Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
What do web survey panel respondents answer when asked “Do you have any other comment?”

Near the end of a web survey respondents are often asked whether they have additional comments. Such final comments are usually ignored, partially because open-ended questions are more challenging to analyze. A random sample of final comments in the LISS panel and Dutch immigrant panel were categorized into one of nine categories (neutral, positive, multiple subcategories of negative). While few respondents chose to make a final comment, this is more common in the Immigrant panel (5.7%) than in the LISS panel (3.6%). In both panels there are slightly more neutral than negative comments, and very few positive comments. The number of final comments about unclear questions was 2.7 times larger in the immigrant panel than in the LISS panel. The number of final comments complaining about survey length on the other hand was 2.7 times larger in the LISS panel than in the immigrant panel. Researchers might want to consider additional pretesting of questions when fielding a questionnaire in the immigrant panel.
Improved Wiener Filter Algorithm for Speech Enhancement

Most of the existing speech enhancement algorithms are aimed at improving the quality of speech, and the algorithms that can improve the speech intelligibility effectively are rare. Speech intelligibility has been found to improve listening comfort and it is generally related to the distortion of the speech signal closely. Studies have assessed the impact of speech distortion introduced by gain functions and shown that one of the main reasons that existing algorithms cannot improve speech intelligibility is because they allow amplification distortions more than 6dB. Therefore, these distortions of the enhanced amplitude spectrum should be corrected to improve the speech intelligibility. The early research by Loizou et al. obtained the experimental results on the ideal state and we are unable to use it in reality because there is no clean speech in reality. In this paper, we modify the method proposed by Loizou et al. and select the estimated speech under two hypothetical conditions to verify the improvement of the speech intelligibility. The short-term objective intelligibility value verifies the improvement of speech intelligibility as the improved algorithm of speech intelligibility is applied to reality successfully.
WS 4.4 NOM-24 corr

Chemical precipitation in combination with biological treatment is a commonly used method for removal of turbidity and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from drinking water. DOC is largely removed during biological treatment, which includes ozonation and filtration through a biologically active carbon (BAC) filter. Ozone converts humic substances into a biologically labile form that is mineralised by bacteria living in the following BAC filter. This study shows that this approach is often not efficient for removal of DOC from waters with a high amount of humic substances. During chemical treatment, the microbiologically available phosphorus is very efficiently removed, which results in shortages of phosphorus needed for bacteria to mineralise carbon in BAC filters. To enhance removal of DOC by biological treatment, addition of phosphorus prior to the BAC filters should be considered.
Pharmacology and Clinical Activity of Toreforant, A Histamine H4 Receptor Antagonist

Toreforant is a potent and selective histamine H4 receptor (H4R) antagonist with a Ki at the human receptor of 8.4 ± 2.2 nM and excellent selectivity over other receptors including the other histamine receptors. The compound acts as an antagonist in all species tested and inhibits histamine-induced eosinophil shape change in vitro. Toreforant was anti-inflammatory in mouse models of asthma and arthritis. However, it was not able to inhibit histamine-induced scratching in mice or block neuropathic pain in rats. The lack of effect in these models may be related to low exposure levels in the central nervous system. Preclinical toxicity studies of up to 6 months in rats and 9 months in monkeys indicated an excellent safety profile with the exception of QT prolongation seen in vivo due to inhibition of the human ether-à-go-go-related gene (hERG) channel. Toreforant was studied in phase 1 human clinical studies to assess safety, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. The compound was well-tolerated at all doses tested and no safety issues were noted in the phase 1 studies with the exception of QT prolongation observed at the highest dose. Toreforant exhibited good pharmacokinetics upon oral dosing with a plasma half-life consistent with once a day dosing. In addition, dose-dependent inhibition of histamine-induced eosinophil shape change was detected suggesting that the H4R was inhibited in vivo.
No-Go Bounds for Quantum Seals

