Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Dual Representation of Non-binary Semiring-based CSPs

It is well known that any non-binary CSP can be reformulated as a binary CSP. In this paper we show that the same translation methods can be applied in the soft constraints framework. We observe that any non-binary soft constraint CSP can be reformulated as a problem with only binary and unary constraints. Interestingly, the translation leads to binary constraints that are hard (de ne conditions of mandatory satisfaction) and unary constraints that are soft (de ne a preference criterion among the set of solutions). We elaborate our observation in the semiringbased framework.
Sex differences in how a low sensitivity to alcohol relates to later heavy drinking.

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS A low level of response (LR), or low sensitivity, to alcohol is a genetically influenced characteristic that predicts future heavy drinking and alcohol problems. While previous analyses of how LR relates to heavier drinking reported the process is similar in males and females, some potential sex differences have been identified. This difference is further explored in these analyses. DESIGN AND METHODS Prospective structural equation models (SEMs) were evaluated for 183 young adult females and 162 males, none of Asian background, from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism. Invariance analyses and SEM evaluations by sex were used to compare across females and males for these primarily Caucasian (75%), non-Asian young (mean age 19) subjects. RESULTS The prospective SEM for the full set of 345 subjects had good fit characteristics and explained 37% of the variance. While the initial invariance analyses identified few sex differences, comparisons of correlations and direct evaluations of path coefficients across males and females indicated that only females showed a link between a low LR and future alcohol problems that was partially mediated by more positive alcohol expectancies and drinking to cope. These sex differences were reflected in the different structures of the SEM results for female versus male subjects. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS These prospective results indicate that there might be some important sex differences regarding how a lower LR relates to alcohol outcomes that should be considered in protocols focusing on preventing the impact of LR on future drinking problems.
Introduction: Genes, cognition and neuropsychiatry

Numerous genes modulate dopamine and consequently prefrontal cortical function. Some of these genes – notably catechol-O-methyltransferase – have been shown to impact a variety of core cognitive processes that are dependent upon the prefrontal cortex. This demonstration that a single functional polymorphism can contribute so dramatically to individual differences heralds a new era for neuropsychiatry. Although enormous detail remains to be discovered about these various genes that regulate neurotransmitters, how they interact and how they affect brain systems, there is much excitement and promise regarding new neuropsychopharmacological possibilities. However, this new research program is magnitudes more complex than any enterprise embarked on hitherto and requires the development, validation and deployment of novel behavioural and neurophysiological phenotypes in order to unravel the pathologies within neural functional systems. This research foundation is essential if these genetic breakthroughs are to be translated to successful clinical agents.
Is Eradication of the Pinewood Nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus) Likely? An Evaluation of Current Contingency Plans

The pinewood nematode (PWN) is one of the worst tree‐killing exotic pests in East‐Asian countries. The first European record of establishment in Portugal in 1999 triggered extensive surveys and contingency plans for eradication in European countries, including immediate removal of large areas of conifer host trees. Using Norway as an example, we applied a simulation model to evaluate the chance of successful eradication of a hypothetical introduction by the current contingency plan in a northern area where wilting symptoms are not expected to occur. Despite a highly variable spread of nematode infestations in space and time, the probability of successful eradication in 20 years was consistently low (mean 0.035, SE 0.02). The low success did not change significantly by varying the biological parameters in sensitivity analyses (SA), probably due to the late detection of infestations by the survey (mean 14.3 years). SA revealed a strong influence of management parameters. However, a high probability of eradication required unrealistic measures: achieving an eradication probability of 0.99 in 20 years required 10,000 survey samples per year and a host tree removal radius of 8,000 m around each detection point.
Fluctuations of tensile strength and hardness of c-BC2N crystals induced by difference in atomic configuration

At the atomistic level, the physical properties of a material are determined by its structure such as atomic arrangements. Here first-principles calculations were performed to investigate the effect of atomic configuration on the tensile strength and Vickers hardness of cubic-BC2N (c-BC2N) crystals. Depending on the degree of mixture between diamond and c-BN, the tensile strength of c-BC2N crystals can vary drastically from 27 to 77 GPa. The magnitude of the Vickers hardness fluctuations (∼10 GPa) is also comparable to the experimental difference (∼14 GPa). Thus, atomic-scale characterization of c-BC2N crystal structures may unveil the discrepancy of the measured Vickers hardness in experiments, and uncover the obvious differences of tensile strength described in theoretical calculations.
Dexmedetomidine does not improve patient satisfaction when compared with propofol during mechanical ventilation*

