Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A fast MPEG-2 to H.264 downscaling transcoder

In MPEG-2 to H.264 cascaded transcoder, the transcoding speed is mainly affected by computational complexity of H.264 encoder. Especially, motion estimation module of the encoder costs much time due to multiple motioncompensated prediction modes of H.264. In this paper, in order to speed up the transcoding and achieve good video quality, we propose a new motion vector composition scheme for MPEG-2 to H.264 transcoder. In this scheme, the multiple partition modes in H.264 are considered. Then we suggest a motion vector refinement method to improve the picture quality. In order to further improve the composited motion vector, we also combine the motion vector mapping scheme with the H.264 FME algorithm. The experiments results show that the proposed method reduces computation complexity of downscale transcoding while maintaining similar PSNR performance.
Multiprogrammed memory management

A queueing network is used to show that the page-fault-rate functions of active programs axe the critical factors in system processing efficiency. Properties of page-fault functions are set forth in tenns of a locality model of program behavior. Memory management policies are grouped into two fixed-partition and three variable-partition classes acording to their methods of allocating memory and controlling the multiprogramming load. It is concluded that the so-called working set policies can be expected to yield the lowest paging rates and highest processing efficiency of all the classes.
The Reciprocal Effects of Pain Intensity and Activity Limitations: Implications for Outcomes Assessment in Clinical Trials

Objectives:To examine the reciprocal effects of pain intensity and limitations in physical functioning over time. Methods:This study presents findings from a reanalysis of a 7-center trial conducted in Ontario, Canada, included 209 adults with chronic knee pain secondary to osteoarthritis. Patients were randomized to receive 28 days of therapy with an active solution (1.5% w/w diclofenac sodium in dimethyl sulfoxide) or 1 of 2 control solutions containing no diclofenac. The key outcome measures used in the current analyses were administered throughout the study period and assessed pain intensity, perceived activity limitations, and a composite score measuring both domains. A structural cross-lagged regression approach was used to determine the reciprocal effects of pain and activity limitations over time. Results:In both study groups, participants (N=209) experienced significant reductions in mean pain intensity and activity limitations from baseline to weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4 (P<0.001 for both variables). Similarly, there were significant reductions in the activity limitations outcome at weeks 1 and 4 for the active versus control group (P<0.05 for both). Higher levels of perceived activity limitations predicted more future pain at all time points. Cross-lagged associations in which pain predicted subsequent perceived activity limitations were not significant at any time point. All 3 outcome measures evidenced similar responsiveness to the treatment. Conclusion:These analyses showed that a decrease in activity limitations results in a decrease in pain intensity. However, changes in pain intensity had no effect on subsequent activity limitations in the study sample. None of the 3 outcome variables emerged as being more responsive to treatment than the others.
The Search for Valid Measures of Social Competence: The Variability and Consistency of Component Behaviour

Measures of component behaviour have been put forward as valid and reliable predictors of social competency. This study assessed the consistency of verbal and nonverbal component behaviours across situations and time. Thirty-seven people participated in an informal conversation with a confederate and a mock job interview with a second confederate. This scenario was repeated three weeks later. Social competency ratings were obtained from the confederates and subsequently from two observers along with specific measures of nine component behaviours. While nonverbal component behaviours were quite consistent across settings and time, verbal behaviours were less so, although none consistently predicted competency ratings across settings and time. Subjects who received high competency ratings were found to behave more variably across settings than those who received low ratings. The findings support the notion that evaluation of social skills training will require measurement of functionally equivalent, rather than topographically defined, classes of behaviour.
Engagement and graduation resources as markers of translator/interpreter positioning

This article examines the application of appraisal theory (Martin and White 2005) to the analysis of translation. It develops the findings in Munday (2012), which focused on attitudinal meanings, and explores the potential for the use of engagement resources and graduation as a means of determining translator/interpreter positioning. Using a range of examples from texts of international organizations, it discusses the translation of reporting verbs and intensification as a signal of the translator’s/interpreter’s degree of ‘investment’ in a proposition and control over the text receiver’s response. This is framed within the concept of ‘discourse space theory’ (Chilton 2004) to provide a reference for future work in this field.
The Bacillus thuringiensis insecticidal toxin binds biotin-containing proteins

