Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improved katz smoothing for language modeling in speech recogniton

In this paper, a new method is proposed to improve the canonical Katz back-off smoothing technique in language modeling. The process of Katz smoothing is detailedly analyzed and the global discounting parameters are selected for discounting. Further more, a modified version of the formula for discounting parameters is proposed, in which the discounting parameters are determined by not only the occurring counts of the n-gram units but also the low-order history frequencies. This modification makes the smoothing more reasonable for those n-gram units that have homophonic (same in pronunciation) histories. The new method is tested on a Chinese Pinyin-to-character (where Pinyin is the pronunciation string) conversion system and the results show that the improved method can achieve a surprising reduction both in perplexity and Chinese character error rate.
Implicit links based kernel to enrich Support Vector Machine for web page classification

Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a powerful classifier used widely in textual and web classification. It tries to find an hyperplane that separates positive and negative data, maximizes the margin. SVM is a classifier that is based on a kernel whose choice is very critical. We propose in this paper an implicit links based Gaussian kernel that uses an implicit links based distance. This kernel helps enrich SVM for web page classification by involving users' intuitive judgments in the classification. We tested our approach on four subsets of the Open Directory Project (ODP). Results show that implicit links based kernel helps bringing improvements on SVM's results.
Sorting and selection on interconnection networks

In this paper we identify techniques that have been employed in the design of sorting and selection algorithms for various interconnection networks. We consider both randomized and deterministic techniques. Interconnection Networks of interest include the mesh, the mesh with fixed and reconfigurable buses, the hypercube family, and the star graph. For the sake of comparisons, we also list PRAM algorithms.
Spatial-temporal reorganization of activated integrins

Integrin receptors play important roles in cell adhesion and tumor metastasis. The coupling of mechanical sensing and biochemical ligation is known to collectively regulate the activation of integrin receptors. Recently, oligomerization of activated integrins has been considered as the primordial signature of cytoskeletal remodeling and the initiation of various downstream signals, such as focal and fibrillar adhesions. However, spatio-temporal reorganization of activated integrins and associated proteins remains poorly understood. Here, we summarized the recent discovery of sequential biophysical events of integrin activation during early adhesion formation. Using the cyclic Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) peptide as a mobile ligand on supported lipid membranes, a series of previously unreported events were observed following integrin αvβ3 clustering and cell spreading, including a long-range lateral translocation of the integrin clusters. With initial clustering, localized actin polymerization occurred in a Src family kinase dependent manner. Clustering of liganded integrins recruits various adaptor proteins and serves as a reaction core for mechanobiological activities. In addition, there are future possibilities to investigate the role of other synergetic interactions with the activated integrin receptors.
CS 203 Programming Languages Survey Project

Basic idea/ problem: XML documents are often generated dynamically by programs. For example, XHTML documents generated by interactive Web Services in response to requests from clients. In most cases there are no static guarantees that the generated documents are valid according to a DTD schema, and in fact many large commercial services generate documents that are in fact invalid. In this survey I look into the research that has been done in the area of providing static (compile-time) guarantees of the validity of dynamically generated XML documents, so that run-time errors are avoided. My survey is based on a series of papers by the BRICS (Basic Research in Computer Science) research group at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, published in the period of 2001 to 2003. I did not find any more recent publications on this topic which makes me believe that the ideas and techniques discussed here are still the latest in the area.
Study on Interface Structure of Cu/Al Clad Plates by Roll Casting

: Large scale Atomic/Molecular dynamic Parallel Simulator (LAMMPS) molecular dynamics simulation software was used to simulate the copper and aluminum atom diffusion and changes of interface during heating and cooling process of copper and aluminum composite panels. The structures of the interface were characterized through scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and transmission electron microscope (TEM), and the mechanical properties were also tested. The simulation results show that the diffusion rate of copper atom is higher than that of aluminum atom, and that the CuAl 2 radial distribution function of the interface at 300 K is consistent with that of pure CuAl 2 at room temperature. At 930 K, t = 50 ps Cu atoms spread at a distance of approximately four Al lattice constants around the Al layer, and Al atoms spread to about half a lattice constant distance to the Cu layer. The experimental results show that the thickness of the interface in copper–aluminum composite plate is about 1 µ m, and only one kind of CuAl 2 with tetragonal phase structure is generated in the interface, which corresponds with the result of molecular dynamics simulation.
Marinization of Mass Transfer Columns for FLNG Applications

