Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression of affects in Embodied Conversational Agents

Providing the virtual agents with expressive facult ies is a contemporary challenge. The generated emotional behaviour for Embodied Conversa tional Agents (ECAs) particularly has to be credible and varied. Cowell and Stanney (2005 ) showed that well chosen behaviours and emotional expressions improve the credibility of an agent. Behaviour expressivity can be conveyed through: the choice of the nonverbal signa ls and their realisation. Some researchers argue that creating an “internal s tate” for an ECA and giving the ECA the possibility to express emotions contributes to a ri cher human-machine interaction (Walker, Sproull and Subramani 1994). The internal states ca n be expressed on the behaviour level through the choice of the nonverbal signals and the modulation of their realisation. In this Chapter several algorithms that enrich the behaviour repertoires of ECAs are presented. Although a great number of models use in terpolations to create new expressions based on formerly defined basic emotions (e.g. Tsap at oulis et al. 2002; Albrecht et al. 2005; Paradiso 2002), a particular attention is paid to t he models of emotional expressions going beyond these so-called universal expressions. Some co putational models of perceptively verified expressions have been created, mostly usin g fuzzy methods (Arya and DiPaola 2007; Arya et al. 2009). Niewiadomski and Pelachaud have lso elaborated a model for the generation of complex facial displays like superpos iti n or masking of expressions (Niewiadomski and Pelachaud 2007; see Chapter by Niewiadomski et al. ). Other researchers grounded their expression generat ion systems in a dimensional approach, with a link between points in the space defined mos tly by the pleasure, arousal and dominance dimensions and the generated expressions (e.g. Zhan g et al. 2007; Courgeon et al. 2008). Some models also integrate other modalities than th e face into the expressions of emotions. A different approach is to focus on the modelling o f facial expressions as sequence of multimodal signals rather than expressions presente d at their apex. Such a model of expression animation may increase the agent’s commu nicative capabilities. Another issue to be treated when modelling agents’ di plays of internal states is the expressive realisation of the behaviours. Different parameters have been defined as having an impact on the behaviour expressivity. This set of p arameters is used in tasks such as animation synthesis, but also in the manual annotat ion of video corpora or automatic analysis.
MICROSCOPIC INVESTIGATION OF FIELD EMITTERS LOCATED BY THERMOMETRY IN 1.5 GHz SUPERCONDUCTING NIOBIUM CAVITIES

A new high resolution, high speed thermometry system has been built to permit the study of eld emitters in 1.5 GHz superconducting niobium cavities. Following a cavity test, the cavity is dissected for examination of the emitters in an electron microscope. Presented below is a survey of the topographical characterstics and composition of various defects found so far. A correlation between the current characteristics of emitters and their ability to process away was observed. It has been found that plasma production in the vicinity of an emitter is of importance in determining how much heat an emitter deposits on the rf surface as the electric eld in the cavity is increased. In particular, this plasma plays a pivotal role in the extinction of emitters.
Multi-frequency millimeter wave massive MIMO channel measurements and analysis

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology and millimeter wave (mmWave) communication are key technologies for the fifth generation (SG) wireless communications. The combination of mmWave and massive MIMO has the potential to dramatically improve wireless access and throughput performance. Such systems benefit from large available signal bandwidths and small antenna form factor. In the literature, most of the massive MIMO channel measurements are carried out at sub-6 GHz frequency bands, while the effects caused by large antenna arrays at mmWave bands have not been studied yet. In this paper, we conduct channel measurements at 11, 16, 28, and 38 GHz frequency bands combined with large antenna arrays in an indoor office environment. The space-alternating generalized expectation-maximization (SAGE) algorithm is applied to obtain the multipath component (MPC) parameters. New propagation characteristics like spherical wavefront, cluster birth-death, and non-stationarity over antenna array axis are validated for the four mmWave bands by investigating the temporal-spatial channel characteristics like power delay profile (PDP), power azimuth profile (PAP), power elevation profile (PEP), root mean square (RMS) delay spread (DS), and azimuth and elevation angular spread (AS). The results indicate that massive MIMO effects should be fully considered for mmWave channel models under systems with large antenna arrays.
Sustainable Method for the Large-Scale Preparation of Fe3O4 Nanocrystals