Brush border membrane vesicles from larvae of the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta, contain protein bands of 85 and 120 kDa which react directly with streptavidin conjugated to alkaline phosphatase. The binding could be prevented either by including 10 microM biotin in the reaction mixture or by prior incubation of the brush border membrane vesicles with an activated 60- to 65-kDa toxin from Bacillus thuringiensis HD-73. The ability of B. thuringiensis toxins to recognize biotin-containing proteins was confirmed by their binding to pyruvate carboxylase, a biotin-containing enzyme, as well as to biotinylated ovalbumin and biotinylated bovine serum albumin but not to their nonbiotinylated counterparts. Activated HD-73 toxin also inhibited the enzymatic activity of pyruvate carboxylase. The biotin binding site is likely contained in domain III of the toxin. Two highly conserved regions within domain III are similar in sequence to the biotin binding sites of avidin, streptavidin, and a biotin-specific monoclonal antibody. In particular, block 4 of the B. thuringiensis toxin contains the YAS biotin-specific motif. On the basis of its N-terminal amino acid sequence, the 120-kDa biotin-containing protein is totally distinct from the 120-kDa aminopeptidase N reported to be a receptor for Cry1Ac toxin.
Experimentally feasible quantum-key-distribution scheme using qubit-like qudits and its comparison with existing qubit- and qudit-based protocols

Recently, Chau introduced an experimentally feasible qudit-based quantum-key-distribution (QKD) scheme. In that scheme, one bit of information is phase encoded in the prepared state in a $2^n$-dimensional Hilbert space in the form $(|i\rangle\pm|j\rangle)/\sqrt{2}$ with $n\ge 2$. For each qudit prepared and measured in the same two-dimensional Hilbert subspace, one bit of raw secret key is obtained in the absence of transmission error. Here we show that by modifying the basis announcement procedure, the same experimental setup can generate $n$ bits of raw key for each qudit prepared and measured in the same basis in the noiseless situation. The reason is that in addition to the phase information, each qudit also carries information on the Hilbert subspace used. The additional $(n-1)$ bits of raw key comes from a clever utilization of this extra piece of information. We prove the unconditional security of this modified protocol and compare its performance with other existing provably secure qubit- and qudit-based protocols on market in the one-way classical communication setting. Interestingly, we find that for the case of $n=2$, the secret key rate of this modified protocol using non-degenerate random quantum code to perform one-way entanglement distillation is equal to that of the six-state scheme.
"Linear Ridge Estimator of High-Dimensional Precision Matrix Using Random Matrix Theory "

In estimation of the large precision matrix, this paper suggests a new shrinkage estimator, called the linear ridge estimator. This estimator is motivated from a Bayesian aspect for a spike and slab prior distribution of the precision matrix, and has a form of convex combination of the ridge estimator and the identity matrix multiplied by scalar. The optimal parameters in the linear ridge estimator are derived in terms of minimizing a Frobenius loss function and estimated in closed forms based on the random matrix theory. Finally, the performance of the linear ridge estimator is numerically investigated and compared with some existing estimators.
High-Accuracy Instrumental Variable Identification of Continuous-Time Autoregressive Processes From Irregularly Sampled Noisy Data

A computationally efficient estimator of continuous-time autoregressive (AR) process parameters from irregularly sampled data affected by discrete-time white measurement noise is presented. It is described how an instrumental variable approach can be used for estimating the AR process parameters with high accuracy. Possible estimators of the incremental variance of the driving continuous-time white noise source and of the variance of the discrete-time white measurement noise are also discussed.
Interoperable Annotation in the Australian National Corpus

The Australian National Corpus (AusNC) provides a technical infrastructure for collecting and publishing language resources representing Australian language use. As part of the project we have ingested a wide range of resource types into the system, bringing together the different meta-data and annotations into a single interoperable database. This paper describes the initial collections in AusNC and the procedures used to parse a variety of data types into a single unified annotation store.
Fathers ’ Education and Children ’ s Human Capital : Evidence from the World War

Children who grow up in more highly educated families have better labor market outcomes as adults than those who grow up in less educated families, but we do not know whether this is because education bestows parents with skills that make them better parents or because unobservable endowments that contribute to the parents’ educational levels are shared by their children. This paper attempts to improve our understanding of the causal processes that contribute to intergenerational immobility by exploiting variation in fathers’ education induced by the World War II G.I. Bill. I use two different identification strategies, both of which rest on the timing of the war: the G.I. bill had different effects on different cohorts depending on their likelihood of military service and the probability that their schooling had been completed before the war began. The two different strategies establish upper and lower bounds on the causal impact of father’s schooling: I find that a one year increase in a father’s education reduces the probability that his child is retained in school by between two to four percentage points. This implies that parental schooling levels have an affect on children’s outcomes that is independent of their innate ability and suggests that public policies aimed at increasing educational attainment may have important intergenerational effects.
Mixed Noise Removal by Weighted Encoding With Sparse Nonlocal Regularization