We investigate the feasibility of quantum seals. A quantum seal is a state provided by Alice to Bob along with information which Bob can use to make a measurement, “break the seal,” and read the classical message stored inside. There are two success criteria for a seal: the probability Bob can successfully read the message without any further information from Alice must be high, and if Alice asks for the state back from Bob, the probability Alice can tell if Bob broke the seal without permission must be high. We build on the work of [Chau, PRA 2007], which gave optimal bounds on these criteria, showing that they are mutually exclusive for high probability. We weaken the assumptions of this previous work by providing Bob with only a classical description of a prescribed measurement, rather than classical descriptions of the possible seal states. We show that this weakening does not affect the bounds but does simplify the analysis. We also prove upper and lower bounds on an alternative operational metric for measuring the success criteria.
Worksite Wellness: Investing in Healthy Employees and Economies

Worksites are structured environments with social norms and policies. These "norms" positively or negatively influence health habits such as physical activity and food choices. This article describes a worksite wellness program conducted and evaluated by Extension. The program demonstrated significant changes in body weight, waist circumference, body mass index, amount of exercise, and stages of change for exercise and intake of fruits and vegetables. This article challenges Extension to partner with employers who have a growing interest in contributing to a healthy work force. Also included are suggestions and tools for conducting worksite wellness programs.
Propagation limit of gaseous detonations governed by yielding confinement and Arrhenius kinetics

The question, namely whether an inviscid-flow simulation can describe the essential propagation mechanism of a gaseous detonation wave, remains baffling. Radulescu argued that turbulence arising from the wave complex associated with a detonation front, i.e., triple-point interaction of shock waves and hydrodynamically unstable slip lines, plays a non-negligible role in the detonation-driving reaction zone. [1] It is conjectured by Radulescu that, as a significant amount of reactive gas is processed by a cellular shock front at an insufficient strength to trigger adiabatic ignition, turbulent transport assists in releasing energy from the resulting large pockets of slowly burning gas. If this conjecture is true, then simulations of an inviscid flow based on the Euler equations, which do not describe transport phenomena, are inadequate to capture the complete mechanism of energy deposition in a detonation-driving zone. For a highly irregular detonatable mixture, a greater amount of weakly shocked gases is present than that arsing from relatively regular mixtures. Following Radulescu’s argument, the energy release of a highly irregular detonation should more rely on turbulent burning, thus, inviscid flow simulations must result in a more inefficient burnout for an increasingly unstable mixture.
Decentralized Learning of Generative Adversarial Networks from Non-iid Data

This work addresses a new problem that learns generative adversarial networks (GANs) from multiple data collections that are each i) owned separately by different clients and ii) drawn from a non-identical distribution that comprises different classes. Given such non-iid data as input, we aim to learn a distribution involving all the classes input data can belong to, while keeping the data decentralized in each client storage. Our key contribution to this end is a new decentralized approach for learning GANs from non-iid data called Forgiver-First Update (F2U), which a) asks clients to train an individual discriminator with their own data and b) updates a generator to fool the most `forgiving' discriminators who deem generated samples as the most real. Our theoretical analysis proves that this updating strategy allows the decentralized GAN to achieve a generator's distribution with all the input classes as its global optimum based on f-divergence minimization. Moreover, we propose a relaxed version of F2U called Forgiver-First Aggregation (F2A) that performs well in practice, which adaptively aggregates the discriminators while emphasizing forgiving ones. Our empirical evaluations with image generation tasks demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach over state-of-the-art decentralized learning methods.
OTT_A_214529 9153..9164

