Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distributed Compressive Sensing: A Deep Learning Approach

Several recent studies on the compressed sensing problem with Multiple Measurement Vectors (MMVs) under the condition that the vectors in the different channels are jointly sparse have been recently carried. In this paper, this condition is relaxed. Instead, these sparse vectors are assumed to depend on each other but this dependency is assumed unknown. We capture this dependency by computing the conditional probability of each entry in each vector being non-zero, given the “residuals” of all previous vectors. To estimate these probabilities, we propose the use of the long short-term memory (LSTM), a data-driven model for sequence modeling that is deep in time. To learn the model parameters, we minimize a cross-entropy cost function. To reconstruct the sparse vectors at the decoder, we propose a greedy solver that uses the above model to estimate the conditional probabilities. By performing extensive experiments on two real world datasets, we show that the proposed method significantly outperforms the general MMV solver (the Simultaneous Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (SOMP)) and a number of the model-based Bayesian methods. The proposed method does not add any complexity to the general compressive sensing encoder. The trained model is used at the decoder only. As the proposed method is a data-driven method, it is only applicable when training data is available. In many applications however, training data is indeed available, e.g., in recorded images for which our method is successfully applied as to be reported in this paper.
Quasi 3D rotation for hand-drawn characters

classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. SIGGRAPH 2014, August 10 – 14, 2014, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 2014 Copyright held by the Owner/Author. ACM 978-1-4503-2958-3/14/08 Quasi 3D Rotation for Hand-Drawn Characters
Human Decisions and Machine Predictions

Can machine learning improve human decision making? Bail decisions provide a good test case. Millions of times each year, judges make jail-or-release decisions that hinge on a prediction of what a defendant would do if released. The concreteness of the prediction task combined with the volume of data available makes this a promising machine-learning application. Yet comparing the algorithm to judges proves complicated. First, the available data are generated by prior judge decisions. We only observe crime outcomes for released defendants, not for those judges detained. This makes it hard to evaluate counterfactual decision rules based on algorithmic predictions. Second, judges may have a broader set of preferences than the variable the algorithm predicts; for instance, judges may care specifically about violent crimes or about racial inequities. We deal with these problems using different econometric strategies, such as quasi-random assignment of cases to judges. Even accounting for these concerns, our results suggest potentially large welfare gains: one policy simulation shows crime reductions up to 24.7% with no change in jailing rates, or jailing rate reductions up to 41.9% with no increase in crime rates. Moreover, all categories of crime, including violent crimes, show reductions; and these gains can be achieved while simultaneously reducing racial disparities. These results suggest that while machine learning can be valuable, realizing this value requires integrating these tools into an economic framework: being clear about the link between predictions and decisions; specifying the scope of payoff functions; and constructing unbiased decision counterfactuals. JEL Codes: C10 (Econometric and statistical methods and methodology), C55 (Large datasets: Modeling and analysis), K40 (Legal procedure, the legal system, and illegal behavior).
Sharing Economy Design Cards

Sharing economy services have become increasingly popular. In addition to various well-known for-profit activities in this space (e.g., ride and apartment sharing), many community groups and non-profit organizations offer collections of shared things (e.g., books, tools) that explicitly aim to benefit local communities. We expect that both non-profit and for-profit approaches will see an increased use in the future. To support designers in devising new sharing economy services, we developed the Sharing Economy Design Cards, a design toolkit in the form of a card deck. We present two deployments of the cards: (1) in individual interviews with 16 designers and sharing economy domain experts; and (2) in two workshops with 5 participants each. Our findings show that the use of the cards not only facilitates the creation of future sharing platforms and services in a collaborative setting, but also helps to evaluate existing sharing economy services as an individual activity.
Putting nonnegative matrix factorization to the test: a tutorial derivation of pertinent cramer—rao bounds and performance benchmarking

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is a useful tool in a broad range of applications, from signal separation to computer vision and machine learning. NMF is a hard (NP-hard) computational problem for which various approximate solutions have been developed over the years. Given the widespread interest in NMF and its applications, it is perhaps surprising that the pertinent Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) on the accuracy of the nonnegative latent factor estimates has not been worked out in the literature. In hindsight, one reason may be that the required computations are more subtle than usual: the problem involves constraints and ambiguities that must be dealt with, and the Fisher information matrix is always singular. We provide a concise tutorial derivation of the CRLB for both symmetric NMF and asymmetric NMF, using the latest CRLB tools, which should be of broad interest for analogous derivations in related factor analysis problems. We illustrate the behavior of these bounds with respect to model parameters and put some of the best NMF algorithms to the test against one another and the CRLB. The results help illuminate what can be expected from the current state of art in NMF algorithms, and they are reassuring in that the gap to optimality is small in relatively sparse and low rank scenarios.
Expression Characteristics of β-Catenin in Scallop Chlamys farreri Gonads and Its Role as a Potential Upstream Gene of Dax1 through Canonical Wnt Signalling Pathway Regulating the Spermatogenesis

