Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VOWEL NASALIZATION IN AMERICAN ENGLISH: ACOUSTIC VARIABILITY DUE TO PHONETIC CONTEXT

This study quantifies acoustic variation of vowel nasalization arising from phonetic context in American English with an emphasis on carryover contexts. While qualitative articulatory trajectories and phonetic descriptions suggest that a vowel is nasalized in carryover contexts, few acoustic studies have examined this issue. Our acoustic analyses investigate the vowel /i/ and show that: (1) a vowel can be nasalized with at least one adjacent nasal consonant, even if the nasal consonant is pre-vocalic; (2) vowels with nasal consonants on both sides (NVN) do not guarantee more vowel nasalization.
An Efficient Polynomial Time Algorithm for Robust Multicast Network Code Construction

For a single source multicast network with failed edges, a robust network code is given to achieve the network capacity by coding only at a subset of edges. Our algorithm provides shaper bounds on the required field size when failure patterns are given. The more required coding edges involved in the linear coding operation, the more computation it takes. The number of required coding edges is minimal in minimal multicast networks employing our algorithm.
Response of two heat shock genes to selection for knockdown heat resistance in Drosophila melanogaster.

To identify genes involved in stress resistance and heat hardening, replicate lines of Drosophila melanogaster were selected for increased resistance to knockdown by a 39 degrees heat stress. Two selective regimes were used, one with and one without prior hardening. Mean knockdown times were increased from approximately 5 min to > 20 min after 18 generations. Initial realized heritabilities were as high as 10% for lines selected without hardening, and crosses between lines indicated simple additive gene effects for the selected phenotypes. To survey allelic variation and correlated selection responses in two candidate stress genes, hsr-omega and hsp68, we applied denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis to amplified DNA sequences from small regions of these genes. After eight generations of selection, allele frequencies at both loci showed correlated responses for selection following hardening, but not without hardening. The hardening process itself was associated with a hsp68 frequency change in the opposite direction to that associated with selection that followed hardening. These stress loci are closely linked on chromosome III, and the hardening selection established a disequilibrium, suggesting an epistatic effect on resistance. The data indicate that molecular variation in both hsr-omega and.hsp68 contribute to natural heritable variation for hardened heat resistance.
Speeding up feature selection: A deep-inspired network pruning algorithm

To address the high-dimensionality of big data, numerous iterative algorithms have been introduced including least absolute shrinkage selection operator (Lasso) and iteratively sure independent screening (ISIS). However, the iterative nature of these algorithms renders the computational cost of retraining the learning model impractical. We take advantage of this key observation to propose a novel non-iterative algorithm inspired by deep neural network input reconstruction. Our proposed technique provides faster feature selection by training the model once. This is achieved by exploiting the cross entropy error between the input and the estimates. Simulation studies support our approach on several real world datasets. For rigor, a comparative analysis of the computational complexity is also provided to assert the advantage of our approach.
Input-to-State Stability of Packetized Predictive Control Over Unreliable Networks Affected by Packet-Dropouts

This work studies a predictive networked control scheme in which packets containing optimizing sequences of control inputs are sent over an unreliable communication network affected by data-loss. We show that, provided the number of consecutive packet losses is bounded, input-to-state stability can be ensured by appropriate choice of design parameters. Our results apply to the general case of constrained nonlinear plants which are affected by uncertain and unmeasured disturbances.
Higher-Level Cognitive Functions and Connectionist Modeling. Developmental and Computational Neuroscience Approaches to Cognition: The Case of Generalization.

The ability to generalize — to abstract regularities from our experiences that can be applied to new experiences — is fundamental to human cognition and our abilities to flexibly adapt to changing situations. However, the generalization abilities of children and adults are far from perfect, with many clear demonstrations of failures to generalize in situations that would otherwise appear to lend themselves to generalization. It seems that people require extensive experience with a domain to demonstrate good generalization, and that their generalization abilities are best when dealing with relatively concrete, familiar situations. In this paper, we argue that people’s successes and failures in generalization are well characterized by neural network models. Networks of neurons connected by synaptic weights are naturally predisposed to encode information in a highly specific fashion, which does not support generalization (as has been seized upon by critics of such models). However, with sufficient experience and appropriate architectural properties, such models can develop abstract representations that support good generalization. Implications for the neural bases and development of generalization abilities are discussed. 2 Developmental and Computational Neuroscience Approaches to Cognition
An agent based framework for adaptive control and decision making of autonomous vehicles