Objective:Dexmedetomidine (DEX) may provide a sedation level that enables sleep and communication, with less amnesia and pain medication requirements, during mechanical ventilation. Our study directly assessed patient-perceived satisfaction with coronary artery bypass graft surgery after administration of DEX or propofol for intensive care unit (ICU) sedation. Design:Prospective, randomized clinical study with subsequent questionnaire administration. Setting:Tertiary care surgical ICU. Patients:A total of 89 adult, nonemergent, coronary artery bypass graft patients with an expected length of intubation of <24 hrs. Interventions:Patients were randomized to either DEX or propofol; drug administration was performed via standardized anesthesia and nursing protocols. Measurements:Patients reported perceptions of their ICU experience after mechanical ventilation with a modified numerical-scale Hewitt questionnaire, validated specifically for ICU patients. Patients were questioned regarding awareness, recall, generalized comfort, level of pain, ability to interact with healthcare providers and family, feelings of agitation and anxiety, perceived ease of extubation, ability to sleep or rest, and satisfaction with ICU experience. Main Results:Groups were well matched at baseline, with a mean ± sd age of 63.0 ± 10.4 yrs and weight of 88.7 ± 16.7 kg. No difference was observed for length of surgery, length of intubation, or ICU stay (p > .05). DEX patients perceived a shorter length of intubation (p = .044). A deeper sedation level was found in the propofol group (p = .021), with similar morphine and midazolam requirements (p = .317). Patient-rated level of overall awareness as a marker of amnesia did not differ between groups (p = .653). The ability to rest or sleep trended toward significance favoring propofol (p = .051). On evaluation of questionnaire ratings, DEX patients expressed more discomfort (p = .046), pain (p = .096), and sleeping difficulty (p = .036). Similar comfort levels were reported during extubation (p = .179). Conclusions:Despite theoretical advantages of DEX to improve overall patient satisfaction, the two agents provide similar responses to amnesia and pain control. According to our findings, DEX does not seem to have any advantage compared with propofol for short-term sedation after coronary artery bypass graft surgery.
Performance evaluation and enhancement of a link stability based routing protocol for MANETs

In this paper, first we present a performance comparison of Associativity Based Routing (ABR) and Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocols. Delay, throughput and energy consumption are the performance metrics that are used for the comparison. We also carry out scenario based performance evaluation of ABR. We propose a technique to reduce the packet size by changing the mechanics of the protocol, and evaluate the proposed technique considering delay, throughput and energy consumption. We also propose and study a scheduling mechanism (neighbour-state dependent scheduling) that uses the overhead information in ABR routing packets to improve the performance.
An empirical analysis of lexical polarity and contextual valence shifters for opinion classification

This work is concerned with the automatic understanding of evaluative text. We investigate sentence level opinion polarity prediction by assigning lexical polarities and deriving sentence polarity from these with the use of contextual valence shifters. A methodology for iterative failure analysis is developed and used to refine our lexicon and identify new contextual shifters. Algorithms are presented that employ these new shifters to improve sentence polarity prediction accuracy beyond that of a state-of-the-art existing algorithm in the domain of consumer product reviews. We then apply the best configuration of our algorithm to the domain of movie reviews.
Using Materialized Views to Enhance a Traceable P2P Record Exchange Framework

P2P technologies are drawing increasing attention nowadays, and have been widely deployed on the Internet for various purposes. Unlike the traditional client-server architecture, a P2P network allows all computers to communicate and share resources as equals and does not depend on a central server for control. In such an environment, tracing how data is copied between peers and how data modifications are performed are not easy because data replications and modifications are performed independently by autonomous peers. This creates inconsistencies in exchanged information and results in a lack of trustworthiness. To provide reliable and flexible information exchange facility in P2P networks, we have proposed a framework for enabling traceable record exchange . In this framework, a computer can exchange structured records with a predefined schema with other peers. The framework supports a tracing facility to query the lineage of the records obtained. A tracing query is described in Datalog and executed as a recursive query among cooperating peers in a P2P network. In the query execution process, the exchange and modification histories of the queried records are collected dynamically from relevant peers. In this paper, we focus on how to enhance the traceable P2P record exchange framework using materialized views. First, we discuss how to construct materialized views in our framework. Then we present methods for reducing query processing cost and providing fault tolerance using the materialized views.
Developmental Differences in Children's Spontaneous Allocation of Study Time