β-catenin is a key signaling molecule in the canonical Wnt pathway, which is involved in animal development. However, little information has been reported for β-catenin in bivalves. In the present study, we cloned a homolog of β-catenin from the scallop Chlamys farreri and determined its expression characteristics. The full-length cDNA of β-catenin was 3,353 bp, including a 2,511 bp open reading frame that encoded a predicted 836 amino acid protein. Level of the β-catenin mRNA increased significantly (P<0.05) with C. farreri gonadal development and presented a sexually dimorphic expression pattern in the gonads, which was significantly high in ovaries detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that the β-catenin was mainly located in germ cells of the gonads, with obvious positive immune signals in the oogonia and oocytes of ovaries as well as in the spermatogonia and spermatocytes of testes, implying β-catenin might be involved in the gametogenesis of C. farreri. Furthermore, when 0.1 µg/mL and 0.2 µg/mL DKK-1 (an inhibitor of the canonical Wnt pathway) were added in vitro to culture medium containing testis cells of C. farreri, the expression of β-catenin decreased significantly detected by qRT-PCR (P<0.05), suggesting the canonical Wnt signal pathway exists in the scallop testis. Similarly, when 50 µM and 100 µM quercetin (an inhibitor of β-catenin) were added in vitro to the culture system, Dax1 expression was significantly down-regulated compared with controls (P<0.05), implying the β-catenin is an upstream gene of Dax1 and is involved in the regulation of C. farreri spermatogenesis.
Optimizing Semi-Honest Secure Multiparty Computation for the Internet

In the setting of secure multiparty computation, a set of parties with private inputs wish to compute some function of their inputs without revealing anything but their output. Over the last decade, the efficiency of secure two-party computation has advanced in leaps and bounds, with speedups of some orders of magnitude, making it fast enough to be of use in practice. In contrast, progress on the case of multiparty computation (with more than two parties) has been much slower, with very little work being done. Currently, the only implemented efficient multiparty protocol has many rounds of communication (linear in the depth of the circuit being computed) and thus is not suited for Internet-like settings where latency is not very low. In this paper, we construct highly efficient constant-round protocols for the setting of multiparty computation for semi-honest adversaries. Our protocols work by constructing a multiparty garbled circuit, as proposed in BMR (Beaver et al., STOC 1990). Our first protocol uses oblivious transfer and constitutes the first concretely-efficient constant-round multiparty protocol for the case of no honest majority. Our second protocol uses BGW, and is significantly more efficient than the FairplayMP protocol (Ben-David et al., CCS 2008) that also uses BGW. We ran extensive experimentation comparing our different protocols with each other and with a highly-optimized implementation of semi-honest GMW. Due to our protocol being constant round, it significantly outperforms GMW in Internet-like settings. For example, with 13 parties situated in the Virginia and Ireland Amazon regions and the SHA256 circuit with 90,000 gates and of depth 4000, the overall running time of our protocol is 25 seconds compared to 335 seconds for GMW. Furthermore, our online time is under half a second compared to 330 seconds for GMW.
Search the past with the portuguese web archive

The web was invented to quickly exchange data between scientists, but it became a crucial communication tool to connect the world. However, the web is extremely ephemeral. Most of the information published online becomes quickly unavailable and is lost forever. There are several initiatives worldwide that struggle to archive information from the web before it vanishes. However, search mechanisms to access this information are still limited and do not satisfy their users who demand performance similar to live-web search engines. This demo presents the Portuguese Web Archive, which enables search over 1.2 billion files archived from 1996 to 2012. It is the largest full-text searchable web archive publicly available [17]. The software developed to support this service is also publicly available as a free open source project at Google Code, so that it can be reused and enhanced by other web archivists. A short video about the Portuguese Web Archive is available at vimeo.com/59507267. The service can be tried live at archive.pt.
Diabetic Foot Infection: Causative Pathogens and Empiric Antibiotherapy Considerations—The Experience of a Tertiary Center

