Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How do you like intelligent virtual agents

Besides in games and entertainment Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA-s) find application in deriving information, obtaining knowledge, and investigating behavior. This paper reports results concerning the ways of perceiving IVA-s by users, as well as about users' readiness to be assisted by an IVA within training courses. Users' expectations about the virtual agent's behavior have also been presented along with their predictions concerning possible effects from IVAs subjective behavior on their own behavior. The conclusion from the study is that the more serious the activity users participate in, the better they perceive the inclusion of an IVA in these activities. A hypothesis claiming that the virtual agent's subjective behavior is likely to provoke a change in the users' behavior has been developed.
Observational learning in chimpanzees and children studied through ‘ghost’ conditions

Emulation has been distinguished from imitation as a form of observational learning because it focuses not on the model's actions but on the action's environmental results. Whether a species emulates, imitates or displays only simpler observational learning is expected to have profound implications for its capacity for cultural transmission. Chimpanzees' observational learning has been suggested to be primarily emulative, but this is an inference largely based upon low fidelity copying in experiments when comparing chimpanzees with humans rather than direct testing. Here we test directly for emulation learning by chimpanzees and children using a ‘ghost’ condition in which a sliding door obscuring a reward was moved to left or right with no agent visible, a context associated with the only published evidence for emulation learning in a non-human species (pigeons). Both children and chimpanzees matched the observed direction of ghost door movement on their first test trial. This is the first evidence for emulation in a non-human primate in the restricted context of a ghost condition. However, only the children continued to match in later trials. Individuals of both species continued to match with 99% or better fidelity when viewing a conspecific model operates the door. We conclude that chimpanzees can and will display emulation learning when the task is as simple as the present one, which contrasts with a failure to do so in a more complex manipulative task tested earlier. However, even with a simple task, emulation alone creates only fleeting fidelity compared with the opportunity to copy a conspecific, when considerable conformity is displayed.
Multi-channel reliability and spectrum usage in real homes: Empirical studies for home-area sensor networks

Home area networks (HANs) consisting of wireless sensors have emerged as the enabling technology for important applications such as smart energy. These applications impose unique QoS constraints, requiring low data rates but high network reliability in the face of unpredictable wireless environments. This paper presents two in-depth empirical studies on wireless channels in real homes, providing key design guidelines for meeting the QoS constraints of HAN applications. The spectrum study analyzes spectrum usage in the 2.4 GHz band where HANs based on the IEEE 802.15. 4 standard must coexist with existing wireless devices. We characterize the ambient wireless environment in six apartments through passive spectrum analysis across the entire 2.4 GHz band over seven days in each apartment. We find that the wireless conditions in these residential environments are much more complex and varied than in a typical office environment. Moreover, while 802.11 signals play a significant role in spectrum usage, there also exists non-negligible noise from non-802.11 devices. The multichannel link study measures the reliability of different 802.15. 4 channels through active probing with motes in ten apartments. We find that there is not always a persistently reliable channel over 24 hours, and that link reliability does not exhibit cyclic behavior at daily or weekly timescales. Nevertheless, reliability can be maintained through infrequent channel hopping, suggesting dynamic channel hopping as a key tool for meeting the QoS requirements of HAN applications. Our empirical studies provide important guidelines and insights in designing HANs for residential environments.
High-efficiency transformation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells by bacterial minicell protoplast fusion

After a new transformation procedure, 10% of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells were found to contain transforming DNA sequences. We used direct transfer of plasmid molecules by fusing bacterial minicell protoplasts to yeast protoplasts. Since the procedure significantly reduces the toxic effect of procaryotic protoplasm on the eucaryotic organism, it might be generally applicable in other systems in which transformation is inefficient or impossible.
Hierarchical Topic Detection in TDT-2004

Huge volume of news makes it hard for people to keep up with the latest information, and automatic processing of news information becomes necessary. Topic Detection and Tracking is a research program that deals with this problem. From the observations in TDT, news topics can be described in different sizes, making it hard to define the “correct” granularity. In TDT-2004, the topic detection task was replaced by a new task called hierarchical topic detection, which used a hierarchy to capture more possible granularities. This paper shows the task definition, evaluation schemes, our attempt to generate a proper hierarchy, comparisons of different participants, and detailed analysis of the results. In the hierarchical structure, not all units satisfy the definition of topics. Our assumption is that the units between topics and stories are events, or sub-topics, and dependency analysis among events can give us better understanding of topics and other concepts. We propose a formal framework of event dependencies, but it still needs data collections, evaluation schemes and actual experiments to test its validity.
Compliance, Palatability and Feasibility of PALEOLITHIC and Australian Guide to Healthy Eating Diets in Healthy Women: A 4-Week Dietary Intervention

