Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Illocutionary constructions in English : cognitive motivation and linguistic realization : a study of the syntactic realizations of the directive, commissive and expressive speech acts in English

Contents: A cognitive approach to illocution - The speech act of ordering - The speech act of requesting - The speech act of advising - The speech act of offering - The speech act of promising - The speech act of threatening - The speech act of congratulating - The speech act of thanking - The speech act of apologizing - The speech act of pardoning - The speech act of condoling - The speech act of boasting.
L-Citrulline Protects Skeletal Muscle Cells from Cachectic Stimuli through an iNOS-Dependent Mechanism

Dietary L-citrulline is thought to modulate muscle protein turnover by increasing L-arginine availability. To date, the direct effects of increased L-citrulline concentrations in muscle have been completely neglected. Therefore, we determined the role of L-citrulline in regulating cell size during catabolic conditions by depriving mature C2C12 myotubes of growth factors (serum free; SF) or growth factors and nutrients (HEPES buffered saline; HBS). Cells were treated with L-citrulline or equimolar concentrations of L-arginine (positive control) or L-alanine (negative control) and changes in cell size and protein turnover were assessed. In myotubes incubated in HBS or SF media, L-citrulline improved rates of protein synthesis (HBS: +63%, SF: +37%) and myotube diameter (HBS: +18%, SF: +29%). L-citrulline treatment substantially increased iNOS mRNA expression (SF: 350%, HBS: 750%). The general NOS inhibitor L-NAME and the iNOS specific inhibitor aminoguanidine prevented these effects in both models. Depriving myotubes in SF media of L-arginine or L-leucine, exacerbated wasting which was not attenuated by L-citrulline. The increased iNOS mRNA expression was temporally associated with increases in mRNA of the endogenous antioxidants SOD1, SOD3 and catalase. Furthermore, L-citrulline prevented inflammation (LPS) and oxidative stress (H2O2) induced muscle cell wasting. In conclusion, we demonstrate a novel direct protective effect of L-citrulline on skeletal muscle cell size independent of L-arginine that is mediated through induction of the inducible NOS (iNOS) isoform. This discovery of a nutritional modulator of iNOS mRNA expression in skeletal muscle cells could have substantial implications for the treatment of muscle wasting conditions.
FDI in Emerging Economies: An analysis in a firm heterogeneity model

In recent years, Japanese manufacturers in both competitive and less competitive sectors have penetrated emerging economies, and sales in 2008 by Japanese affiliates established via foreign domestic investment (FDI) exceeded Japan's revenues from exports. To consider this phenomenon and the significance of FDI for emerging economies, this study constructs a two-country model featuring two factors of production, two industries (with different factor intensities), and firm heterogeneity. Thereafter, the study numerically analyzes trends in FDI by industry and examines how the economies of both countries are affected. Results of the analysis show that highly productive firms favor FDI. That is true whether their industries make intensive use of a scarce factor of production or use a more abundant factor intensively. Compared to the situation in which only export is possible, FDI increases competition among firms in both industries. Real wages and welfare increase as a result. On the other hand, low-productivity firms are forced to exit, and the number of firms decreases. This analysis also shows that FDI could work to help prevent a decline in real revenues of industries that make intensive use of a scarce factor of production.
Design and Testing of an Autonomous Highly Mobile Robot in a Beach Environment

The capability of autonomous platforms to function on beaches is critical for a wide range of military and civilian operations. Of particular importance is the ability to autonomously navigate through rocky terrain, hard-packed moist sand, and loose dry sand typically found in these environments. The study of animal locomotion mechanisms provides specific movement principles that can be applied to address these demands. In this work, we report the design, fabrication, control system development, and field-testing of a biologically inspired autonomous robot for deployment and operation in a surf-zone environment. The robot successfully fuses a range of insect-inspired passive mechanisms with active autonomous control architectures to seamlessly adapt to and traverse through a range of challenging substrates. Field testing establishes the performance of the robot to navigate semi-rugged terrain in the surf-zone environment including: soft to hard packed sand, mild to medium inclines, and rocky terrain. Platform autonomy is shown to be effective for navigation and communication. The fusion of passive mechanisms and active control algorithms enables the robot with the mobility of a legged vehicle with a control system as simple as that of a wheeled robot.
Major Tegument Protein pp65 of Human Cytomegalovirus Is Required for the Incorporation of pUL69 and pUL97 into the Virus Particle and for Viral Growth in Macrophages

