Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DHTnil: An Approach to Publish and Lookup Nilsimsa Digests in DHT

Nilsimsa algorithm plays an important role in the digest-based anti-spam technique. Based on the research about Nilsimsa digest, we propose an approach to publish and lookup for Nilsimsa digests inDHT: DHTnil. In this paper, we discuss DHTnil's publication and lookup algorithm in detail, and evaluate the effectiveness of DHTnil through simulation experiments. For random generated digests, DHTnil can guarantee that the publication of a group of similar Nilsimsa digests involves no more than 3% of all subspaces, and the similar lookup of a digest involves no more than 3.5% of all subspaces to guarantee a recall rate of 80%. For real junk email samples collected from Internet, DHTnil has an even better performance.
Analysis of Altered Micro RNA Expression Profiles in Focal Cortical Dysplasia IIB

Focal cortical dysplasia type IIB is a commonly encountered subtype of developmental malformation of the cerebral cortex and is often associated with pharmacoresistant epilepsy. In this study, to investigate the molecular etiology of focal cortical dysplasia type IIB, the authors performed micro ribonucleic acid (RNA) microarray on surgical specimens from 5 children (2 female and 3 male, mean age was 73.4 months, range 50-112 months) diagnosed of focal cortical dysplasia type IIB and matched normal tissue adjacent to the lesion. In all, 24 micro RNAs were differentially expressed in focal cortical dysplasia type IIB, and the microarray results were validated using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Then the putative target genes of the differentially expressed micro RNAs were identified by bioinformatics analysis. Moreover, biological significance of the target genes was evaluated by investigating the pathways in which the genes were enriched, and the Hippo signaling pathway was proposed to be highly related with the pathogenesis of focal cortical dysplasia type IIB.
Deciphering the role of the chitin synthase families 1 and 2 in the in vivo and in vitro growth of Aspergillus fumigatus by multiple gene targeting deletion

Although chitin is an essential component of the fungal cell wall (CW), its biosynthesis and role in virulence is poorly understood. In Aspergillus fumigatus, there are eight chitin synthase (CHS) genes belonging to two families CHSA‐C, CHSG in family 1 and CHSF, CHSD, CSMA, CSMB in family 2). To understand the function of these CHS genes, their single and multiple deletions were performed using β‐rec/six system to be able to delete all genes within each family (up to a quadruple ΔchsA/C/B/G mutant in family 1 and a quadruple ΔcsmA/csmB/F/D mutant in family 2). Radial growth, conidiation, mycelial/conidial morphology, CW polysaccharide content, Chs‐activity, susceptibility to antifungal molecules and pathogenicity in experimental animal aspergillosis were analysed for all the mutants. Among the family 1 CHS, ΔchsA, ΔchsB and ΔchsC mutants showed limited impact on chitin synthesis. In contrast, there was reduced conidiation, altered mycelial morphotype and reduced growth and Chs‐activity in the ΔchsG and ΔchsA/C/B/G mutants. In spite of this altered phenotype, these two mutants were as virulent as the parental strain in the experimental aspergillosis models. Among family 2 CHS, phenotypic defects mainly resulted from the CSMA deletion. Despite significant morphological mycelial and conidial growth phenotypes in the quadruple ΔcsmA/csmB/F/D mutant, the chitin content was poorly affected by gene deletions in this family. However, the entire mycelial cell wall structure was disorganized in the family 2 mutants that may be related to the reduced pathogenicity of the quadruple ΔcsmA/csmB/F/D mutant strain compared to the parental strain, in vivo. Deletion of the genes encompassing the two families (ΔcsmA/csmB/F/G) showed that in spite of being originated from an ancient divergence of fungi, these two families work cooperatively to synthesize chitin in A. fumigatus and demonstrate the essentiality of chitin biosynthesis for vegetative growth, resistance to antifungal drugs, and virulence of this filamentous fungus.
Recent trends in the incidence of multiple births and associated mortality in England and Wales.

