Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alterations in neural cell adhesion molecules during development of different regions of the nervous system

Several cell adhesion molecules involved in neuron-neuron and neuron- glia interactions have been identified in our laboratory and have been shown to undergo cell surface modulation. In the case of the neural cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM), it has been found that during development the molecule is converted from a microheterogeneous embryonic (E) form containing 30 gm of sialic acid/100 gm of polypeptide to several distinct adult (A) forms containing one third as much of this sugar. In vitro analyses indicate that this change is accompanied by a 4-fold increase in the rate of N-CAM homophilic binding. In the present study of the mouse and the chick, alterations of N-CAMs occurring as a result of E----A conversion, prevalence modulation, and changes in antigenic state during the development of different neural regions were analyzed by the use of highly specific polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies combined with anatomical dissection and several new quantitative assays. We made the following observations. The relative concentration of N-CAM changed during development, with the highest concentration (2.8 times the adult level) occurring around the perinatal period. Each brain region followed a similar pattern of change but according to a different time schedule. While conversion from the E to the A forms of N-CAM occurred mainly during the first 3 postnatal weeks in mice, the relative conversion rates were distinctly different in various neural tissues. The extreme examples are dorsal root ganglia, which already displayed the A forms at birth, and the diencephalon and tectal region, which still retained some E forms in the adult. A cephalocaudal maturation gradient of E---- A conversion was observed in the spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia. Differences in the antigenic determinants of N-CAMs from different neural tissues were detected by two independent monoclonal antibodies. Finally, in some adult neural tissues, one of the three A forms was found to be dominant. These results establish that during development there are definite quantitative and qualitative differences among N- CAMs from various neural tissues. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that alterations in the relative amounts and forms of N-CAM play major roles in neural morphogenesis, possibly by altering the rates of adhesion among neurons and their processes.
On the approximate domain optimization of deterministic and expected value criteria

We define the concept of approximate domain optimizer for deterministic and expected value optimization criteria. Roughly speaking, a candidate optimizer is an approximate domain optimizer if only a small fraction of the optimization domain is more than a little better than it. We show how this concept relates to commonly used approximate optimizer notions for the case of Lipschitz criteria. We then show how random extractions from an appropriate probability distribution can generate approximate domain optimizers with high confidence. Finally, we discuss how such random extractions can be performed using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods.
Scavenging Effects of Dexrazoxane on Free Radicals

Dexrazoxane (ICRF-187) has been clinically used to reduce doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity for more than 20 years. It has been proposed that dexrazoxane may act through its rings-opened hydrolysis product ADR-925, which can either remove iron from the iron-doxorubicin complex or bind to free iron, thus preventing iron-based oxygen radical formation. However, it is not known whether the antioxidant actions of dexrazoxane are totally dependent on its metabolization to its rings-opened hydrolysis product and whether dexrazoxane has any effect on the iron-independent oxygen free radical production. In this study, we examined the scavenging effect of dexrazoxane on hydroxyl, superoxide, lipid, DPPH and ABTS+ free radicals in vitro solution systems. The results demonstrated that dexrazoxane was an antioxidant that could effectively scavenge these free radicals and the scavenging effects of dexrazoxane did not require the enzymatic hydrolysis. In addition, dexrazoxane was capable to inhibit the generation superoxide and hydroxyl radicals in iron free reaction system, indicating that the antioxidant properties of dexrazoxane were not solely dependent on iron chelation. Thus the application of dexrazoxane should not be limited to doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity. Instead, as an effective antioxidant that has been clinically proven safe, dexrazoxane may be used in a broader spectrum of diseases that are known to be benefited by antioxidant treatments.
Towards new applications of multi-function logic: Image multi-filtering

Multifunctional (or polymorphic) gates are capable of performing two or more logic functions according to the setting of control signals. They can be considered as building blocks for new and cheap reconfigurable chips. In this paper, we utilized multifunctional components that can be implemented using multifunctional gates as building blocks of image filters. We applied genetic programming to evolve image filters performing different filtering tasks under different settings of control signals. Evolved solutions exhibit a significant reduction in utilized operations and interconnects w.r. t. the multiplexing of conventional solutions.
Efficient Algorithms for Electrostatic Interactions Including Dielectric Contrasts

