Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stiffness optimization for two-armed robotic sculpting

Purpose – Recent research has considered robotic machining as a dextrous alternative to traditional CNC machine tools for complex sculptured surfaces. One challenge in using robotic machining is that the stiffness is lower than traditional machine tools, due to the cantilever design of the links and low‐torsional stiffness of the actuators. This paper seeks to examine this limitation, using optimization algorithms to determine the best trajectories for the manipulators such that the stiffness is maximized.Design/methodology/approach – The issue of low stiffness is addressed with an integrated off‐line planner and real‐time re‐planner. The available manipulator stiffness is maximized during off‐line planning through a trajectory resolution method that exploits the nullspace of the robot machining system. In response to unmodeled disturbances, a real‐time trajectory re‐planner utilizes a time‐scaling method to reduce the tool speed, thereby reducing the demand on the actuator torques, increasing the robot's.
Phosphorylation promotes activation-induced cytidine deaminase activity at the Myc oncogene

Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) is a mutator enzyme that targets immunoglobulin (Ig) genes to initiate antibody somatic hypermutation (SHM) and class switch recombination (CSR). Off-target AID association also occurs, which causes oncogenic mutations and chromosome rearrangements. However, AID occupancy does not directly correlate with DNA damage, suggesting that factors beyond AID association contribute to mutation targeting. CSR and SHM are regulated by phosphorylation on AID serine38 (pS38), but the role of pS38 in off-target activity has not been evaluated. We determined that lithium, a clinically used therapeutic, induced high AID pS38 levels. Using lithium and an AID-S38 phospho mutant, we compared the role of pS38 in AID activity at the Ig switch region and off-target Myc gene. We found that deficient pS38 abated AID chromatin association and CSR but not mutation at Myc. Enhanced pS38 elevated Myc translocation and mutation frequency but not CSR or Ig switch region mutation. Thus, AID activity can be differentially targeted by phosphorylation to induce oncogenic lesions.
Speech Retrieval under Limited Resources and Open Domain Conditions

Speech Retrieval focuses on retrieving a segment of speech from a speech corpus correspond to a given query. A standard Speech Retrieval system usually composed by two systems, the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system and the Information Retrieval (IR) system. The ASR system transcribes the speech and represents the transcript in different formats. The transcript is then indexed and searched by the IR system. As a result, Speech Retrieval is sensitive to the ASR, since IR system is depend on the transcript generated by ASR. The current challenge in Speech Retrieval is the limitation of ASR performance under certain conditions. Two such conditions are Limited Resources and Open Domain. Under Limited resources condition, the training data is not sufficient for creating a robust ASR system. A good example for this condition is to perform Speech Retrieval on limited resources languages such as Tagalog or Assamese. On the other hand, under Open Domain condition, the recorded speech varies in many perspectives. The high diversity of recorded speech limits the performance of a single ASR system. A good example for this condition is to perform Speech Retrieval on YouTube videos, such as online lectures. We believe Speech Retrieval under these conditions can be significantly improved from different approaches. The first one is to apply extra information, such as contexts from conversation. A context includes the other words in the same utterance or conversation. The second approach is to refine the existing IR system, by using better IR search strategy for Speech Retrieval. We analysis existing IR system and present a better search strategy, which is based on the diversity of current approaches. We have investigated how to integrate these two approaches to Speech Retrieval, and determined that the approaches can achieve improvement on Spoken Term Detection (STD) under the limited resources condition. The resulting system has been shown to be effective on multiple languages, implying that the improvement is language independent. Based on our positive result regarding the limited resources condition, we propose to extend existing approaches and develop new techniques for better Speech Retrieval under the open domain condition. We propose a new Speech Retrieval task called Spoken Snippet Retrieval (SSR), which retrieve a moderate size of speech from the speech collection with just enough context. The retrieved snippet is easier for user to listen through compare to the spoken document retrieved by Spoken Document Retrieval (SDR) systems, which has average length of 3 minutes. The snippet is more comprehensible compare to the term location detected by STD systems, since the context are given. The main contribution for the thesis is to complete SSR on the open domain data, which we believe is doing the adequate retrieval on the appropriate data.
Network-aware source-adaptive video coding for wireless applications

Packet video transmission over wireless networks is expected to experience bursty packet losses due to noise, interference, multipath effects and the motion of mobile hosts. In order to achieve satisfactory end-to-end video quality in such an environment, we first demonstrate the necessity of adapting to both the source and channel dynamic information at the source encoding side using a combination of adaptive packetization and adaptive intra-updating. We then describe the implementation of an adaptive source encoder which can adaptively adjust its packetization scheme and intra-updating rate according to both the source motion information and channel feedback. Motion information is estimated by an exponential weighted moving average (EWMA) approach and channel feedback is provided by RTCP return packets. Finally, we demonstrate the advantages of exploiting source/channel dynamic information through selected simulation results. However, we show that imperfect channel feedback can sometimes be detrimental to system performance.
Estimating larval fish ingestion rates: can laboratory derived values be reliably extrapolated to the wild?

