Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SIGIR 2016 Workshop WebQA II: Web Question Answering Beyond Factoids

Web search engines have made great progress at answering factoid queries. However, they are not well-tailored for managing more complex questions, especially when they require explanation and/or description. The WebQA workshop series aims at exploring diverse approaches to answering questions on the Web. This year, particular emphasis will be given to Community Question Answering (CQA), where comments by the users engaged in the forum communities can be used to answer new questions. Questions posted on the Web can be short and ambiguous (similarly to Web queries to a search engine). These issues make the WebQA task more challenging than traditional QA, and finding the most effective approaches for it remains an open problem. Unlike the more formal conference format, the aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers in diverse areas working on this problem, including those from NLP, IR, social media and recommender systems communities. This workshop is specifically designed for the SIGIR audience. However, due to its format, its goal, as compared to the main conference, is to conduct a more focused and open discussion, encouraging the presentation of work in progress and late-breaking initial results in Web Question Answering. Both academic and industrial participation will be solicited, including keynotes and invited speakers.
The medial geniculate body of the tree shrew, Tupaia glis I. Cytoarchitecture and midbrain connections

In this study of the medial geniculate body in the tree shrew eight subdivisions are identified on the basis of differences recognized in Nissl‐stained material. Experiments using the methods of anterograde and retrograde axonal transport and anterograde degeneration show that each subdivision has a unique pattern of connections with the midbrain.
Eddy covariance fluxes of acyl peroxy nitrates (PAN, PPN and MPAN) above a Ponderosa pine forest

During the Biosphere Effects on AeRosols and Photochemistry EXperiment 2007 (BEARPEX-2007), we observed eddy covariance (EC) fluxes of speciated acyl per- oxy nitrates (APNs), including peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), peroxypropionyl nitrate (PPN) and peroxymethacryloyl ni- trate (MPAN), above a Ponderosa pine forest in the west- ern Sierra Nevada. All APN fluxes are net downward dur- ing the day, with a median midday PAN exchange velocity of 0.3 cm s 1 ; nighttime storage-corrected APN EC fluxes are smaller than daytime fluxes but still downward. Analysis with a standard resistance model shows that loss of PAN to the canopy is not controlled by turbulent or molecular dif- fusion. Stomatal uptake can account for 25 to 50% of the observed downward PAN flux. Vertical gradients in the PAN thermal decomposition (TD) rate explain a similar fraction of the flux, suggesting that a significant portion of the PAN flux into the forest results from chemical processes in the canopy. The remaining "unidentified" portion of the net PAN flux ( 15%) is ascribed to deposition or reactive uptake on non- stomatal surfaces (e.g. leaf cuticles or soil). Shifts in temper- ature, moisture and ecosystem activity during the summer - fall transition alter the relative contribution of stomatal up- take, non-stomatal uptake and thermochemical gradients to the net PAN flux. Daytime PAN and MPAN exchange veloc- ities are a factor of 3 smaller than those of PPN during the first two weeks of the measurement period, consistent with strong intra-canopy chemical production of PAN and MPAN during this period. Depositional loss of APNs can be 3-21% of the gross gas-phase TD loss depending on temperature. As a source of nitrogen to the biosphere, PAN deposition repre- sents approximately 4-19% of that due to dry deposition of nitric acid at this site.
Complex Tensor Factorization With PARAFAC2 for the Estimation of Brain Connectivity From the EEG

