Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extracting Information from Wrong Answers in Computerized Adaptive Testing

Abstract : A brief review of the history of polychotomous (i.e., multi-category) item response models is provided. After describing a new polychotomous item response model (Model 8), examples of the Operating Characteristic Functions obtained when Model 8 is applied to real test data are given. In general, inspection of 'goodness-of-fit' plots indicates that Model 8 provides superior data fit and higher item information functions than the well-known 3-parameter logistic (dichotomous) item response model. A simulation of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) that used the actual item responses of applicants for military enlistment shows that Model 8 would be superior to the 3-parameter logistic model in a CAT environment. In this investigation, Model 8 increased test reliability by an amount that is equivalent to a 25% increase in test length. Computerized testing, selection, classification, training, testing, item response theory psychometric models, Computerized Adaptive Testing-Armed Services Vocational Apt Battery, CAT-ASVAB, item scoring, polychotomous scoring, polytomous scoring.
The semiclassical theory of quantized fields in classical electromagnetic backgrounds

We formulate mathematically the process of pair production in electromagnetic fields for spinless particles. We compute the probability that n pairs are created in the semiclassical approximation, and herein we prove that the pair creation phenomenon is a stochastic Poisson process. Finally, we prove rigorously and interpret suitably the Schwinger formula.
Learning Probabilistic Relational Dynamics for Multiple Tasks

The ways in which an agent's actions affect the world can often be modeled compactly using a set of relational probabilistic planning rules. This paper addresses the problem of learning such rule sets for multiple related tasks. We take a hierarchical Bayesian approach, in which the system learns a prior distribution over rule sets. We present a class of prior distributions parameterized by a rule set prototype that is stochastically modified to produce a task-specific rule set. We also describe a coordinate ascent algorithm that iteratively optimizes the task-specific rule sets and the prior distribution. Experiments using this algorithm show that transferring information from related tasks significantly reduces the amount of training data required to predict action effects in blocks-world domains.
Psychometric Properties of the Spanish Adaptation of the Health Care Communication Questionnaire (HCCQ)

Abstract This study’s aim is to adapt the Health Care Communication Questionnaire in a Spanish sample, and then test the psychometric properties of the adapted instrument. To do so, the questionnaire was adapted for the Spanish context and then applied in a pilot study as well as a final study. The final sample consisted of 200 patients at Morales Meseguer Hospital in Murcia, Spain. The results show that this adaptation’s psychometric properties were similar to those of the original questionnaire. As for item analysis, all items obtained discriminant indices > . 30. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed the same structure as that of the original questionnaire (χ2/df = 1.345; CFI = .983; IFI = .983; TLI = .977; RMSEA = .042), with indices reflecting adequate goodness of fit. Also, results from the analysis of each dimension’s internal consistency had coefficients between . 71 and . 86. We conclude that the Spanish version of the HCCQ has adequate psychometric properties, is useful, and will serve its purpose in the context in which it will be used.
Transposases are the most abundant, most ubiquitous genes in nature

Genes, like organisms, struggle for existence, and the most successful genes persist and widely disseminate in nature. The unbiased determination of the most successful genes requires access to sequence data from a wide range of phylogenetic taxa and ecosystems, which has finally become achievable thanks to the deluge of genomic and metagenomic sequences. Here, we analyzed 10 million protein-encoding genes and gene tags in sequenced bacterial, archaeal, eukaryotic and viral genomes and metagenomes, and our analysis demonstrates that genes encoding transposases are the most prevalent genes in nature. The finding that these genes, classically considered as selfish genes, outnumber essential or housekeeping genes suggests that they offer selective advantage to the genomes and ecosystems they inhabit, a hypothesis in agreement with an emerging body of literature. Their mobile nature not only promotes dissemination of transposable elements within and between genomes but also leads to mutations and rearrangements that can accelerate biological diversification and—consequently—evolution. By securing their own replication and dissemination, transposases guarantee to thrive so long as nucleic acid-based life forms exist.
Multi-level mining and visualization of scientific text collections: Exploring a bi-lingual scientific repository

We present a system to mine and visualize collections of scientific documents by semantically browsing information extracted from single publications or aggregated throughout corpora of articles. The text mining tool performs deep analysis of document collections allowing the extraction and interpretation of research paper's contents. In addition to the extraction and enrichment of documents with metadata (titles, authors, affiliations, etc), the deep analysis performed comprises semantic interpretation, rhetorical analysis of sentences, triple-based information extraction, and text summarization. The visualization components allow geographical-based exploration of collections, topic-evolution interpretation, and collaborative network analysis among others. The paper presents a case study of a bi-lingual collection in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP).
SASA - A Semi-Automatic Semantic Annotator for Personal Knowledge Management