Abstract Developmental differences in two components of allocation of study time were examined: (1) the ability to allocate more time to more difficult material (i.e., differential allocation), and (b) the ability to allocate sufficient time to meet the recall goal (i.e., sufficient allocation). Children in first, third, and fifth grade were asked to study paired-associate items until they were sure they could recall all the pairs perfectly. The study list consisted of highly related pairs of objects (e.g., bat-ball) and unrelated pairs of objects (e.g., frog-book), classified as easy and hard pairs, respectively. Although first- and third-grade children spent approximately the same amount of study time on hard pairs as they spent on easy pairs, fifth-grade children spontaneously allocated significantly more time to the hard pairs than to the easy pairs. The recall scores for the hard items were far below the criterion, suggesting that children at all ages did not spend a sufficient amount of study time t.
Only Recommend to You : Towards Personalized Models for Question Recommendation in Community Question Answering ⋆

Question Answering communities such as Yahoo! Answers have emerged as a popular medium for online information seeking and knowledge sharing. However, as these QA sites always have thousands of new questions posted daily, it’s time-consuming for users to find the questions that are of interest to them. Some QA sites conduct question recommendation by category filtering. Category filtering is efficient but not very effective. While smart use of non-textual features is crucial in many web services, there has been little research to develop systematic and formal approaches to process these features. To solve the problem, we present a machine learning approach to predict whether a user will be interested in an unsolved question after category filtering. Whether a question is recommended to a user depends on the user’s prior experience, expectations, and personal preferences. We develop personalized models, formalize the problem, and explore a variety of content, structure, and interaction features for this task using standard machine learning techniques. The experimental results show that our approach leads to a better performance than other baseline approaches and increases the F-measure by a factor ranging from 15 to 20%.
Graphics and Scene Text Classification in Video

Achieving good accuracy for text detection and recognition is a challenging and interesting problem in the field of video document analysis because of the presences of both graphics text that has good clarity and scene text that is unpredictable in video frames. Therefore, in this paper, we present a novel method for classifying graphics texts and scene texts by exploiting temporal information and finding the relationship between them in video. The method proposes an iterative procedure to identify Probable Graphics Text Candidates (PGTC) and Probable Scene Text Candidates (PSTC) in video based on the fact that graphics texts in general do not have large movements especially compared to scene texts which are usually embedded on background. In addition to PGTC and PSTC, the iterative process automatically identifies the number of video frames with the help of a converging criterion. The method further explores the symmetry between intra and inter character components to identify graphics text candidates and scene text candidates. Boundary growing method is employed to restore the complete text line. For each segmented text line, we finally introduce Eigen value analysis to classify graphics and scene text lines based on the distribution of respective Eigen values. Experimental results with the existing methods show that the proposed method is effective and useful to improve the accuracy of text detection and recognition.
Molecular phylogenetic analysis of Grifola frondosa (maitake) reveals a species partition separating eastern North American and Asian isolates

A phylogenetic analysis was performed on 51 isolates of the commercially valuable basidiomycete, Grifola frondosa (maitake), using sequences from the Internal Transcribed Spacers and 5.8S region of the nuclear ribosomal DNA (rDNA) and a portion of the β-tubulin gene. The β-tubulin gene provided more than twice as many variable characters as the ITS/5.8S regions. The isolates analyzed comprised 21 from eastern North America, 27 from Asia, one from Europe, and two of unknown geographic origin, one of which was the major US commercial production strain in use. Grifola sordulenta was used as an outgroup. Combined and separate analysis of both genes showed a partition separating Asian versus eastern North American isolates. Bootstrap analysis showed strong support for these clades in the β-tubulin data alone and in the combined data. The major commercial isolate of unknown geographic origin is apparently of Asian descent based on its grouping within the Asian clade. The single European isolate analyzed was distinct from both the eastern North American and Asian clades. These results indicate strong support for a species partition separating eastern North American and Asian isolates of G. frondosa, despite previous studies indicating no morphological distinction between them.
Iron-binding Proteins in Milk and Resistance to Escherichia coli Infection in Infants