Still today, there is limited information available about the predictive impact of column motion on the fluid dynamics and mass transfer efficiency of industrial-sized marinized columns. Raschig and UOP started a new approach in 2010 to evaluate the performance of random and structured packings during column motion. In a moving pilot plant, columns containing different random and structured packings have been investigated for a wide range of liquid loads with varied constant column tilt and different column motion frequencies. This paper compares the performance of random and structured packings used with different column tilts and motions and will provide information on when to apply one of these product lines.
The Schwartz Cancer Fatigue Scale: testing reliability and validity.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To describe the psychometric development of the Schwartz Cancer Fatigue Scale (SCFS). DESIGN A multiphase instrumentation study describing construct and operational definitions, informal and formal content validity, reliability, and validity analysis. SAMPLE Content validity established with 20 subjects. Reliability and validity evaluated with 166 subjects residing in diverse parts of the United States. FINDINGS Eleven items that failed to show variance, had high interitem correlations, or failed to discriminate were eliminated. Factor analysis resulted in a four-factor solution that accounted for 70% of the variance. Cronbach's alpha for the total scale was estimated to be 0.96 and to be between 0.82 and 0.93 for the subscales. CONCLUSIONS The 28-item SCFS has demonstrated reliability and content and construct validity. Factor analysis supports the four subscales (physical, emotional, cognitive, and temporal). Preliminary construct validity has been demonstrated by differences in fatigue between those people who are currently receiving treatment and those who have completed treatment and by scores on a visual analogue scale of fatigue. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE The SCFS may prove to be clinically relevant in assessing the effect of interventions to treat and manage cancer-related fatigue.
Differentiation induced by Achyrocline satureioides (Lam) infusion in PC12 cells

Epidemiological studies have shown that flavonoid‐rich plants induce beneficial health effects that are likely beyond their potent antioxidant capacity. Thus, the mechanisms by which Achyrocline satureioides (AS), a popular South American medicinal plant, protects cells and neurons in culture, are still unclear. In this sense, a recently described trophic capacity for flavonoids, similar to that evoked by growth factors, could be one of the mechanisms involved in AS cellular protection. Since this trophic activity causes differentiation of PC12 cells, the cell differentiation capacity of AS and some of its flavonoids were evaluated. PC12 cells were treated with AS infusion (10 or 20 µg/mL of total polyphenols), quercetin (Q) (12.5 or 25 µm), luteolin (L) (25 µm), Q + L (12.5 µm each one) or nerve growth factor (NGF) for 3 days. Four morphological parameters (percentage of cells with neurites longer than one cell body diameter, percentage of cells with neurites, average number of neurites per cell and percentage of fusiform cells) were explored. The AS infusion showed differentiation capacity on all parameters with similar potency when compared with NGF. Besides, AS was more potent than some of its constituent flavonoids: Q, L or their combination. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Sampling Strategies and Active Learning for Volume Estimation

This paper tackles the challenge of accurately and efficiently estimating the number of relevant documents in a collection for a particular topic. One real-world application is estimating the volume of social media posts (e.g., tweets) pertaining to a topic, which is fundamental to tracking the popularity of politicians and brands, the potential sales of a product, etc. Our insight is to leverage active learning techniques to find all the "easy" documents, and then to use sampling techniques to infer the number of relevant documents in the residual collection. We propose a simple yet effective technique for determining this "switchover" point, which intuitively can be understood as the "knee" in an effort vs. recall gain curve, as well as alternative sampling strategies beyond the knee. We show on several TREC datasets and a collection of tweets that our best technique yields more accurate estimates (with the same effort) than several alternatives.
SVM-based IADL score correlation and classification with EEG/ECG signals

This paper explores the correlation between the subjective IADL assessment and the objective EEG/ECG signals measurement. Thirty elderly participants are scored by IADL and classified into three groups, that is, the high score, the medium score and the low score groups, and each participant's collected EEG/ECG signals is then attributed to the groups correspondingly. Six equations of extraction methods, including five for EEG and one for ECG, are applied to the EEG/ECG signals from each participant. Thereafter, the extracted features are trained by SVM and classified by one-against-all method in terms of group. The experiment is shown that 82% of accuracy can be reached by the proposed extracted methods and the proposed framework.
Stochastic Dual Ascent for Solving Linear Systems

