Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrating MT at Swiss Post’s Language Service: preliminary results

This paper presents the preliminary results of an ongoing academia-industry collaboration that aims to integrate MT into the workflow of Swiss Post’s Language Service. We describe the evaluations carried out to select an MT tool (commercial or open-source) and assess the suitability of machine translation for post-editing in Swiss Post’s various subject areas and language pairs. The goal of this first phase is to provide recommendations with regard to the tool, language pair and most suitable domain for implementing MT.
Influence of the partial substitution of fine aggregate by granite powder in mortar on the process of natural carbonation

This article presents an evaluation of the influence on the natural carbonation process of the use of granite cutting residue as a replacement for fine aggregate in mortars. The methodology adopted consisted of replacing the fine aggregate with granite cutting residue, analysing the carbonation depth with the aid of an experimental planning matrix of 23 + 3 repetitions at the central point. The influence of the exposure time, the percentage of residue in the mixture, and the particle size of the residue used were evaluated. The exposure time variable was found to have the greatest influence on the carbonation process. Under the conditions analysed, granite residue was found to be beneficial, reducing the carbonation depth.
Structural insight into multistage inhibition of CRISPR-Cas12a by AcrVA4

Significance Bacteriophage encodes anti-CRISPR (Acr) proteins to inactivate host bacterial CRISPR-Cas systems. These Acrs are also found in bacteria to avoid self-targeting autoimmunity. So far, quite a few Acrs targeting type I and II CRISPR-Cas systems have been well characterized. In contrast, the Acrs inhibiting type V systems remain poorly understood. Both type II (Cas9) and V (Cas12a) CRISPR-Cas systems have been harnessed as powerful tools for genome editing and the latter showed even better efficiency and accuracy. In this work, we report a comprehensive mechanistic insight into a unique multistage inhibitor, AcrVA4, blocking CRISPR-Cas12a activity, different from other characterized single-stage targeting Acrs. This represents a sophisticated mechanism for CRISPR-Cas inhibition and provides clues for developing regulatory tools for genome editing. Prokaryotes possess CRISPR-Cas systems to exclude parasitic predators, such as phages and mobile genetic elements (MGEs). These predators, in turn, encode anti-CRISPR (Acr) proteins to evade the CRISPR-Cas immunity. Recently, AcrVA4, an Acr protein inhibiting the CRISPR-Cas12a system, was shown to diminish Lachnospiraceae bacterium Cas12a (LbCas12a)-mediated genome editing in human cells, but the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Here we report the cryo-EM structures of AcrVA4 bound to CRISPR RNA (crRNA)-loaded LbCas12a and found AcrVA4 could inhibit LbCas12a at several stages of the CRISPR-Cas working pathway, different from other characterized type I/II Acr inhibitors which target only 1 stage. First, it locks the conformation of the LbCas12a-crRNA complex to prevent target DNA-crRNA hybridization. Second, it interacts with the LbCas12a-crRNA-dsDNA complex to release the bound DNA before cleavage. Third, AcrVA4 binds the postcleavage LbCas12a complex to possibly block enzyme recycling. These findings highlight the multifunctionality of AcrVA4 and provide clues for developing regulatory genome-editing tools.
Cognitive function in multiple sclerosis: A long-term look on the bright side

Background Multiple sclerosis (MS) may lead to cognitive decline over-time. Objectives Characterize cognitive performance in MS patients with long disease duration treated with disease modifying drugs (DMD) in relation to disability and determine the prevalence of cognitive resilience. Methods Cognitive and functional outcomes were assessed in 1010 DMD-treated MS patients at least 10 years from onset. Cognitive performance was categorized as high, moderate or low, and neurological disability was classified according to the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) as mild, moderate or severe. Relationship between cognitive performance and disability was examined. Results After a mean disease duration of 19.6 (SD = 7.7) years, low cognitive performance was observed in 23.7% (N = 239), moderate performance in 42.7% (N = 431), and 33.7% (N = 340) had high cognitive performance, meeting the definition of cognitively resilient patients. Within the group of patients with low cognitive performance, severe disability was observed in 50.6% (121/239), while in the group of patients with high cognitive performance, mild disability was observed in 64.4% (219/340). Differences between the group of patients with high cognitive performance and severe disability (4.5%) and the group of patients with low cognitive performance and mild disability (5.0%) were not accounted for by DMD treatment duration. Conclusions The majority of DMD treated MS patients did not have cognitive decline that could impair their quality of life after disease of extended duration.
Uncovering Olive Biodiversity through Analysis of Floral and Fruiting Biology and Assessment of Genetic Diversity of 120 Italian Cultivars with Minor or Marginal Diffusion