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Basic Medical College of Jiujiang University, Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province 332000, People’s Republic of China Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the regulatory roles of estrogen receptor beta (ERβ) on gastric cancer (GC) cells, and reveal the potential mechanisms relating to nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) signaling. Methods: GC cell lines SGC7901 and MKN45 were transfected with pEGFP-C1-ERβ to overexpress ERβ, and treated with PMA (a NF-κB activator) to activate NF-κB signaling. The cell proliferation and migration, as well as the formation of vessel-like structures in human venous endothelial cells (HUVECs) were detected. The expression of ERβ, NF-κB p65, p-NFκB p65, Ki67 (a proliferation marker), vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) and matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP-2), the DNA binding activity of NF-κB p65, the content of VEGF-A, and the activity of MMP-2 were detected in SGC7901 and MKN45 cells. Results: The transfection of pEGFP-C1-ERβ significantly increased the expression of ERβ in SGC7901 and MKN45 cells (P < 0.05). Overexpression of ERβ in SGC7901 and MKN45 cells significantly decreased the cell activity, cell number in G2/M phase, cell migration, the expression of Ki67, VEGF-A and MMP-2, VEGF-A content, MMP-2 activity, as well as the number of vessel-like structures formed by HUVECs (P < 0.05). Overexpression of ERβ also significantly decreased the DNA binding activity and the expression of p-NF-κB p65 in SGC7901 and MKN45 cells (P < 0.05). The anti-tumor effect of ERβ overexpression on GC cells was reversed by the intervention of PMA (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Overexpression of ERβ inhibited the proliferation, migration, and angiogenesis of GC cells through inhibiting NF-κB signaling.
Description of new species of Myxobolus Bütschli, 1882 and Thelohanellus Kudo, 1933 from the Cirrhinus mrigala Hamilton, 1822 an edible fish of India

Myxobolus Bütschli, 1882 and Thelohanellus Kudo, 1933 are important groups of Myxozoan parasitic protozoa infecting a large number of freshwater fish species worldwide. Myxozoan parasites cause gill myxoboliasis in fishes throughout different geographical areas. The severity of Myxobolus and Thelohanellus infection leads to heavy loss in production of fishes. During the survey of the fish parasites, one species from each of the genus Myxobolus and Thelohanellus which appears to be new have been isolated from the gills of a freshwater edible fish, Cirrhinus mrigala Hamilton, 1822 from West Bengal, India which has been described here. The isolated mature Myxobolus spores have a length of 10. 75μm ±0.23 μm (10.40μm -11.02μm) with a width of 4.90 μm ±0. 19μm (4.59μm -5.20μm). The spore is tear-shaped with anterior end bluntly pointed and greatly rounded posterior end. Towards the anterior portion the spore takes a nearly bottle-neck shaped with a small knob like structure. Both the polar capsules are similar, pear shaped which measures of 4. 86μm ±0. 31μm (4.28μm -5.30μm) in length and width of 2. 05μm ±0. 08μm (1.94μm -2.14μm). The isolated mature Thelohanellus spores have a length of 17. 33μm ±0. 35μm (16.89μm -17.72μm) with a width of 7. 76μm ±0. 21μm (7.46μm -8.02μm). They are elongated tear shaped with bluntly pointed anterior end and rounded posterior end. The single polar capsule measures 13. 34μm ±0. 14μm (13.14μm -13.56μm) in length and width of 4. 68μm ±0. 09μm (4.54μm -4.82μm) and is elongated tear shaped with slightly pointed anterior end.
Fatty acids composition and lipid content from muscle tissue of clam Amiantis umbonella (Bivalve) in the Persian Gulf Coasts (Bushehr)

In this investigation, the muscle tissue of Amiantis umbonella from the coastal waters of Bushehr, Iran in May 2013 were separately extracted for their lipid content especially omega-3 fatty acids composition using the method of Blight & Dyer. The compounds were determined by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GCMS). The components detected in both male and female species. Some of the compounds identified in both sexes, including saturated fatty acids Palmitic acid and Stearic acid, monounsaturated fatty acid Oleic acid, polyunsaturated fatty acid alpha Linolenic acid (ALA), two methyl esters of fatty acids including Octadecanoic acid, methyl ester and Hexadecanoic acid, methyl ester. The dominant fatty acids identified in both sexes were alphaLinolenic acid (ALA) and Palmitic acid. [Rustaiyan A, Samiee K, Ghanbary Bonjar M. Fatty acids composition and lipid content from muscle tissue of clam Amiantis umbonella (Bivalve) in the Persian Gulf Coasts (Bushehr) Life Sci J 2013;184-188] (ISSN: 10978135). http://www.lifesciencesite. com. 31
Chapter 2 Information extraction and ... . surroundings

