Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An analysis of the factors influencing success of bank-issued micropayment system in Taiwan

Purpose – The point of sale (POS) e‐micropayment program is undergoing a revival in Taiwan. Local banks are co‐operating with organizations which have existing captive markets to issue e‐wallet smart cards. Such co‐operation reflects the restriction imposed by Taiwan's Banking Act and the very high density of convenience stores in Taiwan. The paper aims to help researchers and the program's operators to understand the dynamics influencing such a revival.Design/methodology/approach – An extended Post‐acceptance Model of IS Continuance incorporating network externality is used and the roles of factors such as perceived usefulness and network externality are determined through hypothesis testing.Findings – The study shows that these programs have good potential to succeed even though consumers' choice on whether transport‐related or convenience store‐related card has highest potential to succeed differs in different parts of Taiwan. Network externality cannot be ignored and contributes to Taiwan consumers' c.
Measuring Color Defects in Flat Panel Displays Using HDR Imaging and Appearance Modeling

Measuring and quantifying color defects in flat panel displays (FPDs) are critical in the FPD industry and related business. Color defects are traditionally investigated by professional human assessors, as color defects are subtle perceptual phenomena that are difficult to detect using a camera system. However, human-based inspection has hindered the quantitative analysis of such color defects. Thus, the industrial automation of color defect measurement in FPDs has been severely limited even by leading manufacturers accordingly. This paper presents a systematic framework for the measurement and numerical evaluation of color defects. Our framework exploits high-dynamic-range imaging to robustly measure physically meaningful quantities of subtle color defects. In addition to the application of advanced imaging technology, an image appearance model is employed to predict the human visual perception of color defects as human assessors do. This proposed automated framework can output quantitative analysis of the color defects. This paper demonstrates the performance of the proposed workflow in investigating subtle color defects in FPDs with a high accuracy.
The Wiston Text to Speech System for Blizzard Challenge 2010

The paper introduces the speech synthesis system developed by Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences(CASIA) for Blizzard Challenge 2010. The large corpus based speech synthesis system, WISTON, was built to synthesize Mandarin speech. In this year, a new prosodic structure prediction model was used, which is more precise and compact than before. Furthermore, two kinds of syllable segmentation methods, i.e. rough segmentation and precise segmentation, were performed on Mandarin speech corpus. The rough segmentation labels were used in prosody models training and unit selection stage. During concatenation stage, these two kinds of segmentation labels are both used to determine the start position and end position of waveform fragment of each unit. Experiment results show that this approach is effective. The evaluation results show that except the similarity is very high, mean opinion score (MOS) and word error rate (WER) of WISOTN system are of average level.
Bioinformatical approaches to characterize intrinsically disordered/unstructured proteins

Intrinsically disordered/unstructured proteins exist without a stable three-dimensional (3D) structure as highly flexible conformational ensembles. The available genome sequences revealed that these proteins are surprisingly common and their frequency reaches high proportions in eukaryotes. Due to their vital role in various biological processes including signaling and regulation and their involvement in various diseases, disordered proteins and protein segments are the focus of many biochemical, molecular biological, pathological and pharmaceutical studies. These proteins are difficult to study experimentally because of the lack of unique structure in the isolated form. Their amino acid sequence, however, is available, and can be used for their identification and characterization by bioinformatic tools, analogously to globular proteins. In this review, we first present a small survey of current methods to identify disordered proteins or protein segments, focusing on those that are publicly available as web servers. In more detail we also discuss approaches that predict disordered regions and specific regions involved in protein binding by modeling the physical background of protein disorder. In our review we argue that the heterogeneity of disordered segments needs to be taken into account for a better understanding of protein disorder.
Unsupervised Visual Domain Adaptation Using Auxiliary Information in Target Domain

We propose a novel approach for unsupervised visual domain adaptation that exploits auxiliary information in a target domain. The key idea is to embed data in the target domain into a subspace where samples are better organized, expecting auxiliary information to serve as a somewhat semantically related signal. Specifically, we apply partial least squares (PLS) to RGB image features and corresponding depth features captured at the same time. Thus, we can improve the performance of domain adaptation without any help from manual annotation in the target domain. In experiments, we tested our approach with two state-of-the-art subspace based domain adaptation methods and show that, our method consistently improves the classification accuracy.
A Framework for Model-Based Repair

We describe IRS, a program that combines partial-order planning with GDE-style, model-based diagnosis to achieve an integrated approach to repair. Our system makes three contributions to the field of diagnosis. First, we provide a unified treatment of both information-gathering and state-altering actions via the UWL representation language. Second, we describe a way to use part-replacement operations (in addition to probes) to gather diagnostic information. Finally, we define a cost function for decision making that accounts for both the eventual need to repair broken parts and the dependence of costs on the device state.
Mass Mortality of Adult Male Subantarctic Fur Seals: Are Alien Mice the Culprits?