The primary impetus behind this research was to provide a boost to the characterization of the Italian olive biodiversity by acquiring reliable and homogeneous data over the course of an eight-year trial on the floral and fruiting biology of 120 molecularly analyzed cultivars, most of which have either low or very low diffusion. The obtained data highlighted a considerable variability to almost all of the analyzed parameters, which given the uniformity of environment and crop management was indicative of a large genetic variability in the accessions under observation, as confirmed through the molecular analysis. Several cases of synonymy were reported for the first time, even among plants cultivated in different regions, whilst all of the varieties examined, with only one exception, showed very low percentages of self-fruit-set, indicating a need for the employment of suitable pollinator plants. Eventually, a fitted model allowed us to evaluate the clear effects of the thermal values on blossoming, particularly in the months of March and April, whereas the climatic conditions during the flowering time had only a modest effect on its duration.
Bronchial thermoplasty decreases airway remodelling by blocking epithelium-derived heat shock protein-60 secretion and protein arginine methyltransferase-1 in fibroblasts

Bronchial thermoplasty (BT) is to date the only therapy that provides a lasting reduction in airway wall remodelling. However, the mechanism of action of BT is not well understood. This study aimed to characterise the changes of remodelling regulating signalling pathways by BT in asthma. Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) was obtained from eight patients with severe asthma before and after BT. Primary bronchial epithelial cells were isolated from 23 patients before (n=66) and after (n=62) BT. Epithelial cell culture supernatant (Epi.S) was collected and applied to primary fibroblasts. Epithelial cells obtained from asthma patients after BT proliferated significantly faster compared with epithelial cells obtained before BT. In airway fibroblasts, BALF or Epi.S obtained before BT increased CCAAT enhancer-binding protein-β (C/EBPβ) expression, thereby downregulating microRNA-19a. This upregulated extracellular signal-regulated kinase-1/2 (ERK1/2) expression, protein arginine methyltransferase-1 (PRMT1) expression, cell proliferation and mitochondrial mass. BALF or Epi.S obtained after BT reduced the expression of C/EBPβ, ERK1/2, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ coactivator-1α (PGC1α), PRMT1 and mitochondrial mass in airway fibroblasts. Proteome and transcriptome analyses indicated that epithelial cell-derived heat shock protein-60 (HSP60) is the main mediator of BT effects on fibroblasts. Further analysis suggested that HSP60 regulated PRMT1 expression, which was responsible for the increased mitochondrial mass and α-smooth muscle actin expression by asthmatic fibroblasts. These effects were ablated after BT. These results imply that BT reduces fibroblast remodelling through modifying the function of epithelial cells, especially by reducing HSP60 secretion and subsequent signalling pathways that regulate PRMT1 expression. We therefore hypothesise that BT decreases airway remodelling by blocking epithelium-derived HSP60 secretion and PRMT1 in fibroblasts. Bronchial thermoplasty reduces asthma-associated airway wall remodelling by epithelial cell-controlled downregulation of PRMT1 expression in fibroblasts http://bit.ly/2TLhCkC
EpiSmokEr: A robust classifier to determine smoking status from DNA methylation data