This chapter is intended to be an overall presentation of Information Extraction (IE) motivation, technology and future trends as they appear in the current scientific scenario. Information Extraction generally refers to automatic approaches to locate important facts in large collections of documents aiming at highlighting specific information to be used for enriching other texts and documents while populating summaries, feeding reports, filling in forms or storing information for further processing (e.g. data mining); the extracted information is usually structured in the form of ‘templates’. The use of IE systems will support the final user reducing the problem of manually analyzing large amounts of texts for identifying specific pieces of information. The chapter is organized in several sections. Following topic Introduction, the historical framework is described in which IE approaches get their motivation and related systems were developed. Within such a framework is described the general architecture for IE systems until now considered valid in many kinds of applications. A key problem for a wide deployment of IE systems is in assessing their flexibility and easy adaptation to new application scenarios. In order to improve such drawbacks, adaptation and portability matters will be discussed. Finally, for exemplification purposes, a few IE systems, developed in the context of European consortia, will be shown.
Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education

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Detonation model using Burgers equation and a pulsed reaction

This study uses a simplified detonation model to investigate the behaviour of detonations with galloping-like pulsations. The reactive Burgers equation is used for the hydrodynamic equation, coupled to a pulsed source whereby all the shocked reactants are simultaneously consumed at fixed time intervals. The model mimics the short periodic amplifications of the shock front followed by relatively lengthy decays seen in galloping detonations. Numerical simulations reveal a saw tooth evolution of the front velocity with a period-averaged detonation speed equal to the Chapman-Jouguet velocity. The detonation velocity exhibits two distinct groups of decay time scales, punctuated by reaction pulses. At each pulse, a rarefaction wave is created at the reaction front's last position. A characteristic investigation reveals that characteristics originating from the head of this rarefaction take 1.57 periods to reach and attenuate the detonation front, while characteristics at the tail take an additional period. The leading characteristics are amplified twice, by passing through the reaction fronts of subsequent pulses, before arriving at the shock front, whilst the trailing characteristics are amplified three times. This leads to the two distinct groups of time scales seen in the detonation front speed.
France Telecom Orange Labs (Beijing) AT MSR-BING CHALLENGE ON IMAGE RETRIEVAL 2013

This study addresses approaches of our team ORANGE for MSR-Bing Image Retrieval Challenge to assess the relevance on a pair of query term and image. Our approaches aim to boos the performance of web scale image retrieval, where images on the initial list (indexed by query term) can be re-ranked based on their relevance. One year BING image retrieval logs are used to develop the relevance assessment system. Several visual features are employed to describe one image. A visual similarity learning algorithm is introduced to train a weighted image similarity. Three runs are submitted for evaluation: “boostLearn”, “fast v1”, “learn RF”.
Electromechanical Analogy Approach to Modeling and Analysis of Air Suspension with Auxiliary Chamber

In order to effectively avoid the complexity and difficulty in analyzing the differential equations during the modeling process of air suspensions with auxiliary air chambers, electromechanical similarity theories were introduced, an equivalent electrical model was developed by analyzing parameters interaction relationship of the parts between electromechanical systems and mechanical system. The electrical model was verified and validated through comparisons and analysis between characteristic tests towards air suspension with auxiliary air chamber and simulation of equivalent electrical model. Based on the proposed electrical model, simulation was conducted to analyze main factors that influence the suspension performance, which could indicate that evaluation indexes of suspension system vary with the volume of auxiliary chamber and damping coefficient of damper. Analysis results show that both the volume of auxiliary chamber and damping coefficient of damper had considerable influence on air suspension performance, and the acceleration of sprung mass falls obviously with the auxiliary chamber increasing. Copyright © 2013 IFSA.
Heavy metal contents of Water, Sediment and Fish from Kpatariver Lokoja, Kogi State-Nigeria

