Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of cobalt (II, III) oxide, iron (III) oxide, silicon dioxide, and aluminum oxide nanoparticles on human lymphocytes in vitro

Despite the extensive use of nanoparticles (NPs) in various fields, adequate knowledge of human health risk and potential toxicity is still lacking. The human lymphocytes play a major role in the immune system, and it can alter the antioxidant level when exposed to NPs. Identification of the hazardous NPs was done using in vitro toxicity tests and this study mainly focuses on the comparative in vitro cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of four different NPs including cobalt (II, III) oxide (Co3O4), iron (III) oxide (Fe2O3), silicon dioxide (SiO2), and aluminum oxide (Al2O3) on human lymphocytes. The Co3O4 NPs showed decrease in cellular viability and increase in cell membrane damage followed by Fe2O3, SiO2, and Al2O3 NPs in a dose-dependent manner after 24 h of exposure to human lymphocytes. The oxidative stress was evidenced in human lymphocytes by the induction of reactive oxygen species, lipid peroxidation, and depletion of catalase, reduced glutathione, and superoxide dismutase. The Al2O3 NPs showed the least DNA damage when compared with all the other NPs. Chromosomal aberration was observed at 100 µg/ml when exposed to Co3O4 NPs and Fe2O3 NPs. The alteration in the level of antioxidant caused DNA damage and chromosomal aberration in human lymphocytes.
What's in an Idea?: Truth Commission Policy Transfer in Ghana and Canada

This article employs a social constructivist framework to explain truth commission policy transfer across borders. Using the cases of Ghana and Canada, the article draws on qualitative interview research to trace how and why the truth commission model was adopted by these two countries in response to past human rights abuse. In contrast to suggestions that the transnational proliferation of truth commissions is the result of behavioral socialization emanating from “one-size-fits-all” international regulative structures, we argue that the idea of a truth commission is adopted and adapted by domestic agents, with the assistance of international actors, in the face of domestic constraints that bar the path to alternative transitional justice policy choices. Our findings show that actors both act upon and act within existing structures, and ideas play a significant, constitutive role in helping to shape peoples’ shared beliefs about the best way to address an abusive past. The article includes methodological explanation of what we can learn from nonparadigmatic transitions such as Ghana's and Canada's, and it concludes with a brief discussion of the role of international transitional justice actors.
Service-Level Differentiation in Many-Server Service Systems : A Solution Based on Fixed-Queue-Ratio Routing

Motivated by telephone call centers, we study large-scale service systems with multiple customer classes and multiple agent pools, each with many agents. For the purpose of delicately balancing service levels of the different customer classes, we propose a family of routing controls called Fixed-QueueRatio (FQR) rules. A newly available agent next serves the customer from the head of the queue of the class (from among those he is eligible to serve) whose queue length most exceeds a specified proportion of the total queue length. We show that the proportions can be set to achieve desired service-level targets for all classes; these targets are achieved asymptotically as the total arrival rate increases. The FQR rule is a special case of the Queue-and-Idleness-Ratio (QIR) family of controls which in a previous paper where shown to produce an important state-space collapse (SSC) as the total arrival rate increases. This SSC facilitates establishing asymptotic results. In simplified settings, SSC allows us to solve a combined design-staffing-and-routing problem in a nearly optimal way. Our analysis also establishes a diminishing-returns property of flexibility: Under FQR, very moderate cross-training is sufficient to make the call center as efficient as a single-pool system, again in the limit as the total arrival rate increases. ∗Columbia Business School, 4I Uris Hall, 3022 Broadway, New York, NY 10027. (ig2126@columbia.edu) †IEOR Department, Columbia University, 304 S. W. Mudd Building, 500 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027-6699. (ww2040@columbia.edu)
ARF7 and ARF19 Regulate Lateral Root Formation via Direct Activation of LBD/ASL Genes in Arabidopsis[W]

Lateral root formation in Arabidopsis thaliana is regulated by two related AUXIN RESPONSE FACTORs, ARF7 and ARF19, which are transcriptional activators of early auxin response genes. The arf7 arf19 double knockout mutant is severely impaired in lateral root formation. Target-gene analysis in arf7 arf19 transgenic plants harboring inducible forms of ARF7 and ARF19 revealed that ARF7 and ARF19 directly regulate the auxin-mediated transcription of LATERAL ORGAN BOUNDARIES-DOMAIN16/ASYMMETRIC LEAVES2-LIKE18 (LBD16/ASL18) and/or LBD29/ASL16 in roots. Overexpression of LBD16/ASL18 and LBD29/ASL16 induces lateral root formation in the absence of ARF7 and ARF19. These LBD/ASL proteins are localized in the nucleus, and dominant repression of LBD16/ASL18 activity inhibits lateral root formation and auxin-mediated gene expression, strongly suggesting that these LBD/ASLs function downstream of ARF7- and ARF19-dependent auxin signaling in lateral root formation. Our results reveal that ARFs regulate lateral root formation via direct activation of LBD/ASLs in Arabidopsis.
Analysing global value chains using input-output economics: Proceed with care