(1) Background/Objectives: The Paleolithic diet has been receiving media coverage in Australia and claims to improve overall health. The diet removes grains and dairy, whilst encouraging consumption of fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs and nuts. Our aim was to compare the diet to the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (AGHE) in terms of compliance, palatability and feasibility; (2) Subjects/Methods: 39 healthy women (age 47 ± 13 years, BMI 27 ± 4 kg/m2) were randomised to an ad-libitum Paleolithic (n = 22) or AGHE diet (n = 17) for 4-weeks. A food checklist was completed daily, with mean discretionary consumption (serves/day) calculated to assess compliance. A 12-item questionnaire was administered post intervention to assess palatability and feasibility; (3) Results: The AGHE group reported greater daily consumption of discretionary items (1.0 + 0.6 vs. 0.57 + 0.6 serves/day, p = 0.03). Compared to the AGHE group, the Paleolithic group reported a significantly greater number of events of diarrhoea (23%, 0%, p = 0.046), costs associated with grocery shopping (69%, 6% p < 0.01) and belief that the diet was not healthy (43%, 0% p < 0.01); (4) Conclusions: Compliance to both diets was high but the potential side effects and increased cost suggest that the Paleolithic diet may not be practical in clinical/public health settings. Further studies are required to assess longer term feasibility.
Regulation of Rab5 Function during Phagocytosis of Live Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Macrophages

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a Gram-negative opportunistic human pathogen, is a frequent cause of severe hospital-acquired infections. Effectors produced by the type III secretion system disrupt mammalian cell membrane trafficking and signaling and are integral to the establishment of P. aeruginosa infection. One of these effectors, ExoS, ADP-ribosylates several host cell proteins, including Ras and Rab GTPases. In this study, we demonstrated that Rab5 plays a critical role during early stages of P. aeruginosa invasion of J774-Eclone macrophages. We showed that live, but not heat-inactivated, P. aeruginosa inhibited phagocytosis and that this occurred in conjunction with downregulation of Rab5 activity. Inactivation of Rab5 was dependent on ExoS ADP-ribosyltransferase activity, and in J744-Eclone cells, ExoS ADP-ribosyltransferase activity caused a more severe inhibition of phagocytosis than ExoS Rho GTPase activity. Furthermore, we found that expression of Rin1, a Rab5 guanine exchange factor, but not Rabex5 and Rap6, partially reversed the inactivation of Rab5 during invasion of live P. aeruginosa. These studies provide evidence that live P. aeruginosa cells are able to influence their rate of phagocytosis in macrophages by directly regulating activation of Rab5.
Iterative Linear-Programming-Based Route Optimization for Cooperative Networks

In this paper we develop linear-programming (LP) based route optimization techniques for networks of relays that employ mutual-information accumulation at the physical layer. Motivated by applications to unicast transmission in ultra wideband communications we concentrate on the regime where each node has a fixed bandwidth and transmission power. Our goal is to find the cooperative route that minimizes the source- to-destination transmission duration subject to a sum-energy constraint. We tackle this problem by solving a sequence of LP-based route optimizations under increasingly tight energy constraints, revealing a trade-off between energy consumption and delay. An initial route is found by "flooding" the network, resulting in the smallest delay, but largest energy consumption. Successive routes are found by initializing the LP with the optimum route found at the (slightly higher) previous energy constraint. Through this iterative procedure we explore a massive parameter space to find locally (and often globally) optimum solutions very efficiently. We illustrate our method for a network consisting of 50 nodes and compare the results to classic routing approaches. We comment on the applicability of our framework to other bandwidth and energy constraints, objective functions, and to multicasting.
Hand Poste Estimation with Constrained Multi-hypotheses Gradient-Descent

In this report, we detail a novel approach to recover 3D hand pose from 2D images. To this end, we introduce a compact 3D hand model in a low dimension space where anatomy, kinematics and dynamics are implicitly inherited. The parameters of this model are recovered through a Bayesian inference approach. To this end, we propose an objective function which aims at separating the hand-skin characteristics within the 2D hand silhouette from the cluttered background. To address computational issues a polygonal approximation of the silhouette is considered and the differentiations from the 3D model to the 2D silhouette projection are carried out. Optimization of the cost function is done through a smart particle filtering approach which combines classical particle filters and local search. We further develop this concept towards reducing the number of hypotheses to be tested while retaining its performance through the use of a constrained variable metric gradient descent step. Very promising experimental results demonstrate the potentials of our approach.
Approximation of stationary control policies by quantized control in Markov decision processes