Self-reported smoking status is prone to misclassification due to under-reporting, while biomarkers like cotinine can only measure recent exposure. Smoking strongly influences DNA methylation, with current, former and never smokers exhibiting different methylation profiles. Recently, two approaches were proposed to calculate scores based on smoking-responsive DNA methylation loci, to serve as reliable indicators of long-term exposure and potential biomarkers to estimate smoking behavior. However, these two methodologies need significant improvements to make them globally applicable to all populations and to achieve an optimal classification of individuals with unknown smoking habits. To advance the practical applicability of the smoking-associated methylation signals, we used machine learning methodology to train a classifier for smoking status prediction. We show the prediction performance of our classifier on three independent whole-blood test datasets demonstrating its robustness and global applicability. Furthermore, we show the cross-tissue functionality of our classifier in tissues other than blood. Additionally, we provide the community with an R package, EpiSmokEr, facilitating implementation of our classifier to predict smoking status in future studies.
Enrichment of HDL Proteome and Phospholipidome from Human Serum via IMAC/MOAC Affinity.

High-density lipoproteins (HDLs) have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and are potentially cardio-protective. Defective HDL function is caused by alterations in both proteome and lipidome of HDL particles. As potential biomarker, analytical methods are required to be developed for enrichment of HDLs. Therefore, a method for selective enrichment of HDLs using immobilized metal ion affinity chromatography (IMAC) and metal oxide affinity chromatography (MOAC) is presented. SPE based isolation of HDLs from whole serum is adopted as an alternate to traditional ultracentrifugation method followed by SDS-PAGE. Enrichment mechanism relies on isoelectric points of lipoproteins and metal oxide. Negatively charged lipoprotein particles interact with positively charged metal oxides and IMAC affinity which acts as a cation. Identified proteins from HDL through MALDI-MS analysis are apo A-I, A-II, A-IV, C-I, C-III, E, J, M, H, serum amyloid A, and other non-apoproteins that are part of HDL particles and perform cellular functions. This serum-based proteomics approach gives insight into functional role of HDL. HDL associated phospholipids have also been analyzed by LDI-MS. Results suggest that adopted analytical strategy is a feasible idea to extract lipoproteins from serum. A comparative study of healthy and diseased samples by using this approach will provide valuable information in future.
Primary Human Natural Killer Cells Retain Proinflammatory IgG1 at the Cell Surface and Express CD16a Glycoforms with Donor-dependent Variability*

The composition of post-translational modifications attached to the crystallizable fragment (Fc) of IgG antibodies are widely known to be associated with disease and inflammation, however, much less is known about the composition of antibodies bound to circulating immune cells or the composition of the antibody-binding receptors themselves. This report characterizes the composition of asparagine-linked glycans from the predominant antibody-binding receptor expressed by natural killer cells, Fc γ receptor 3a/CD16a and it's bound IgG1 ligand. Graphical Abstract Highlights Enough CD16a from NK cells can be isolated from a single donor following apheresis. NK cell CD16a shows variability between different donors. NK cells preferentially bind IgG1 that lacks core fucosylation. Post-translational modification confers diverse functional properties to immune system proteins. The composition of serum proteins such as immunoglobulin G (IgG) strongly associates with disease including forms lacking a fucose modification of the crystallizable fragment (Fc) asparagine(N)-linked glycan that show increased effector function, however, virtually nothing is known about the composition of cell surface receptors or their bound ligands in situ because of low abundance in the circulating blood. We isolated primary NK cells from apheresis filters following plasma or platelet donation to characterize the compositional variability of Fc γ receptor IIIa/CD16a and its bound ligand, IgG1. CD16a N162-glycans showed the largest differences between donors; one donor displayed only oligomannose-type N-glycans at N162 that correlate with high affinity IgG1 Fc binding whereas the other donors displayed a high degree of compositional variability at this site. Hybrid-type N-glycans with intermediate processing dominated at N45 and highly modified, complex-type N-glycans decorated N38 and N74 from all donors. Analysis of the IgG1 ligand bound to NK cell CD16a revealed a sharp decrease in antibody fucosylation (43.2 ± 11.0%) versus serum from the same donors (89.7 ± 3.9%). Thus, NK cells express CD16a with unique modification patterns and preferentially bind IgG1 without the Fc fucose modification at the cell surface.
Pressure Sensing Insoles for Learning Tai-Chi Chuan