We used literature data to compare the relative influences of body size, water temperature, food density and experimental method on laboratory derived estimates of the ingestion rates of marine fish larvae. We subsequently used these results to evaluate whether larval feeding rates in nature are likely to be food-limited. Larval dry weight, temperature and food density explained 85 % of the variance in the laboratory derived ingestion rates of 11 species. After removing the effects of larval size and water temperature on ingestion rates, larval functional response was steepest at food densities < 185 pg 1 l ; beyond this level, ingestion rates were independent of food density. A conlparison of the laboratory functional response with natural microzooplankton densities shows that (1) larvae are unlikely to feed at maximal rates in the sea; (2) larval feeding rates are most sensitive to changes in food abundance across the range of food densities that are most likely to occur in nature (median = 31 pg 1-'; 90th percentile = 148 pg I-'; N = 46). However, in situ ingestion rate estimates for 8 species of marine fish larvae indicate that these larvae fed at rates independent of food density and near-maximally, despite relatively low food densities. We conclude that this difference between in situ and laboratory estimates of ingestion rates as a function of prey density results primarily from the failure of most integrated census estimates of prey density to adequately represent the real contact rate of larvae with their prey and the failure of most laboratory experimental designs to incorporate relevant variables known to influence prey encounter rates and selection. Integrated measures of in situ prey abundance and most experimental designs fail to account for small-scale temporal and spatial patchiness in the dstributions of larvae and their prey, for various aspects of larval behaviour, and for water-column turbulence.
Interaction Between Gravity Compensation Suspension System and Deployable Structure

Gravity compensation suspension systems are essential to support space structures during tests on Earth, but also impose constraints on the structures that have the effect of changing their behavior. A computational and experimental study of the interaction of a rigid panel solar array model with a manually adjustable suspension system during quasi-static deployment tests in the 1-g environment of the laboratory is presented. A methodology is established for modeling this interaction, for predicting the effects of suspension system adjustments, and for optimization of the suspension system through these adjustments. Some improvements can be achieved by manual adjustments, but further optimization requires an active system.
WVD2 and WDL1 Modulate Helical Organ Growth and Anisotropic Cell Expansion in Arabidopsis1 212

Wild-type Arabidopsis roots develop a wavy pattern of growth on tilted agar surfaces. For many Arabidopsis ecotypes, roots also grow askew on such surfaces, typically slanting to the right of the gravity vector. We identified a mutant, wvd2-1, that displays suppressed root waving and leftward root slanting under these conditions. These phenotypes arise from transcriptional activation of the novel WAVE-DAMPENED2(WVD2) gene by the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter in mutant plants. Seedlings overexpressing WVD2 exhibit constitutive right-handed helical growth in both roots and etiolated hypocotyls, whereas the petioles of WVD2-overexpressing rosette leaves exhibit left-handed twisting. Moreover, the anisotropic expansion of cells is impaired, resulting in the formation of shorter and stockier organs. In roots, the phenotype is accompanied by a change in the arrangement of cortical microtubules within peripheral cap cells and cells at the basal end of the elongation zone. WVD2transcripts are detectable by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction in multiple organs of wild-type plants. Its predicted gene product contains a conserved region named “KLEEK,” which is found only in plant proteins. The Arabidopsis genome possesses seven other genes predicted to encode KLEEK-containing products. Overexpression of one of these genes, WVD2-LIKE 1, which encodes a protein with regions of similarity to WVD2 extending beyond the KLEEK domain, results in phenotypes that are highly similar towvd2-1. Silencing of WVD2 and its paralogs results in enhanced root skewing in the wild-type direction. Our observations suggest that at least two members of this gene family may modulate both rotational polarity and anisotropic cell expansion during organ growth.
Detection of α‐fetoprotein mRNA, an indicator of hematogenous spreading hepatocellular carcinoma, in the circulation: A possible predictor of metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma

We attempted to detect circulating hepatocellular carcinoma by demonstrating hepatocyte‐associated mRNA in the nuclear cell component of peripheral blood using nested reverse transcription—polymerase chain reaction because of the extremely small number of tumor cells in the circulation. Albumin mRNA was demonstrated not only in the liver tissue (hepatocytes) and HepG2 cells but also in nuclear cells of the blood from normal healthy volunteers (neutrophils and lymphocytes) by reverse transcription—polymerase chain reaction. In contrast, α‐fetoprotein mRNA was demonstrated in the liver tissue, as well as in HepG2 cells, but not in peripheral blood of normal healthy volunteers, indicating the possibility of using α‐fetoprotein mRNA for detection of benign and malignant hepatocytes among the population of neutrophils and lymphocytes. α‐Fetoprotein mRNA in peripheral blood was detected in 17 of 33 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma (52%), 2 of 13 cases of cirrhosis (15%) and 2 of 17 cases of chronic hepatitis (12%). α‐Fetoprotein mRNA was not demonstrated in 26 cases of normal healthy volunteers (0%). Among the patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, total volume of tumor tissue, maximum size of tumor and serum α‐fetoprotein level were markedly increased in the patients with α‐fetoprotein mRNA in blood. In addition, α‐fetoprotein mRNA was detected in the blood of all 6 patients showing metastasis at extrahepatic organs (100%), in contrast to 11 of 27 cases without metastasis (41%). From these results, we conclude that the presence of α‐fetoprotein mRNA in peripheral blood may be an indicator of circulating malignant or benign hepatocytes, which might predict hematogenous spreading metastasis of tumor cells in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. (Hepatology 1994;20:1418–1425).
Dual Cell HSDPA Application Performance

Dual Cell HSDPA (DC-HSDPA), which was introduced in Release 8 of the WCDMA specifications, enables the User Equipment (UE) to receive downlink data on two adjacent carriers simultaneously. Although the user physical layer throughput is expected to double compared to a single carrier HSDPA (SC-HSDPA) system, it is not quite clear how this would translate to user experience for realistic applications in various operating scenarios, i.e. channel conditions and loading. We implemented DC- HSDPA functionality in a prototype and evaluated its performance for various applications in comparison with SC-HSDPA. Our results show that, with DC-HSDPA, realistic applications such as web browsing and video streaming see significant gains in lab as well as OTA environments compared to SC-HSDPA with or without loading due to other users. Our results also highlight the ability of DC-HSDPA UEs to improve application performance by taking advantage of uneven loading across carriers, which may result due to UEs operating on a single carrier.
The Domestic Environment and Respiratory Health of School Children in Zongshan, China

There have been many reports on the adverse impacts of exposures to particulate matter in the air but relatively few of these have been related to exposures to ultrafine particles (UFP) in the indoor environment. To investigate exposures to (UFP) in domestic environments, and the association with childhood respiratory symptoms in Zongshan, China a modified Thoracic Society questionnaire was completed by 359 households with children. Air quality monitoring took place in 37 households using a P-Trak instrument to determine concentration of UFPs in rooms. The mean number of UFP was 4.1 × 104 cm−3. A range of factors was found to be associated with UFP concentration and self-reported childhood respiratory symptoms. In conclusion, the evidence suggests that behavioural and environmental factors contribute to increased UFP concentrations indoors although there was no statistically signification correlation between indoor ultrafine particle concentration and any reported repeated episodes of respiratory symptoms.
Identification of a Minimal Size Requirement for Termination of Vesicular Stomatitis Virus mRNA: Implications for the Mechanism of Transcription

ABSTRACT The nonsegmented negative-strand RNA (NNS) viruses have a single-stranded RNA genome tightly encapsidated by the viral nucleocapsid protein. The viral polymerase transcribes the genome responding to specific gene-start and gene-end sequences to yield a series of discrete monocistronic mRNAs. These mRNAs are not produced in equimolar amounts; rather, their abundance reflects the position of the gene with respect to the single 3′-proximal polymerase entry site. Promoter-proximal genes are transcribed in greater abundance than more distal genes due to a localized transcriptional attenuation at each gene junction. In recent years, the application of reverse genetics to the NNS viruses has allowed an examination of the role of the gene-start and gene-end sequences in regulating mRNA synthesis. These studies have defined specific sequences required for initiation, 5′ modification, termination, and polyadenylation of the viral mRNAs. In the present report, working with Vesicular stomatitis virus, the prototypic Rhabdovirus, we demonstrate that a gene-end sequence must be positioned a minimal distance from a gene-start sequence for the polymerase to efficiently terminate transcription. Gene-end sequences were almost completely ignored in transcriptional units less than 51 nucleotides. Transcriptional units of 51 to 64 nucleotides allowed termination at the gene-end sequence, although the frequency with which polymerase failed to terminate and instead read through the gene-end sequence to generate a bicistronic transcript was enhanced compared to the observed 1 to 3% for wild-type viral mRNAs. In all instances, failure to terminate at the gene end prevented initiation at the downstream gene start site. In contrast to this size requirement, we show that the sequence between the gene-start and gene-end signals, or its potential to adopt an RNA secondary structure, had only a minor effect on the efficiency with which polymerase terminated transcription. We suggest three possible explanations for the failure of polymerase to terminate transcription in response to a gene-end sequence positioned close to a gene-start sequence which contribute to our emerging picture of the mechanism of transcriptional regulation in this group of viruses.
A somatic marker perspective of immoral and corrupt behavior