Abstract The paper addresses the problem of defining a theoretical physical agent framework that combines rational agent decision making with abstractions from predictions and planning of the future of the physical environment. The objective of the new framework is to reduce complexity of logical inference of agents controlling autonomous vehicles and robots in space exploration, deep underwater exploration, defense reconnaissance, automated manufacturing and household automation. An essential feature of the framework is automated realtime evaluations of abstractions on the effects of future actions. Comparison is made with hybrid automaton based solutions in terms of computational complexity.
Small Molecule Amiloride Modulates Oncogenic RNA Alternative Splicing to Devitalize Human Cancer Cells

Alternative splicing involves differential exon selection of a gene transcript to generate mRNA and protein isoforms with structural and functional diversity. Abnormal alternative splicing has been shown to be associated with malignant phenotypes of cancer cells, such as chemo-resistance and invasive activity. Screening small molecules and drugs for modulating RNA splicing in human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line Huh-7, we discovered that amiloride, distinct from four pH-affecting amiloride analogues, could “normalize” the splicing of BCL-X, HIPK3 and RON/MISTR1 transcripts. Our proteomic analyses of amiloride-treated cells detected hypo-phosphorylation of splicing factor SF2/ASF, and decreased levels of SRp20 and two un-identified SR proteins. We further observed decreased phosphorylation of AKT, ERK1/2 and PP1, and increased phosphorylation of p38 and JNK, suggesting that amiloride treatment down-regulates kinases and up-regulates phosphatases in the signal pathways known to affect splicing factor protein phosphorylation. These amiloride effects of “normalized” oncogenic RNA splicing and splicing factor hypo-phosphorylation were both abrogated by pre-treatment with a PP1 inhibitor. Global exon array of amiloride-treated Huh-7 cells detected splicing pattern changes involving 584 exons in 551 gene transcripts, many of which encode proteins playing key roles in ion transport, cellular matrix formation, cytoskeleton remodeling, and genome maintenance. Cellular functional analyses revealed subsequent invasion and migration defects, cell cycle disruption, cytokinesis impairment, and lethal DNA degradation in amiloride-treated Huh-7 cells. Other human solid tumor and leukemic cells, but not a few normal cells, showed similar amiloride-altered RNA splicing with devitalized consequence. This study thus provides mechanistic underpinnings for exploiting small molecule modulation of RNA splicing for cancer therapeutics.
Independent component analysis of noninvasively recorded cortical magnetic DC-fields in humans

We apply a recently developed multivariate statistical data analysis technique-so called blind source separation (BSS) by independent component analysis-to process magnetoencephalogram recordings of near-DC fields. The extraction of near-DC fields from MEG recordings has great relevance for medical applications since slowly varying DC-phenomena have been found, e.g., in cerebral anoxia and spreading depression in animals. Comparing several BSS approaches, it turns out that an algorithm based on temporal decorrelation successfully extracted a DC-component which was induced in the auditory cortex by presentation of music. The task is challenging because of the limited amount of available data and the corruption by outliers, which makes it an interesting real-world testbed for studying the robustness of ICA methods.
Conceptions of Limited Attention and Discourse Focus

Walker (1996) presents a cache model of the operation of attention in the processing of discourse as an alternative to the focus space stack that was proposed previously by Grosz and Sidner (Grosz 1977a; Grosz and Sidner 1986). In this squib, we present a critical analysis of the cache model and of Walker's supporting evidence from anaphora in discourses with interruptions and from informationally redundant utterances. We argue that the cache model is underdetermined in several ways that are crucial to a comparison of the two models and conclude that Walker has not established the superiority of the cache model. We also argue that psycholinguistic evidence does not support the cache model over the focus stack model.
Luzzu—A Methodology and Framework for Linked Data Quality Assessment

The increasing variety of Linked Data on the Web makes it challenging to determine the quality of this data and, subsequently, to make this information explicit to data consumers. Despite the availability of a number of tools and frameworks to assess Linked Data Quality, the output of such tools is not suitable for machine consumption, and thus consumers can hardly compare and rank datasets in the order of fitness for use. This article describes a conceptual methodology for assessing Linked Datasets, and Luzzu; a framework for Linked Data Quality Assessment. Luzzu is based on four major components: (1) an extensible interface for defining new quality metrics; (2) an interoperable, ontology-driven back-end for representing quality metadata and quality problems that can be re-used within different semantic frameworks; (3) scalable dataset processors for data dumps, SPARQL endpoints, and big data infrastructures; and (4) a customisable ranking algorithm taking into account user-defined weights. We show that Luzzu scales linearly against the number of triples in a dataset. We also demonstrate the applicability of the Luzzu framework by evaluating and analysing a number of statistical datasets against a variety of metrics. This article contributes towards the definition of a holistic data quality lifecycle, in terms of the co-evolution of linked datasets, with the final aim of improving their quality.
Alloantiserum-mediated suppression of histocompatibility-linked IR gene controlled immune responses. I. Histocompatibility antigen requirement.