In this work, we designed and implemented a pair of pressure sensing insoles to quantize the user’s plantar pressure distributions. Each pressure sensing insole includes four force sensor modules, a microcontroller and a wireless data transmission module. We firstly performed a simple process to calibrate the force sensor, and then built a plantar pressure model for estimating the complete plantar pressure distribution. We have applied the pressure sensing insoles to develop a Tai-Chi Chuan instruction system which, with visual feedback, can help users to learn the correct plantar pressure distribution of the fundamental movements of Tai-Chi Chuan. We have also evaluated the efficiency of learning Tai-Chi Chuan with our system. According to our experimental results, users using our system can learn faster than those without using our system.
Fair Scheduling in Cloud Datacenters with Multiple Resource Types

Fair Scheduling in Cloud Datacenters with Multiple Resource Types Wei Wang Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto 2015 This dissertation focuses on algorithm design and prototype implementation of fair sharing policies in cloud datacenters with multiple resource types. Specifically, it seeks to address two fundamental resource management problems. First, how should the the computing resources of a large-scale cluster – such as CPU cores, memory, and storage – be fairly shared among running applications? This problem has become even more complicated in cloud datacenters, mainly due to their unprecedented heterogeneity and complexity. Cloud computing clusters are likely to be constructed from a large number of commodity servers spanning multiple generations, with different computing capabilities, bandwidth, and storage capacities. On the other hand, depending on the underlying applications, computing tasks may require vastly different amounts of resources: some are CPU-intensive; some are memoryor bandwidth-bound. Despite these complexities, existing resource sharing policies either result in significant resource fragmentation, or require a homogeneous cluster where servers are of the same specification. This dissertation proposes Dominant Resource Fairness in Heterogeneous systems (DRFH), a general multi-resource sharing policy that preserves many axiomatically, and highly desirable “fair” properties that used to be provided by weighted fair sharing in the single-resource setting. DRFH eliminates the application’s incentive of cheating the cluster scheduler for more allocation share by misreporting its resource requirement, a strategic behaviour commonly observed in production clusters. Prototype implementation and trace-driven simulations show that DRFH can be easily enforced in cluster systems, with higher resource utilization and shorter job completion time than the existing resource sharing policies. Second, how should the active flows fairly share the network resources of middleboxes, software routers, and other appliances that are widely deployed in datacenters? In middleboxes or software routers, flows usually undergo deep packet inspection, which requires the support of multiple types of resources, and may bottleneck on either CPU, memory bandwidth, or link bandwidth. While there is rich literature of fair queueing for a single type of resource (i.e., link bandwidth), it remains unclear how
Nurse-led ontology construction: A design science approach

Most nursing quality studies based on the structure-process-outcome paradigm have concentrated on structure-outcome associations and have not explained the nursing process domain. This thesis turns the spotlight on the process domain and visualises nursing processes or ‘what nurses do’ by using ‘semantics’ which underpin Linking Of Data (LOD) technologies such as ontologies. Ontology construction has considerable limitations that make direct input of nursing process semantics difficult. Consequently, nursing ontologies being constructed to date use nursing process semantics collected by non-clinicians. These ontologies may have undesirable clinical implications when they are used to map nurse processes to patient outcomes. To address this issue, this thesis places nurses at the centre of semantic collection and ontology construction.
Ultrawideband Dielectric Resonator Antenna based on Meandered Dielectric Resonator with Band Rejection Characteristics

A new compact band-notched S-shaped Dielectric Resonator Antenna (DRA) for ultra wideband (UWB) applications is presented. An excellent notch band characteristic is achieved by implanting an inverted T-shaped parasitic strip on the front plane of dielectric substrate. By etching a rectangular slot on the ground plane, the width of the notch band characteristics can be controlled. The overall size of the antenna is 11×23×0.75mm3. The results obtained by measurement depict that the presented DRA achieves satisfactory radiation characteristics along with UWB impedance bandwidth of around 135% with a sufficient band rejection in the band of 5.15-5.825GHz, high radiation efficiency and nearly constant gain.
Experimental study of nanosecond repetitively pulsed discharges in water vapor

