Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Constraint Propagation for First-Order Logic and Inductive Definitions

In Constraint Programming, constraint propagation is a basic component of constraint satisfaction solvers. Here we study constraint propagation as a basic form of inference in the context of first-order logic (FO) and extensions with inductive definitions (FO(ID)) and aggregates (FO(AGG)). In a first, semantic approach, a theory of propagators and constraint propagation is developed for theories in the context of three-valued interpretations. We present an algorithm with polynomial-time data complexity. We show that constraint propagation in this manner can be represented by a datalog program. In a second, symbolic approach, the semantic algorithm is lifted to a constraint propagation algorithm in symbolic structures, symbolic representations of classes of structures. The third part of the article is an overview of existing and potential applications of constraint propagation for model generation, grounding, interactive search problems, approximate methods for ∃∀SO problems, and approximate query answering in incomplete databases.
Muscle-specific locus control region activity associated with the human desmin gene.

We describe the reproduction of the full pattern of expression of the muscle-specific desmin gene in transgenic mice using a 240-kb genomic clone spanning the human desmin locus. Analysis of RNA from adult tissues demonstrated that this fragment possesses all the necessary genetic regulatory elements required to provide reproducible, site-of-integration-independent, physiological levels of tissue-specific expression that is directly proportional to transgene copy number in all muscle cell types. In situ hybridization revealed that in marked contrast to murine desmin which is strongly expressed in the myotome of the somites, skeletal muscles, the heart, and smooth muscle of the vasculature by 9.5 days postcoitum, human desmin transgene expression was completely absent from smooth muscles, was very weak and restricted to the atrium and outflow tract within the heart, and was expressed at only 5% of murine desmin mRNA levels within the myotome of the somites. The spatial distribution and levels of human and mouse desmin expression were not coincident until 14.5 days postcoitum. Immunohistochemical analysis of human embryos at comparable stages of development showed that this transgene faithfully reproduces the human and not the mouse developmental expression pattern for this gene in transgenic mice. These results indicate that the 240-kb desmin genomic clone is capable of establishing an independent, chromatin domain in transgenic mice and provides the first definitive data for muscle-specific locus control region activity. In addition, our results demonstrate that the behavior of human transgenes in mice should, whenever possible, be compared to expression patterns for that gene in human embryonic as well as adult tissues.
Well-defined clinical presentation of Ehlers–Danlos syndrome in patients with tenascin-X deficiency: a report of four cases

The Ehlers–Danlos syndrome (EDS) is a clinically and genetically heterogeneous group of inherited connective tissue disorders. The six major, well-defined, subtypes are classified according to diagnostic criteria, formalized in the Villefranche revised nosology. Shortly after the publication of these criteria in 1998, a further distinct type of EDS, the tenascin-X (TNX)-deficient type EDS, was reported. The phenotype of this largely unknown type of EDS resembles the phenotype of the classical type of EDS, but its inheritance is autosomal recessive and wound healing is normal; hence, no atrophic scars are present. The clinical diagnosis can be confirmed by the absence of TNX in the serum and by mutation analysis of the TNXB gene. Because the TNX-deficient type EDS is rare and not included in the current diagnostic criteria, this diagnosis is often delayed or even overlooked. Here, we describe four cases which improve the clinical recognition of this type of EDS.
Enhanced subliminal emotional responses to dynamic facial expressions

Emotional processing without conscious awareness plays an important role in human social interaction. Several behavioral studies reported that subliminal presentation of photographs of emotional facial expressions induces unconscious emotional processing. However, it was difficult to elicit strong and robust effects using this method. We hypothesized that dynamic presentations of facial expressions would enhance subliminal emotional effects and tested this hypothesis with two experiments. Fearful or happy facial expressions were presented dynamically or statically in either the left or the right visual field for 20 (Experiment 1) and 30 (Experiment 2) ms. Nonsense target ideographs were then presented, and participants reported their preference for them. The results consistently showed that dynamic presentations of emotional facial expressions induced more evident emotional biases toward subsequent targets than did static ones. These results indicate that dynamic presentations of emotional facial expressions induce more evident unconscious emotional processing.
The Rise and Fall of an Evolutionary Innovation: Contrasting Strategies of Venom Evolution in Ancient and Young Animals