We develop a new randomized iterative algorithm---stochastic dual ascent (SDA)---for finding the projection of a given vector onto the solution space of a linear system. The method is dual in nature: with the dual being a non-strongly concave quadratic maximization problem without constraints. In each iteration of SDA, a dual variable is updated by a carefully chosen point in a subspace spanned by the columns of a random matrix drawn independently from a fixed distribution. The distribution plays the role of a parameter of the method. Our complexity results hold for a wide family of distributions of random matrices, which opens the possibility to fine-tune the stochasticity of the method to particular applications. We prove that primal iterates associated with the dual process converge to the projection exponentially fast in expectation, and give a formula and an insightful lower bound for the convergence rate. We also prove that the same rate applies to dual function values, primal function values and the duality gap. Unlike traditional iterative methods, SDA converges under no additional assumptions on the system (e.g., rank, diagonal dominance) beyond consistency. In fact, our lower bound improves as the rank of the system matrix drops. Many existing randomized methods for linear systems arise as special cases of SDA, including randomized Kaczmarz, randomized Newton, randomized coordinate descent, Gaussian descent, and their variants. In special cases where our method specializes to a known algorithm, we either recover the best known rates, or improve upon them. Finally, we show that the framework can be applied to the distributed average consensus problem to obtain an array of new algorithms. The randomized gossip algorithm arises as a special case.
Hepatocyte growth factor promotes in vitro scattering and morphogenesis of human cervical carcinoma cells.

OBJECTIVE Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) enhances cell dissociation and morphogenesis in many forms of carcinomas including some, but not all, cervical carcinomas. In this study, we examined the effects of HGF on two cervical cancer cell lines, derived from the same tumor, with different growth patterns in vivo and in vitro. METHODS Two cell lines, derived from the same cervical carcinoma, express spinous (C-4I) and basal (C4-II) squamous cell differentiation, respectively. A cell scattering assay was used to determine whether HGF would stimulate cell dissociation and motility. The morphogenetic capacity of HGF was assessed in collagen gel cultures, expression of the HGF receptor c-Met by Western blot analysis, and cadherin expression by immunofluorescence microscopy. RESULTS HGF-induced cell scattering was intense in C-4II, but limited in C-4I cultures. In collagen gels, C-4I cells formed large, spherical compact colonies with necrotic centers while C-4II cells formed small, irregular colonies with no necrosis. HGF induced proliferation and branching morphogenesis in both lines, but more prominently in C-4II cultures. There was no difference in c-Met or E- and P-cadherin expression between C-4I and C-4II cultures, but the lines differed in their signal transduction responses to HGF. The scatter response was mediated primarily by phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase in line C-4I, but by mitogen-activated protein kinase in line C-4II. HGF induced collagen gel contraction by C-4 cells, demonstrating for the first time that HGF has the capacity to induce this function. CONCLUSIONS The HGF-induced cell dispersion, morphogenesis, and collagen gel contraction in two cervical carcinoma cell lines were greatly influenced by differences between the lines in differentiation-associated properties. These properties, which include variations in extracellular matrix, junctional proteins, and signal transduction, may also modulate HGF action in vivo and thus determine patterns of invasiveness and growth of cervical carcinomas.
Resource allocation for energy harvesting-powered D2D communications underlaying cellular networks

Device-to-device communication and energy harvesting are both key technologies to improve spectrum and energy efficiency. In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation problem for the energy harvesting-powered D2D communication underlaying cellular networks, where D2D pairs firstly harvest energy and then transmit information signals. The goal is to maximize the sum throughput via joint time scheduling and power control while satisfying the SINR requirement of cellular user and taking into account the energy constraint. The formulated non-convex problem is transformed into a nonlinear fractional programming problem with a tactful reformulation. Coupled with D.C. (difference of two convex functions) programming, a near optimal solution of the non-convex problem can be obtained by iteratively solving a sequence of convex problems. Then, a first-order algorithm is employed to solve these convex problems. Numerical simulations are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and evaluate the system throughput performance.
Building a KVM-based Hypervisor for a Heterogeneous System Architecture Compliant System

Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) is an archi-tecture developed by the HSA foundation aiming at reduc-ing programmability barriers as well as improving commu-nication efficiency for heterogeneous computing. For ex-ample, HSA allows heterogeneous computing devices to share the same virtual address space. This feature allows programmers to bypass explicit data copying between devices, as was required in the past. HSA features such as job dispatching through user level queues and memory based signaling help to reduce communication latency between the host and other computing devices. While the new features in HSA enable more efficient heterogeneous computing, they also introduce new chal-lenges to system virtualization, especially in memory virtu-alization and I/O virtualization. This work investigates the issues involved in HSA virtualization and implements a KVM-based hypervisor that supports the main features of HSA inside guest operating systems. Furthermore, this work shows that with the newly introduced hypervisor for HSA, system resources in HSA-compliant AMD Kaveri can be effectively shared between multiple guest operating sys-tems.
BER performance of OSTBCs on correlated fading channels with imperfect channel estimation