Individuals who engage in corrupt and immoral behavior are in some ways similar to individuals with psychopathy. Normal people refrain from engaging in such behaviors because they tie together the moral value of society and the risk of punishment when they violate social rules. What is it, then, that allows these immoral individuals to behave in this manner, and in some situations even to prosper? When there is a dysfunction of somatic markers, specific disadvantageous impairments in decision-making arise, as in moral judgment, but, paradoxically, under some circumstances, the damage can cause the patient to make optimal financial investment decisions. Interestingly, individuals with psychopathy, a personality disorder, share many of the same behavioral characteristics seen in VMPFC and amygdala lesion patients, suggesting that defective somatic markers may serve as a neural framework for explaining immoral and corrupt behaviors. While these sociopathic behaviors of sometimes famous and powerful individuals have long been discussed, primarily within the realm of social science and psychology, here we offer a neurocognitive perspective on the possible neural roots of immoral and corrupt behaviors.
Association of PLA 2 G 4 A with myocardial infarction is modulated by dietary PUFAs 1 – 3

Background: Leukotrienes are proinflammatory molecules derived from dietary PUFAs and have been associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD). We previously reported that an A/G variant (rs12746200) of the cytosolic phospholipase A2 group IVA gene (PLA2G4A), which encodes the enzyme that liberates PUFAs from cellular membranes for leukotriene synthesis, decreases the risk of CVD. Objective: We sought to replicate these initial observations with a more clinically relevant phenotype, such as myocardial infarction (MI), and to determine whether dietary PUFAs mediate this association. Design: In a Costa Rican case-control data set (n = 3971), rs12746200 was genotyped and was tested for an association with MI. Functional experiments were carried out to determine whether rs12746200 led to differences in mRNA expression. Results: Risk of MI was significantly lower in AG/GG subjects than in AA homozygotes (OR: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.75, 0.99; P = 0.040). The reduced risk of MI was observed primarily in AG/GG subjects who were above the median for intake of dietary omega-6 (n26) PUFAs (OR: 0.71; 95% CI: 0.59, 0.87; P-interaction = 0.005). A similar analysis with dietary omega-3 (n23) PUFAs did not show a statistically significant nutrigenetic association (P-interaction = 0.23). Functional analysis in human aortic endothelial cells showed that the carriers of the G allele had significantly lower PLA2G4A gene expression (P = 0.014), consistent with the atheroprotective association of this variant. Conclusion: These results replicate the association of rs12746200 with CVD phenotypes and provide evidence that the protective association of this functional PLA2G4A variant is mediated by dietary PUFAs. Am J Clin Nutr doi: 10.3945/ajcn.111. 032094.
Deep Boltzmann Regression With Mimic Features for Oscillometric Blood Pressure Estimation

Oscillometric blood pressure (BP) devices are among the standard automatic monitors, now readily available for the home, office, and hospital. The systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) are obtained at fixed ratios of the envelope of the maximum amplitude of the oscillometric wave signal. However, these fixed ratios can cause overestimation or underestimation of the real SBP and DBP in oscillometric BP measurements. In this paper, we propose a new regression technique using a deep Boltzmann regression with mimic features based on the bootstrap technique to learn the complex nonlinear relationships between the mimic features vectors acquired from the oscillometric signals and the target BPs. The performance of the proposed model is compared with those of conventional and auscultatory techniques. Our regression model with mimic features provides lower standard deviation of error, mean error, mean absolute error, and standard error of estimates than the conventional techniques, along with a similar fit for the SBP and DBP.
Robust classification of motor imagery EEG signals using statistical time–domain features

The tradeoff between computational complexity and speed, in addition to growing demands for real-time BMI (brain–machine interface) systems, expose the necessity of applying methods with least possible complexity. Willison amplitude (WAMP) and slope sign change (SSC) are two promising time–domain features only if the right threshold value is defined for them. To overcome the drawback of going through trial and error for the determination of a suitable threshold value, modified WAMP and modified SSC are proposed in this paper. Besides, a comprehensive assessment of statistical time–domain features in which their effectiveness is evaluated with a support vector machine (SVM) is presented. To ensure the accuracy of the results obtained by the SVM, the performance of each feature is reassessed with supervised fuzzy C-means. The general assessment shows that every subject had at least one of his performances near or greater than 80%. The obtained results prove that for BMI applications, in which a few errors can be tolerated, these combinations of feature–classifier are suitable. Moreover, features that could perform satisfactorily were selected for feature combination. Combinations of the selected features are evaluated with the SVM, and they could significantly improve the results, in some cases, up to full accuracy.