Mixed noise removal from natural images is a challenging task since the noise distribution usually does not have a parametric model and has a heavy tail. One typical kind of mixed noise is additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) coupled with impulse noise (IN). Many mixed noise removal methods are detection based methods. They first detect the locations of IN pixels and then remove the mixed noise. However, such methods tend to generate many artifacts when the mixed noise is strong. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective method, namely weighted encoding with sparse nonlocal regularization (WESNR), for mixed noise removal. In WESNR, there is not an explicit step of impulse pixel detection; instead, soft impulse pixel detection via weighted encoding is used to deal with IN and AWGN simultaneously. Meanwhile, the image sparsity prior and nonlocal self-similarity prior are integrated into a regularization term and introduced into the variational encoding framework. Experimental results show that the proposed WESNR method achieves leading mixed noise removal performance in terms of both quantitative measures and visual quality.
TargetOrtho: A Phylogenetic Footprinting Tool to Identify Transcription Factor Targets

The identification of the regulatory targets of transcription factors is central to our understanding of how transcription factors fulfill their many key roles in development and homeostasis. DNA-binding sites have been uncovered for many transcription factors through a number of experimental approaches, but it has proven difficult to use this binding site information to reliably predict transcription factor target genes in genomic sequence space. Using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and other related nematode species as a starting point, we describe here a bioinformatic pipeline that identifies potential transcription factor target genes from genomic sequences. Among the key features of this pipeline is the use of sequence conservation of transcription-factor-binding sites in related species. Rather than using aligned genomic DNA sequences from the genomes of multiple species as a starting point, TargetOrtho scans related genome sequences independently for matches to user-provided transcription-factor-binding motifs, assigns motif matches to adjacent genes, and then determines whether orthologous genes in different species also contain motif matches. We validate TargetOrtho by identifying previously characterized targets of three different types of transcription factors in C. elegans, and we use TargetOrtho to identify novel target genes of the Collier/Olf/EBF transcription factor UNC-3 in C. elegans ventral nerve cord motor neurons. We have also implemented the use of TargetOrtho in Drosophila melanogaster using conservation among five species in the D. melanogaster species subgroup for target gene discovery.
Bayesian Reinforcement Learning-Based Coalition Formation for Distributed Resource Sharing by Device-to-Device Users in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

This paper investigates the problem of distributed resource sharing in a device-to-device enabled heterogeneous network, where the various device pairs choose their transmission channels, modes, base stations (BSs), and power levels without any control by the BSs based only on the locally-observable information. This problem is represented as a Bayesian coalition formation game, where the players (device pairs) create coalitions to maximize their long-term rewards with no prior knowledge of the values of potential coalitions and the types of their members. To minimize these uncertainties, a novel Bayesian reinforcement learning (RL) model is derived. In this model, the players update (through repeated coalition formation) their beliefs about the types and coalitional values to reach a stable coalitional agreement. The proposed Bayesian RL-based coalition formation algorithms are implemented in a long-term evolution advanced network and evaluated using simulations. The algorithms show a superior performance when compared with other relevant resource allocation schemes and achieve near-optimal results after a relatively small number of RL iterations.
Practice of Epidemiology Adjusting for Confounding by Neighborhood Using a Proportional Odds Model and Complex Survey Data

In social epidemiology, an individual's neighborhood is considered to be an important determinant of health behaviors, mediators, and outcomes. Consequently, when investigating health disparities, researchers may wish to adjust for confounding by unmeasured neighborhood factors, such as local availability of health facilities or cultural predispositions. With a simple random sample and a binary outcome, a conditional logistic regression analysis that treats individuals within a neighborhood as a matched set is a natural method to use. The authors present a generalization of this method for ordinal outcomes and complex sampling designs. The method is based on a proportional odds model and is very simple to program using standard software such as SAS PROC SURVEYLOGISTIC (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina). The authors applied the method to analyze racial/ethnic differences in dental preventative care, using 2008 Florida Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey data. The ordinal outcome represented time since last dental cleaning, and the authors adjusted for individual-level confounding by gender, age, education, and health insurance coverage. The authors compared results with and without additional adjustment for confounding by neighborhood, operationalized as zip code. The authors found that adjustment for confounding by neighborhood greatly affected the results in this example.
Community choir: what motivates people to join, stay, and sing. A mixed method research study