Best practice organisations have realised that people and their knowledge remain their greatest assets and will continue to be the largest contributory factor in obtaining future competitive advantage. Knowledge fundamentally derived from people in the absence of their understanding, personal context and application remains largely as obscure information. Current personal knowledge management (PKM) activities do not adequately support the finding, reminding, reuse and collaboration of information. In this paper we propose a novel PKM tool called SASA, a semi-automatic semantic annotator of PDF documents, which will enable collecting, connecting and collaborating of discovered information to facilitate knowledge sharing and personal content management within a business setting. SASA, a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat Professional, utilises Semantic Web technologies to enable building, augmenting and sharing of ontologies amongst knowledge workers. Within an ontology named entities are connected to additional information such as Web pages, documents, mail messages, personal notes, and wikis. SASA automatically derives the context of the document, highlights named entities and applies the relevant additional information. The business case for such a tool is outlined and user scenario development used to illustrate how SASA will assist Business Client Account Managers in the laborious process of reviewing, annotating and gathering information from customer documentation by enhancing their PKM.
Traffic light assistant system for optimized energy consumption in an electric vehicle

Increasingly intelligent vehicle driving systems are rapidly being developed, and will in the future become a necessity for sustainable, convenient and safe mobility in our ever more urbanized world. This paper presents an innovative approach for the control of a fully electric vehicle approaching a road segment with Multiple Traffic Lights (TL). By utilizing Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication, the energy consumption for the maneuver completion can be reduced. The problem is approached from a Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework. The performance of the system is evaluated using a complex simulation toolchain representing the vehicle, powertrain, driver, and road including the traffic conditions. The results have shown an overall energy consumption reduction of 29 % for an idealized case and 17 % for a real road simulated scenario as compared to `normal' human driver behavior.
Early intervention with glucagon‐like peptide 1 analog liraglutide prevents tau hyperphosphorylation in diabetic db/db mice

Increasing evidence has shown that type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. Neurofibrillary tangles, which consist of hyperphosphorylated tau and misfolded microtubules, is one of the neuropathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. Db/db mice, a rodent model of T2D, also exhibited age‐dependent tau hyperphosphorylation. Glucagon‐like peptide‐1 (GLP‐1) mimetics, a type of drug used in T2D, has been found to have neuroprotective effects. The aim of this study was to explore the potential effects of liraglutide (a GLP‐1 analog), or insulin, on tau phosphorylation in T2D animals. Male db/db mice (3–3.5 weeks) were daily injected subcutaneously with liraglutide (n = 27), insulin (n = 27), or saline (n = 26), and five to seven mice were killed every 2 weeks for analysis of plasma and cerebrospinal (CSF) insulin levels by ELISA, and protein levels in the hippocampal formation by western blot. We found that db/db mice treated with saline exhibited an age‐dependent decrease in CSF insulin and an increase in hippocampal tau phosphorylation. Liraglutide injection reversed the CSF insulin to ~1 mIU/L by the end of 8 weeks treatment, and prevented the hyperphosphorylation of tau protein in the hippocampal formation. By contrast, insulin injection had no effects on CSF insulin or phosphorylation of tau protein. In summary, this study indicates that early GLP‐1 analog intervention prevented the age‐dependent tau hyperphosphorylation in T2D mice brain, probably by facilitating sequential activation in an insulin signaling pathway reflected in increased basal activation of Akt and basal suppression of glycogen synthase kinase‐3 beta.
Power Allocation for Max-Sum Rate and Max-Min Rate Proportional Fairness in NOMA

In this letter, we consider proportional fairness scheduling (PFS) for downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with two users. Unlike conventional multiuser diversity systems, the power allocation plays a key role in PFS for NOMA as it can support multiple users simultaneously with positive transmission rates. With different criteria, we find optimal power allocation. Among those, it is shown that the PFS scheme that maximizes the minimum normalized rate can provide not only proportional fairness, but also small variation of transmission rates.
HDAC4-Myogenin Axis As an Important Marker of HD-Related Skeletal Muscle Atrophy