Most moderate-to-severe diabetic foot infections (DFIs) require hospitalization with urgent surgical approach and administration of empiric antibiotherapy. To ensure optimal antibiotic coverage, regular microbiological background updates are imperative. The purpose is to characterize the microbiological profile and the antibiotic sensitivity pattern of the DFI causative pathogens isolated within a specialized DFI unit of a tertiary hospital, in order to establish evidence-based policies regarding empirical antibiotic use. A cross-sectional study was conducted. Microbiological cultures and corresponding antibiotic sensitivity tests collected from moderate-to-severe DFIs as a first approach to the hospitalized patient were retrieved and analyzed during a 12-month period. Two groups were analyzed: inpatients that had been previously followed at the diabetic foot clinic of the hospital and inpatients without a previous contact with the hospital services. A total of 125 isolates obtained from 87 patients were deemed for analysis. Globally, a predominance of Gram-positive bacteria was observed (60%). Staphylococcus aureus was the most common pathogen. The global ratio of methicillin-sensitive S aureus to methicillin-resistant S aureus (MRSA) was 1.3:1, with similar findings in both groups. According to the antibiotic sensitivity test results, and within the recommended empiric antibiotic regimens for DFI, piperacillin/tazobactam seems to be the most suitable option. Gram-positive bacteria prevail as the main isolates in DFIs. Screening for MRSA-specific risk factors is mandatory. When going for a first empiric therapy, piperacillin/tazobactam is recommended in this institution, and an anti-MRSA agent should be added early, if necessary. We encourage continuous monitoring for the bacterial prevalence in Portuguese diabetic foot centers as it is paramount for the decision making regarding DFI protocols.
Text and Language Independent Speaker Identification by GMM based i Vector

Speaker Identification process is to identify a particular vocal cord from a set of existing speakers. In the speaker identification processes, unknown speaker voice sample targets each of the existing speakers present in the system and gives a predication. The predication may be more than one existing known speaker voice and is very close to the unknown speaker voice. The model is a Gaussian mixture model built by the extracted acoustic feature vectors from voice. The i-vector based dimension compression mapping function of the channel depended speaker, and super vector give better predicted scores according to cosine distance scoring associated with the order pair of speakers. In the order pair, the first coordinate is the unknown speaker i.e. test speaker, and the second coordinates is the existing known speaker i.e. target speaker. This paper presents the enhancement of the prediction based on i- vector in compare to the normalized set of predicted score. In the simulation, known speaker voices are collected through different channels and in different languages. In the testing, the GMM voice models, and GMM based i-Vector speaker voice models of the known speakers are used among the numbers of clusters in the test data set.
Global Expression Analysis Revealed Novel Gender-Specific Gene Expression Features in the Blood Fluke Parasite Schistosoma japonicum

Background Schistosoma japonicum is one of the remarkable Platyhelminths that are endemic in China and Southeast Asian countries. The parasite is dioecious and can reside inside the host for many years. Rapid reproduction by producing large number of eggs and count-react host anti-parasite responses are the strategies that benefit long term survival of the parasite. Praziquantel is currently the only drug that is effective against the worms. Development of novel antiparasite reagents and immune-prevention measures rely on the deciphering of parasite biology. The decoding of the genomic sequence of the parasite has made it possible to dissect the functions of genes that govern the development of the parasite. In this study, the polyadenylated transcripts from male and female S. japonicum were isolated for deep sequencing and the sequences were systematically analysed. Results First, the number of genes actively expressed in the two sexes of S. japonicum was similar, but around 50% of genes were biased to either male or female in expression. Secondly, it was, at the first time, found that more than 50% of the coding region of the genome was transcribed from both strands. Among them, 65% of the genes had sense and their cognate antisense transcripts co-expressed, whereas 35% had inverse relationship between sense and antisense transcript abundance. Further, based on gene ontological analysis, more than 2,000 genes were functionally categorized and biological pathways that are differentially functional in male or female parasites were elucidated. Conclusions Male and female schistosomal parasites differ in gene expression patterns, many metabolic and biological pathways have been identified in this study and genes differentially expressed in gender specific manner were presented. Importantly, more than 50% of the coding regions of the S. japonicum genome transcribed from both strands, antisense RNA-mediated gene regulation might play a critical role in the parasite biology.
Functional characterization of lmo2‐Cre transgenic zebrafish

Cre/loxP system is a powerful tool to manipulate the genome. Transgenic animals expressing Cre recombinase in specific tissues or cells have been widely used for conditional gene targeting, lineage tracing, and other genetic analyses. In zebrafish, the transgenic line with stable expression of Cre in specific tissues and cell subtypes has not been generated and its functional activity remains to be defined. Here we report the establishment of a stable transgenic fish Tg(zlmo2:Cre), which specifically expresses Cre in the primitive hematopoietic progenitors and vascular endothelial cells, under the control of lmo2 promoter. Our result shows that the Cre expression pattern recapitulates the endogenous lmo2 expression pattern during embryogenesis. Crossing of the Tg(zlmo2:Cre) line with another established transgenic reporter line Tg(zlmo2:loxP‐DsRed‐loxP‐EGFP), induces a robust recombination activity in hematopoietic progenitors and vascular endothelial cells. Thus, the Tg(zlmo2:Cre) transgenic line provides an invaluable tool to dissect genetic pathways in hematopoietic development and diseases. Developmental Dynamics 237:2139–2146, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Age Structure, Changing Demography and Effective Population Size in Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar)