Animal venoms are theorized to evolve under the significant influence of positive Darwinian selection in a chemical arms race scenario, where the evolution of venom resistance in prey and the invention of potent venom in the secreting animal exert reciprocal selection pressures. Venom research to date has mainly focused on evolutionarily younger lineages, such as snakes and cone snails, while mostly neglecting ancient clades (e.g., cnidarians, coleoids, spiders and centipedes). By examining genome, venom-gland transcriptome and sequences from the public repositories, we report the molecular evolutionary regimes of several centipede and spider toxin families, which surprisingly accumulated low-levels of sequence variations, despite their long evolutionary histories. Molecular evolutionary assessment of over 3500 nucleotide sequences from 85 toxin families spanning the breadth of the animal kingdom has unraveled a contrasting evolutionary strategy employed by ancient and evolutionarily young clades. We show that the venoms of ancient lineages remarkably evolve under the heavy constraints of negative selection, while toxin families in lineages that originated relatively recently rapidly diversify under the influence of positive selection. We propose that animal venoms mostly employ a ‘two-speed’ mode of evolution, where the major influence of diversifying selection accompanies the earlier stages of ecological specialization (e.g., diet and range expansion) in the evolutionary history of the species–the period of expansion, resulting in the rapid diversification of the venom arsenal, followed by longer periods of purifying selection that preserve the potent toxin pharmacopeia–the period of purification and fixation. However, species in the period of purification may re-enter the period of expansion upon experiencing a major shift in ecology or environment. Thus, we highlight for the first time the significant roles of purifying and episodic selections in shaping animal venoms.
Intermediation in a low energy building project: a case of One Brighton housing development

Many experimental local projects have been carried out in low energy buildings that integrate a range of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and solutions. These have been important in showing how low energy building can be carried out and stimulating future expectations on energy demand reduction through buildings. However, a key question remains as to how we can spread these experiments to other localities and, importantly, into commercial applications, and who are important actors in these processes. This paper presents an in-depth case study of One Brighton, a new build housing development in England offering 172 apartments and a community space, constructed during 2007–2010. One Brighton was developed with an objective of creating a residential building complex that enables sustainable, healthy and happy lifestyles. It in many ways stems from Bioregional – an environmental charity, social enterprise and an intermediary organisation championing more sustainable ways of living – and its pioneering BedZed housing development in London. However, also other intermediary actors were needed to initiate and pull through this innovative low energy building project. Triangulation of data sources including interviews, attendance in an on-site learning tour, and written material were used to construct the in-depth case. Through a detailed analysis of this case, the paper shows (1) the role of a key intermediary actor in advancing systemic innovation in low energy housing beyond its initial experimental stage, and (2) how an ecology of intermediaries and champions advanced energy efficiency and sustainability during different phases of a building project. Intermediation in this case was crucial, taking different forms by different actors and at different periods. For policymakers this highlights the need to support the existence and activities of such intermediaries.
Combining Novel Acoustic Features using SVM to Detect Speaker Changing Points

Automatic speaker change point detection separates different speakers from continuous speech signal by utilising the speaker characteristics. It is often a necessary step before using a speaker recognition system. Acoustic features of the speech signal such as Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Linear Prediction Cepstral Coefficients (LPCC) are commonly used to represent a speaker. However, the features are affected by speech content, environment, type of recording device, etc. So far, no features have been discovered, which values depend only on the speaker. In this paper four novel feature types proposed in recent journals and conference papers for speaker verification problem, are applied to the problem of speaker change point detection. The features are also used to form a combination scheme using an SVM classifier. The results shows that the proposed scheme improves the performance of speaker changing point detection as compared to the system that uses MFCC features only. Some of the novel features of low dimensionality give comparable speaker change point detection accuracy to the high-dimensional MFCC features.
Surface Reconstruction Based on Kinect Sensor

—Traditional accurate 3D reconstruction can be roughly divided into two categories according to types of sensor. One is through expensive laser scanner, and the other is by photogrammetry, which perform the reconstruction using photos taken from different angles. However, in recent years, the rapid development of depth camera has threw some new light upon the field. In this paper, we present a 3D reconstruction plan for indoor scenes using a very low-cost depth camera, the Microsoft Kinect sensor. Our system include four steps: data preprocessing, pose estimation of the sensor, fusion of the depth data, 3D surface extraction. Firstly, we project each frame of depth data back into the space to obtain the point-cloud. Secondly, estimate the sensor pose using ICP algorithm. Thirdly, fuse all of the depth data using a volumetric method, and finally extract 3D surface from the global model.
Short Peptides as Inhibitors of Amyloid Aggregation