We consider the problem of approximating optimal stationary control policies by quantized control. Stationary quantizer policies are introduced and it is shown that such policies are “-optimal among stationary policies under mild technical conditions. Quantitative bounds on the approximation error in terms of the rate of the approximating quantizers are also derived. Thus, one can search for”-optimal policies within quantized control policies. These pave the way for applications in optimal design of networked control systems where controller actions need to be quantized, as well as for a new computational method for the generation of approximately optimal Markov decision policies in general (Borel) state and action spaces for both discounted cost and average cost infinite horizon optimal control problems.
Long‐Term Comparison of Video‐Assisted Thoracic Sympathectomy and Clinical Observation for the Treatment of Palmar Hyperhidrosis in Children Younger Than 14

Abstract: The results of video‐assisted thoracic sympathectomy (VATS)in children are unknown. To investigate the improvement in quality of life (QOL) of a group of 45 children who did and did not undergo VATS for the treatment of palmar hyperhidrosis (PH) 4 years after the initial evaluation. Forty‐five children with PH were initially evaluated. Children were divided into two groups: 30 in the VATS group and 15 in the control group. We studied the evolution of PH, negative effect of hyperhidrosis on the QOL before the treatment, and improvement in QOL after treatment. Twenty‐five patients (83.4%) in the VATS group experienced great improvement in PH, and five (16.6%) experienced partial improvement; 12 (80.0%) children from the control group had some type of improvement, and three (20.0%) had partial improvement. Two (13.3%) children in the control group and 23 (76.7%) in the VATS group had great improvement in QOL. For children with PH and poor QOL, VATS is better than no treatment. It produces better results with regard to sweating and greater improvement in QOL.
An OpenFlow-Based Prototype of SDN-Oriented Stateful Hardware Firewalls

This paper describes an Open Flow-based prototype of a SDN-oriented stateful hardware firewall. The prototype of a SDN-oriented stateful hardware firewall includes an Open Flow-enabled switch and a firewall controller. The security rules are specified in the flow table in both the Open Flow-enabled switch and the firewall controller. The firewall controller is in charge of making control decisions on regulating the unidentified traffic flows. A communication channel is needed between a firewall controller and an Open Flow enabled switch. Through this channel, a switch sends to the controller with the information of unidentified flows, and the controller sends to the switch with the control decisions. Constraining this communication overhead is important to the applicability of the prototype because a high communication overhead could disturb the performance evaluation on the operation of a SDN-oriented stateful hardware firewall.
Research on Servo Turning Table Control Method Based on Optimal Fuzzy Reasoning and Disturbance Observer

In this paper, a novel servo turning table control method based on optimal fuzzy reasoning and disturbance observer (DOB) was studied. Optimal fuzzy reasoning contains thought of optimization and feedback, and a fuzzy-PID controller using optimal fuzzy reasoning can make the reasoning process more reasonable and enhance the robustness to some extent. However, when a large external disturbance exists or the parameters of plant change largely, the accuracy of the control system will be influenced. The DOB can compensate the disturbance torque including friction torque and has great effect on improvement of accuracy. To improve the accuracy of the control system, DOB was added into the control structure. Meanwhile, fuzzy controller also enhances the robustness and dynamic performance of the DOB. Simulation results for a servo turning table system showed the effectiveness of the control method.
Plasmid-Driven Formation of Influenza Virus-Like Particles

ABSTRACT We established a plasmid-based system for generating infectious influenza virus-like particles entirely from cloned cDNAs. Human embryonic kidney cells (293T) were transfected with plasmids encoding the influenza A virus structural proteins and with a plasmid encoding an influenza virus-like viral RNA (vRNA) which contained an antisense copy of the cDNA for green fluorescence protein (GFP) flanked by an RNA polymerase I promoter and terminator. Intracellular transcription of the latter construct by RNA polymerase I generated GFP vRNA that was packaged into influenza virus-like particles. This system, which produced more than 104 infectious particles per ml of supernatant, would be useful in studies of influenza virus replication and particle formation. It might also benefit efforts in vaccine production and in the development of improved gene therapy vectors.
Liver expression quantitative trait loci: a foundation for pharmacogenomic research

Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analysis can provide insights into the genetic regulation of gene expression at a genomic level and this information is proving extremely useful in many different areas of research. As a consequence of the role of the liver in drug metabolism and disposition, the study of eQTLs in primary human liver tissue could provide a foundation for pharmacogenomics. Thus far, four genome-wide eQTL studies have been performed using human livers. Many liver eQTLs have been found to be reproducible and a proportion of these may be specific to the liver. Already these data have been used to interpret and inform clinic genome-wide association studies, providing potential mechanistic evidence for clinical associations and identifying genes which may impact clinical phenotypes. However, the utility of liver eQTL data has not yet been fully explored or realized in pharmacogenomics. As further liver eQTL research is undertaken, the genetic regulation of gene expression will become much better characterized and this knowledge will create a rational basis for the prospective pharmacogenomic study of many drugs.
Efficient parameter selection for support vector machines