Input-output economics has become a popular tool to analyse the international fragmentation of value chains, especially now that several multi-regional tables that cover large parts of the global economy have become available. It has been argued that these tables, when analysed with the help of the input-output economics toolbox, can provide better insights about global value chains than can be obtained by case studies of individual value chains. We argue that there are several problems related to the aggregated nature of the input-output table that may lead to large distortions and biases in the aggregate picture about global value chains that is obtained by input-output analysis. There are three main sources behind the distortion obtained in static decompositions of value chains the average nature of value added to output ratios in the tables, the emergence of production cycles in the process of aggregating several value chains into a single table, and the characteristic of the so-called inverse Leontief matrix to even out the value added distribution. We provide an overview of how these distortions work, and argue that under a wide range of circumstances, input-output methods tend to overstate the contribution of the final sector to the value chain. We also show that this bias does not vanish when we compare input-output decompositions at two different points in time.
Ethnic identity maintenance within the Latino-American church: a structuration perspective

Abstract The Latino ethnic/immigrant church plays a significant role in maintaining the ethnic identity of its congregants. Through the perspective of structuration theory, this qualitative analysis investigates how the activities of the church impact its members and how an individual might contribute to the cultural structure of the Latino church (i.e., duality of structure). Interviews of 25 pastors from Spanish-speaking congregations in both urban and rural settings in Oregon resulted in several themes including the initial planting of the church, the denominational structure, the emergence of a new multi-ethnic cultural identity, generational differences, and the influence of Spanish.
Tibetan-Chinese cross language named entity extraction based on comparable corpus and naturally annotated resources

Tibetan-Chinese named entity extraction can effectively improve the performance of Tibetan-Chinese cross language question answering system, information retrieval, machine translation and other researches. In the condition of no practical Tibetan named entity recognition system and Tibetan-Chinese translation model, this paper proposes a method to extract Tibetan-Chinese entities based on comparable corpus and naturally annotated resources from webs. The main work of this paper is in the following: (1) Tibetan-Chinese comparable corpus construction. (2) Combining sentence length, word matching and boundary term features, using multi-feature fusion algorithm to obtain parallel sentences from comparable corpus. (3) Tibetan-Chinese entity mapping based on the maximum word continuous intersection model of parallel sentence. Finally, the experimental results show that our approach can effectively find Tibetan-Chinese cross language named entity.
RP-HPLC Method for Simultaneous Estimation of Frusemide and Amiloride Hydrochloride in Tablet Formulation

A new reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography method for the simultaneous estimation of frusemide and amiloride hydrochloride in tablet formulation is developed. The determination was carried out on a HIQ SIL, C18 (250×4.6 mm, 5 µm) column using a mobile phase of 50 mM phosphate buffer solution:acetonitrile (50:50 v/v, pH 3.0). The flow rate was 1.0 ml/min with detection at 283 nm. The retention time for frusemide was 3.038 min and for amiloride hydrochloride 10.002 min. Frusemide and amiloride hydrochloride showed a linear response in the concentration range of 20-200 µg/ml and 10-100 µg/ml, respectively. The results of analysis have been validated statistically and by recovery studies. The mean recoveries found for frusemide was 99.98% and for amiloride hydrochloride was 100.09%. Developed method was found to be simple, accurate, precise and selective for simultaneous estimation of frusemide and amiloride hydrochloride in tablets.
Scene perception using machine pareidolia of facial expressions

The aim of this thesis is to pursue the question, ‘Can a machine describe the emotional response to a scene using perceived faces and facial expressions? ’. To establish the relevance of this interdisciplinary thesis question literature research was conducted not only in Computer Science but also in the disciplines of Cognitive Science and Psychology. The findings from this research revealed that humans can produce an emotional response to a scene using the facial expressions of perceived faces and face-like patterns, and this is achieved at a conscious and subconscious level, as well as beyond our visual focus. These findings provide the foundations for addressing the thesis question in the realm of computer vision and machine learning. A new face model, a new face detection algorithm and a new machine learning technique based on Support Vector Machines (SVMs) was developed and an extensive experimental evaluation was conducted. The new machine learning technique called ‘Pairwise Adaptive SVM’ (aka, pa-SVM) uses a refined parameter selection process for training, and was tested using real world datasets. The result is an improved detection and classification of faces and face-like patterns, as well as their associated facial expressions. The outcome is a machine that is capable of describing the emotional response to a scene using pareidolia of faces and facial expressions.
A weighted variational method for the removal of mixed noise