Alloantisera were produced in guinea pigs by immunizing one inbred strain with the lymphoid cells of another. The effect of these sera on the response of sensitized lymphocytes to antigen or mitogen was studied in vitro. Strain 13 anti-strain 2 alloantisera, when added to cultures at a 1:75 or greater dilution, specifically suppress responses to GA and to 2,4-dinitrophenyl (DNP)-GL, both of which are controlled by strain 2-linked immune response (IR) genes. Addition of the anti-strain 2 sera at higher concentrations diminishes the apparent specificity for strain 2-associated immune responses. for example, at a 1:30 dilution the anti-strain 2 sera suppress the response of sensitized Hartley lymphocytes to the mitogen phytohemagglutinin and to the antigen GT whose controlling immune response gene is linked to strain 13 histocompatibility antigens. When compared as a function of antiserum concentration, the ability of the anti-strain 2 alloantisera to suppress strain 2-associated immune responses in vitro closely parallels its cytotoxic capacity. Furthermore, the ability of the anti-strain 2 sera to suppress GA responses in vitro depends on the presence of strain 2 histocompatibility antigens on the responding lymphocytes. In contrast to its effective suppression of GA responses in sensitized lymphocytes bearing strain 2 histocompatibility antigens, the anti-strain 2 antisera has no effect on the response to GA in lymphocytes from responder Hartley guinea pigs that did not inherit the strain 2 histocompatibility locus. These studies indicate that the histocompatibility antigens on the lymphocyte membrane are the target through which the alloantisera mediate specific immunosuppression
Online discriminative training for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion

We present an online discriminative training approach to grapheme-to-phoneme (g2p) conversion. We employ a manyto-many alignment between graphemes and phonemes, which overcomes the limitations of widely used one-to-one alignments. The discriminative structure-prediction model incorporates input segmentation, phoneme prediction, and sequence modeling in a unified dynamic programming framework. The learning model is able to capture both local context features in inputs, as well as non-local dependency features in sequence outputs. Experimental results show that our system surpasses the state-of-the-art on several data sets.
Isolation and Characterization of Rugose Form of Vibrio cholerae O139 Strain MO10

ABSTRACT An extracellular exopolysaccharide (slime) is produced byVibrio cholerae O139 MO10 in response to nutrient starvation. The presence of this slime layer on the cell surface and its subsequent release have been shown to be associated with biofilm formation and the change from a normal smooth colony morphology to a rugose one. An immunoelectron microscopic examination demonstrated that there is an epitope common to the exopolysaccharide antigen of V. cholerae O1 and that of O139 MO10.
Affective Priming in Music Listening: Emotions as a Source of Musical Expectation

Three behavioral experiments were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that perceived emotion activates expectations for upcoming musical events. Happy, sad, and neutral pictures were used as emotional primes. In Experiments 1 and 2, expectations for the continuation of neutral melodic openings were tested using an implicit task that required participants to judge the tuning of the first note of the melodic continuation. This first note was either high or low in pitch (Experiment 1) or followed either a narrow or wide melodic interval (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 assessed expectations using an explicit task and required participants to rate the quality of melodic continuations, which varied in register and interval size. Experiments 1 and 3 confirmed that emotion indeed modulates expectations for melodic continuations in a high or low register. The effect of emotion on expectations for melodic intervals was significant only in Experiment 3, although there was a trend for happiness to increase expectations for wide intervals in Experiment 2.
Susceptibility to interference and intrusion errors in consequence of the dominant hemisphere’s hippocampal infarct: A case report

We present a case of a man with an ischemic lesion of the left hippocampus. Detailed neuropsychological assessment revealed susceptibility to retroactive interference and a tendency to make intrusion errors in addition to mild deficits in the verbal memory processes. Although retroactive interference and intrusion errors are normally considered to be the manifestations of frontal lobe dysfunctions, the idea of susceptibility to interference has recently begun to emerge in the literature, as an explanation of medial temporal lobe amnesia. Our data support this new theory, suggesting that one role of the hippocampus is to decrease the interference during the learning processes.
The MADP Toolbox: An Open-Source Library for Planning and Learning in (Multi-)Agent Systems