The purpose of this mixed method research study was to gain insight into choir members’ motivation for joining and continuing to participate in a particular British Columbia community choir. The researcher used a specially-developed questionnaire to survey the population of the community choir, and performed case studies of five selected choir members using semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire included four sections: a demographic profile of the community choir singers; musical background and experience; self-evaluation results with respect to musical and choral ability; and a Choral Music Participation Inventory (CMPI). Frequency tables were developed and cross-tabular analysis was performed to further understand the demographic composition of the community choir. The questionnaires revealed a community choir that is 66% female, predominantly older (all over the age of 40 with most being 61-70 years of age), and very highly educated (almost half of the members have completed graduate school). The five semi-structured interviews revolved around the two research questions: “What motivated you to participate in this Community Choir? ” and “Why do you continue to participate in this Community Choir? ” In addition to the CMPI themes, other emergent themes were identified and coded. Cross-case analysis revealed that the interviewees were motivated to participate due to the influence of past music experience, fun during choir rehearsals and performance, personal values, such as interest in developing music reading and vocal skills, and social interaction opportunities afforded by choir participation. Suggestions for future research are provided based on the key findings of this study.
Case-Based Argumentation via Process Models

We introduce AHEAD (Analogical Hypothesis Elaborator for Activity Detection), a software system we are developing for the DARPA EELD (Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery) program. AHEAD performs case-based hypothesis elaboration using process models. We are applying AHEAD, which embodies a domain-independent approach, to elaborate hypothesized hostile activities. In this application, AHEAD is given as input (1) structured evidence and (2) a hypothesis concerning the activities of an asymmetric adversary (e.g., a terrorist organization). The system outputs a detailed symbolic argument supporting and/or opposing the given hypothesis. Combining casebased/analogical reasoning techniques, using the FIRE Analogy Server (Forbus, 2001) with qualitative functional processes represented as Task-Method-Knowledge models (Stroulia & Goel, 1995; Goel & Murdock, 1996), AHEAD extracts additional implications of the hypothesis to develop a coherent argument that supports and/or contradicts it. We detail AHEAD’s design, its role in EELD, its implementation status, and our plans for its evaluation.
Oligosaccharides are a key factor in prediction of amino acid digestibility in soybean meal of different origins when fed to growing pigs

Objective The objective of this experiment was to determine apparent ileal digestibility (AID) and standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of crude protein (CP) and amino acid (AA) in 15 sources of soybean meal (SBM) produced from soybeans from different countries and subsequently to establish equations for predicting the AID and SID in SBM based on their chemical composition. Methods Eighteen barrows (57.9±6.1 kg) fitted with a simple T-cannula were allotted into three 6×6 Latin square designs. Each period comprised a 6-d adaption period followed by a 2-d collection of ileal digesta. The 15 test diets included SBM as a sole source of AA in the diet. Another nitrogen-free diet was used to measure basal endogenous losses of CP and AA. Chromic oxide (0.3%) was used as an inert marker in each diet. Results The AID of lysine in SBM from China and USA tended to be greater than in SBM from Brazil (p<0.10). The SID of valine and proline in SBM from China was greater than in SBM from Brazil (p<0.05). The SID of lysine, threonine, cysteine and glycine in SBM from China tended to be greater than in SBM from Brazil (p<0.10). From a stepwise regression analysis, a series of AID and SID prediction equations were generated. The best fit equations for lysine in SBM were: AID lysine = 1.16 sucrose−1.81 raffinose+82.10 (R2 = 0.69, p<0.01) and SID lysine = 1.14 sucrose−1.93 raffinose−0.99 ether extract (EE)+85.26 (R2 = 0.77, p<0.01). Conclusion It was concluded that under the conditions of this experiment, the oligosaccharides (such as sucrose and raffinose) can be used to predict the AID and SID of AA in SBM with reasonable accuracy.
Proteasome dynamics during cell cycle in rat Schwann cells

The proteasome is responsible for most of the protein degradation that takes place in the cytoplasm and nucleus. Immunofluorescence and electron microscopy are used to study proteasome dynamics during the cell cycle in rat Schwann cells. During interphase, the proteasome is present in the nucleus and cytoplasm and shows no colocalization with cytoskeletal components. Some cytoplasmic proteasomes always localize in the centrosome both in interphase and in mitotic cells and only associate with microtubules during mitosis. The proteasome exits the nucleus during prophase. In anaphase, the proteasome becomes prominent in the region between the two sets of migrating chromosomes and in association with interzonal microtubules and stem bodies. In telophase, the proteasome begins to reenter the nucleus and is prominent in the midbody region until the end of cytokinesis. The proteasome does not colocalize with actin or vimentin during mitosis, except for colocalization with actin in the sheet‐like lamellipodia, which serve as substrate attachments for the cell during mitosis. During S phase, nuclear proteasomes colocalize with foci of BrdU incorporation, but this association changes with time: maximal at early S phase and declining as S phase progresses to the end. These results are discussed in relation to the biochemical pathways involved in cell cycle progression. GLIA 38:313–328, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.