Environmental monitoring for water, sediment and fish samples from Kpata river in Lokoja metropolis Kogi State were monitored for heavy metals ( Pb, Cu, Cd and Cr). Mean concentration of heavy metals in water were Cu (0.110mg/L), Pb (0.000mg/L), Cr (0.043mg/L) and Cd (0.000mg/L) with distribution pattern of Cu > Cr > Pb > Cd. Also the mean concentration of sediments were Cu (0.131mg/kg), Pb (0.992mg/kg), Cr (0.305mg/kg), Cd (0.000mg/kg) with distribution pattern of Pb > Cr > Cu > Cd. The geo-I of the heavy metals in the sediment indicate that all the metals were practically unpolluted. However, the results for the CF of all the heavy metals in the sediment indicate low contamination factor. The geo-I for the metals in the water were practically unpolluted. Whereas the CF of the metals in the water indicate low CF for Pb and Cu, with moderate CF in Cd. Highest concentration of Cu (6.845mg/kg) was recorded in the liver of Bubu fish, while the gill of Cat fish has the highest concentration of Pb (1.832mg/kg). The highest value of Cr (1.133mg/kg) was observed in the gills of Cat fish. Cd was found to be absent in the fish samples. All the values obtained for the heavy metals level in water, sediments and various fish species were below the permissible limit of FAO/WHO.
AN IMPROVED TRACKING METHOD BASED ON KERNELIZED CORRELATION FILTER WITH A UNION FEATURE

Object tracking is one of the most important topics in the computer vision field. Tracking methods using discriminative models are becoming more and more attractive due to their outperformance compared with the ones using the generative models. The kernelized correlation filter based trackers achieve remarkable performance because of its high speed and accuracy, but there are still some limitations needed to be improved. In this paper, a new kernelized correlation filter based tracker using a new union feature is proposed, which is computed by using two feature matrixes of the modified Histogram of Oriented Gradient (fHOG) feature and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) feature to represent the target. The on-line object tracking benchmark is used to evaluate the method proposed in the paper, and the experiment results show that the proposed method can achieve outstanding performance compared with some state-of-the-art methods and the original kernelized correlation filter method, under the scenario that the target has rich texture features.
Kangaroo care for analgesia in preterm infants undergoing heel stick pain.

by XIAOMEI CONG Heelstick is the most common painful procedure in hospitalized premature infants and may be associated with impaired physiological, neurologic and immunologic functioning. The purpose was to examine Kangaroo Care (KC) effect on heelstick pain as measured by the Premature Infant Pain Profile (PIPP) and heart rate variability (HRV) indices. Twenty-eight preterm infants 30-32 weeks gestational age were tested in a crossover design. Fourteen were randomized to group A (incubator heelstick [IH] on day1; KC heelstick [KCH] on day2) and 14 to group B (KCH on day1; IH on day2). The first 18 were tested in an 80-minute protocol and the last 10 in a 30-minute protocol. During the Heel Stick phase, in the 30-min protocol subgroup, PIPP scores were lower in KCH (range 4.00-10.60) than IH (range 9.75-14.33) and the difference between KCH and IH were > 2 points (considered clinically important). Repeated-measures analysis showed that PIPP was lower in KCH than IH at 0.5 minute after the stick in the Total Sample, p < . 05. Infants had an average of 27% less pain in KCH than IH and KC had a large effect on reducing pain. During the Recovery phase, KCH infants had less pain at three time points (p < .05-.001) in the 30-minute protocol subgroup and at 2 time points (p < .05) in the Total