In this work, a facile synthetic process is reported for the large-scale synthesis of Fe3O4 nanocrystals. Thermal decomposition of Fe(acac)3 (100 g) in 1-hexadecanol produced Fe3O4 nanocrystals with well-controlled sizes and morphologies. The nanocrystals were spherically shaped with average diameters of 7.8 ± 0.6, 6.5 ± 0.4, and 5.9 ± 0.2 nm when prepared at 300°C, 270°C, and 250°C, respectively. Mechanisms of crystal formation were elucidated on the basis of gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy analysis, enabling the large-scale preparation of Fe3O4 nanocrystals. To provide an environmentally benign route, Fe3O4 nanocrystals were prepared with recycled solvent which was recovered from the initial experiment. The resulting porous Fe3O4 nanocrystals had larger average sizes than those of the initial nanocrystals. Structural characterization was performed using transmission electron microscopy and powder X-ray diffraction.
Increasing dietary palmitic acid decreases fat oxidation and daily energy expenditure.

BACKGROUND Oleic acid (OA) is oxidized more rapidly than is palmitic acid (PA). OBJECTIVE We hypothesized that changing the dietary intakes of PA and OA would affect fatty acid oxidation and energy expenditure. DESIGN A double-masked trial was conducted in 43 healthy young adults, who, after a 28-d, baseline, solid-food diet (41% of energy as fat, 8.4% as PA, and 13.1% as OA), were randomly assigned to one of two 28-d formula diets: high PA (40% of energy as fat, 16.8% as PA, and 16.4% as OA; n = 21) or high OA (40% of energy as fat, 1.7% as PA, and 31.4% as OA; n = 22). Differences in the change from baseline were evaluated by analysis of covariance. RESULTS In the fed state, the respiratory quotient was lower (P = 0.01) with the high OA (0.86 +/- 0.01) than with the high-PA (0.89 +/- 0.01) diet, and the rate of fat oxidation was higher (P = 0.03) with the high-OA (0.0008 +/- 0.0001) than with the high-PA (0.0005 +/- 0.0001 mg . kg fat-free mass(-1) . min(-1)) diet. Resting energy expenditure in the fed and fasting states was not significantly different between groups. Change in daily energy expenditure in the high-OA group (9 +/- 60 kcal/d) was significantly different from that in the high-PA group (-214 +/- 69 kcal/d; P = 0.02 or 0.04 when expressed per fat-free mass). CONCLUSIONS Increases in dietary PA decrease fat oxidation and daily energy expenditure, whereas decreases in PA and increases in OA had the opposite effect. Increases in dietary PA may increase the risk of obesity and insulin resistance.
Lipid Metabolism in Patients with End-Stage Renal Disease: A Five Year Follow-up Study.

BACKGROUND Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) exhibit high morbidity as well as mortality for atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Therefore, we investigated differences in individual lipoprotein classes and subclasses in ESRD patients under chronic high volume hemodiafiltration (HV-HDF) in comparison with a control group. We also assessed the prognosis of these patients and analyzed these parameters after 5 years follow-up. METHODS 57 patients and 50 controls were enrolled. We analysed high density (HDL) and low density (LDL) lipoprotein subfractions using the Quantimetrix Lipoprint(R) system. Subfractions were correlated with selected clinical-biochemical parameters including risk factors for atherosclerotic CVD at the beginning of and after 5 years follow-up. RESULTS Fourteen patients survived the 5-year follow-up. Follow-up results revealed a shift toward smaller HDL subfractions. In lipoproteins carrying apolipoprotein B, there was a shift of cholesterol from very low density (VLDL) to intermediate density (IDL) lipoproteins and LDLs. Hypolipidaemic therapy did not influence lipoprotein profiles in HV-HDF patients. CONCLUSION 1. HV-HDF patients exhibit specific lipid profiles with elevated triacylglycerol, low HDL and LDL and higher content of cholesterol in remnant particles (VLDL and IDL) at the expense of large LDL. HDL subfractions were linked to the number of risk factors for CVD in the control group only. 2. Baseline lipoprotein profiles did not differ between survivors and non-survivors. Non-survivors had higher CRP and lower HDL-C. 3. During the 5 year follow-up period, cholesterol in HDL particles and lipoproteins carrying apolipoprotein B redistributed in survivors towards smaller particles, thus resembling the profile of control patients.
Associations between Blood Glucose and Carotid Intima-Media Thickness Disappear after Adjustment for Shared Risk Factors: The KORA F4 Study