Skeletal muscle remodelling and contractile dysfunction occur through both acute and chronic disease processes. These include the accumulation of insoluble aggregates of misfolded amyloid proteins that is a pathological feature of Huntington’s disease (HD). While HD has been described primarily as a neurological disease, HD patients’ exhibit pronounced skeletal muscle atrophy. Given that huntingtin is a ubiquitously expressed protein, skeletal muscle fibres may be at risk of a cell autonomous HD-related dysfunction. However the mechanism leading to skeletal muscle abnormalities in the clinical and pre-clinical HD settings remains unknown. To unravel this mechanism, we employed the R6/2 transgenic and HdhQ150 knock-in mouse models of HD. We found that symptomatic animals developed a progressive impairment of the contractile characteristics of the hind limb muscles tibialis anterior (TA) and extensor digitorum longus (EDL), accompanied by a significant loss of motor units in the EDL. In symptomatic animals, these pronounced functional changes were accompanied by an aberrant deregulation of contractile protein transcripts and their up-stream transcriptional regulators. In addition, HD mouse models develop a significant reduction in muscle force, possibly as a result of a deterioration in energy metabolism and decreased oxidation that is accompanied by the re-expression of the HDAC4-DACH2-myogenin axis. These results show that muscle dysfunction is a key pathological feature of HD.
Implementation of a Turbo Decoder on a Configurable Computing Platform

(ABSTRACT) Turbo codes are a new class of codes that can achieve exceptional error performance and energy efficiency at low signal-to-noise ratios. Decoding turbo codes is a complicated procedure that often requires custom hardware if it is to be performed at acceptable speeds. Configurable computing machines are able to provide the performance advantages of custom hardware while maintaining the flexibility of general-purpose microprocessors and DSPs. This thesis presents an implementation of a turbo decoder on an FPGA-based configurable computing platform. Portability and flexibility are emphasized in the implementation so that the decoder can be used as part of a configurable software radio. The system presented performs turbo decoding for a variable block size with a variable number of decoding iterations while using only a single FPGA. When six iterations are performed, the decoder operates at an information bit rate greater than 32 kbps. iii Acknowledgements There are several people who deserve recognition for the assistance they provided in the successful completion of my graduate work. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Peter Athanas, for his help and guidance in not only this effort, but in all of the projects we have attempted in the three-and-a-half years of our association. His friendly demeanor, keen insight, and amazingly upbeat attitude in the face of adversity continue to inspire his students and colleagues alike. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Dr. Mark Jones and Dr. Jeff Reed, for their suggestions and support throughout this effort and for serving on my committee. Special thanks goes out to Dr. Brian Woerner, my committee member-by-proxy, who was more than willing to help out on short notice and also provided many useful suggestions. I am also grateful to my fellow students Yufei Wu and Matt Valenti for their support in helping me understand the theory of turbo codes. I am doubly grateful to Yufei for the invaluable debugging support she provided during the latter days of this project. Wendy Akers and Martha McCollum provided priceless administrative and emotional support throughout my time with the Configurable Computing team, and without their help, this document would still have colons used improperly. My wonderful parents and friends have given me the support I needed to complete what at times seemed to be an insurmountable task. Their simultaneous desires for my success and my sanity gave me much-needed support when …
Metal Rings as Quantum Bits

We propose a device that meets the physical and quantum mechanical conditions required for the operation of interacting quantumbits. Metal rings embeddedin a solid state substrate by means of silicon processing technology are considered as the basic computing elements. We investigate different set-ups and concepts that are compatible with the topology of the metallic rings. Accessing the rings for in- and output signals as well as achieving the exchange and quantization of information are two essential requirements for a proper operation of an array of communicating quantum bits. In particular, the superposition of the quantum states characterizing the quantum bit array is primordial in order to run quantumcomputing algorithms. Furthermore, decoherence must be dealt with in a controllable fashion in order to read out the signals before they loose the signature of the quantum information. This work reports on the processing and testing of two device configurations.
Capturing cancer initiating events in OncoCL, a cancer cell ontology

We have developed an ontology, OncoCL, to classify cancer cells and provide a framework for consistent annotation of cancer-associated data from conventional surgical pathology and cancer molecular biology for the purpose of access, comparison, and analysis. The cell type ontology, CL, describes normal cell types and was not designed to capture the pathology of cancer cells. OncoCL builds upon CL, as a canonical cell (represented in CL) undergoes oncogenic change and tumorigenesis with the acquisition of the cancer hallmarks described by Hanahan and Weinberg.
Validation of Vitek 2 Nonfermenting Gram-Negative Cards and Vitek 2 Version 4.02 Software for Identification and Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing of Nonfermenting Gram-Negative Rods from Patients with Cystic Fibrosis