ABSTRACT The support vector machines (SVM) is a popular classification method. Many users may not well tune hyperparameters because this step is time-consuming. However, the performance of SVM relies on the values of hyperparameters. To get around the problem, users may resort to anecdotal methods or default values set by software developers, but these methods may compromise the performance of classification accuracy. We investigate the theory that justifies P-SVM for tuning P-SVM significantly improved accuracy for classifying the business intelligence data. Experiments of simulation and real datasets show that P-SVM reducescomputational time substantially without much loss in accuracy.
Screening for Dysglycemia in Overweight Youth Presenting for Weight Management

OBJECTIVE To examine the performance of current screening recommendations for detecting dysglycemia in children and adolescents with obesity. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In a cross-sectional study, an oral glucose tolerance test and demographic (age, sex, family history of diabetes, and ethnicity), clinical (BMI z score, waist circumference, and pubertal stage), and laboratory variables used in current pediatric screening criteria for type 2 diabetes mellitus were measured in 259 overweight or obese youth aged 5–17 years. Glycemic status was based on American Diabetes Association (ADA) thresholds. The performance (sensitivity and specificity) of current screening criteria and newly developed models to identify isolated IGT were compared. RESULTS Dysglycemia was present in 20.8% of the cohort. Of the 54 participants with dysglycemia, 68% had a normal fasting glucose and were identified with the 2-h glucose test. Current ADA criteria had low sensitivity (41.7% [95% CI 25.6–57.8]) and moderate specificity (69.5% [63.5–75.6]) to identify IGT. In receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, the addition of hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) or FPG did not improve the ROC area under the curve (AUC) (HbA1c: 0.64 vs. 0.63; P = 0.54; HbA1c + FPG: 0.66; P = 0.42), but adding triglyceride level did (AUC 0.72 vs. 0.63; P = 0.03). A simple model with fasting triglyceride level >1.17 mmol/L improved AUC compared with ADA screening criteria (0.68 vs. 0.57; P = 0.04). CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of IGT is high among obese children and youth. Current screening criteria have low sensitivity to detect isolated IGT. Although adding nonfasting laboratory values to history and physical measures does not improve diagnostic accuracy, adding fasting lipid profile improves predictive value.
Comparison of pricing mechanisms in markets with non-convexities

We consider markets that are characterized by non-convexities or indivisibilities, due to the presence of avoidable costs and minimum supply requirements. The motivation for our work has been the area of electricity markets, which allow the submission of multi-part bids and take into account the technical characteristics of the generation units. Such market designs, when operated under marginal pricing, may lead to market outcomes where truthful bidding results in losses for some participants. To deal with this highly undesirable prospect, some approaches provide makewhole payments, or uplifts, as they are often called, whereas others modify the market-clearing prices to ensure sufficient revenues to the suppliers. In this work, we present and compare revenueadequate pricing approaches. These include the Semi-Lagrangean Relaxation and the so-called “Primal-Dual” approaches for generating efficient revenue-adequate prices. We supplement these schemes with a newly proposed scheme, which we refer to as Minimum Zero-Sum Uplift (MZU). To facilitate the comparisons, we apply these schemes on a stylized example that appears in the literature.
Ranking a Random Feature for Variable and Feature Selection

We describe a feature selection method that can be applied directly to models that are linear with respect to their parameters, and indirectly to others. It is independent of the target machine. It is closely related to classical statistical hypothesis tests, but it is more intuitive, hence more suitable for use by engineers who are not statistics experts. Furthermore, some assumptions of classical tests are relaxed. The method has been used successfully in a number of applications that are briefly described.
From Maximum Entropy to Belief Propagation: An application to Skin Detection

We build a maximum entropy model for skin detection. This model imposes constraints on various marginal distributions. Parameter estimation as well as optimization cannot be tackled without approximations. We propose to use a tree approximation of the pixel lattice. Parameter estimation is then reduced to the estimations of color histograms for neighbor pixels. Moreover, the belief propagation algorithm permits to obtain fast solution for skin probability at pixel locations. We assess the performance on the Compaq database.
Pitx3 controls multiple aspects of lens development

The transcription factor Pitx3 is critical for lens formation. Deletions in the promoter of this gene cause abnormal lens development in the aphakia (ak) mouse mutant, which has only rudimentary lenses. In this study, we investigated the role of Pitx3 in lens development and differentiation. We found that reduced expression of Pitx3 leads to changes in the proliferation, differentiation and survival of lens cells. The genetic interactions between Pitx3 and Foxe3 were investigated, as these two transcription factors are expressed at the same time in lens development and their absence has similar consequences for lens development. We found no evidence that these two genes genetically interact. In general, our study shows that the abnormal phenotype of the ak lenses is not due to just one molecular pathway, rather in the absence of Pitx3 expression multiple aspects of lens development are disrupted. Developmental Dynamics 238:2193–2201, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.