The coupling between neuronal populations and its magnitude have been shown to be informative for various clinical applications. One method to estimate functional brain connectivity is with electroencephalography (EEG) from which the cross spectrum between different sensor locations is derived. We wish to test the efficacy of tensor factorization in the estimation of brain connectivity. An EEG model in the complex domain is derived that shows the suitability of the PARAFAC2 model. Complex tensor factorization based on PARAFAC2 is used to decompose the EEG into scalp components described by the spatial, spectral, and complex trial profiles. A connectivity metric is also derived on the complex trial profiles of the extracted components. Results on a benchmark EEG dataset confirmed that the PARAFAC2 can estimate connectivity better than traditional tensor analysis such as PARAFAC within a range of signal-to-noise ratios. MVAR-ICA outperformed PARAFAC2 for very low signal-to-noise ratios while being inferior in most of the range, and in contrast to our method, MVAR-ICA does not allow the estimation of trial to trial information. The analysis of the EEG from patients with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease showed that the PARAFAC2 identifies loss of brain connectivity agreeing with prior pathological knowledge. The complex PARAFAC2 algorithm is suitable for the EEG connectivity estimation since it allows to extract meaningful-coupled sources and provides better estimates than complex PARAFAC and MVAR-ICA. A new paradigm that employs complex tensor factorization has demonstrated to be successful in identifying brain connectivity and the location of couples sources for both a benchmark and a real-world EEG dataset. This can enable future applications and has the potential to solve some the issues that deteriorate the performance of traditional connectivity metrics.
Design of Hole-Blocking and Electron-Blocking Layers in AlxGa1–xN-Based UV Light-Emitting Diodes

The band-engineered structure design for electron-blocking layer (EBL) and hole-blocking layer (HBL) in AlxGa1-xN-based ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (UV LEDs) is performed and analyzed theoretically. Simulation results show that the severe polarization effect is efficiently mitigated and the downward-bended band profile of the EBL is improved when the EBL is designed with a graded-composition and multiquantum barrier (GMQB) structure. As a result, the capabilities of both electron confinement and hole injection, and also the light output power are promoted. On the contrary, for the HBL, the design of composition graded and/or multiquantum barrier structures reduces the effective potential barrier height for holes in the valence band and, consequently, causes a considerable hole overflow. The UV LED, thus, exhibits superior optical performance when the LED structure is simultaneously designed with a GMQB EBL and a bulk HBL.
Controlled hypotension for orthognathic surgery.

Hypotensive anesthesia has three potential benefits: 1) reduced blood loss with a consequent reduction in risks associated with blood transfusion; 2) improved quality (dryness) of the operative field, potentially allowing more accurate dissection and improved surgical results; and 3) reduced operative time. For the most part, studies of hypotensive anesthesia have shown a reduced blood loss that has been statistically significant (1-3). Nonetheless, the clinical importance of a small but statistically significant reduction in blood loss remains controversial when weighed against the added possible risk and expense of inducing hypotension. Reductions in operative time have also been statistically significant in some (2,4), but not all studies (3,5). Improvement of the quality of the operative field has been studied less extensively. Several authors have concluded that the quality of the operative field is improved, but give little objective evidence to support this conclusion (4,6). One report claims that postoperative swelling was reduced and the quality of surgical results was improved based on subjective anecdotal observations without matched controls (4). A few studies do suggest some measurable improvement in the surgical field. Grundy et al. (5) reported on 24 patients undergoing Harrington rod operations, 13 of which were performed with controlled hypotension. The surgeons were able to identify correctly whether or not controlled hypotension was employed in 20 out of the 24 cases. Chan et al. (7) reported on 21 patients undergoing orthognathic procedures, 11 of which were performed with controlled hypotension to a mean arterial pressure of 70 mm Hg. At the end of each case, the surgeons rated the quality of the surgical field on a scale
The Saccharomyces cerevisiae AP-1 Protein Discriminates between Oxidative Stress Elicited by the Oxidants H2O2 and Diamide*