The misfolding and aggregation of proteins into amyloid has been linked to a variety of age-related diseases. Aggregation of proteins, such as Aβ in Alzheimer’s disease and Islet Amyloid Polypeptide (IAPP, amylin) in type 2 diabetes, appears to lead to the formation of toxic assemblies. These assemblies range in size from small oligomers (2–8 proteins) to large fibrils (thousands of proteins). It remains unclear how these amyloidogenic proteins misfold and form toxic species, but growing evidence suggests that inhibiting the aggregation of these proteins could slow, if not prevent altogether, the progression of these diseases. We describe the use of small peptides (<43 amino acids) as inhibitors of amyloid-based aggregation. These peptides, often short complementary segments of the amyloid proteins, can be useful (i) for identifying the aggregation-prone regions of the amyloid proteins (ii) as models for drug discovery and (iii) as potential therapeutic agents themselves.
Off line signature recognition based on wavelet, curvelet and contourlet transforms

In this paper we proposed new offline signature recognition based on the three different kinds of feature extractors, wavelet, curvelet and contourlet transform. The curvature and orientation of a signature image was used as feature. We utilized Support vector machine (SVM) as a tool to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods. The comparison of the three transforms for identifying the kind of signatures showed that contourlet transform can extract better features among the proposed.
Changes in diagnosis with follow-up in an incident cohort of patients with parkinsonism

Background: Accurate diagnosis of the cause of parkinsonism during life can be difficult, particularly at presentation, but few studies have described changes in clinical diagnosis over time and the effect of applying strict research criteria. Methods: Incident patients with a possible/probable diagnosis of degenerative or vascular parkinsonism had a standardised assessment at diagnosis and at yearly intervals thereafter at which the most likely clinical diagnosis was recorded without strict application of research criteria. Four years after the beginning of the incident period, formal research criteria were applied retrospectively using patient records at baseline and the latest yearly follow-up. Results: Of 82 incident patients, 66 underwent at least 1 year of follow-up. After a median follow-up of 29 months, clinical diagnosis had changed in 22 (33%). Most (82%) changes occurred in the first year and were due to the development of atypical clinical features, particularly early cognitive impairment; the results of brain imaging; responsiveness to levodopa; and the rate of disease progression. Diagnosis on research criteria differed from latest clinical diagnosis in eight participants (12%). Research criteria gave a “probable” diagnosis in 71% of parkinsonian patients at follow-up but in only 15% at the initial assessment. Discussion: The clinical diagnosis of the cause of parkinsonism at presentation was often incorrect, even when made by those with a special interest. In particular, Parkinson’s disease was overdiagnosed. Research criteria were often unhelpful in clarifying the diagnosis, even after a median of 29 months of follow-up. Further research is required to identify factors that may be used to improve the accuracy of diagnosis at initial assessment.
CS 224 N Final Project : Adaptive 2 Language Models

To learn a language, one should be exposed to the right environment. A person who used English for his/her entire life would never understand a single Japanese word. Even within the same language, people use the same language very di erently from person to person and from occassion to occasion. For instance, you would nd English written on a NLP research paper (i.e. this one) very di erent from Justin Bieber's tweets (i.e. @alfredo ores why would you ruin it gosh ). Even on the same media, Twitter for example, the language Barack Obama uses is di erent from what Justin Bieber uses. This gives us an important idea for statistical NLP model: our models would perform better if they're trained on the right domain of data.
Quantifying Neighbourhood Socioeconomic Effects in Clustering of Behaviour-Related Risk Factors: A Multilevel Analysis

Background The extent to which neighbourhood characteristics explain accumulation of health behaviours is poorly understood. We examined whether neighbourhood disadvantage was associated with co-occurrence of behaviour-related risk factors, and how much of the neighbourhood differences in the co-occurrence can be explained by individual and neighbourhood level covariates. Methods The study population consisted of 60 694 Finnish Public Sector Study participants in 2004 and 2008. Neighbourhood disadvantage was determined using small-area level information on household income, education attainment, and unemployment rate, and linked with individual data using Global Positioning System-coordinates. Associations between neighbourhood disadvantage and co-occurrence of three behaviour-related risk factors (smoking, heavy alcohol use, and physical inactivity), and the extent to which individual and neighbourhood level covariates explain neighbourhood differences in co-occurrence of risk factors were determined with multilevel cumulative logistic regression. Results After adjusting for age, sex, marital status, and population density we found a dose-response relationship between neighbourhood disadvantage and co-occurrence of risk factors within each level of individual socioeconomic status. The cumulative odds ratios for the sum of health risks comparing the most to the least disadvantaged neighbourhoods ranged between 1.13 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.03–1.24) and 1.75 (95% CI, 1.54–1.98). Individual socioeconomic characteristics explained 35%, and neighbourhood disadvantage and population density 17% of the neighbourhood differences in the co-occurrence of risk factors. Conclusions Co-occurrence of poor health behaviours associated with neighbourhood disadvantage over and above individual's own socioeconomic status. Neighbourhood differences cannot be captured using individual socioeconomic factors alone, but neighbourhood level characteristics should also be considered.
Teachers' stories of environmental education: blurred boundaries of professionalism, identity and curriculum

