Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anodal Stimulation of the Left DLPFC Increases IGT Scores and Decreases Delay Discounting Rate in Healthy Males

Previous correlational imaging studies have implicated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in decision making. Using High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS), the present study directly investigated the causal role of the DLPFC in performing the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Inter-Temporal Choice (ITC) task. Three experiments were conducted: Experiment 1 (N = 41) to study the left DLPFC, Experiment 2 (N = 49) to study the right DLPFC, and Experiment 3 (N = 20, a subset of those in Experiment 1) to switch the experimental and control conditions. All participants were healthy male college students. For Experiments 1 and 2, participants were randomly assigned to either the HD-tDCS or the sham stimulation condition. For Experiment 3, participants were assigned to the condition they were not in during Experiment 1. Results showed that HD-tDCS over the left DLPFC increased IGT score, decreased the recency parameter in IGT, and lowered delay discounting rate (k) in the ITC task. We discussed the potential roles of impulse control and time perception in mediating the effect of tDCS stimulation of left DLPFC on decision making. Our results have clinical implications for the treatment of disorders involving poor decision-making, such as addictions.
Identification and Crystallization of Penicillin-Binding Protein/β-Lactamase Homolog (Rp46) from Ruegeria Pomeroyi

In spite of the enormous biological and clinical significance of penicillin-binding protein (PBP)/β-lactamase (βL), few of their many homologs (PBP)/βLs homologs) have been studied crystallographically, and have known functions. Herein, X-ray crystallographic study of a PBP/βL homolog (Rp46) from Ruegeria pomeroyi is described. Multiple sequence alignments indicate that Rp46 has a conserved serine residue within the S70-X-X-K73 motif (Motif I), acting as the catalytic nucleophile. Moreover, an invariant tyrosine residue (Tyr185) and a Trp365-X-Gly motif (Motif III) were also identified. The recombinant Rp46 protein was expressed in Escherichia coli and purified to homogeneity judging from the SDS-PAGE analysis. Rp46 was crystallized using a solution consisting of 20% (w/v) PEG 3000, 0.1 M Tris-HCl, pH 7.0, 0.2 M calcium acetate, and the X-ray diffraction data were collected to a resolution of 1.90 A with an Rmerge of 7.4%. The crystals of Rp46 belong to the space group I422, with unit cell parameters a = b = 141.26 A, and c = 119.75. The structure determination and biochemical characterization are in progress. (Synopsis: A penicillin-binding protein/β-lactamase homolog (Rp46) from Ruegeria pomeroyi was identified and crystallized in the space group I4, and the diffraction data were collected to a resolution of 1.90 A. )
RU-EVAL-2019: EVALUATING ANAPHORA AND COREFERENCE RESOLUTION FOR RUSSIAN

This paper reports on one of the events within the evaluation campaign RU-EVAL-2019. The NLP task behind this even concerns anaphora and coreference resolution in Russian. The first evaluation event devoted to this issue was held in 2014. However, since then the NLP technologies and resources for Russian has changed greatly. The present event is organized in order to estimate the current state-of-the-art regarding this task and to compare various methods and principles implemented for Russian. In this paper, we define anaphora and coreference resolution tasks, describe the dataset with special attention to the annotation rules, clarify the evaluation procedure and discuss the results. Besides, we present a new open dataset with coreference annotations for Russian (523 documents, 5.7k chains with 25k mentions) that can be used for training and evaluation while developing new systems.
Patient Data Dissemination in Wireless Body Area Network: A Qualitative Analysis

With the availability of various sensors for vital signs monitoring of a human body, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have envisioned several applications in the health-care domain. Different wearable and implanted sensor nodes report the vital signs information to a remote medical facility via the local body coordinator. Together the set of sensor nodes and body coordinator form a network known as Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). In addition to the common routing constraints of WSNs, WBAN poses unique challenges constrained by heterogeneous nature of data, postural movements, and temperature-rise issues. Numerous contributions have been made to address the aforementioned issues of WBAN and are classified as temperature-aware routing protocols, cluster-based routing protocols, QoS-aware routing protocols and postural movement based routing protocols. This paper qualitatively analyzes the performance of the variously proposed protocols in terms of energy efficiency, provision of QoS, mobility, end-to-end delay, and temperature-rise. A relative performance of all the protocols is also given in order to develop a general understanding of the overall efficacy in-line with the unique constraints of WBANs.
Freischütz Digital: A Case Study for Reference-Based Audio Segmentation for Operas