AIM: To review trends in multiple births and associated mortality in England and Wales since 1975, in the light of trends for earlier years; to assess, within the limitations of the available data, the extent of any association between multiple birth rates and assisted conception and drugs used for subfertility. METHODS: Data collected routinely in England and Wales, between 1975 and 1994, were retrospectively reviewed. These comprised Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS) data collected at the registration of live and stillbirths and deaths occurring under the age of 1 year in England and Wales from 1975 onwards. Department of Health data about NHS prescriptions dispensed outside hospitals within England for drugs which could be used in the medical management of subfertility were also included. RESULTS: The proportion of pregnancies that resulted in a registered multiple birth increased from a low of 9.9 per thousand in 1975 to 13.6 per thousand in 1994. Up to 1992, the increase was seen in all age groups except for women under 20, with the most substantial increase being in women aged 35 to 39. The rise in the rate of triplet and other higher order births was much steeper than that for all multiple births, increasing from 0.13 sets of triplets per thousand maternities in 1975, to 0.41 in 1994. Prescriptions dispensed for selected drugs that may be used for the medical management of subfertility and assisted conception became more common over this period. The fragmented nature of the data precluded direct comparison with changes in multiple birth rates, however. CONCLUSIONS: Although the causes of the rise since 1980 in multiple birth rates in general, and the dramatic rise in the triplet rate in particular, cannot be ascertained or quantified directly from routinely collected data, drugs used for subfertility and more recently, assisted conception, probably had a major role.
Quality Control of Crowd Labeling through Expert Evaluation

We propose a general scheme for quality-controlled labeling of large-scale data using multiple labels from the crowd and a “few” ground truth labels from an expert of the ﬁeld. Expert-labeled instances are used to assign weights to the expertise of each crowd labeler and to the difﬁculty of each instance. Ground truth labels for all instances are then approximated through those weights along with the crowd labels. We argue that injecting a little expertise in the labeling process, will signiﬁcantly improve the accuracy of the labeling task. Indeed, empirical evaluation demonstrates that our methodology is efﬁcient and effective as it gives better quality labels than majority voting and other state-of-art methods.
Follower Forgiveness and Reactions to Leader Interpersonal Transgressions

Do leaders transgress in the workplace? Research has shown that they do and that these offenses may occur in a variety of ways (e.g., Blase & Blase, 2002; Grandy & Starratt, 2010; Shapiro, Boss, Salas, Tangirala, & Von Glinow, 2011). This dissertation examines factors that influence the forgiveness accorded by followers for interpersonal transgressions committed by direct supervisors, as well as the impact of forgiveness on organizational outcomes. More specifically, I explore the effects of transgression severity on forgiveness, as moderated by the quality of the leader-follower relationship (leader-member exchange – LMX; Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975), courageous followership (Chaleff, 2009), and apologies. Forgiveness is then argued to impact both turnover intentions and counterproductive behavior, as moderated by one’s continuance commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991). Two studies were conducted. First, a scenario-based study examined the effects of perceptions of severity on forgiveness, as moderated by LMX and apologies (N = 456). Second, a retrospective field study (N = 333), in which participants were asked to recall a transgression committed by a direct supervisor, was conducted. Across both studies, severity and LMX significantly impacted forgiveness. In Study 1, LMX moderated the relationship between severity and the three subscales of forgiveness (avoidance, revenge, and benevolence motivations; e.g., McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997; McCullough, Root, & Cohen, 2006), such that the effects of severity were mitigated when LMX was high versus low. In contrast, the moderating effect of LMX on overall forgiveness in Study 2 suggests that LMX magnifies the negative effects of severity on forgiveness. Higher levels of forgiveness were associated with fewer intentions to leave the organization and less counterproductive behavior. Finally, a key finding from this dissertation is that forgiveness mediates the relationship between perceptions of transgression severity and both outcomes. This suggest that forgiveness is an important variable that helps us to understand how and why followers desire to leave the organization and engage in deviance as a result of leader interpersonal transgressions. Future research directions and practical implications of this research are discussed.
Pyrosequencing reveals regional differences in fruit-associated fungal communities

We know relatively little of the distribution of microbial communities generally. Significant work has examined a range of bacterial communities, but the distribution of microbial eukaryotes is less well characterized. Humans have an ancient association with grape vines (Vitis vinifera) and have been making wine since the dawn of civilization, and fungi drive this natural process. While the molecular biology of certain fungi naturally associated with vines and wines is well characterized, complementary investigations into the ecology of fungi associated with fruiting plants is largely lacking. DNA sequencing technologies allow the direct estimation of microbial diversity from a given sample, avoiding culture-based biases. Here, we use deep community pyrosequencing approaches, targeted at the 26S rRNA gene, to examine the richness and composition of fungal communities associated with grapevines and test for geographical community structure among four major regions in New Zealand (NZ). We find over 200 taxa using this approach, which is 10-fold more than previously recovered using culture-based methods. Our analyses allow us to reject the null hypothesis of homogeneity in fungal species richness and community composition across NZ and reveal significant differences between major areas.
Induction of Jasmonate Biosynthesis in Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Barley Roots1,2

