Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Model Research of FAQ Answering System Based on Concept

At present, the FAQ (Frequently-Asked Question) answering system cannot understand the user's questions at the concept level, so its efficiency needs to be improved. In this paper, a model of FAQ answering system based on concept is proposed. The system model consists of three components, which are concept-based preprocessing, extraction of question-answer pairs, and concept-based matching of sentences. On the one hand, the model proposes an index-based extracting method of question-answering pairs, to combine the extraction with the index mechanism for improving the speed of extraction. On the other hand, the model expands the user's question at the concept level, and proposes a concept based matching method between sentences, to match the user's question with the question-answering pairs. The concept based matching method concerns the synonymous meanings between sentences at the concept level. In addition, the experimental result shows the matching method is an efficient method.
Induction of Capsular Polysaccharide Synthesis by p-Fluorophenylalanine in Escherichia coli Wild Type and Strains with Altered Phenylalanyl Soluble Ribonucleic Acid Synthetase

Escherichia coli K-12 strain AB259 can be induced to form capsular polysaccharide (mucoid clones) by dl-p-fluorophenylalanine (FPA; 5 × 10−6m on agar plates at 37 C or 8 × 10−5m in liquid medium at 30 C). The change was shown to be phenotypic. An increase in enzymes probably involved in capsular polysaccharide synthesis [phosphomannose isomerase (3.3-fold), uridine diphosphate-d-galactose-4-epimerase (2.5-fold), and guanine diphosphate-l-fucose synthetase] was demonstrated as a result of growth in FPA. These increases appear sufficient to account for the increased synthesis of capsular polysaccharide due to growth in FPA. FPA-resistant derivatives of strain AB259 were obtained by selecting mutants on FPA-containing agar or by transducing in an altered phenylalanyl soluble ribonucleic acid synthetase that activates FPA poorly. Mucoid clones were formed by these strains only in the presence of 30 to 1,000 times as much FPA. Among these strains, there was a close correlation between incorporation of FPA-C14 and induction of capsular polysaccharide synthesis. The results are thus consistent with the following model: FPA is incorporated into the protein product of the R1 gene (repressor) and alters it sufficiently to allow derepression of several enzymes.
An improved algorithm for power system fault type classification based on least square phasor estimation

Smart grids have urged a radical reappraisal of distribution networks and power quality requirements, which demand to continuously monitor grid conditions. This allows for early classification of power quality degeneration. In this context, this paper proposes an improved algorithm for phasor estimation and fault type classification in smart grid applications. The proposed algorithm is specifically composed of two steps: first, the phasor estimation from the input signals, which can be executed on the Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU). While step two concerns the fault type classification using the phasor estimation. Specifically, we propose to estimate the phasor parameters, (frequency, amplitude and initial phase) using least square method. Then, fault type classification is obtained using symmetrical component algorithm. The proposed algorithm can be used for the identification of power quality disturbances. It has been evaluated, compared, and studied with simulated data. Simulation results show accurate phasor estimations and accurate fault type classification in presence of noise.
Impact of universal vaccination on intrafamilial transmission of hepatitis B virus

To control hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, a nationwide vaccination program was launched in 1984 and resulted in a significant reduction in the rate of persistent infection of children. However, the relative contribution of vaccination to the intrafamilial clustering of HBV infection remains unclear. The rate of intrafamilial HBV transmission in vaccinated children was investigated. Eighty‐four sera from vaccinated children were enrolled and HBV serum markers were determined. The modes of intrafamilial HBV transmission were investigated by history taking and serological assay, and confirmed by genotyping and phylogenetic analysis. The results showed 66 (78.6%) vaccinated children born to hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)‐negative parents were HBsAg‐negative. Eighteen vaccinees were born to HBsAg‐positive parents; four (21.4%) of the children were HBsAg‐positive. According to the parents' HBsAg status, three patterns of HBsAg‐positive parents were identified. Serological analysis showed that three of 15 children born to HBsAg‐positive mother (pattern I) and one of two children born to HBsAg‐positive father became infected (pattern II). The remaining one child was HBsAg negative with both parents positive for HBsAg (pattern III). Genotyping and phyogenetic analysis confirmed the mode of intrafamilial transmissions. Sequence analysis of S and pre‐S genes showed that HBV isolates of HBsAg‐positive vaccinees were variants; no G145R but G145A and other substitutions were found. In conclusion, this small study showed that both maternal and paternal transmissions are important of the intrafamilial spread of HBV infection. In addition, the introduction of HBV vaccination has resulted in a reduction of intrafamilial transmission, but a study of a large population is needed. J. Med. Virol. 83:783–790, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A method for the extraction of phonetically-rich triphone sentences