This article describes the MultiAgent Decision Process ( MADP ) toolbox, a software library to support planning and learning for intelligent agents and multiagent systems in uncertain environments. Some of its key features are that it supports partially observable environments and stochastic transition models; has uniﬁed support for single-and multiagent systems; provides a large number of models for decision-theoretic decision making, including one-shot decision making (e.g., Bayesian games) and sequential decision making under various assumptions of observability and cooperation, such as Dec-POMDPs and POSGs; provides tools and parsers to quickly prototype new problems; provides an extensive range of planning and learning algorithms for single-and multiagent systems; and is written in C++ and designed to be extensible via the object-oriented paradigm.
Throughput maximizing feedback for MIMO OFDM based wireless communication systems

Currently evolving wireless communication systems (e.g. LTE-A, WiMAX) are based on linearly precoded MIMO OFDM and utilize adaptive modulation and coding to adjust the code rate and modulation alphabet to the current channel conditions. For this purpose the transmitter requires channel knowledge, which is provided by means of receiver feedback, utilizing the rank, precoding matrix and channel quality indicators. This work presents algorithms for computing these feedback values. Our algorithms choose the rank and precoding matrix indicators to maximize the estimated user throughput, whereas the channel quality indicator is chosenmore conservatively to satisfy a given upper bound on the block error ratio. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithms by means of link level simulations and comparison to theoretical bounds on the achievable throughput.
Discovering Web access patterns and trends by applying OLAP and data mining technology on Web logs

As a confluence of data mining and World Wide Web technologies, it is now possible to perform data mining on Web log records collected from the Internet Web-page access history. The behaviour of Web page readers is imprinted in the Web server log files. Analyzing and exploring regularities in this behaviour can improve the system performance, enhance the quality and delivery of Internet information services to the end user, and identify populations of potential customers for electronic commerce. Thus, by observing people using collections of data, data mining can bring a considerable contribution to digital library designers. In a joint effort between the TeleLearning-NCE (Networks of Centres of Excellence) project on the Virtual University and the NCE-IRIS project on data mining, we have been developing a knowledge discovery tool, called WebLogMiner, for mining Web server log files. This paper presents the design of WebLogMiner, reports current progress and outlines future work in this direction.
Corrosion: Simulating and Rendering

Weathering phenomena represent a topic of growing interest in computer graphics, and corrosion reactions are of great importance since they affect a large number of different fields. Previous investigations have essentially dealt with the modeling and rendering of metallic patinas. We propose an approach based on simple physical characteristics to simulate and render new forms of corrosion. We take into account "real world" time and different atmospheric condition categories with experimental data. This allows us to predict the evolution of corrosion over time. The reaction is simulated using a random walk technique adapted to our generic model. For realistic rendering, we propose a BRDF and (color- and bump-) texture models, thus affecting color, reflectance and geometry. We additionally propose a set of rules to automatically predict the preferential starting locations of corrosion.
Adolescent-to-Parent Violence in Adoptive Families

Adolescent-to-parent violence (APV) has received little attention in the social work literature, although it is known to be a factor in families whose children are at risk of entry to care. The behaviour patterns that characterise APV include coercive control, domination and intimidation. Crucially, parental behaviours are compromised by fear of violence. This article discusses the unexpected findings from two recent adoption studies of previously looked after children in England and Wales. The studies exposed the prevalence of APV in the lives of families who had experienced an adoption disruption and those who were finding parenting very challenging. Two main APV patterns emerged: early onset (pre-puberty) that escalated during adolescence, and late onset that surfaced during puberty and rapidly escalated. The stigma and shame associated with APV delayed help seeking. The response from services was often to blame the adoptive parents and to instigate child protection procedures. There is an urgent need for a greater professional recognition of APV and for interventions to be evaluated with children who have been maltreated and showing symptoms of trauma.
Publish/subscribe over information centric networks: A Standardized approach in CONVERGENCE

Originally conceived as a “network of hosts”, the Internet is evolving into an Internet of services, an Internet of media, an Internet of people and an Internet of “things”. This implies a strategic shift from “host-centric” to “content-centric” and “data-centric” networking. CONVERGENCE proposes to enhance the Internet with a novel, information-centric, publish-subscribe service model, based on the Versatile Digital Item (VDI): a common container for all kinds of digital content, derived from the MPEG-21 standard. Results in terms of standardization activities and software implementation are presented.