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae AP-1 protein (yAP-1) is a key mediator of oxidative stress tolerance. Transcriptional activation by yAP-1 has been shown to be inducible by exposure of cells to H2O2 and diamide, among other oxidative stress eliciting compounds. Here we define the segments of the yAP-1 protein that are required to respond to this environmental challenge. Western blotting analyses indicated that levels of yAP-1 do not change during oxidative stress. Deletion mutagenesis and gene fusion experiments indicate that two different segments of yAP-1 are required for oxidative stress inducibility. These two domains function differentially depending on the type of oxidant used to generate oxidative stress. Three repeated cysteine-serine-glutamate sequences located in the carboxyl terminus are required for normal regulation of yAP-1 function during oxidative stress. Replacement of these cysteine-serine-glutamate repeats by alanine residues does not similarly affect H2O2 and diamide regulation of yAP-1 function. While yAP-1 transactivation is enhanced by exposure to either H2O2 or diamide, the protein responds to the oxidative stress produced by these compounds in nonidentical ways.
Investigation of possible epistatic interactions between GRIA2 and GRIA4 variants on clinical outcomes in patients with major depressive disorder

Objectives To investigate the effects of glutamate receptor, ionotropic, alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionate (AMPA) 2 (GRIA2) rs4260586 and glutamate receptor, ionotropic, AMPA 4 (GRIA4) rs10736648 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on response to antidepressants in Korean patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), and to ascertain whether epistatic interactions might exist between these SNPs. Methods In this retrospective analysis, patients were assessed at hospital admission and discharge using the Montgomery–Åsberg depression rating scale (MADRS). A multiple regression model was employed to investigate the effects of the two SNP variants on clinical/sociodemographic outcomes relating to MDD. Results Out of 145 Korean patients, the presence of both GRIA2 rs4260586 and GRIA4 rs10736648 polymorphisms had no significant association with MADRS improvement scores or other clinical/sociodemographic variables. Conclusions These data potentially suggest a lack of epistatic interaction between GRIA2 and GRIA4 variants, regarding clinical outcomes in patients with MDD. The study was limited by small sample size, use of different antidepressants and incomplete coverage of genes under investigation. Future research should include larger patient samples treated with different antidepressants, analysis of different SNPs and/or investigation of different gene–gene interactions within the glutamatergic system.
Spanning the gap between motion estimation and morphing

Motion estimation is an important and well-studied method for determining correspondences between images in video processing. In contrast with motion estimation, the use of image warping on image sequences is a new and developing field. To provide image warping effects, morphing algorithms rely on mesh points to align two images. Presently, the selection of these mesh points is a labor-intensive, manual process. This paper attempts to automate the selection of mesh points for morphing by recognizing this problem as one of determining image correspondences. Applications include video compression, animation sequence generation and high-quality time dilation of video. <<ETX>>
Project Memory: Information Management for Project Teams

Modern organizations are successfully using project teams to address complex tasks. Yet these teams often use approaches for project data management that may not capture project processes, contexts, rationales, or artifacts in a way that enables new project members to familiarize themselves quickly with the project history. Project information is rarely captured, retained, or indexed so that people external to the project can retrieve and apply it to future tasks. To address the issue of capturing a comprehensive project history that can subsequently be retrieved and applied to current problems, a generalizable object-oriented data model is developed. It decomposes project information into five discrete classes: projects, users, events, meetings, and documents. Through inheritance and domain references, the model describes the people, temporal events (such as meetings or single agenda items within a meeting), and archival documents that are created within a project or support some aspect of the project. These project items can be retrieved based on either contextual information (such as the dates they were created or last revised, who created them, or the projects they pertain to) or user-supplied descriptive keywords. Hypertext-like links can also be created to associate related items. Based on this model, a prototype system, Project Memory, has been developed to validate the model structure and system requirements.
CommonKADS: a comprehensive methodology for KBS development

The aim of CommonKADS is to fill the need for a structured methodology for KBS projects by constructing a set of engineering models built with the organization and the application in mind. We give a brief overview of the CommonKADS methodology, paying special attention to the expertise modeling-an aspect of KBS development that distinguishes it from other types of software development. We illustrate the CommonKADS approach by showing how aspects of the VT system for elevator design would be modeled. <<ETX>>
A p38 MAPK-MEF2C pathway regulates B-cell proliferation