Coarse-grained models of soft matter are usually combined with implicit solvent models that take the electrostatic polarizability into account via a dielectric background. In biophysical or nanoscale simulations that include water, this constant can vary greatly within the system. Performing molecular dynamics or other simulations that need to compute exact electrostatic interactions between charges in those systems is computationally demanding. We review here several algorithms developed by us that perform exactly this task. For planar dielectric surfaces in partial periodic boundary conditions, the arising image charges can be either treated with the MMM2D algorithm in a very efficient and accurate way or with the electrostatic layer correction term, which enables the user to use his favorite 3D periodic Coulomb solver. Arbitrarily-shaped interfaces can be dealt with using induced surface charges with the induced charge calculation (ICC*) algorithm. Finally, the local electrostatics algorithm, MEMD(Maxwell Equations Molecular Dynamics), even allows one to employ a smoothly varying dielectric constant in the systems. We introduce the concepts of these three algorithms and an extension for the inclusion of boundaries that are to be held fixed at a constant potential (metal conditions). For each method, we present a showcase application to highlight the importance of dielectric interfaces.
Assimilating MODIS reflectance data into an ecosystem model to improve estimates of terrestrial carbon flux: recent progress

This paper details recent progress in the assimilation of top of canopy reflectance data into an ecosystem model to constrain estimates of net carbon flux. Previous work has demonstrated the feasibility of such an approach but its application at wide spatial scales remains relatively un explored. Two aspects of this are examined in this paper: the requirement to provide spatialised reflectance model parameters and the restating of an ecosystem model to optimise it for assimilating EO data.
Limitations of security standards against public clouds

Since a Web-technology has arisen and clouds has come, every application wants to be online and operates with sensitive data that cannot but attract anyone to get an access this data. It means an urgent need in security. Examining the clouds leads us to different visions of security controls and metrics per each cloud vendor while industrial organizations try to help to the vendors and their customers with an appropriate security level. They offer a transparency of security controls that belong to different vendors against the best security practices.
Augmenting transportation-related recommendations through data mining

This paper reports on the exploitation of data mining techniques during the formulation of purposeful association rules out of the transactions' database of a transportation management system. The rules' construction is performed through an elaborated version of the AprioriTid algorithm. The proposed algorithm is generic and capable to construct such rules by creating a large set of related items. The constructed rules can be used by the system's recommender module, which is responsible for providing recommendations to the associated users. The recommendation process takes into account the constructed rules and techniques that derive from the area of Collaborative Filtering (CF).
Série Scientifique Scientific Series Multi-task Learning for Option Pricing Multi-task Learning for Option Pricing

Reproduction partielle permise avec citation du document source, incluant la notice ©. Short sections may be quoted without explicit permission, if full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Les cahiers de la série scientifique (CS) visent à rendre accessibles des résultats de recherche effectuée au CIRANO afin de susciter échanges et commentaires. Ces cahiers sont écrits dans le style des publications scientifiques. Les idées et les opinions émises sont sous l'unique responsabilité des auteurs et ne représentent pas nécessairement les positions du CIRANO ou de ses partenaires. This paper presents research carried out at CIRANO and aims at encouraging discussion and comment. The observations and viewpoints expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors. They do not necessarily represent positions of CIRANO or its partners. Résumé / Abstract L'apprentissage multi-tâches est une manière d'apprendre des particularités d'un domaine (le biais) qui comprend plusieurs tâches possibles. On entraîne simultanément plusieurs modèles, un par tâche, en imposant des contraintes sur les paramètres de manière à capturer ce qui est en commun entre les tâches, afin d'obtenir une meilleure généralisation sur chaque tâche, et pour pouvoir rapidement généraliser (avec peu d'exemples) sur une nouvelle tâche provenant du même domaine. Ici cette commonalité est définie par une variété affine dans l'espace des paramètres. Dans cet article, nous appliquons ces méthodes à la prédiction du prix d'options d'achat de l'indice S&P 500 entre 1987 et 1993. Une analyse de la variance des résultats est présentée, démontrant des améliorations significatives de la prédiction hors-échantillon. Multi-task learning is a process used to learn domain-specific bias. It consists in simultaneously training models on different tasks derived from the same domain and forcing them to exchange domain information. This transfer of knowledge is performed by imposing constraints on the parameters defining the models and can lead to improved generalization performance. In this paper, we explore a particular multi-task learning method that forces the parameters of the models to lie on an affine manifold defined in parameter space and embedding domain information. We apply this method to the prediction of the prices of call options on the S&P index for a period of time ranging from 1987 to 1993. An analysis of variance of the results is presented that shows significant improvements of the generalization performance.
Smoking cessation and financial stress.