A method is proposed for compiling a corpus of phonetically-rich triphone sentences; i.e., sentences with a high variety of triphones, distributed in a uniform fashion. Such a corpus is of interest for a wide range of contexts, from automatic speech recognition to speech therapy. We evaluated this method by building phonetically-rich corpora for Brazilian Portuguese. The data employed comes from Wikipedia's dumps, which were converted into plain text, segmented and phonetically transcribed. The method consists of comparing the distance between the triphone distribution of the available sentences to an ideal uniform distribution, with equiprobable triphones. A greedy algorithm was implemented to recognize and evaluate the distance among sentences. A heuristic metric is proposed for pre-selecting sentences for the algorithm, in order to quicken its execution. The results show that, by applying the proposed metric, one can build corpora with more uniform triphone distributions.
Influence of fasting on the effects of dimethylamiloride and oxfenicine on ischaemic–reperfused rat hearts

Abstract To assess whether glycolysis, Na+–H+ exchange and oxidation of fatty acid derived from endogenous lipolysis are involved in the beneficial effects of 24-h fasting on the ischaemic – reperfused heart, it was studied the effects of inhibiting Na+ – H+ exchange using 10 μM dimethylamiloride and fatty acid oxidation using 2 mM oxfenicine, on the functional activity, lactate production and cell viability measured with tetrazolium stain. Since fasting accelerates heart fatty acid oxidation, data were compared to those from fed rats; using Langendorff perfused (glucose 10 mM) hearts of 250–350 g Wistar rats exposed to 25 min ischaemia – 30 min reperfusion. Fasting reduced the ischaemic rise of end diastolic pressure (contracture), improved recovery of contraction and lowered lactate production in comparison with the fed whereas cellular viability was similar in both groups. Dimethylamiloride improved the recovery of contraction (fed control 24 ± 9%, fed treated 68 ± 11%, P < 0.05 at the end of reperfusion), attenuated the contracture (fed control 40 ± 9%, fed treated 24 ± 11%, P < 0.05 at the beginning of reperfusion) and reduced lactate production in the fed group and increased cellular viability in both groups (fed control 21 ± 6%, fed treated 69 ± 7%, P < 0.05, and fasted control 18 ± 7%, fasted treated 53 ± 8%, P < 0.05). Oxfenicine reduced the recovery of contraction (fasted control 88 ± 6%, fasted treated 60 ± 11%, P < 0.05) and increased lactate production of fasted group and attenuated the contracture in the fed. These data suggest that beneficial effects of fasting owe, at least in part, to a lowered glycolysis probably secondary to the increased fatty acid oxidation and to the accumulation of energy supplying acyl esters. Dimethylamiloride slowing of glycolysis might explain functional improvement, whereas it seems unrelated to the protection on cell viability.
Diagnosing late onset rheumatoid arthritis, polymyalgia rheumatica, and temporal arteritis in patients presenting with polymyalgic symptoms. A prospective longterm evaluation.

OBJECTIVE . To examine for demographic and clinical differences between late onset rheumatoid arthritis (LORA), polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR), and temporal arteritis (TA) patients presenting with polymyalgic symptoms (PMS) and to identify baseline clinical and laboratory features that would lead to a more accurate final diagnosis. METHODS Three hundred forty-nine consecutive patients with new onset of symptoms suggestive of LORA, PMR, or TA presenting at or above age 60 years were enrolled in a prospective study. RESULTS During followup, 9 patients diagnosed initially as PMR developed LORA (giving a final total of 145), 5 patients initially diagnosed as LORA changed diagnosis to PMR (final total 147), and 29 patients had PMS that predated TA symptoms (final total 57). The delay in diagnosis ranged from 1 to 30 months. DRB1*04 was associated with development of both LORA and TA. CONCLUSION In about 10% of patients the correct diagnosis of LORA, PMR, and TA in those presenting with PMS may be delayed due to similarities in initial clinical presentation. Longterm followup is essential to establish correct diagnosis. Laboratory tests tend to be unhelpful, although a positive rheumatoid factor or persistently raised plasma viscosity despite steroids might indicate RA, and the presence of HLA-DRB1*04 may indicate underlying RA or TA.
BSDM : Big Spatial Data Management Special Track along with CLOUD COMPUTING

We are living in the era of Big Data. Spatial and Spatiotemporal Data are not an exception. Mobile apps, cars, GPS devices, UAVs, ships, airplanes, space telescopes, medical devices and IoT devices are generating explosive amounts of data with spatial characteristics. Web apps and social networking systems also store vast amounts of geo-located information, like geo-located tweets, or captured mobile users' locations. Modeling, storing, querying and analyzing big spatial and spatiotemporal data is an active area of basic and applied research with many challenges. Multicore CPU / GPU processing techniques and parallel and distributed frameworks utilizing cloud infrastructures are being created and extended for novel big spatial data management solutions. The purpose of this track is to act as a forum where recent advances in Big Spatial (and Spatiotemporal, considered as a special case of Spatial) Data Management will be presented and discussed. Keywords-Big data; Spatial data; Cloud computing; Data modelling and analysis; Data processing; Systems and applications; Algorithms.
A Novel Adaptive Cooperative MAC Protocol for Wireless LANs