Background Mass mortalities of marine mammals due to infectious agents are increasingly reported. However, in contrast to previous die-offs, which were indiscriminate with respect to sex and age, here we report a land-based mass mortality of Subantarctic fur seals with apparent exclusivity to adult males. An infectious agent with a male-predilection is the most plausible explanation for this die-off. Although pathogens with gender-biased transmission and pathologies are unusual, rodents are known sources of male-biased infectious agents and the invasive Mus musculus house mouse, occurs in seal rookeries. Methodology/ Principal Findings Molecular screening for male-biased pathogens in this potential rodent reservoir host revealed the absence of Cardiovirus and Leptospirosis genomes in heart and kidney samples, respectively, but identified a novel Streptococcus species with 30% prevalence in mouse kidneys. Conclusions/ Significance Inter-species transmission through environmental contamination with this novel bacterium, whose congenerics display male-bias and have links to infirmity in seals and terrestrial mammals (including humans), highlights the need to further evaluate disease risks posed by alien invasive mice to native species, on this and other islands.
Modeling the Marginal Distributions of Complex Wavelet Coefficient Magnitudes for the Classification of Zoom-Endoscopy Images

In this paper, we propose a set of new image features for the classification of zoom-endoscopy images. The feature extraction step is based on fitting a two-parameter Weibull distribution to the wavelet coefficient magnitudes of sub-bands obtained from a complex wavelet transform variant. We show, that the shape and scale parameter possess more discriminative power than the classic mean and standard deviation based features for complex subband coefficient magnitudes. Furthermore, we discuss why the commonly used Rayleigh distribution model is suboptimal in our case.
Co-construction and collaboration in couple therapy for depression

Rautiainen, Eija-Liisa Co-construction and collaboration in couple therapy for depression Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla, 2010, 56 p. (Jyvaskyla Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research ISSN 0075-4625; 396) ISBN 978-951-39-4034-8 (PDF), 978-951-39-4010-2 (nid.) Finnish Summary Diss. This thesis aims at developing couple therapeutic work with depression in the context of mental health outpatient care. It reports on and draws conclusions from two studies. The data for the first study consisted of videotaped and transcribed couple therapy sessions, which were analyzed using narrative analysis. In this study the question was: How do couples in this context coconstruct narratives of depression? In the second study the aim was to include both clients and therapists in a collaborative evaluation of the entire coupletherapeutic process. The data for this study consisted of videotaped and transcribed co-research interviews with both clients and therapists. The questions here were: What was helpful, what was not helpful, and what could have been done differently? The study applied Grounded Theory methodology. In the first study it was found that couples co-construct narratives of depression each in their own way. In the second study it was found that many clients experienced couple therapy for depression as helpful to them. Nevertheless, difficulties with the therapeutic work emerged, both for the clients and the therapists. Taken together, the studies suggest that it is important to negotiate with the couple regarding the focus of the therapeutic work: is it depression, is it the couple relationship, or is it both of these? It was also concluded that coresearch interviews can be used in developing clinical work, in psychotherapy training courses, and in psychotherapy research.
Doing visual research with children and young people

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Identification of novel substrates of Shigella T3SA through analysis of its virulence plasmid-encoded secretome

Many human Gram-negative bacterial pathogens express a Type Three Secretion Apparatus (T3SA), including among the most notorious Shigella spp. , Salmonella enterica, Yersinia enterocolitica and enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC). These bacteria express on their surface multiple copies of the T3SA that mediate the delivery into host cells of specific protein substrates critical to pathogenesis. Shigella spp. are Gram-negative bacterial pathogens responsible for human bacillary dysentery. The effector function of several Shigella T3SA substrates has largely been studied but their potential cellular targets are far from having been comprehensively delineated. In addition, it is likely that some T3SA substrates have escaped scrutiny as yet. Indeed, sequencing of the virulence plasmid of Shigella flexneri has revealed numerous open reading frames with unknown functions that could encode additional T3SA substrates. Taking advantage of label-free mass spectrometry detection of proteins secreted by a constitutively secreting strain of S. flexneri, we identified five novel substrates of the T3SA. We further confirmed their secretion through the T3SA and translocation into host cells using β-lactamase assays. The coding sequences of two of these novel T3SA substrates (Orf13 and Orf131a) have a guanine-cytosine content comparable to those of T3SA components and effectors. The three other T3SA substrates identified (Orf48, Orf86 and Orf176) have significant homology with antitoxin moieties of type II Toxin-Antitoxin systems usually implicated in the maintenance of low copy plasmids. While Orf13 and Orf131a might constitute new virulence effectors contributing to S. flexneri pathogenicity, potential roles for the translocation into host cells of antitoxins or antitoxin-like proteins during Shigella infection are discussed.
With or Without You: Divorce Rates and Intra-Household Allocation of Time