In this paper the authors present a novel variational method for the reconstruction of images corrupted by non-uniformly distributed noise. The additive noise model has been studied extensively, using variational techniques such as the Rudin, Osher and Fatemi model. However, the reconstruction of images corrupted by non-Gaussian noise has not yet been thoroughly studied. The proposed model includes a balance between the data term and the regularization term in the energy functional, taking into account the statistical control of the parameters and the position of the noisy points related to the edges presented in the image. The parameters are determined by the given observed noisy image. The obtained results have shown the effectiveness and robustness in restoring images with multiplicative noise or mixed Gaussian noise, while preserving edges and small structures belonging to the image.
Addressing the attack attribution problem using knowledge discovery and multi-criteria fuzzy decision-making

In network traffic monitoring, and more particularly in the realm of threat intelligence, the problem of "attack attribution" refers to the process of effectively attributing new attack events to (un)-known phenomena, based on some evidence or traces left on one or several monitoring platforms. Real-world attack phenomena are often largely distributed on the Internet, or can sometimes evolve quite rapidly. This makes them inherently complex and thus difficult to analyze. In general, an analyst must consider many different attack features (or criteria) in order to decide about the plausible root cause of a given attack, or to attribute it to some given phenomenon. In this paper, we introduce a global analysis method to address this problem in a systematic way. Our approach is based on a novel combination of a knowledge discovery technique with a fuzzy inference system, which somehow mimics the reasoning of an expert by implementing a multi-criteria decision-making process built on top of the previously extracted knowledge. By applying this method on attack traces, we are able to identify large-scale attack phenomena with a high degree of confidence. In most cases, the observed phenomena can be attributed to so-called zombie armies - or botnets, i.e. groups of compromised machines controlled remotely by a same entity. By means of experiments with real-world attack traces, we show how this method can effectively help us to perform a behavioral analysis of those zombie armies from a long-term, strategic viewpoint.
Cold-stage microscopy system for fast-frozen liquids.

The least artifact-laden fixation technique for examining colloidal suspensions, microemulsions, and other microstructured liquids in the electron microscope appears to be thermal fixation, i.e., ultrafast freezing of the liquid specimen. For rapid-enough cooling and for observation in TEM/STEM a thin sample is needed. The need is met by trapping a thin layer ( approximately 100 nm) of liquid between two polyimide films ( approximately 40 nm thickness) mounted on copper grids and immersing the resulting sandwich in liquid nitrogen at its melting point. For liquids containing water, polyimides films are used since this polymer is far less susceptible to the electron beam damage observed for the commonly used polymer films such as Formvar and collodion in contact with ice. Transfer of the frozen sample into the microscope column without deleterious frost deposition and warming is accomplished with a new transfer module for the cooling stage of the JEOL JEM-100CX microscope, which makes a true cold stage out of a device originally intended for cooling specimens inside the column. Sample results obtained with the new fast-freeze, cold-stage microscopy system are given.
Interactive Video Coding and Transmission over Heterogeneous Wired-to-Wireless IP Networks Using an Edge Proxy

Digital video delivered over wired-to-wireless networks is expected to suffer quality degradation from both packet loss and bit errors in the payload. In this paper, the quality degradation due to packet loss and bit errors in the payload are quantitatively evaluated and their effects are assessed. We propose the use of a concatenated forward error correction (FEC) coding scheme employing Reed-Solomon (RS) codes and rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes to protect the video data from packet loss and bit errors, respectively. Furthermore, the performance of a joint source-channel coding (JSCC) approach employing this concatenated FEC coding scheme for video transmission is studied. Finally, we describe an improved end-to-end architecture using an edge proxy in a mobile support station to implement differential error protection for the corresponding channel impairments expected on the two networks. Results indicate that with an appropriate JSCC approach and the use of an edge proxy, FEC-based error-control techniques together with passive error-recovery techniques can significantly improve the effective video throughput and lead to acceptable video delivery quality over time-varying heterogeneous wired-to-wireless IP networks.
Quantifier-Free Interpolation of a Theory of Arrays

The use of interpolants in model checking is becoming an enabling technology to allow fast and robust verification of hardware and software. The application of encodings based on the theory of arrays, however, is limited by the impossibility of deriving quantifier- free interpolants in general. In this paper, we show that it is possible to obtain quantifier-free interpolants for a Skolemized version of the extensional theory of arrays. We prove this in two ways: (1) non-constructively, by using the model theoretic notion of amalgamation, which is known to be equivalent to admit quantifier-free interpolation for universal theories; and (2) constructively, by designing an interpolating procedure, based on solving equations between array updates. (Interestingly, rewriting techniques are used in the key steps of the solver and its proof of correctness.) To the best of our knowledge, this is the first successful attempt of computing quantifier- free interpolants for a variant of the theory of arrays with extensionality.
Coming out: implications for self-esteem and depression in gay and lesbian individuals