B lymphocytes are an integral part of the adaptive immune system. On antigen binding to the B-cell receptor (BCR), B cells rapidly proliferate and differentiate into antibody-secreting plasma cells. The p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway functions downstream of the BCR to control cell proliferation, but the transcriptional effectors of this pathway in B cells have remained elusive. In the present study, we inactivated Mef2c exclusively in B cells by conditional gene targeting in mice. Loss of MEF2C function resulted in a reduced immune response to antigen, defective germinal center formation, and a severe defect in B-cell proliferation, and we show that MEF2C regulates proliferation in response to BCR stimulation via the p38 MAPK pathway. p38 directly phosphorylates MEF2C via three residues in the C-terminal transactivation domain, establishing MEF2C as a direct transcriptional effector of BCR signaling via p38 MAPK.
Model Checking Temporal Logic Formulas Using Sticker Automata

As an important complex problem, the temporal logic model checking problem is still far from being fully resolved under the circumstance of DNA computing, especially Computation Tree Logic (CTL), Interval Temporal Logic (ITL), and Projection Temporal Logic (PTL), because there is still a lack of approaches for DNA model checking. To address this challenge, a model checking method is proposed for checking the basic formulas in the above three temporal logic types with DNA molecules. First, one-type single-stranded DNA molecules are employed to encode the Finite State Automaton (FSA) model of the given basic formula so that a sticker automaton is obtained. On the other hand, other single-stranded DNA molecules are employed to encode the given system model so that the input strings of the sticker automaton are obtained. Next, a series of biochemical reactions are conducted between the above two types of single-stranded DNA molecules. It can then be decided whether the system satisfies the formula or not. As a result, we have developed a DNA-based approach for checking all the basic formulas of CTL, ITL, and PTL. The simulated results demonstrate the effectiveness of the new method.
A simple model for nonsaturated IEEE 802.11 DCF networks

We propose a simple approximate model for a nonsaturated IEEE 802.11 DCF network. Our model is much simpler than others that have appeared in the literature. The main simplification we introduce is that the attempt rate in the nonsaturated setting can be approximated by scaling the attempt rate of the saturated setting with the probability of a packet arrival. We verify our model using ns-2 simulation and show that our MAC access delay result is the most accurate amongst related work, while our collision probability and throughput results achieve comparable accuracy to [1].
Imaging Cancer Metabolism

It is widely accepted that altered metabolism contributes to cancer growth and has been described as a hallmark of cancer. Our view and understanding of cancer metabolism has expanded at a rapid pace, however, there remains a need to study metabolic dependencies of human cancer in vivo. Recent studies have sought to utilize multi-modality imaging (MMI) techniques in order to build a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of cancer metabolism. MMI combines several in vivo techniques that can provide complementary information related to cancer metabolism. We describe several non-invasive imaging techniques that provide both anatomical and functional information related to tumor metabolism. These imaging modalities include: positron emission tomography (PET), computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) that uses hyperpolarized probes and optical imaging utilizing bioluminescence and quantification of light emitted. We describe how these imaging modalities can be combined with mass spectrometry and quantitative immunochemistry to obtain more complete picture of cancer metabolism. In vivo studies of tumor metabolism are emerging in the field and represent an important component to our understanding of how metabolism shapes and defines cancer initiation, progression and response to treatment. In this review we describe in vivo based studies of cancer metabolism that have taken advantage of MMI in both pre-clinical and clinical studies. MMI promises to advance our understanding of cancer metabolism in both basic research and clinical settings with the ultimate goal of improving detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients.
Activity‐dependent formation of perforated synapses in cultured hippocampal neurons