Objective The association between blood glucose and carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) is considered to be established knowledge. We aimed to assess whether associations between different measures of glycaemia and CIMT are actually independent of anthropometric variables and metabolic risk factors. Moreover, we checked published studies for the adjustment for shared risk factors of blood glucose and CIMT. Methods Fasting glucose, 2-hour glucose, HbA1c, and CIMT were measured in 31-81-years-old participants of the population-based Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg (KORA) F4 study in Southern Germany (n = 2,663). CIMT was assessed according to the Rotterdam protocol. Linear and logistic regression models with adjustment for age, sex, anthropometric measures, hypertension, and dyslipidaemia were fitted to assess the association between continuous measures of glycaemia, and categories of glucose regulation, respectively, with CIMT. Results We found a 0.10 mm increase (95%-confidence interval: 0.08–0.12) in CIMT in subjects with compared to subjects without diabetes in crude analysis. This increase was not significant in age-sex adjusted models (p = 0.17). Likewise, neither impaired fasting glucose (p = 0.22) nor impaired glucose tolerance (p = 0.93) were associated with CIMT after adjustment for age, sex, and waist circumference. In multivariable adjusted models, age, sex, hypertension, waist circumference, HDL and LDL cholesterol, but neither fasting glucose nor 2-hour glucose nor HbA1c were associated with elevated CIMT. Literature findings are inconclusive regarding an independent association of glucose levels and CIMT. Conclusion CIMT is highly dependent on traditional cardiovascular risk factors, but no relationships between blood glucose and CIMT were found after adjustment for age, sex, and anthropometric variables.
Competence Implies Credibility

The (reputation for) competence of a central bank at doing its job makes monetary policy under discretion credible and transparent. Based on its reading of the state of the economy, the central bank announces its policy intentions to the public in a cheap-talk game. The precision of its private signal measures its competence. The fineness of the equilibrium message space measures its credibility and transparency. This is increasing in the competence/inflation bias ratio: the public expects a competent central bank to use its discretion more to pursue its "objective" targets than to surprise expectations and stimulate output. (JEL E52, E58)
A Hybrid Loss for Multiclass and Structured Prediction

We propose a novel hybrid loss for multiclass and structured prediction problems that is a convex combination of a log loss for Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) and a multiclass hinge loss for Support Vector Machines (SVMs). We provide a sufficient condition for when the hybrid loss is Fisher consistent for classification. This condition depends on a measure of dominance between labels-specifically, the gap between the probabilities of the best label and the second best label. We also prove Fisher consistency is necessary for parametric consistency when learning models such as CRFs. We demonstrate empirically that the hybrid loss typically performs least as well as-and often better than-both of its constituent losses on a variety of tasks, such as human action recognition. In doing so we also provide an empirical comparison of the efficacy of probabilistic and margin based approaches to multiclass and structured prediction.
Blunted lipolytic response to fasting in abdominally obese women: evidence for involvement of hyposomatotropism.