Effective population size (Ne) is a central evolutionary concept, but its genetic estimation can be significantly complicated by age structure. Here we investigate Ne in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations that have undergone changes in demography and population dynamics, applying four different genetic estimators. For this purpose we use genetic data (14 microsatellite markers) from archived scale samples collected between 1951 and 2004. Through life table simulations we assess the genetic consequences of life history variation on Ne. Although variation in reproductive contribution by mature parr affects age structure, we find that its effect on Ne estimation may be relatively minor. A comparison of estimator models suggests that even low iteroparity may upwardly bias Ne estimates when ignored (semelparity assumed) and should thus empirically be accounted for. Our results indicate that Ne may have changed over time in relatively small populations, but otherwise remained stable. Our ability to detect changes in Ne in larger populations was, however, likely hindered by sampling limitations. An evaluation of Ne estimates in a demographic context suggests that life history diversity, density-dependent factors, and metapopulation dynamics may all affect the genetic stability of these populations.
Essential kinase-independent role of a Fer-like non-receptor tyrosine kinase in Caenorhabditis elegans morphogenesis

Morphogenesis requires coordination of cell surface activity and cytoskeletal architecture. During the initial stage of morphogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans, the concerted movement of surface epithelial cells results in enclosure of the embryo by the epidermis. We report that Fer-related kinase-1 (FRK-1), an ortholog of the mammalian non-receptor tyrosine kinase Fer, is necessary for embryonic enclosure and morphogenesis in C. elegans. Expression of FRK-1 in epidermal cells is sufficient to rescue a chromosomal deficiency that removes the frk-1 locus, demonstrating its autonomous requirement in the epidermis. The essential function of FRK-1 is independent of its kinase domain, suggesting a non-enzymatic role in morphogenesis. Localization of FRK-1 to the plasma membrane requires β-catenin, but not cadherin or α-catenin, and muscle-expressed β-integrin is non-autonomously required for this localization; in the absence of these components FRK-1 becomes nuclear. Mouse FerT rescues the morphogenetic defects of frk-1 mutants and expression of FRK-1 in mammalian cells results in loss of adhesion, implying a conserved function for FRK-1/FerT in cell adhesion and morphogenesis. Thus, FRK-1 performs a kinase-independent function in differentiation and morphogenesis of the C. elegans epidermis during embryogenesis.
Parametric Throughput Analysis of Synchronous Data Flow Graphs

Synchronous data flow graphs (SDFGs) have proved to be a very successful tool for modeling, analysis and synthesis of multimedia applications targeted at both single- and multiprocessor platforms. One of the most prominent performance constraints of concurrent real-time applications is throughput. For given actor execution times, throughput can be verified by analyzing the SDFG models of such applications, for instance using maximum cycle mean analysis or state space analysis. In various contexts, such as design space exploration or run-time reconfiguration, many fast throughput computations are required for varying actor execution times. We present methods to compute throughput of an SDFG where actor execution times can be parameters. The throughput of these graphs is obtained in the form of a function of these parameters. Recalculation of throughput is then merely an evaluation of this function for specific parameter values, which is much faster than the standard throughput analysis. We propose three different algorithms for parametric throughput analysis and evaluate these algorithms experimentally, showing the feasibility of the approach and showing that a divide and conquer algorithm performs best.
Trophoblasts, invasion, and microRNA

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have recently become essential actors in various fields of physiology and medicine, especially as easily accessible circulating biomarkers, or as modulators of cell differentiation. To this respect, terminal differentiation of trophoblasts (the characteristic cells of the placenta in Therian mammals) into syncytiotrophoblast, villous trophoblast, or extravillous trophoblast constitutes a good example of such a choice, where miRNAs have recently been shown to play an important role. The aim of this review is to provide a snapshot of what is known today in placentation mechanisms that are mediated by miRNA, under the angles of materno–fetal immune dialog regulation, trophoblast differentiation, and angiogenesis at the materno–fetal interface. Also, two aspects of regulation of these issues will be highlighted: the part played by oxygen concentration and the specific function of imprinted genes in the developing placenta.
Indirect capabilities and complex performance : implications for procurement and operations strategy

Purpose – The paper argues that indirect capabilities – the ability to access other organizations' capabilities – are an important and neglected part of firm strategy in procuring complex performance (PCP) settings, and that this is especially so if these settings are treated as genuinely complex, rather than merely complicated. Elements of indirect capabilities are identified. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This is a theoretical paper, drawing on complexity notions and Penrose's analysis of endogenous innovation to drive a disequilibrium-oriented discussion of the capabilities required by firms in a PCP setting. Findings – Six inter-related elements of indirect capabilities are proposed and discussed: IT infrastructure, boundary management practices, contracting, interface artefacts, valuing others' capabilities and relating direct to indirect capabilities. These are important in PCP settings and in other operations and supply settings characterised by complexity. O.