In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive cooperative medium access control (MAC) protocol, called ACoopMAC, that adopts new frame control formats and is completely backward compatible with the legacy IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF). To adapt to dynamic channel variation and network topology, the sender selects either direct transmission or cooperative transmission adaptively based on the instantaneous channel measurements. An extended analytical model based on elementary conditional probability is adopted to evaluate throughput and average delay performance of our proposed protocol. Analytical and simulation results show that ACoopMAC can improve the throughput performance and substantially reduce system delay, compared to CoopMAC protocol.
Optimal Scheduling for Asymmetric Multi-core Server Processors

The arrival rate of jobs at servers in a data-center can vary significantly over time. The servers in data-centers are typically multi-core processors, which allow jobs to be processed at different degrees of parallelism (DoPs), i.e., the number of threads spawned by a job. In this thesis, we show analytically as well as empirically that the DoP which minimizes the service time of jobs varies with the arrival rate of jobs. Also, recent trends have shown a move towards asymmetric multi-core server processors. These processors are made up of multiple clusters, each consisting of cores of different type and of which only one cluster can be turned on at a given point in time while the others remain “dark”. We show that the choice of the optimal cluster is dependent on the arrival rate. Based on these observations, we propose a run-time scheduler that determines the optimal DoP and performs intercluster migration to minimize the mean total service time. The main contributions of this thesis are • We propose a queueing theoretic model to determine the mean service time of jobs as function of the DoP, number of parallel jobs and the cluster choice. • Based on the queueing theoretic model, we show that both the optimal DoP and cluster choice are dependent on the job arrival rate, and propose a run-time scheduler that makes optimal optimal cluster migration and DoP selection decisions to minimize mean service time.
Nad(P)H Oxidase and Pro-Inflammatory Response during Maximal Exercise: Role of C242T Polymorphism of the P22PHOX Subunit

Intense exercise induces a pro-inflammatory status through a mechanism involving the NAD(P)H oxidase system. We focused our attention on p22phox, a subunit of the NAD(P)H oxidase, and on its allelic polymorphism C242T, which is known to affect the functional activity of the enzyme. We investigated whether the p22phox C242T variants exhibit systemic effects in healthy subjects by analyzing the proinflammatory and cardiocirculatory responses to physical exercise in endurance athletes. The group of study consisted of 97 long distance runners, 37±4.4 yrs of age, with similar training history. The subjects underwent a maximal stress test during which both inflammatory and cardiopulmonary parameters were monitored. Our results demonstrate that T allele deeply influences the neutrophil activation in response to intense exercise, since T carriers were characterized by significantly lower release of myeloperoxidase (MPO), a classical leukocyte derived pro-inflammatory cytokine. In addition, the presence of T allele was associated with a higher cardiopulmonary efficiency as evidenced by a significantly lower Heart Rate (HR) at the peak of exercise and, when a dominant model was assumed, by a higher maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max). On the other hand, no effects of 242T mutation on the plasmatic total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and on the cortisol responses to the physical exercise were detected. In conclusion, our data support a systemic role for p22phox C242T polymorphism that, modifying the intensity of the inflammatory response, can influence the cardiovascular adaptations elicited by aerobic training. These results contribute to support the hypothesis of a systemic effect for the C242T polymorphism and of its possible functional rebound in healthy subjects.
Integrating Adaptive Beamforming and Auditory Features for Robust Large Vocabulary Speech Recognition

We demonstrate a system to integrate adaptive beam-forming and auditory features in order to improve speech recognition accuracy in noisy environments. Adaptive beam-forming based on a microphone array can utilize spatial information to improve the sound recording signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on a focused speaker for robust speech recognition. Auditory features based on modeling the signal processing functions in the hearing system have shown to largely improve speech recognition accuracy under noisy conditions. According to our experiments, when both adaptive beam-forming and the auditory features are integrated, an absolute gain of more than 50% over a baseline on speech recognition accuracy is achieved when 5dB white noise is added.
Attitude Error Representations for Kalman Filtering