This study uses narrative inquiry to contribute to ways of valuing and utilising teachers’ personal narratives as tools for understanding their thinking and knowing in relation to the environment and environmental education, and for critically examining and challenging dominant narratives and discourses of education and the environment in school education. The research develops teachers’ stories as the main focus of inquiry and data, with the understanding that teachers’ stories articulate the dynamics and interactions between discourses and practices that constitute teachers’ thinking and experiences of environmental education. Based on life-historical and focus group interviews with eleven secondary school teachers in Korea, the inquiry also develops novel ways of understanding and analysing teacher narratives about environmental education, in three parts. As an introductory part of the analysis, five teachers’ short stories are presented via framings of their plots (“vision”) and key narrative themes, with a focus on the teacher’s own ways of making sense of their environment-related experiences through blurring the boundaries of personal and professional identities. Two subsequent chapters develop a critical investigation into their discursive practices, illustrating the blurring of boundaries in professionalism and curriculum, through which the teachers’ environmental education can create cracks and ruptures in school education. Narrative analysis of three teacher groups – science, humanities, and environment teachers - contributes to an examination of the tensions in arguing for ‘environmental education teachers’ professionalism within the institutional context of schooling in Korea. Finally, analysis of teachers’ curriculum repertoires, via six topics – alternative energy, environmental issues, health and ‘well-being’, biotechnology issues, outdoor education, and green education - provides an examination of the contingencies and complexities in the processes of teachers’ pedagogical rendering of cultural narratives of science and environmental issues. The study utilises narrative-discursive approaches to teachers’ thinking and practice. Teacher narratives are located alongside other narratives of teachers, to elucidate the meanings of personal narratives as ‘small’ stories and explore their role in critiquing surrounding, ‘larger’ institutional and cultural narratives, including hero and exemplary teacher discourses, by opening up discursive spaces for alternative meanings of professionalism and curriculum. The study also includes a discussion of how teacher learning can be understood and facilitated by using teacher narratives as vehicles for examining the nature of teacher action, and in so doing, argues that school environmental education can be a catalyst for such teacher learning.
When What's Left Is Right: Visuomotor Transformations in an Aged Population

Background There has been little consensus as to whether age-related visuomotor adaptation effects are readily observable. Some studies have found slower adaptation, and/or reduced overall levels. In contrast, other methodologically similar studies have found no such evidence of aging effects on visuomotor adaptation. A crucial early step in successful adaptation is the ability to perform the necessary transformation to complete the task at hand. The present study describes the use of a viewing window paradigm to examine the effects of aging in a visuomotor transformation task. Methods Two groups of participants, a young adult control group (age range 18–33 years old, mean age = 22) and an older adult group (age range 62–74, mean age = 68) completed a viewing window task that was controlled by the user via a computer touchscreen. Four visuomotor “flip” conditions were created by varying the relationship between the participant's movement, and the resultant on-screen movement of the viewing window: 1) No flip 2) X-Axis and Y-axis body movements resulted in the opposite direction of movement of the viewing window. In each of the 3) Flip-X and 4) Flip-Y conditions, the solitary X- or Y-axes were reversed. Response times and movement of the window were recorded. Conclusions Older participants demonstrated impairments in performing a required visuomotor transformation, as evidenced by more complex scanning patterns and longer scanning times when compared to younger control participants. These results provide additional evidence that the mechanisms involved in visuomotor transformation are negatively affected by age.
Automatic Sprite Shading

Sprites have been present since the first arcade games and console generations. Despite the advances in computer graphics and the whole representation of virtual worlds on 3D environments, 2D-based games still have their space, specially on portable consoles and mobile devices. The visual quality of sprites have increased as a result of hardware improvements in processing power, memory, and a richer color gamut. However, most of the sprite editing task is still manual, using graphics editing tools. We present a method to automatically generate shading distribution on sprites, one important step during the editing process that is time demanding for most manual works on art design today. Our method allows to control the position of a local light source and to generate an approximation of shading distribution effect on sprites. Although our solution is not physically accurate according to the shape of the represented object, it can produce convincing and well usable results for 2D game systems in many practical cases. We compare our fully automatic results with handmade sprite shading, with very convincing results.
Empowering Browser Security for Mobile Devices Using Smart CDNs

There has been a great deal of attention on browser security in recent years. However, the majority of projects in this space have focused on security of desktop browsers, while it is likely that it is the mobile browsers that will be targets of security attacks in the coming years. In this paper we propose the use of “smart CDNs” to quickly drive security innovations into the mobile browser space.