ABSTRACT The tegument protein pp65 of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) represents the major component of mature virus particles. Nevertheless, deletion of pp65 has been shown to have no effects on virus replication and morphogenesis in fibroblasts in vitro. We have studied the HCMV virion composition in the absence of pp65 and viral growth of a pp65 stop mutant in different cell types, including monocyte-derived macrophages. Two stop codons at amino acids 11 and 12 of pp65 were introduced by bacterial artificial chromosome mutagenesis into the endotheliotropic strain TB40/E. Clear changes of the tegument composition could be observed in purified mutant virus particles, where the amount of tegument protein pUL25 was drastically reduced. In addition, pUL69 and the virally encoded protein kinase UL97 were undetectable in the pp65 stop mutant. Expression of pUL69 in infected cells was unaltered while pUL25 accumulated in the absence of pp65, thus demonstrating that only incorporation into virus particles is dependent on pp65. Coimmunoprecipitation experiments using lysates of infected cells revealed an interaction between pUL69 and pp65. This interaction was verified in pull-down experiments using transfected cells, which showed that pp65 and pUL69 do not require the presence of other viral proteins for their interaction. We conclude that pp65 is required for the incorporation of other viral proteins into the virus particle and thus is involved in the protein-protein interaction network leading to normal tegument formation. When studying growth kinetics of the pp65 stop mutant in different cell types, we found a severe impairment of viral growth in monocyte-derived macrophages, showing for the first time a strong cell-specific role of pp65 in viral growth.
TLR7- and TLR9-Responsive Human B Cells Share Phenotypic and Genetic Characteristics

B cells activated by nucleic acid–sensing TLR7 and TLR9 proliferate and secrete immune globulins. Memory B cells are presumably more responsive due to higher TLR expression levels, but selectivity and differential outcomes remain largely unknown. In this study, peripheral blood human B cells were stimulated by TLR7 or TLR9 ligands, with or without IFN-α, and compared with activators CD40L plus IL-21, to identify differentially responsive cell populations, defined phenotypically and by BCR characteristics. Whereas all activators induced differentiation and Ab secretion, TLR stimulation expanded IgM+ memory and plasma cell lineage committed populations, and favored secretion of IgM, unlike CD40L/IL-21, which drove IgM and IgG more evenly. Patterns of proliferation similarly differed, with CD40L/IL-21 inducing proliferation of most memory and naive B cells, in contrast with TLRs that induced robust proliferation in a subset of these cells. On deep sequencing of the IgH locus, TLR-responsive B cells shared patterns of IgHV and IgHJ usage, clustering apart from CD40L/IL-21 and control conditions. TLR activators, but not CD40L/IL-21, similarly promoted increased sharing of CDR3 sequences. TLR-responsive B cells were characterized by more somatic hypermutation, shorter CDR3 segments, and less negative charges. TLR activation also induced long positively charged CDR3 segments, suggestive of autoreactive Abs. Testing this, we found culture supernatants from TLR-stimulated B cells to bind HEp-2 cells, whereas those from CD40L/IL-21–stimulated cells did not. Human B cells possess selective sensitivity to TLR stimulation, with distinctive phenotypic and genetic signatures.
General Purpose Technologies and the Industrial Revolution