This paper investigates the relationship between the probability of divorce and marriage specific investments. As these investments in terms of childcare and household activities are likely to increase the marital surplus, they are consequently likely to decrease the risk of divorce. All such activities, however, are characterized by gender role bias through, for example, social norms. In periods in which married women enjoy greater outside options (e.g., by increasing their labor force participation), it is expected that households in which the husband takes on typically female chores are less likely to dissolve, while couples in which the wife takes on typically male chores are more likely to divorce. The paper tests this hypothesis using data from the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) of Mature Women, the NLS Young Women, and the NLSY79. The prediction is strongly supported by the data with respect to older cohorts while it loses empirical relevance when tested on younger individuals. Furthermore, asymmetric effects between genders gain importance over time. Finally, an explanation for the relationship between divorce and marital investments is offered in terms of increasing intra-household time consumption complementarities. To this end, data from the American Time Use Surveys from 1965 to 2005 are studied to illustrate how time spent together by partners in the same household has become increasingly crucial in the American family.
Optimization and Implementation of LBM Benchmark on Multithreaded GPU

With fast development of transistor technology, Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) is increasingly used in the non-graphics applications, and major GPU hardware vendors have introduced software stacks for their own GPUs, such as Brook+ for AMD GPU. Compared with the traditional parallel systems, heterogeneous systems integerating stream-based multi-threaded GPUs provide higher parallel computing capabilities with lower cost. However, porting traditional applications to the heterogeneous systems makes new demand of application optimization on GPU. Based on the AMD's Brook+ platform, we explored application optimization features on AMD GPU by optimizing and implementing the benchmark LBM from SPEC2006. To improve the program locality, we optimized the original data layout of LBM. Using the short vector data types mechanism provided by Brook+, we also optimized the GPU's bandwidth utilization and its thread processors' efficiency. Through the branch elimination technique, we reduced the performance lose caused by branch divergences in the kernel, which is due to the GPU’s SIMD executing mode. The experiment results show that data layout, memory bandwidth, branch paths and other factors have a close effect on the performance of program execution on the GPU. Through all the optimizations, we finally got a speedup of 22x (single-precision) and 19x (double-precision) over the original serial benchmark code on a Quad-core CPU, and a speedup of 4x (single-precision) and 8.7x (double-precision) over the original OMP benchmark code on a 8-core CPU.
At what costs will screening with CT colonography be competitive? A cost‐effectiveness approach

The costs of computed tomographic colonography (CTC) are not yet established for screening use. In our study, we estimated the threshold costs for which CTC screening would be a cost‐effective alternative to colonoscopy for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening in the general population. We used the MISCAN‐colon microsimulation model to estimate the costs and life‐years gained of screening persons aged 50–80 years for 4 screening strategies: (i) optical colonoscopy; and CTC with referral to optical colonoscopy of (ii) any suspected polyp; (iii) a suspected polyp ≥6 mm and (iv) a suspected polyp ≥10 mm. For each of the 4 strategies, screen intervals of 5, 10, 15 and 20 years were considered. Subsequently, for each CTC strategy and interval, the threshold costs of CTC were calculated. We performed a sensitivity analysis to assess the effect of uncertain model parameters on the threshold costs. With equal costs ($662), optical colonoscopy dominated CTC screening. For CTC to gain similar life‐years as colonoscopy screening every 10 years, it should be offered every 5 years with referral of polyps ≥6 mm. For this strategy to be as cost‐effective as colonoscopy screening, the costs must not exceed $285 or 43% of colonoscopy costs (range in sensitivity analysis: 39–47%). With 25% higher adherence than colonoscopy, CTC threshold costs could be 71% of colonoscopy costs. Our estimate of 43% is considerably lower than previous estimates in literature, because previous studies only compared CTC screening to 10‐yearly colonoscopy, where we compared to different intervals of colonoscopy screening. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Role of transcription factor Ets‐1 in the apoptosis of human vascular endothelial cells