Music information retrieval has started to become more and more important in the humanities by providing tools for computer-assisted processing and analysis of music data. However, when applied to real-world scenarios, even established techniques, which are often developed and tested under lab conditions, reach their limits. In this paper, we illustrate some of these challenges by presenting a study on automated audio segmentation in the context of the interdisciplinary project “Freischutz Digital”. One basic task arising in this project is to automatically segment different recordings of the opera “Der Freischutz” according to a reference segmentation specified by a domain expert (musicologist). As it turns out, the task is more complex as one may think at first glance due to significant acoustic and structural variations across the various recordings. As our main contribution, we reveal and discuss these variations by systematically adapting segmentation procedures based on synchronization and matching techniques.
The language of mathematics in science

"The Language of Mathematics in Science" is an ASE/Nuffield project aimed at supporting teachers of 11-16 science in the use of mathematical ideas in the science curriculum. Two publications have been produced. This article focuses on the first of these, The Language of Mathematics in Science: A Guide for Teachers of 11-16 Science, which provides an overview of key ideas and approaches in this area, along with a glossary of relevant terms. A selection of teacher discussion activities are introduced to illustrate some of the general themes that run through the publication. One key theme is that, while there are important mathematical techniques to be learned, the way that mathematics is used in science is a matter of judgement and not of applying hard-and-fast rules
Diverged Alleles of the Anopheles gambiae Leucine-Rich Repeat Gene APL1A Display Distinct Protective Profiles against Plasmodium falciparum

Functional studies have demonstrated a role for the Anopheles gambiae APL1A gene in resistance against the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. Here, we exhaustively characterize the structure of the APL1 locus and show that three structurally different APL1A alleles segregate in the Ngousso colony. Genetic association combined with RNAi-mediated gene silencing revealed that APL1A alleles display distinct protective profiles against P. falciparum. One APL1A allele is sufficient to explain the protective phenotype of APL1A observed in silencing experiments. Epitope-tagged APL1A isoforms expressed in an in vitro hemocyte-like cell system showed that under assay conditions, the most protective APL1A isoform (APL1A2) localizes within large cytoplasmic vesicles, is not constitutively secreted, and forms only one protein complex, while a less protective isoform (APL1A1) is constitutively secreted in at least two protein complexes. The tested alleles are identical to natural variants in the wild A. gambiae population, suggesting that APL1A genetic variation could be a factor underlying natural heterogeneity of vector susceptibility to P. falciparum.
Optimization of Relational Preference Queries

The design and implementation of advanced personalized database applications requires a preference-driven approach. Representing preferences as strict partial orders is a good choice in most practical cases. Therefore the efficient integration of preference querying into standard database technology is an important issue. We present a novel approach to relational preference query optimization based on algebraic transformations. A variety of new laws for preference relational algebra is presented. This forms the foundation for a preference query optimizer applying heuristics like 'push preference'. A prototypical implementation and a series of benchmarks show that significant performance gains can be achieved. In summary, our results give strong evidence that by extending relational databases by strict partial order preferences one can get both: good modelling capabilities for personalization and good query runtimes. Our approach extends to recursive databases as well.
Use of risk adjustment in setting budgets and measuring performance in primary care I: how it works

Healthcare systems in countries throughout the developed world are faced with the problem of limiting the growth in spending on health services while ensuring that their populations have access to appropriate care. The United Kingdom is no different in this respect, and the past 20 years have seen the introduction of numerous initiatives aimed at improving the efficiency of the NHS. Approaches adopted by the NHS to help improve efficiency include the introduction of capitation based budgets and increased monitoring of providers' performance. In the United States similar pressures to improve the efficiency of the healthcare system have led to the wide scale adoption of fixed budgets and monitoring of healthcare providers. Diagnosis based methods for adjusting risk are becoming increasingly common within the US managed healthcare industry. The objective of risk adjustment is to help ensure that budgetary allocations or provider assessments take into account the morbidity of individual patients. In this and a subsequent article, we will describe this still evolving process and discuss its possible implications for the NHS, particularly for the new primary care organisations. There are various methods for carrying out risk adjustment, but we have used the Johns Hopkins adjusted clinical group system to show how risk adjustment works. The system is particularly relevant to primary care and is the most widely used method of measuring population case mix in the United States. #### Summary points Primary care groups and general practices will be funded largely through capitation based formulas, and their performance will be monitored more closely Current methods of funding primary care trusts and general practices, and of monitoring their performance, do not take into account differences in case mix Risk adjustment methods have been developed in the United States to allow measurement of case mix and morbidity of primary care populations Risk adjustment methods …
On Super-Resolution versus Image Interpolation