BACKGROUND Abdominal obesity is associated with a blunted lipolytic response to fasting that may contribute to the preservation of adipose tissue mass. OBJECTIVE To further explore the pathophysiology of blunted lipolysis during fasting in obesity, we simultaneously measured lipolysis and distinct neuroendocrine regulatory hormones in abdominally obese and normal-weight (NW) women. DESIGN Eight abdominally obese [x +/- SD body mass index (BMI; in kg/m(2)): 32.1 +/- 2.6] and 6 NW (BMI: 22.7 +/- 1.5) women were studied during the last 8 h of a 20-h fast. The glycerol appearance rate and the serum and plasma concentrations of insulin, leptin, cortisol, and growth hormone were measured regularly. RESULTS At 13 h of fasting, the mean (+/-SD) glycerol appearance rate corrected for fat mass was greater in NW women than in obese women (7.2 +/- 1.0 and 5.1 +/- 0.6 micro mol.kg(-1). min(-1), respectively; P = 0.001). After a 20-h fast, lipolysis increased to 8.9 +/- 1.5 mmol.kg(-1). min(-1) in NW women (23%), whereas it did not change significantly in obese women (-2%). Fasting decreased insulin concentrations by approximately 30% in both groups, but it did not induce significant changes in leptin concentrations. Mean cortisol concentrations and urinary catecholamine excretion were comparable in both groups. However, mean plasma growth hormone concentrations were higher in NW women than in obese women (1.81 +/- 0.98 compared with 0.74 +/- 0.52 mU/L; P = 0.046). The relative change in lipolysis tended to correlate with mean plasma growth hormone concentrations (r = 0.515, P = 0.059). CONCLUSION Abdominal obesity-associated hyposomatotropism may be involved in the blunted increase in lipolysis during fasting.
Programming and Reasoning with Guarded Recursion for Coinductive Types

We present the guarded lambda-calculus, an extension of the simply typed lambda-calculus with guarded recursive and coinductive types. The use of guarded recursive types ensures the productivity of well-typed programs. Guarded recursive types may be transformed into coinductive types by a type-former inspired by modal logic and Atkey-McBride clock quantification, allowing the typing of acausal functions. We give a call-by-name operational semantics for the calculus, and define adequate denotational semantics in the topos of trees. The adequacy proof entails that the evaluation of a program always terminates. We demonstrate the expressiveness of the calculus by showing the definability of solutions to Rutten's behavioural differential equations. We introduce a program logic with L\"{o}b induction for reasoning about the contextual equivalence of programs.
Seqeunce Alignment in Molecular Biology

Molecular biology is becoming a computationally intense realm of contemporary science and faces some of the current grand scientific challenges. In its context, tools that identify, store, compare and analyze effectively large and growing numbers of bio-sequences are found of increasingly crucial importance. Biosequences are routinely compared or aligned, in a variety of ways, to infer common ancestry, to detect functional equivalence, or simply while searching for similar entries in a database. A considerable body of knowledge has accumulated on sequence alignment during the past few decades. Without pretending to be exhaustive, this paper attempts a survey of some criteria of wide use in sequence alignment and comparison problems, and of the corresponding solutions. The paper is based on presentations and literature given at the Workshop on Sequence Alignment held at Princeton, N.J., in November 1994, as part of the DIMACS Special Year on Mathematical Support for Molecular Biology.
Cryptosporidium parvum induces apoptosis in biliary epithelia by a Fas/Fas ligand-dependent mechanism.

Although the clinical features of sclerosing cholangitis from opportunistic infections of the biliary tree in patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) are well known, the mechanisms by which associated pathogens, such as Cryptosporidium parvum, cause disease are obscure. Using an in vitro model of biliary cryptosporidiosis, we observed that C. parvum induces apoptosis in cultured human biliary epithelia. Both caspase protease inhibitors and neutralizing antibodies to either Fas receptor (Fas) and Fas ligand (FasL) inhibited this process; neutralizing antibodies to other apoptotic cytokines [interleukin-1β (IL-1β), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β)] had no effect. C. parvum stimulated FasL membrane surface translocation, increased both FasL and Fas protein expression in infected biliary epithelia, and induced a marked increase of soluble FasL (but not IL-1β, TNF-α, and TGF-β) in supernatants from infected cells. When a coculture model is used in which infected and uninfected cell populations were physically separated by a semipermeable membrane, both uninfected biliary epithelia and uninfected Fas-sensitive Jurkat cells (but not a Fas-resistant Jurkat cell line) underwent apoptosis when cocultured with infected biliary epithelia. Moreover, both a neutralizing antibody to FasL and a metalloprotease inhibitor blocked the apoptosis in uninfected cocultured cells. Activation of caspase activity was also observed in uninfected cocultured biliary epithelia. The data suggest that C. parvuminduces apoptosis in biliary epithelia by a Fas/FasL-dependent mechanism involving both autocrine and paracrine pathways. These observations may be relevant to both the pathogenesis and therapy of the cholangitis seen in AIDS patients with biliary cryptosporidiosis.
Diamond based field-effect transistors of Zr gate with SiN x dielectric layers