In this contribution, we examine the bit error rate (BER) performance of orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBCs) under flat-fading channels with imperfect channel state information. We present new exact BER expressions for PAM and QAM signal constellations, regardless of the fading distribution. Furthermore, we show how these expressions can be efficiently and accurately evaluated for the case of arbitrarily correlated Nakagami-m fading channels. As the high diversity order resulting from the application of OSTBCs gives rise to small BER values, the numerical evaluation of the presented BER expressions is much faster than straightforward computer simulations.
Toward Civilized Evolution: Developing Inhibitions

Most evolutionary algorithms concerned with a memory of evolution aim at memorizing and reusing the recipes of past successes (cid:15)e(cid:16)g(cid:16) fruitful operators or fruitful mutation direc(cid:17) tions(cid:18)(cid:16) The scheme proposed here follows the oppo(cid:17) site track(cid:2) and memorizes the past failures of evolution (cid:15)un(cid:19)t o(cid:20)spring(cid:18) through a vir(cid:17) tual individual termed the virtual loser(cid:16) The underlying metaphor is that o(cid:20)spring should attempt to get further away from the vir(cid:17) tual loser than their parents(cid:16) This is done by a new evolution operator(cid:2) termed (cid:2)ee(cid:3) mutation(cid:2) as an alternative to standard re(cid:17) combination and mutation(cid:16) Special atten(cid:17) tion is paid to adjusting the (cid:21)ee(cid:17)mutation step size(cid:16) Experiments on large sized prob(cid:17) lems validate this approach(cid:2) and unexpect(cid:17) edly show that a constant (cid:21)ee(cid:17)mutation step
Renal Clearance and Urinary Excretion of Roxithromycin in Healthy AdultFemale Subjects

Objective: In current study, influence of environmental situation and genetic variations on renal clearance and urinary excretion of roxithromycin was determined in local healthy adult female subjects. Roxithromycin is a secondgeneration macrolide widely used in human clinics for different infectious diseases. Methods: For experimentation, ten healthy adult female were selected. Roxithromycin 300 mg (Rulide®) was given to each volunteer. Blank samples each for urine and blood was collected prior administration of roxithromycin and after that blood samples were collected at 1,2, 4 and 6 hours and urine samples were collected at 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 24 and 48 hours post medication. Blood samples were centrifuged to separate plasma. A high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was used to find out the concentration of drug in urine and plasma samples. In plasma and urine concentration of drug and endogenous creatinine were used to calculate renal clearance and urinary excretion of drug. Results: In present study the renal clearance of roxithromycin was 0.08 ± 0.01 ml/min/kg. Mean ± SE value for clearance ratio between drug clearance and creatinine clearance was 0.04 ± 0.00 which indicates reabsorption (back diffusion) of roxithromycin. The cumulative percentage of oral dose of 300 mg tablet of roxithromycin excreted through urine during 48 hours was 12.87 ± 1.31 percent. Conclusion: Renal clearance and urinary excretion observed in present study variates from previous studies conducted in other geographical regions under different environmental conditions. Variations in present study may be due to genetic variations. It is concluded from the study that renal clearance and urinary excretion study is required under indigenous conditions.
Bcl-xL Prevents the Initial Decrease in Mitochondrial Membrane Potential and Subsequent Reactive Oxygen Species Production during Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha-Induced Apoptosis

ABSTRACT The Bcl-2 family of proteins are involved in regulating the redox state of cells. However, the mode of action of Bcl-2 proteins remains unclear. This work analyzed the effects of Bcl-xL on the cellular redox state after treatment with tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) or exogenous oxidants. We show that in cells that undergo TNF-α-induced apoptosis, TNF-α induces a partial decrease in mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨ m ) followed by high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS scavengers delay the progression of mitochondrial depolarization and apoptotic cell death. This indicates that ROS are important mediators of mitochondrial depolarization. However, ROS scavengers fail to prevent the initial TNF-α-induced decrease in ΔΨ m . In contrast, expression of Bcl-xL prevents both the initial decrease in ΔΨ m following TNF-α treatment and the subsequent induction of ROS. Bcl-xL itself does not act as a ROS scavenger. In addition, Bcl-xL does not block the initial decrease in ΔΨ m following treatment with the oxidant hydrogen peroxide. However, unlike control-transfected cells, Bcl-xL-expressing cells can recover their mitochondrial membrane potential following the initial drop in ΔΨ m induced by hydrogen peroxide. These data suggest that Bcl-xL plays a regulatory role in controlling the membrane potential of and ROS production by mitochondria rather than acting as a direct antioxidant.