Experimental study of a Nanosecond Repetitively Pulsed (NRP) discharge in atmospheric pressure water vapor at 450K is reported. The discharge is produced between two pin electrodes by application of voltage pulses (0-15 kV amplitude), 10 ns in duration, with a repetition frequency up to 30 kHz. Electrical measurements were done to determine the energy deposited in the discharge. The energy per pulse ranges from 1 to 10 mJ. In order to determine the efficiency of water vapor dissociation, the concentration of the final reaction products (H2 and O2) and their respective flow rates were measured.
Resistance to electronic surveillance : the response of call center team managers

Studies show that managers’ responses to resistance to electronic surveillance in the workplace affects the behavior of resistance and its effects on organizations. However, there are few studies about managers’ responses to these behaviors and the following questions remain unanswered: “How do managers respond to resistance to electronic surveillance in the workplace? ” and “Why do managers respond in this way? ” This study seeks to answer these questions in order to understand managers’ response to resistance to electronic surveillance in the workplace. The theoretical framework adopted combines Coetsee (1999), Lapointe and Rivard (2005), Regan (1996) and Rivard and Lapointe (2012). The data was collected through interviews with nine call center team managers working in companies of different sectors and was analyzed by Content Analysis with the support of Atlas.TI® software. The results suggest that managers respond to resistance to surveillance in three ways: they try to convince the employee to abandon the resistance (dissuasion), they do not act on it at all (inaction) or they change the surveillance system (rectification). Four aspects lead managers to these responses: resistance behavior, frequency of resistance, target technology and size of the managers’ team. The participant with the smallest team did not report resistance to surveillance, which could indicate the absence of these behaviors in some contexts. This study helps researchers to define the theoretical framework of their work, to better understand the issue of control on organizations nowadays, as well as to define new research’ problems. As for managers, this study clarifies aspects regarding technologies targeted by acts of resistance and the resistance behavior that may be present in the workplace.
Ouroboros Clepsydra: Ouroboros Praos in the Universally Composable Relative Time Model

Ouroboros Praos is a proof of stake based blockchain protocol. One of its security assumptions is parties are synchronized i.e., all of them knows when the protocol passes a new state. However, it is not easy to have such a protocol in real life, especially in a decentralized network. Therefore, we construct a new version of Ouroboros Praos by composing a new protocol called Relative Time protocol. We call the new version Ouroboros Clepsydra. At the end of the relative time protocol, a party learns the approximate state of the protocol based on the median of arrival times of messages sent by the other parties and adjusts its local clock based on it. The relative time protocol does not add any new computation to the other parties. They even do not realize that they are part of the relative time protocol. In order to prove Ouroboros Clepsydrain the Universally Composable (UC) model, we define a general UC model to capture the notion of relative time. We remove the synchronization assumption in Ouroboros Clepsydra and show that Ouroboros Clepsydra is a secure proof of stake blockchain protocol in the UC model.
Improving word mover's distance by leveraging self-attention matrix

Measuring the semantic similarity between two sentences is still an important task. The word mover's distance (WMD) computes the similarity via the optimal alignment between the sets of word embeddings. However, WMD does not utilize word order, making it challenging to distinguish sentences with significant overlaps of similar words, even if they are semantically very different. Here, we attempt to improve WMD by incorporating the sentence structure represented by BERT's self-attention matrix (SAM). The proposed method is based on the Fused Gromov-Wasserstein distance, which simultaneously considers the similarity of the word embedding and the SAM for calculating the optimal transport between two sentences. Experiments demonstrate the proposed method enhances WMD and its variants in paraphrase identification with near-equivalent performance in semantic textual similarity. Our code is available at \url{https://github.com/ymgw55/WSMD}.