Transcription factor Ets‐1 is induced in endothelial cells (ECs) by angiogenic factors, and promotes angiogenesis by inducing angiogenesis‐related genes such as MMPs and integrin β3. Here, we examined the effect of Ets‐1 on apoptosis in ECs. Overexpression of Ets‐1 in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) induced apoptosis under the serum‐deprived condition. VEGF inhibited apoptosis and augmented the DNA binding of Ets‐1 in HUVECs. The inhibition of transcriptional activity of endogenous Ets‐1 by a dominant negative molecule intensified the anti‐apoptotic effect of VEGF. Caspase inhibitors blocked apoptosis of HUVECs induced by Ets‐1. DNA array analysis showed that Ets‐1 up‐regulated pro‐apoptotic genes such as Bid, cytochrome p450, caspase‐4, p27, and p21 more than 2 fold, and down‐regualted anti‐apoptotic genes such as DAD‐1, AXL, Cox‐2, IAP‐2, and MDM‐2 less than 0.5 fold in HUVECs. These results indicate that Ets‐1 itself is pro‐apoptotic to ECs by modulating the expression of apoptosis‐related genes. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Musicians Detect Pitch Violation in a Foreign Language Better Than Nonmusicians: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence

The aim of this study was to determine whether musical expertise influences the detection of pitch variations in a foreign language that participants did not understand. To this end, French adults, musicians and nonmusicians, were presented with sentences spoken in Portuguese. The final words of the sentences were prosodically congruous (spoken at normal pitch height) or incongruous (pitch was increased by 35% or 120%). Results showed that when the pitch deviations were small and difficult to detect (35%: weak prosodic incongruities), the level of performance was higher for musicians than for nonmusicians. Moreover, analysis of the time course of pitch processing, as revealed by the event-related brain potentials to the prosodically congruous and incongruous sentence-final words, showed that musicians were, on average, 300 msec faster than nonmusicians to categorize prosodically congruous and incongruous endings. These results are in line with previous ones showing that musical expertise, by increasing discrimination of pitcha basic acoustic parameter equally important for music and speech prosodydoes facilitate the processing of pitch variations not only in music but also in language. Finally, comparison with previous results [Schn, D. , Magne, C. , & Besson, M. The music of speech: Music training facilitates pitch processing in both music and language. Psychophysiology, 41, 341349, 2004] points to the influence of semantics on the perception of acoustic prosodic cues.
A duality-based approach to elliptic control problems in non-reflexive Banach spaces

Convex duality is a powerful framework for solving non-smooth optimal control problems. However, for problems set in non-reflexive Banach spaces such as L1 (Ω) or BV(Ω), the dual problem is formulated in a space which has difficult measure theoretic structure. The predual problem, on the other hand, can be formulated in a Hilbert space and entails the minimization of a smooth functional with box constraints, for which efficient numerical methods exist. In this work, elliptic control problems with measures and functions of bounded variation as controls are considered. Existence and uniqueness of the corresponding predual problems are discussed, as is the solution of the optimality systems by a semismooth Newton method. Numerical examples illustrate the structural differences in the optimal controls in these Banach spaces, compared to those obtained in corresponding Hilbert space settings.
Effects of age and nutritional state on the expression of gustatory receptors in the honeybee (Apis mellifera)

Gustatory receptors (Grs) expressed in insect taste neurons signal the presence of carbohydrates, sugar alcohols, CO2, bitter compounds and oviposition stimulants. The honeybee (Apis mellifera) has one of the smallest Gr gene sets (12 Gr genes) of any insect whose genome has been sequenced. Honeybees live in eusocial colonies with a division of labour and perform age-dependent behavioural tasks, primarily food collection. Here, we used RT-qPCR to quantify Gr mRNA in honeybees at two ages (newly-emerged and foraging-age adults) to examine the relationship between age-related physiology and expression of Gr genes. We measured the Gr mRNAs in the taste organs and also the brain and gut. The mRNA of all Gr genes was detected in all tissues analysed but showed plasticity in relative expression across tissues and in relation to age. Overall, Gr gene expression was higher in the taste organs than in the internal tissues but did not show an overall age-dependent difference. In contrast Gr gene expression in brain was generally higher in foragers, which may indicate greater reliance on internal nutrient sensing. Expression of the candidate sugar receptors AmGr1, AmGr2 and AmGr3 in forager brain was affected by the types of sugars bees fed on. The levels of expression in the brain were greater for AmGr1 but lower for AmGr2 and AmGr3 when bees were fed with glucose and fructose compared with sucrose. Additionally, AmGr3 mRNA was increased in starved bees compared to bees provided ad libitum sucrose. Thus, expression of these Grs in forager brain reflects both the satiety state of the bee (AmGr3) and the type of sugar on which the bee has fed.