BACKGROUND Research on the financial consequences of quitting smoking is scant. We examined the association of smoking cessation with the subsequent likelihood of experiencing financial stress. METHODS Data came from Waves 1, 2 and 3 (2001-04) of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The size of the subsample of smokers in Wave 1 who also participated in Waves 2 and 3 was 1747. We compared respondents who reported to have been a smoker in all three waves with those who were smokers only in Wave 1. Eight questionnaire items were used to construct a binary financial stress indicator. RESULTS The odds of experiencing financial stress in Wave 3 were 42% (95% CI: 6-74%; P=0.028) smaller for quitters than for continued smokers. CONCLUSIONS Interventions to encourage smoking cessation among disadvantaged groups are likely to enhance their material conditions and standards of living, and to reduce socio-economic disparities in mortality.
An Analysis of Cache Awareness for Interactive Selective Rendering

Interactive high-fidelity rendering is one of the major goals of computer graphics. Algorithms based on ray tracing are usually used to drive high-fidelity renderers. While ray tracing is often thought to be impractical for real time performance, recent algorithmic advances in the field have led to the development of interactive ray tracers which leverage the performance of modern parallel systems and cache awareness to obtain real-time rates for moderately complex scenes using Whitted-style ray tracing. Another method used for accelerating ray tracing is the use of selective rendering where only the pixels that need to be computed are traced and the remainder are computed by other means such as interpolation. The choice of which pixels to render may depend oil a number of factors. from simple ones that just compare the radiance values of the rays within a certain area and shoot further rays recursively if the difference in radiance is above a certain threshold, to more complex ones based on visual attention. Selective rendering algorithms may not be perfectly compatible with cur-rent interactive ray tracing techniques since selective rendering methods tend to be naturally incoherent. and the computation of rays at a stride may result in expensive cache misses. In this paper we analyse the effect of selective rendering on interactive ray tracing and hint at possible solutions that would allow selective rendering to be compatible with interactive rendering methods to further improve rendering speeds.
E-Learner's Collective Intelligent System Framework: Web Mining for Personalization in E-Learning 2. 0 Ecosystem using Web 2. 0 Technologies

E-Learning 2.0 ecosystem has turn out to be a trend in the world nowadays. The term E-Learning 2.0 ecosystem was coined that came out during the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies. Most of the researches overlook a deep-seated issue in the e-learner’s foregoing knowledge on which the valuable intelligent systems are based. This research utilizes the e-Learner’s collective intelligence knowledge and extracts useful information for appropriate target courses or resources as a part of a personalization procedure to construct the eLearner’s collective intelligent system framework for recommendation in e-learning 2.0 ecosystem. This research based on a novel web usage mining techniques and introduces a novel approach to collective intelligence with the use of mashup and web 2.0 technology approach to build a framework for an E-Learning 2.0 ecosystem. It is incorporated in predictive model efficiently based on back-propagation network (BPN). A prototype system, named E-learner’s Collective Intelligence System Framework, has been proposed which has features such as self-regulation, reusability, lightweight, end user oriented, and openness. To evaluate the proposed approach, empirical research is conducted for the performance evaluation. General Terms Information System Application, Artificial Intelligence, Automatic Service, E-Learner’s Knowledge Discovery.
Intelligent product agents : The key to implementing collaboration process networks ?

The promise of process integration between organizations too often remains unfulfilled. To make rapid progress new approaches are needed. Distributed control is a new and exciting opportunity to build more effective process networks for a wide range of applications in logistics and product development. A solution based on distributed control around the consumers of services in process networks is proposed. In logistics it is the physical delivery that becomes the focus for distributed control when you approach the service environment from the service consumer perspective. In collaborative design and manufacturing it is the product model that becomes the focus of control. A service consumer perspective provides key guidelines that help manufacturers and service providers identify the design of process networks that most efficiently add value in different industries and for different applications. Introduction: From trading process to collaboration process network The Internet is an enabler to create trading process networks. A list of recent examples [1] includes the alliance between the three big auto manufacturers (General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, and Ford) to establish Covisint (an electronic market for automotive parts suppliers), the launch of RetailLink by Wal-Mart, and the Transfer Process Network by General Electric. In addition, in fragmented industries, a host of third-party-operated electronic markets are emerging. The Economist [2] found more than 750 in existence at the beginning of the year 2000. Examples include e-STEEL for the steel industry, IMX for home mortgage, and Paper Exchange for the paper industry. The concept of a trading process network can be extended to cover more complex activities and closer collaboration, such as supply chain management and product development. This advanced process network may be defined as a collaboration process network. The importance of collaboration is especially pronounced in supply chain management and product development. Kranton and Minehart [3] demonstrate how in the supply chain, increasing the number of inter-firm links in the collaboration network has a positive effect on efficiency in situations where individual firms face large idiosyncratic shocks and capacity is
Bandstop Filter (BSF) Topology With Variable Attenuation

