units for segmentation by French-learning infants. The rationale was that decreasing TP cues around target syllables embedded in bisyllabic words would block bisyllabic word segmentation and facilitate the observation of syllabic segmentation. In Experiments 1 and 2, infants were tested in a condition of moderate TP decrease; no evidence of either syllabic or bisyllabic word segmentation was found. In Experiment 3, infants were tested in a condition of more marked TP decrease, and a novelty syllabic segmentation effect was observed. Therefore, the present study first establishes early syllabic segmentation in French-learning infants, bringing support from a syllable-based language to the proposal that rhythmic units are used at the onset of segmentation abilities. Second, it confirms that French-learning infants are sensitive to TP cues. Third, it demonstrates that they are sensitive to the relative weight of TP and rhythmic cues, explaining why effects of syllabic segmentation are not observed in context of high TPs. These findings are discussed in relation to theories of word segmentation bootstrapping, and the larger debate about statistically- versus prosodically-based accounts of early language acquisition.
A Systematic Approach for Congestion Control in Wireless Ad hoc Network using Opnet

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is a reliable, end-to-end transport protocol, which is most widely used for data services and is very efficient for wired networks. However, experiments and research showed that TCP’s congestion control algorithm performs very poorly over Wireless Ad Hoc Networks with degraded throughputs and severe unfairness among flows.In this paper, a deep study has been conducted in order to study the factors that cause congestion in an ad hoc wireless network. Main focus in this report has been to simulate and study the effect of change in topology and number of users on network congestion. Apart from that, the effects of network congestion and the importance of its study have also been highlighted. Congestion is a critical factor, in determining the quality of network. It also determines the dependability and sustainability of a network. Deploying new network infrastructure to tackle congestion problem is not economically viable solution, hence it is important to understand the reasons behind such network operation conditions and then design suitable methods to overcome them. In this paper, various network behaviors’ have been simulated using OPNET Modeler 14.5 to study how node’s buffer space gives impact to the in-flight packets in ad hoc environment by also taking mobility and power consumption into consideration. With a controlled size of users ( ) the network condition has been simulated. Performance has been measure on several parameters such as throughput, number of packets dropped, and retransmission count and end number of users changed.
Meta-Analysis of RAGE Gene Polymorphism and Coronary Heart Disease Risk

Background Recent data from human and animal studies have shown an upregulated expression of advanced glycosylation end product–specific receptor (RAGE) in human atherosclerotic plaques 1 and in retina, messangial, and aortic vessels, suggesting an important role of RAGE in the pathogenesis of atherothrombotic diseases. In the past few years, the relationship between RAGE polymorphisms (−429T/C, −374T/A, and G82S) and coronary heart disease (CHD) has been reported in various ethnic groups; however, these studies have yielded contradictory results. Methods PubMed, ISI web of science, EMBASE and the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases were systematically searched to identify relevant studies. Data were abstracted independently by two reviewers. A meta-analysis was performed to examine the association between RAGE polymorphisms and susceptibility to CHD. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated. Results A total of 17 studies including 4343 patients and 5402 controls were involved in this meta-analysis. Overall, no significant results were observed for −429T/C (OR = 1.01, 95% CI: 0.92–1.12, P = 0.78), −374T/A (OR = 1.11, 95% CI: 0.98–1.26, P = 0.09) and G82S (OR = 1.12, 95% CI: 0.86–1.45, P = 0.41) polymorphism. In the stratified analyses according to ethnicity, sample size, CHD endpoint and Hardy-Weinberg status, no evidence of any gene-disease association was obtained. Conclusions This meta-analysis demonstrates that there is no association between the RAGE −429T/C, −374T/A and G82S polymorphisms and CHD.
Macular Retinal Ganglion Cell Complex Damage in the Apparently Normal Visual Field of Glaucomatous Eyes With Hemifield Defects

PurposeTo compare the thicknesses of the macular ganglion cell complex (mGCC), the entire macular retina, and the peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (ppRNFL) in the apparently normal visual field of glaucomatous eyes with hemifield defects with thicknesses in normal eyes. In addition, to evaluate the relationship between the structural and retinal sensitivity parameters by standard automated perimetry. MethodsThis single institution study included 50 eyes of 50 glaucoma patients with visual field defects restricted to the superior or inferior hemifield, in addition to 25 eyes of 25 normal controls matched for age, sex, and refractive errors. We measured the thickness of the 3 areas of interest using the automatic algorithm of a spectral-domain optical coherence tomography device. We subsequently compared the difference in these values between the defective and normal hemifields. Furthermore, each optical coherence tomography parameter was correlated with the total deviation values of the parameters in the Humphrey visual field corresponding to each hemisphere. ResultsThe thickness of the mGCC in the normal hemifield of the glaucomatous eyes was significantly less than in normal eyes. In contrast, the total thickness of the macular retinas between the glaucomatous and normal eyes showed no significant difference. In addition, the thicknesses of the mGCC and ppRNFL in the normal hemisphere of the glaucomatous eyes were significantly correlated with the total deviation in the visual field parameters of the corresponding area. ConclusionsIn addition to ppRNFL thickness, the mGCC thickness could be a structural parameter for detecting preperimetric glaucoma.