The quaternion has the lowest dimensionality possible for a globally nonsingular attitude representation. The quaternionmustobeyaunitnormconstraint,though,whichhasledtothedevelopmentofanextendedKalmane lter usingaquaternionfortheglobalattitudeestimateandathree-componentrepresentationforattitudeerrors.Various attitude error representations are considered for this multiplicative extended Kalman e lter, which incorporates a nonlinear, norm preserving quaternion reset operation. Second-order bias corrections are computed in this framework.
Digital Radiographic Measurement of the Atlantodental Interval in Children

The atlantodental interval (ADI) is assessed after trauma to the head and neck region to determine whether the transverse ligament of the atlas is intact. Atlantodental interval measurement from conventional screen-film radiographs is characterized by the need for magnification correction and by low reliability. Assessment of normal ADI values using digital radiography with computer-assisted measurement has not been reported. We compared with published values the digital radiographic measurements of ADI in children, examined the reliability of measurements, and examined the interaction between age, sex and ADI. Computer-assisted digital measurements of ADI in 101 children, aged 1 to 12 years, were obtained from lateral supine head-neutral radiographs. We found intraobserver reliability of 0.72 and 0.85, interobserver reliability of 0.50, a maximum ADI value of 3.5 mm, no effect of sex and age, and weak evidence for an interaction between sex and age. Computer-assisted digital ADI measurement provides higher intraobserver reliability than what has previously been reported, and interobserver reliability and a maximum ADI value similar to that found in the literature.
A Study of Climate Change and Cost Effective Mitigation of the Baltic Sea Eutrophication

Eutrophication of coastal marine waters is globally considered to be a serious environmental problem [1, 2]. The Baltic Sea is the world’s largest brackish-sea and damages from eutrophication have been documented since the early 1960s by a large number of different studies [e.g. 3, 4]. In response to eutrophication of the sea the riparian states formed the administrative body HELCOM in charge of policies for improving the Baltic Sea and entered ministerial agreements on nutrient reduction in 1988 and 2007. Although nutrient reductions have been made, the 50 percent reduction agreed upon in 1988 has been far from reached and the ecological status of the sea continues to deteriorate. In order to reach the ecological goal of “clear water”, which is one main objective of the 2007 treaty, large reductions of both phosphorous and nitrogen are necessary. The cost of these nutrient reductions can be substantial, not the least since many low cost abatement options have already been implemented. In this respect it is important to evaluate if and how future nutrient loads will change and how this will affect costs for achieving stipulated targets.
Evaluation of sodium sulfite and protein correction in analyses of fibrous compounds in tropical forages

The objective of this study was to evaluate the contents of fibrous compounds in tropical grasses and legumes according to utilization of sodium sulfite in the neutral detergent solution or using a procedure for contaminant protein correction. Samples of ten grasses and ten legumes were used. The contents of neutral detergent fiber were decreased when sodium sulfite was used; however, more prominent reductions were verified in legumes. Sodium sulfite decreased the acid detergent fiber content in both forage groups. The contents of neutral and acid detergent insoluble protein and lignin were reduced by sodium sulfite in legumes, but no effect was observed in grasses with regard to these variables. The decrease in fiber contents in legumes could be explained by the solubilization of lignin and decrease in insoluble nitrogen. However, the decreases in fiber in grasses could not be solely explained by the decrease in contaminant protein and solubilization of lignin, and loss of other fibrous compounds probably occurred. The utilization of sodium sulfite compromises the accuracy of the estimates of fibrous compounds contents in tropical forages. The precision of the estimates were not relevantly increased by sodium sulfite. The correction of insoluble fibrous compounds for protein is suggested instead of using sodium sulfite because there are no modifications on neutral detergent solution or undesirable solubilization of fibrous compounds.
Mild cognitive impairment in the oldest old: A comparison of two approaches

The main purpose of the current investigation was to examine the predictive utility of two sets of criteria for mild cognitive impairment (MCI). A second purpose was to determine the incidence of MCI in a longitudinal, population-based sample of the oldest old in Sweden. The participants were from the larger 'Origins of Variance in the Old-Old: Octogenarian Twins' (OCTO-Twin) study, identified through the Swedish Twin Registry. Participants were initially aged 80 or above with a mean age of 83 and were re-examined after two, three, six and eight years. The sample for this study consisted of 263 elders that were randomly selected singletons from twin pairs. Mild cognitive impairment was rated at baseline using both Petersen's and Ritchie's criteria. Petersen's criteria emphasize memory and memory complaint whereas Ritchie's criteria use a broader set of cognitive indicators. The incidence rate was comparable to that of other studies, however, neither set of criteria predicted subsequent dementia. The failure to confirm subsequent dementia suggests that there may be many sources of MCI in very late life besides incipient dementia. The presence of a key informant, as well as the weighting of performance across domains by an experienced clinician, both of which are hard to quantify, may be the key elements that give predictive values to MCI in prior studies.