In this paper, we provide a new third-order bandstop filter (BSF) topology with attenuation control capability. The proposed BSF topology contains inter-resonator coupling structures and it can duplicate the frequency responses of the conventional BSF topology, which does not have inter-resonator couplings. In addition, the proposed topology can control the attenuation level by adjusting the resonant frequency of each resonator, and this characteristic cannot be obtained from the conventional one. Two BSFs utilizing the conventional and proposed topologies are designed, fabricated, and measured to support the presented theory. Two filters have been designed and fabricated employing frequency tunable substrate integrated cavity resonators. The measurement verifies that the BSF utilizing the presented topology is capable of adjusting the attenuation level as well as reproducing the conventional bandstop responses.
Dynamic Swarm Formation with Potential Fields and A* Path Planning in 3D Environment

A dynamic swarm formation based in artificial potential fields is presented and extended to 3D environments. A dynamic technic to adjust the swarm configuration when avoiding obstacles is also proposed. Using potential fields in conjunction with a global planner like the A* algorithm allows the navigation through an environment in presence of obstacles. The global planner finds an obstacle free path using a discrete representation of the world and this path is used to guide the center of the swarm formation. Potential field is used to control the swarm formation and to avoid obstacles locally when travelling the planned path. Simulation results are presented for swarm of particles of different sizes in 2D and 3D worlds.
Active Learning for Dependency Parsing by A Committee of Parsers

Data-driven dependency parsers need a large annotated corpus to learn how to generate dependency graph of a given sentence. But annotations on structured corpora are expensive to collect and requires a labor intensive task. Active learning is a machine learning approach that allows only informative examples to be selected for annotation and is usually used when the number of annotated data is abundant and acquisition of more labeled data is expensive. We will provide a novel framework in which a committee of dependency parsers collaborate to improve their efﬁciency using active learning techniques. Queries are made up only from uncertain tokens, and the annotations of the remaining tokens of selected sentences are voted among committee members.
Evolution of the Guerrero composite terrane along the Mexican margin, from extensional fringing arc to contractional continental arc

The western margin of Mexico is ideally suited for testing two opposing models for the growth of continents along convergent margins: accretion of exotic island arcs by the consumption of entire ocean basins versus accretion of fringing terranes produced by protracted extensional processes in the upper plate of a single subduction zone. We present geologic and detrital zircon evidence that the Zihuatanejo terrane of the Guerrero composite terrane originated from the latter mechanism. The evolution of the Zihuatanejo terrane can be explained by extensional and compressional processes operating entirely within the upper plate of a long-lived subduction zone that dipped east under the Mexican margin. This process controlled crustal growth by continental margin rifting and addition of new igneous and volcaniclastic material during extension, followed by accretion and thickening of the crust during contraction. Prior to this study, all Mesozoic rocks in the western part of the Guerrero composite terrane were considered to be part of a single arc. However, we divide it into four distinctive tectonostratigraphic assemblages: (1) a Triassic–Early Jurassic accretionary complex (Arteaga complex); (2) a Jurassic to earliest Cretaceous extensional volcanic arc assemblage; (3) an Early Cretaceous extensional arc assemblage; and (4) a Santonian–Maastrichtian compressional arc assemblage. (1) The Arteaga subduction complex forms the basement to the Zihuatanejo terrane and includes Grenville, Pan-African, and Permian detrital zircon suites that match the Potosi fan of the Mexican mainland. (2) The Jurassic to earliest Cretaceous extensional volcanic arc assemblage shows a Callovian–Tithonian (ca. 163–145 Ma) peak in magmatism; extensional unroofing began in this time frame and continued into through the next. (3) The Early Cretaceous extensional arc assemblage has two magmatic peaks: one in the Barremian-Aptian (ca. 129–123 Ma), and the other in the Albian (ca. 109 Ma). In some localities, rapid subsidence produced thick, mainly shallow-marine volcano-sedimentary sections, while at other localities, extensional unroofing of all older assemblages resulted in recycling of zircon from all older units (1, 2, 3). (4) For the Santonian–Maastrichtian compressional arc assemblage, our new detrital zircon dates show for the first time that arc volcanic rocks of this age are present in the coastal Zihuatanejo terrane. The contractional arc developed atop assemblages 1–3, which were shortened between Turonian and Santonian time (ca. 93 and 84 Ma). Taken together, the western Zihuatanejo terrane records a more protracted history of arc magmatism than has yet been dated in other terranes of western Mexico, but it closely matches the history of Baja California to the northwest