Colonization of barley (Hordeum vulgare cv Salome) roots by an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus, Glomus intraradices Schenck & Smith, leads to elevated levels of endogenous jasmonic acid (JA) and its amino acid conjugate JA-isoleucine, whereas the level of the JA precursor, oxophytodienoic acid, remains constant. The rise in jasmonates is accompanied by the expression of genes coding for an enzyme of JA biosynthesis (allene oxide synthase) and of a jasmonate-induced protein (JIP23). In situ hybridization and immunocytochemical analysis revealed that expression of these genes occurred cell specifically within arbuscule-containing root cortex cells. The concomitant gene expression indicates that jasmonates are generated and act within arbuscule-containing cells. By use of a near-synchronous mycorrhization, analysis of temporal expression patterns showed the occurrence of transcript accumulation 4 to 6 d after the appearance of the first arbuscules. This suggests that the endogenous rise in jasmonates might be related to the fully established symbiosis rather than to the recognition of interacting partners or to the onset of interaction. Because the plant supplies the fungus with carbohydrates, a model is proposed in which the induction of JA biosynthesis in colonized roots is linked to the stronger sink function of mycorrhizal roots compared with nonmycorrhizal roots.
NLS : A Non-Latent Similarity Algorithm

This paper introduces a new algorithm for calculating semantic similarity within and between texts. We refer to this algorithm as NLS, for Non-Latent Similarity. This algorithm makes use of a second-order similarity matrix (SOM) based on the cosine of the vectors from a first-order (non-latent) matrix. This first-order matrix (FOM) could be generated in any number of ways; here we used a method modified from Lin (1998). Our question regarded the ability of NLS to predict word associations. We compared NLS to both Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and the FOM. Across two sets of norms, we found that LSA, NLS, and FOM were equally predictive of associates to modifiers and verbs. However, the NLS and FOM algorithms better predicted associates to nouns than did LSA.
On the Elements of an Accurate Tree-to-String Machine Translation System

While tree-to-string (T2S) translation theoretically holds promise for efficient, accurate translation, in previous reports T2S systems have often proven inferior to other machine translation (MT) methods such as phrase-based or hierarchical phrase-based MT. In this paper, we attempt to clarify the reason for this performance gap by investigating a number of peripheral elements that affect the accuracy of T2S systems, including parsing, alignment, and search. Based on detailed experiments on the English-Japanese and JapaneseEnglish pairs, we show how a basic T2S system that performs on par with phrasebased systems can be improved by 2.6-4.6 BLEU, greatly exceeding existing stateof-the-art methods. These results indicate that T2S systems indeed hold much promise, but the above-mentioned elements must be taken seriously in construction of these systems.
Change or the Illusion of Change: The War Against Official Corruption in Africa

This Article explores the historical context of the fight against corruption in post-colonial Africa, examining both the early and contemporary efforts by African governments to build a corruption-free society. This article also explores the various initiatives taken at the regional, continental, and global levels by African governments to combat corruption. A critical evaluation of the African response to the problem of corruption is provided, as is a discussion on the war against official corruption in Africa, accompanied by suggestions for improving the pan-African regime against corruption.
Maximum hands-off control without normality assumption

Maximum hands-off control is a control that has the minimum L0 norm among all feasible controls. It is known that the maximum hands-off (or L0-optimal) control problem is equivalent to the L1-optimal control under the assumption of normality. In this article, we analyze the maximum hands-off control for linear time-invariant systems without the normality assumption. For this purpose, we introduce the Lp-optimal control with 0 <; p <; 1, which is a natural relaxation of the L0 problem. By using this, we investigate the existence and the bang-off-bang property (i.e. the control takes values of ±1 and 0) of the maximum hands-off control. We then describe a general relation between the maximum hands-off control and the L1-optimal control. We also prove the continuity and convexity property of the value function, which plays an important role to prove the stability when the (finite-horizon) control is extended to model predictive control.
Forward and backward arm cycling are regulated by equivalent neural mechanisms.

It was shown some time ago that cutaneous reflexes were phase-reversed when comparing forward and backward treadmill walking. Activity of central-pattern-generating networks (CPG) regulating neural activity for locomotion was suggested as a mechanism involved in this "program reversal. " We have been investigating the neural control of arm movements and the role for CPG mechanisms in regulating rhythmic arm cycling. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the pattern of muscle activity and reflex modulation when comparing forward and backward arm cycling. During rhythmic arm cycling (forward and backward), cutaneous reflexes were evoked with trains (5 x 1.0 ms pulses at 300 Hz) of electrical stimulation delivered to the superficial radial (SR) nerve at the wrist. Electromyographic (EMG) recordings were made bilaterally from muscles acting at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. Analysis was conducted on specific sections of the movement cycle after phase-averaging contingent on the timing of stimulation in the movement cycle. EMG patterns for rhythmic arm cycling are similar during both forward and backward motion. Cutaneous reflex amplitudes were similarly modulated at both early and middle latency irrespective of arm cycling direction. That is, at similar phases in the movement cycle, responses of corresponding sign and amplitude were seen regardless of movement direction. The results are generally parallel to the observations seen in leg muscles after stimulation of cutaneous nerves in the foot during forward and backward walking and provide further evidence for CPG activity contributing to neural activation and reflex modulation during rhythmic arm movement.
Isolation of acetylcholine receptor clusters in substrate-associated material from cultured rat myotubes using saponin