Did breakthroughs in core processes during the Industrial Revolution tend to generate further innovations in downstream technologies? Here a theoretical model examines the effect of a political shock on a non-innovating society in which there is high potential willingness to cooperate. The result is regional specialization in the innovation process by degree of cooperation. tests with a zero-inflated Poisson specification indicate that 116 important innovations between 1700 and 1849 may be grouped into three categories: (1) General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) tended to be generated in large states with standardized languages following transition to pluralistic political systems; (2) GPTs in turn generated spillovers for their regions in technologies where cooperation was necessary to integrate distinct fields of expertise; (3) however, GPTs discouraged downstream innovation in their regions where such direct cooperation was not required.
Virginity and the clutch size behavior of a parasitoid wasp where mothers mate their sons.

Theoretical and empirical research on the evolution of clutch size has proved to be an extremely productive area of evolutionary biology. A general prediction is that individuals should produce a smaller number of offspring when resources are more limited, such as when multiple individuals compete for the same resources for their development. However, we expect that the opposite prediction arises with virgin females of haplodiploid species, which are subject to extreme local mate competition. We test the key assumption and predictions of this theory with the parasitoid wasp Melittobia australica. Our data demonstrate that there is a trade-off between the size of the first and subsequent clutches and that virgin females adjust their production of sons according to the mating status (mated or not) of cofounding females. We also found that mated females facultatively change their offspring sex ratio in response to the mating status of cofoundresses. We discuss the potential mechanisms used to recognize the mating status and the implications of our results in the context of the extremely female-biased sex ratios observed across Melittobia species.
IIT-TUDA at SemEval-2016 Task 5: Beyond Sentiment Lexicon: Combining Domain Dependency and Distributional Semantics Features for Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis

This paper reports the IIT-TUDA participation in the SemEval 2016 shared Task 5 of Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA) for sub-task 1. We describe our system incorporating domain dependency graph features, distributional thesaurus and unsupervised lexical induction using an unlabeled external corpus for aspect based sentiment analysis. Overall, we submitted 29 runs, covering 7 languages and 4 different domains. Our system is placed ﬁrst in sentiment polarity classiﬁcation for the English laptop domain, Spanish and Turkish restaurant reviews, and opinion target expression for Dutch and French in restaurant domain, and scores in medium ranks for aspect category identiﬁcation and opinion target extraction.
A DSPstone Benchmark of CoDeL's Automated Clock Gating Platform

We present a performance analysis of CoDeL, a highly efficient automated clock gating platform for rapidly developing power efficient hardware architectures. It automatically inserts clock gating at the behavioral level to reduce dynamic power dissipation in the resulting architecture. In this paper we use the DSPstone benchmark to thoroughly evaluate the CoDeL platform for the design of power efficient DSP architectures. We find that, compared to DSPs, the CoDeL platform produces designs with comparable clock cycle counts but faster run times, and dramatically lower power dissipation. Next we use power analysis to compare the effectiveness of CoDeL's automated clock gating as compared to automated clock gating using Synopsys tools. A simulation based power analysis shows that CoDeL's clock gating performs better than Synopsys' automated clock gating. CoDeL reduces the power dissipation by 72% on average, while Synopsys gives 63% savings
Privacy Preserving Transparent Mobile Authentication

Transparent authentication on mobile phones suffers from privacy issues especially when biometric information is involved. In this paper, we propose a solution to address those two issues using the Biohashing algorithm on behavioral information extracted from a mobile phone. The authentication scenario is tested on a dataset composed of 100 users and shows promising results with a 10% EER in the worst case scenario (i.e when protection key is compromised) and a 1% EER in the best case one. In addition, privacy concerns are discussed and experimentally evaluated both in a quantitative and qualitative ways. This opens new perspectives concerning online authentication using smartphone sensing abilities.
Sm–Co hard magnetic nanoparticles prepared by surfactant-assisted ball milling