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . ivv TABLE OF CONTENTS.v LIST OF TABLES . vii LITERATURE REVIEW . 1 Self-Esteem . 1 Depression . 3 Coming out.5 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.10 Self-esteem . 10 Depression . 11 Self-disclosure and “outness”. 12 HYPOTHESES . 15 METHODS . 16 Participants . 16 Measures. 17 Demographic Information . 17 Self-Esteem . 17 Depression . 20 Outness . 21 Procedure . 22 Risks . 23 Benefits . 23 vi Management of Risks . 23 RESULTS . 23 Hypothesis 1 . 24 Hypothesis 2 . 24 Hypothesis 3 . 25 Hypothesis 4 . 26 Hypothesis 5 . 26 DISCUSSION . 34 Hypotheses . 34 Hypothesis 1: . 34 Hypothesis 2: . 34 Hypothesis 3: . 35 Hypothesis 4: . 36 Hypothesis 5: . 36 Limitations . 37 Suggestions for future research . 40 REFERENCES . 43 APPENDIX A . 52 APPENDIX B . 54 APPENDIX C . 55 APPENDIX D . 57 APPENDIX E . 58 APPENDIX F. 59
Classroom 2000: a system for capturing and accessing multimedia classroom experiences

There is a value to using computational resources to augment the inefficiency of human record-taking, especially when there are multiple streams of related information generated by a group of people. It is virtually impossible for a human to record all aspects of such a rich interactive experience. Computational support can also automate the relationships between various streams of information, so that one stream of information, such as notes taken during a meeting, can be used to index into another stream, such as the audio track from the same meeting. In this way, an integrated, multimedia record of an experience can aid in the recall of the meaning or significance of past events.
Inducing Implicit Arguments from Comparable Texts: A Framework and Its Applications

In this article, we investigate aspects of sentential meaning that are not expressed in local predicate–argument structures. In particular, we examine instances of semantic arguments that are only inferable from discourse context. The goal of this work is to automatically acquire and process such instances, which we also refer to as implicit arguments, to improve computational models of language. As contributions towards this goal, we establish an effective framework for the difficult task of inducing implicit arguments and their antecedents in discourse and empirically demonstrate the importance of modeling this phenomenon in discourse-level tasks.Our framework builds upon a novel projection approach that allows for the accurate detection of implicit arguments by aligning and comparing predicate–argument structures across pairs of comparable texts. As part of this framework, we develop a graph-based model for predicate alignment that significantly outperforms previous approaches. Based on such alignments, we show that implicit argument instances can be automatically induced and applied to improve a current model of linking implicit arguments in discourse. We further validate that decisions on argument realization, although being a subtle phenomenon most of the time, can considerably affect the perceived coherence of a text. Our experiments reveal that previous models of coherence are not able to predict this impact. Consequently, we develop a novel coherence model, which learns to accurately predict argument realization based on automatically aligned pairs of implicit and explicit arguments.
Classification of plantar pressure and heel acceleration patterns using neural networks

Postural control in humans relies on information from receptors in the proprioceptive, visual, and vestibular systems of the body. As part of human aging, declines in all three postural control systems occur. Age-related changes impact multiple gait parameters, such as decreased range of motion in plantarflexion, increased hip flexion, and reduced stride length and gait velocity. In addition, excessive weight bearing on the heels during standing or forefoot-dominated walking creates risk factors for falls and injury within this population. Identification of these abnormal patterns by a computerized technique can help in early detection of gait changes and prevention of falls. This paper presents a case study to see if plantar pressure and heel acceleration patterns attributed to different motion activities can be accurately identified by a neural network classifier. The method has been tested on motion patterns collected from a single subject. The results show good sensitivity and specificity of the classifier, confirming the feasibility of further research.
Frequency-based controls for terrain editing

Authoring virtual terrains can be a challenging task. Procedural and stochastic methods for automated terrain generation produce plausible results but lack intuitive control of the terrain features, while data driven methods offer more creative control at the cost of a limited feature set, higher storage requirements and blending artefacts. Moreover, artists often prefer a workflow involving varied reference material such as photographs, concept art, elevation maps and satellite images, for the incorporation of which there is little support from commercial content-creation tools. We present a sketch-based toolset for asset-guided creation and intuitive editing of virtual terrains, allowing the manipulation of both elevation maps and 3D meshes, and exploiting a layer-based interface. We employ a frequency-band subdivision of elevation maps to allow using the appropriate editing tool for each level of detail. Using our system, we show that a user can start from various input types: storyboard sketches, photographs or height maps to easily develop and customise a virtual terrain.