After exposure of rat myotube cultures to saponin, less than 1% of the cellular protein was found to remain associated with the tissue culture substrate. This substrate-associated material contained approximately 10% of the acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) and greater than 80% of the large, ventral AChR clusters present in the original culture. The domain structure evident in intact cells was maintained in AChR clusters after isolation using saponin. However, vinculin, present at the clusters of intact cells, was absent from isolated clusters. Dodecyl sulfate PAGE showed that substrate-associated material enriched in AChR clusters contained a distinctive set of polypeptides, the major ones electrophoresing with apparent molecular weights of 43,000 and 49,000. Saponin extraction of cultures of established cell lines also yielded substrate-associated material with characteristics particular to the cell type.
A Marketplace in the Brain?

What would you do if faced with the choice of a smaller reward that you could have today versus a larger reward that you would receive after several weeks9 delay? Such questions are explored by Ainslie and Monterosso in their Perspective, which discusses a recent study that uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the brain activity of student volunteers as they are faced with immediate versus delayed monetary rewards ( McClure et al.).
Synthesis of synchronization using uninterpreted functions

Correctness of a program with respect to concurrency is often hard to achieve, but easy to specify: the concurrent program should produce the same results as a sequential reference version. We show how to automatically insert small atomic sections into a program to ensure correctness with respect to this implicit specification. Using techniques from bounded software model checking, we transform the program into an SMT formula that becomes unsatisfiable when we add correct atomic sections. By using uninterpreted functions to abstract data-related computational details, we make our approach applicable to programs with very complex computations, e.g., cryptographic algorithms. Our method starts with an empty set of atomic sections, and, based on counterexamples obtained from the SMT solver, refines the program by adding new atomic sections until correctness is achieved. We compare two different such refinement methods and provide experimental results, including Linux kernel modules where we successfully fix race conditions.
The Inhibited (Exhibited) Spread of Innovations

This note makes general statements about standard models of the diffusion of innovations. Its premise is a familiar idea that innovations are socially-learned changes that spread like wildfires across diverse populations. However, the rate at which innovations spread is subject to the forces of exhibition and inhibition. Exhibitors promote the spread of innovations; inhibitors subjugate them. Hence, where the forces of subjugation are stronger than the forces of promotion, it is the slow spread, rather than the lack, of innovations which undermines the competitiveness of nations, and consequently frustrates economic performance. This suggests a need for a simple and more realistic model. Since the analytical components (basic equations and statistical inference) of the needed model are readily available, this note attempts a synthesis. Unfortunately in its current version the note is incomplete, and therefore makes only a tentative concluding remark. Even so, there is enough insight to warrant comment.
Model-Based Approaches for Degraded Channel Modelling in Robust ASR

Speech is usually observed after passing through some form of “channel” that results in distortions. For some scenarios it is possible to build explicit models of this channel distortion and hence compensate the acoustic models. However the accuracy of the distortion model is sometimes poor and more general adaptation approaches are required. This paper investigates these model-based approaches for communication channel, link, modelling. In particular the paper examines the interaction of link models with speaker adaptation and adaptive training. CMLLR link models with multiple transforms can yield multiple inconsistent feature-spaces When combined with speaker adaptation with very few transforms this inconsistency can limit adaptation performance gains. In contrast using a front-end CMLLR (FE-CMLLR) transform yields a consistent space for speaker adaptation. These schemes are compared on communication channel distorted dialect Arabic conversational speech. Preliminary results on this task indicate the benefits of performing adaptation in a consistent feature-space.
A Timing Analysis Algorithm For Circuits With Level-sensitive Latches

For a logic design with level-sensitive latches, we need to validate timing signal paths which may flush through several latches. We developed efficient algorithms based on the modified shortest and longest path method. The computational complexity of our algorithm is generally better than that of known algorithms in the literature. The implementation (CYCLOPSS) has been applied to an industrial chip to verify the clock schedules.