The study investigated the formation of perforated synapses in rat hippocampal cell cultures. Perforated synapses are defined by their discontinuous postsynaptic densities (PSDs) and are believed to occur in parallel with changes in synaptic activity and possibly also synaptic efficacy. Several in vivo studies have demonstrated an increase in the frequency of perforated synapses induced by development and environmental stimulation as well as long‐term potentiation (LTP). Also in in vitro brain slices, LTP was associated with an elevated number of perforated spine synapses. Our study demonstrated for the first time that the formation of perforated synapses can be induced by a short‐term increase in spontaneous neural activity in a hippocampal cell culture model. Stimulation with the GABAA‐antagonist picrotoxin (PTX) induced a significant increase in the percentage of perforated synapses. This strong increase was blocked when APV was added together with PTX, indicating that the formation of perforated synapses depended on the activation of NMDA receptors. We also showed that inhibition of the tissue type plasminogen activator (tPA‐stop/PAI‐1) significantly interfered with the activity‐induced increase in perforated synapses. This implies that the proteolytic activities of tPA might be involved in steps which are downstream from the NMDA receptor‐mediated synaptic plasticity leading to structural changes at synaptic contacts. In contrast, even long‐term inhibition of electrical network activity by tetrodotoxin had no effect on the number of perforated synapses, but almost completely abolished the formation of spine synapses. These results indicate that a short‐term increase in neural activity via NMDA receptors and a proteolytic cascade involving tPA lead to the formation of perforated synapses.
Interpreting and Leveraging Browser Interaction for Exploratory Search Tasks

In this paper we introduce a novel approach for modeling and interpreting search behavior for exploratory search by using a so called exploration graph. We use an existing methodology of logging and analyzing user interactions with a web browser and add an additional interpretation step that can be used, e. g. to integrate sensemaking or browsing patterns into the log data. We conducted a user study and are able to show that: (a) interaction logs can be interpreted semantically, (b) semantic interpretations lead to a more connected exploration graph, and (c) multiple (even contradicting) interpretations of the same search behavior may exist at the same time. We also show how our theoretical model can be applied in the area of professional search by incorporating insights gained from the model into novel recommendation and machine learning approaches.
Endoplasmic reticulum stress‐mediated autophagy protects against lipopolysaccharide‐induced apoptosis in HL‐1 cardiomyocytes

What is the central question of this study? Cardiac dysfunction in sepsis is associated with apoptosis of cardiomyocytes. Is endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress induced in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)‐treated cardiomyocytes? Does ER stress‐induced autophagy protect against LPS‐induced apoptosis of cardiomyocytes? What is the mechanism in detail? What is the main finding and its importance? Our results indicate that ER stress is activated and mediates autophagy in LPS‐treated murine atrium‐derived cardiac HL‐1 cells. Protein kinase regulated by RNA‐like ER‐associated kinase (PERK), one arm of ER stress, is involved in protecting against LPS‐induced apoptosis of HL‐1 cells by promotion of autophagy.
Classification and Prediction of Breast Cancer Data derived Using Natural Language Processing

Most of the traditional Medical reports in India are in the form of descriptive natural language text. In recent times, medical data are electronically acquired, indexed and stored in databases resulting in easy retrieval and processing. The work presented here is the extension of an automated system developed earlier that processed 150 de-identified Breast cancer Pathology reports applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Extraction (IE) techniques. The system classified parameters, Tumor T, Lymph node N and Metastases M, the components of the pTNM classification protocol by the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) and derived the stage of cancer S using T, N and M. The Gold-standard to evaluate the work was obtained from the Pathologists who manually reviewed the corpus. The current work processes the pathology report and extracts details regarding the presence / absence of ten medical conditions associated with Breast Cancer. Then Decision-tree based classifiers J48, Naïve Bayes and Random Forest are applied on all the parameters extracted as part of the earlier and the current work and the Gold standard values, using WEKA tool. A Training set consisting of 53 rules was used to predict the stage of cancer on the Test set. The automated system interfaces with WEKA and presents the results obtained. This work processes and analyzes regional breast cancer data and thus has practical applicability and relevance. The results of analysis by the system would assist the medical experts in early diagnosis, decision making and understanding of the patient population in India.