This work presents a discussion about multi-frame Super-Resolution Reconstruction (SRR) and single-frame interpolation. SRR has been extensively studied in the last decades but it is not yet as popular as image interpolation. Since both methods are directed to improve image quality, comparisons are inevitable and desirable. However, fundamental misunderstandings can still be found in the literature on the choice between these two approaches. Recently, some mistaken conclusions have been reached regarding the SRR performance. This paper clarifies important SRR issues in image reconstruction, in contrast to interpolation. For reasons further discussed, two algorithms are considered: bicubic interpolation and LMS-SRR.
Submicroscopic infection in Plasmodium falciparum-endemic populations: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION Light microscopy examination of blood slides is the main method of detecting malaria infection; however, it has limited sensitivity. Low-density infections are most likely to be missed, but they contribute to the infectious reservoir. Quantifying these submicroscopic infections is therefore key to understanding transmission dynamics and successfully reducing parasite transmission. METHODS We conducted a systematic review of endemic population surveys in which P. falciparum prevalence had been measured by both microscopy and a more-sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based technique. The combined microscopy:PCR prevalence ratio was estimated by random-effects meta-analysis, and the effect of covariates was determined by meta-regression. RESULTS Seventy-two pairs of prevalence measurements were included in the study. The prevalence of infection measured by microscopy was, on average, 50.8% (95% confidence interval [CI], 45.2%-57.1%) of that measured by PCR. For gametocyte-specific detection, the microscopy prevalence was, on average, 8.7% (95% CI, 2.8%-26.6%) of the prevalence measured by PCR. A significantly higher percentage of total infections was detected by microscopy in areas of high, compared with low, transmission (74.5% when the prevalence determined by PCR was >75% versus 12.0% when the prevalence determined by PCR was <10%). DISCUSSION Microscopy can miss a substantial proportion of P. falciparum infections in surveys of endemic populations, especially in areas with low transmission of infection. The extent of the submicroscopic reservoir needs to be taken into account for effective surveillance and control.
Towards an enhanced and adaptable ontology by distilling and assembling online encyclopedias

In this paper, we investigate the problem of making better use of semantic knowledge obtained from different encyclopedia sources. We propose a framework to integrate different encyclopedias and reorganize the information. We also utilize Learning to Rank models to distill out more functional knowledge from the encyclopedic information and then align the knowledge with a WordNet-like ontology. Finally as a demonstration, a Chinese semantic knowledge repository named JNet is constructed based on this framework. Experiments show that the proposed methods work well and the three steps reinforce each other towards a more powerful ontology.
Computing moments of piecewise polynomial surfacesCarlos

Combining the advantages of a low-degree polynomial surface representation with Gauss' divergence theorem allows eecient and exact calculation of the moments of objects enclosed by a free-form surface. Volume , center of mass and the inertia tensor can be computed in seconds even for complex objects with 10 5 patches while changes due to local modiication of the surface geometry can be computed in real time as feedback for animation or design. Speed and simplicity of the approach allow solving the inverse problem of modelling to match prescribed moments.
Piloting an “Opt-Out” Option for Wildlife Surveys of the General Public

ABSTRACT Random sample surveys may provide the best way to collect data that accurately represent public attitudes on wildlife issues, but survey response rates have declined in recent years. Often, little information is collected on why people choose not to participate. In a recent survey of public attitudes toward wolves in Wisconsin, we tested a method that allowed recipients to “opt-out” of participating, as well as indicate their reasons for doing so. Including this option increased our survey responses, and data showed significant differences in demographics between full survey respondents and opt-outs. The most frequently cited reasons for opting-out were lack of knowledge of the topic (63%) and trust in the state to manage wolves without their input (31%). Results suggest that providing a means for survey recipients to indicate why they are not participating can yield multiple benefits, although further testing of this method is needed.
Selecting Sentences versus Selecting Tree Constituents for Automatic Question Ranking

Community question answering (cQA) websites are focused on users who query questions onto an online forum, expecting for other users to provide them answers or suggestions. Unlike other social media, the length of the posted queries has no limits and queries tend to be multi-sentence elaborations combining context, actual questions, and irrelevant information. We approach the problem of question ranking: given a user’s new question, to retrieve those previously-posted questions which could be equivalent, or highly relevant. This could prevent the posting of nearly-duplicate questions and provide the user with instantaneous answers. For the first time in cQA, we address the selection of relevant text —both at sentence- and at constituent-level— for parse tree-based representations. Our supervised models for text selection boost the performance of a tree kernel-based machine learning model, allowing it to overtake the current state of the art on a recently released cQA evaluation framework.
Disconnection prediction in mobile ad hoc networks for supporting cooperative work

We're investigating a specific pervasive architecture that can maintain continuous connections among MANET devices. We're targeting this architecture for computer-supported-cooperative-work (CSCW) and workflow management applications that would constitute the coordination layer. The basic problem of such an architecture is, how do you predict possible disconnections of devices, to let the coordination layer appropriately address connection anomalies? To solve this problem, we've developed a technique for predicting disconnections in MANETS. This technique serves as the basic layer of an innovative pervasive architecture for cooperative work and activity coordination in MANETS. We believe that in emergency scenarios, our proposed pervasive architecture can provide more effective coordination among team members.
Clustering Wikipedia infoboxes to discover their types