Investigation of Zr-gate diamond field-effect transistor with SiNx dielectric layers (SD-FET) has been carried out. SD-FET works in normally on depletion mode with p-type channel, whose sheet carrier density and hole mobility are evaluated to be 2.17 × 1013 cm-2 and 24.4 cm2ċV-1ċs-1, respectively. The output and transfer properties indicate the preservation of conduction channel because of the SiNx dielectric layer, which may be explained by the interface bond of C-N. High voltage up to -200 V is applied to the device, and no breakdown is observed. For comparison, another traditional surface channel FET (SC-FET) is also fabricated.
Oral amino acids stimulate muscle protein anabolism in the elderly despite higher first-pass splanchnic extraction.

Muscle protein synthesis and breakdown and amino acid transport were measured in 7 healthy young (30 ± 2 yr) and 8 healthy elderly (71 ± 2 yr) volunteers in the postabsorptive state and during the oral administration of an amino acid mixture withl-[ ring-2H5]phenylalanine infusion, femoral artery and vein catheterization, and muscle biopsies. Phenylalanine first-pass splanchnic extraction was measured by addingl-[ ring-13C6]phenylalanine to the mixture. In the postabsorptive state, no differences in muscle amino acid kinetics were detected between young and elderly volunteers. Phenylalanine first-pass splanchnic extraction was significantly higher in the elderly ( P < 0.003) during ingestion of amino acids, but the delivery to the leg increased to the same extent in both groups. Phenylalanine transport into the muscle, muscle protein synthesis, and net balance increased significantly ( P < 0.01) and similarly in both the young and the elderly. We conclude that, despite an increased splanchnic first-pass extraction, muscle protein anabolism can be stimulated by oral amino acids in the elderly as well as in the young.
Physical activity energy expenditure predicts changes in body composition in middle-aged healthy whites: effect modification by age.

BACKGROUND It is unclear whether physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) predicts changes in body composition. OBJECTIVE The objective was to describe the independent associations between PAEE and changes in body composition in a population-based cohort. DESIGN This was a prospective population-based study conducted in 739 (311 men and 428 women) healthy middle-aged (median age: 53.8 y) whites. The median follow-up was 5.6 y. PAEE (MJ/d) was assessed by heart rate monitoring, individually calibrated by using the FLEX heart rate method. Fat mass (FM) and fat-free mass (FFM) were assessed by bioimpedance. RESULTS Body weight (BW) at follow-up was significantly related to baseline PAEE (P < 0.05) after adjustment for sex, baseline age, FM, FFM, and follow-up time. A significant interaction between PAEE and age (P = 0.023) was observed. After the subjects were stratified (above and below the median for age), BW increased by a mean (+/-SD) of 1.7 +/- 5.9 kg (P < 0.0001) in the younger cohort. In this group, follow-up FM was significantly associated with baseline PAEE (P = 0.036) after adjustment for confounders. In the older cohort, BW did not change between baseline and follow-up. In this group, in contrast with the younger population, follow-up BW, FM, and FFM were all significantly and positively associated with baseline PAEE (P < 0.01 for all). CONCLUSIONS Baseline PAEE predicts a change in FM in younger adults, who as a group gained weight in this study. In contrast, baseline PAEE in older adults--who were on average weight stable--is associated with a gain in BW, which was explained by an increase in FM and FFM.