Hard magnetic nanoparticles based on the Sm2Co17 and SmCo5 systems have been successfully produced using a surfactant-assisted ball milling technique. A size-selection process has been developed to obtain nanoparticles of different sizes with narrow size distribution. Significant room-temperature coercivity up to 3.1 kOe has been achieved with the Sm2Co17-based nanoparticles of an average size of 23 nm. It has been found that surfactants play multifold roles in the processing.
Extracting Aspect Specific Opinion Expressions

Opinionated expression extraction is a central problem in ﬁne-grained sentiment analysis. Most existing works focus on either generic subjective expression or aspect expression extraction. However, in opinion mining, it is often desirable to mine the aspect speciﬁc opinion expressions (or aspect-sentiment phrases) containing both the aspect and the opinion. This paper proposes a hybrid generative-discriminative framework for extracting such expressions. The hybrid model consists of (i) an unsupervised generative component for modeling the semantic coherence of terms (words/phrases) based on their collocations across different documents, and (ii) a supervised discriminative sequence modeling component for opinion phrase extraction. Experimental results using Amazon.com reviews demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach that signiﬁcantly outperforms several state-of-the-art baselines.
Coupled Transformations of Shared Packed Parse Forests

SPPF (shared packed parse forest) is the best known graph representation of a parse forest (family of related parse trees) used in parsing with ambiguous/conjunctive grammars. Systematic general purpose transformations of SPPFs have never been investigated and are considered to be an open problem in software language engineering. In this paper, we motivate the necessity of having a transformation operator suite for SPPFs and extend the state of the art grammar transformation operator suite to metamodel/model (grammar/graph) cotransformations.
Study on the compound cascaded STATCOM and compensating for 3-phase unbalancd loads

The existing 3-phase cascaded STATCOMs have two connection types, Y connection and Δ connection, which are very different from each other in the structure, functionality, reliability, economy and technical realization. Based on the deep comparative analysis of the merits and demerits of these two connection types, this paper puts forward a compound cascaded STATCOM. The internal relations and distinctions among the Y-connected and the Δ-connected and the compound cascaded STATCOM are revealed from two aspects, mathematical model and physical significance. The implementation method of compensating 3-phase unbalanced loads by the compound cascaded STATCOM is presented and the simulation results have proved the effectiveness and superiority of the new topology. Research results show that the compound cascaded STATCOM with comparative advantage in technology and economy has inherited the superiorities and overcame the shortcomings of the Y connection and Δ connection, which is worth popularizing in the field of high power and high voltage 3-phase unbalanced system.
Renal Sympathetic Denervation in Rats Ameliorates Cardiac Dysfunction and Fibrosis Post-Myocardial Infarction Involving MicroRNAs

Background The role of renal sympathetic denervation (RSD) in ameliorating post-myocardial infarction (MI) left ventricular (LV) fibrosis via microRNA-dependent regulation of connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) remains unknown. Material/Methods MI and RSD were induced in Sprague–Dawley rats by ligating the left coronary artery and denervating the bilateral renal nerves, respectively. Norepinephrine, renin, angiotensin II and aldosterone in plasma, collagen, microRNA21, microRNA 101a, microRNA 133a and CTGF in heart tissue, as well as cardiac function were evaluated six weeks post-MI. Results In the RSD group, parameters of cardiac function were significantly improved as evidenced by increased LV ejection fraction (p<0.01), LV end-systolic diameter (p<0.01), end-diastolic diameter (p<0.05), LV systolic pressure (p<0.05), maximal rate of pressure rise and decline (dP/dtmax and dP/dtmin, p<0.05), and decreased LV end-diastolic pressure (p<0.05) when compared with MI rats. Further, reduced collagen deposition in peri-infarct myocardium was observed in RSD-treated rats along with higher microRNA101a and microRNA133a (p<0.05) and lower microRNA21 expression (p<0.01) than in MI rats. CTGF mRNA and protein levels were decreased in LV following RSD (p<0.01), accompanied by decreased expression of norepinephrine, renin, angiotensin II and aldosterone in plasma (p<0.05) compared with untreated MI rats. Conclusions The potential therapeutic effects of RSD on post-MI LV fibrosis may be partly mediated by inhibition of CTGF expression via upregulation of microRNA 101a and microRNA 133a and downregulation of microRNA21.
Modeling postural coordination dynamics using a closed-loop controller