Wikipedia has emerged as an important source of structured information on the Web. But while the success of Wikipedia can be attributed in part to the simplicity of adding and modifying content, this has also created challenges when it comes to using, querying, and integrating the information. Even though authors are encouraged to select appropriate categories and provide infoboxes that follow pre-defined templates, many do not follow the guidelines or follow them loosely. This leads to undesirable effects, such as template duplication, heterogeneity, and schema drift. As a step towards addressing this problem, we propose a new unsupervised approach for clustering Wikipedia infoboxes. Instead of relying on manually assigned categories and template labels, we use the structured information available in infoboxes to group them and infer their entity types. Experiments using over 48,000 infoboxes indicate that our clustering approach is effective and produces high quality clusters.
Ocean Circulation

Volume 1, The Earth system: physical and chemical dimensions of global environmental change, pp 557–579 Ocean circulation is one of the major elements of climate, moving heat, freshwater, nutrients and dissolved gases. Ocean circulation at the largest spatial scales and long time scales contains many elements that are in common in the different oceans. Understanding the processes that drive these different elements has progressed a long way and is essential for verifying climate models. The ocean circulation is forced (1) by the winds, through a thin frictional layer called the Ekman layer and through the response of the interior ocean to mass convergences and divergences in this layer, and (2) by heating and cooling that change the temperature and processes that change the amount of fresh water and hence the salinity. The first type of circulation is wind driven and the second is the thermohaline circulation. The prevailing, large-scale winds of the Earth are trades (easterlies) in the tropics, westerlies at mid-latitudes. The wind-driven ocean circulation that results contains subtropical gyres around ocean high pressure regions and subpolar gyres around low pressure regions. These gyres are asymmetric, with strong western boundary currents (velocities of about 1 m s 1) that extend to great depth and relatively weak currents elsewhere. With increasing depth, each subtropical gyre shrinks poleward and westward towards its western boundary current. Shallow eastern boundary currents are created by local upwelling along eastern boundaries, driven by equatorward winds. In the tropics, the trade winds drive westward surface flow and create a strong and very thin eastward-flowing undercurrent on the equator. At the latitude of Drake Passage, between South America and Antarctica, the ocean is open all the way around the Earth. The westerly winds here create the strong, deep-reaching eastward flowing Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Except in the strong western boundary currents and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the deep flow is driven by thermohaline forcing, in which dense waters are made in isolated locations at high latitudes and spread through the oceans via relatively strong deep western boundary currents , which differ in mechanism and often direction from the wind-driven western boundary currents. Abyssal flow away from the deep western boundary currents is dominated by topography, and is often found to move parallel to the topography, with low pressure in the center. Ocean currents transport heat from the tropics to the poles. Most of the heat is lost at …
Turkish adaptation of the educational-learning capital questionnaire: Results for gifted and non-gifted students

ABSTRACT The Actiotope Model of Giftedness (AMG) focuses on person–environment interactions to define giftedness. The development of the Questionnaire of Educational and Learning Capital (QELC) was based on the AMG. The first aim of this study was to present the reliability and validity of a Turkish version of the QELC for 10th grade students. The second aim of this study was the administration of the QELC in gifted and non-gifted students and the determination of mean QELC-scale differences between both groups. Two different samples were included in the study. In the first sample, 421 10th grade students took the QELC (147 boys, 274 girls). The second sample consisted of 38 gifted students and 38 non-gifted students, the latter randomly selected from the first sample. In addition to the QELC, confidence in one’s competence, failure coping, stability and modifiability beliefs regarding one’s action repertoire were assessed and used to validate the QELC. School grades were collected, too. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis supported the two-factor structure of the QELC (i.e., educational capital and learning capital). The results supported the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of QELC. Gifted students had lower scores in educational as well as learning capital than non-gifted students.
DCTAM: Drift-corrected tracking and mapping for autonomous micro aerial vehicles

Visual odometry, especially using a forward-looking camera only, can be challenging: It is doomed to fail from time to time and will inevitably drift in the long run. We accept this fact and present methods to cope with and correct the effects for an autonomous MAV using an RGBD camera as its main sensor. We propose correcting drift and failure in visual odometry by combining its pose estimates with information about efficiently detected ground planes in the short term and running a full SLAM back-end incorporating loop closures and ground plane measurements in pose graph optimization. We show that the system presented here achieves accurate results on several instances of the TUM RGB-D benchmark dataset while being computationally efficient enough to enable autonomous.