ABSTRACT Accurate identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of nonfermenters from cystic fibrosis patients are essential for appropriate antimicrobial treatment. This study examined the ability of the newly designed Vitek 2 nonfermenting gram-negative card (NGNC) (new gram-negative identification card; bioMérieux, Marcy-l'Ètoile, France) to identify nonfermenting gram-negative rods from cystic fibrosis patients in comparison to reference methods and the accuracy of the new Vitek 2 version 4.02 software for AST compared to the broth microdilution method. Two hundred twenty-four strains for identification and 138 strains for AST were investigated. The Vitek 2 NGNC identified 211 (94.1%) of the nonfermenters correctly. Among morphologically atypical microorganisms, five strains were misidentified and eight strains were determined with low discrimination, requiring additional tests which raised the correct identification rate to 97.8%. Regarding AST, the overall essential agreement of Vitek 2 was 97.6%, and the overall categorical agreement was 92.9%. Minor errors were found in 5.1% of strains, and major and very major errors were found in 1.6% and 0.3% of strains, respectively. In conclusion, the Vitek NGNC appears to be a reliable method for identification of morphologically typical nonfermenters and is an improvement over the API NE system and the Vitek 2 GNC database version 4.01. However, classification in morphologically atypical nonfermenters must be interpreted with care to avoid misidentification. Moreover, the new Vitek 2 version 4.02 software showed good results for AST and is suitable for routine clinical use. More work is needed for the reliable testing of strains whose MICs are close to the breakpoints.
Recruitment and Activation of RSK2 by HIV-1 Tat

The transcriptional activity of the integrated HIV provirus is dependent on the chromatin organization of the viral promoter and the transactivator Tat. Tat recruits the cellular pTEFb complex and interacts with several chromatin-modifying enzymes, including the histone acetyltransferases p300 and PCAF. Here, we examined the interaction of Tat with activation-dependent histone kinases, including the p90 ribosomal S6 kinase 2 (RSK2). Dominant-negative RSK2 and treatment with a small-molecule inhibitor of RSK2 kinase activity inhibited the transcriptional activity of Tat, indicating that RSK2 is important for Tat function. Reconstitution of RSK2 in cells from subjects with a genetic defect in RSK2 expression (Coffin-Lowry syndrome) enhanced Tat transactivation. Tat interacted with RSK2 and activated RSK2 kinase activity in cells. Both properties were lost in a mutant Tat protein (F38A) that is deficient in HIV transactivation. Our data identify a novel reciprocal regulation of Tat and RSK2 function, which might serve to induce early changes in the chromatin organization of the HIV LTR.
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Cc by Securing Data in Cloud Using Homomorphic Encryption

Security and privacy in cloud computing is one of the most challenging ongoing research areas because data owner stores their sensitive data to remote servers and users also access required data from remote cloud servers which is not controlled and managed by data owners. Since cloud computing is rest on internet, various security issues like privacy, data integrity, confidentiality, authentication and trust encounter. In this paper, we will comprehensively survey the various existing hybrid security techniques of cloud computing. We will compare these combinations of security techniques with their key features.
A comparison of bolus versus continuous cardiac output in an experimental model of heart failure

Objective The majority of studies examining cardiac output measurement have been done in physiologically stable models with low thermal background noise. Research comparing continuous cardiac output (CCO) with bolus thermodilution cardiac output (COTD) measures in human and animal models have reported high correlations, negligible bias, but large limits of agreement. The purpose of this project was to compare CCO with COTD measures in an experimental model of heart failure where the cardiac output values were low and the range was narrow. Design A one-group experimental design with preintervention control measures and repeated CCO and COTD measures across nine time points. Setting Cardiovascular research laboratory. Subjects Thirty dogs. Measures and Main Results Univariate and multivariate versions of repeated-measures analysis were used to assess the influences of temperature, weight, and stage of the experimental protocol on CCO, COTD, and the differences between them. The two measures CCO and COTD were assessed for agreement by using methods proposed by Bland and Altman. Two hundred and fifty pairs of measurements were obtained during sinus rhythm. The range for COTD measures was 0.5–4.67 L/min and for CCO measures 1.0–5.40 L/min. Of the 250 cardiac outputs estimated by the continuous method, 73.4% of the values were within ±15% of that estimated by the repetitive, single thermodilution method. The mean bias for the entire protocol was 0.01 (sd = 0.51) with a range of 4.33 L/min. Conclusion Agreement between the two measures may be the function of biological variability, responses to anesthesia, and technique. Bland and Altman evaluation demonstrated low bias and precision and similar levels of agreement when compared with previous studies in an experimental model where the cardiac output was low and the range was narrow.
Multi-Rate Networked Control of Conic Systems

Implementation uncertainties such as timevarying delay and data loss and having to typically implement a discrete-time-controller can cause significant problems in the design of networked control systems. This paper describes a novel multi-rate digital-control system which preserves stability and provides robustness to such implementation uncertainties. We present necessary conditions for stability of conic systems interconnected over digital-control-networks which can tolerate networked delays and data-loss. We also compare the performance using simulation results of the proposed architecture to that of a classic-digital-control-implementation applied to controlling position of a single-degree of freedom robotic manipulator.