This paper models recent data in the field of postural coordination showing the existence of self-organized postural states, and transition between them, underlying supra-postural tracking movements. The proposed closed-loop controller captures the complex postural behaviors observed in humans and can be used to implement efficient and simple balance control principles in humanoids.
Rate allocation for spotlight SAR phase history data compression

Complex phase history data in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems require extensive processing before useful images can be obtained. In spotlight mode SAR systems, useful images can be obtained by applying aperture weighting and inverse Fourier transform operations to SAR phase history data. In this paper, we are concerned with the compression of the complex phase history data obtained by a spotlight SAR system. We exploit knowledge of the aperture weighting function along with Fourier transform processing to attach a "gain" factor to each complex phase history data sample. This gain factor is then used to efficiently allocate bits to the phase history data during quantization. Performance evaluations are presented for this compression system relative to other existing SAR phase history data compression systems.
Computational models for the determination of depth-dependent mechanical properties of skin with a soft, flexible measurement device

Conformal modulus sensors (CMS) incorporate PZT nanoribbons as mechanical actuators and sensors to achieve reversible conformal contact with the human skin for non-invasive, in vivo measurements of skin modulus. An analytic model presented in this paper yields expressions that connect the sensor output voltage to the Young moduli of the epidermis and dermis, the thickness of the epidermis, as well as the material and geometrical parameters of the CMS device itself and its encapsulation layer. Results from the model agree well with in vitro experiments on bilayer structures of poly(dimethylsiloxane). These results provide a means to determine the skin moduli (epidermis and dermis) and the thickness of the epidermis from in vivo measurements of human skin.
Automated path prediction for redirected walking using navigation meshes

Redirected walking techniques have been introduced to overcome physical space limitations for natural locomotion in virtual reality. These techniques decouple real and virtual user trajectories by subtly steering the user away from the boundaries of the physical space while maintaining the illusion that the user follows the intended virtual path. Effectiveness of redirection algorithms can significantly improve when a reliable prediction of the users future virtual path is available. In current solutions, the future user trajectory is predicted based on non-standardized manual annotations of the environment structure, which is both tedious and inflexible. We propose a method for automatically generating environment annotation graphs and predicting the user trajectory using navigation meshes. We discuss the integration of this method with existing redirected walking algorithms such as FORCE and MPCRed. Automated annotation of the virtual environments structure enables simplified deployment of these algorithms in any virtual environment.
Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality

In "Studying Human Behavior", Helen E. Longino enters into the complexities of human behavioral research, a domain still dominated by the age-old debate of "nature versus nurture. " Rather than supporting one side or another or attempting to replace that dichotomy with a different framework for understanding behavior, Longino focuses on how scientists study it, specifically sexual behavior and aggression, and asks what can be known about human behavior through empirical investigation. She dissects five approaches to the study of behavior - quantitative behavioral genetics, molecular behavior genetics, developmental psychology, neurophysiology and anatomy, and social/environmental methods - highlighting the underlying assumptions of these disciplines, as well as the different questions and mechanisms each addresses. She also analyzes efforts to integrate different approaches. Longino concludes that there is no single "correct" approach but that each contributes to our overall understanding of human behavior. In addition, Longino reflects on the reception and transmission of this behavioral research in scientific, social, clinical, and political spheres. A highly significant and innovative study that bears on crucial scientific questions, "Studying Human Behavior" will be essential reading not only for scientists and philosophers but also for science journalists and anyone interested in the engrossing challenges of understanding human behavior.