Human milk contains large quantities of iron-binding protein, of which the greater proportion is lactoferrin, though small amounts of transferrin are also present. Three samples of human milk with unsaturated iron-binding capacities of between 56 and 89% had a powerful bacteriostatic effect on Escherichia coli O111/B4. The bacteriostatic properties of milk were abolished if the iron-binding proteins were saturated with iron. Purified human lactoferrin, in combination with specific E. coli antibody, strongly inhibited the growth of E. coli, and this effect was also abolished by saturating the lactoferrin with iron. Guinea-pig milk also contains lactoferrin and transferrin. Newly born guinea-pigs fed on an artificial diet and dosed with E. coli O111 had higher counts of E. coli O111 in the intestine than suckled animals. The apparent suppressive effect of guinea-pig milk on E. coli in the intestine could be reversed by feeding the iron compound haematin. It seems that iron-binding proteins in milk may play an important part in resistance to infantile enteritis caused by E. coli.
A Bit-Loading Scheme for V-BLAST Systems with Improved BER Performance

In this paper, a bit-loading scheme is proposed for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) spatial multiplexing systems. Minimization of average bit error rate (BER) criteria is employed under the requirement of total bit rates and equal power allocation to each transmit antenna. Bisection method is utilized to select transmit constellations that make the BER of every transmit substream equal. In contrast to the transmit power allocation scheme, the requirements on the dynamic range of the power amplifiers are reduced in our scheme without the performance loss. Simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme could provide superior performance over the conventional MIMO system.
New directions in nearest neighbor searching with applications to lattice sieving

To solve the approximate nearest neighbor search problem (NNS) on the sphere, we propose a method using locality-sensitive filters (LSF), with the property that nearby vectors have a higher probability of surviving the same filter than vectors which are far apart. We instantiate the filters using spherical caps of height 1 -- α, where a vector survives a filter if it is contained in the corresponding spherical cap, and where ideally each filter has an independent, uniformly random direction. For small α, these filters are very similar to the spherical locality-sensitive hash (LSH) family previously studied by Andoni et al. For larger α bounded away from 0, these filters potentially achieve a superior performance, provided we have access to an efficient oracle for finding relevant filters. Whereas existing LSH schemes are limited by a performance parameter of ρ ≥ 1/(2c2 -- 1) to solve approximate NNS with approximation factor c, with spherical LSF we potentially achieve smaller asymptotic values of ρ, depending on the density of the data set. For sparse data sets where the dimension is super-logarithmic in the size of the data set, we asymptotically obtain ρ = 1/(2c2 -- 1), while for a logarithmic dimensionality with density constant κ we obtain asymptotics of ρ ~ 1/(4κc2). To instantiate the filters and prove the existence of an efficient decoding oracle, we replace the independent filters by filters taken from certain structured random product codes. We show that the additional structure in these concatenation codes allows us to decode efficiently using techniques similar to lattice enumeration, and we can find the relevant filters with low overhead, while at the same time not significantly changing the collision probabilities of the filters. We finally apply spherical LSF to sieving algorithms for solving the shortest vector problem (SVP) on lattices, and show that this leads to a heuristic time complexity for solving SVP in dimension n of (3/2)n/2+o(n) a 20.292n+o(n). This asymptotically improves upon the previous best algorithms for solving SVP which use spherical LSH and cross-polytope LSH and run in time 20.298n+o(n). Experiments with the GaussSieve validate the claimed speedup and show that this method may be practical as well, as the polynomial overhead is small.
Throughput-Optimal Broadcast in Wireless Networks with Point-to-Multipoint Transmissions

We consider the problem of efficient packet dissemination in wireless networks with point-to-multipoint wireless broadcast channels. We propose a dynamic policy, which achieves the broadcast capacity of the network. This policy is obtained by first transforming the original multi-hop network into a precedence-relaxed virtual single-hop network and then finding an optimal broadcasting policy for the relaxed network. The resulting policy is shown to be throughput-optimal for the original wireless network using a sample-path argument. We also prove the NP-completeness of the finite-horizon broadcasting problem, which is in contrast with the polynomial-time solvability of the problem with point-to-point channels. Illustrative simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed broadcast policy in achieving the full broadcast capacity with low delay.
Yeast Upf Proteins Required for RNA Surveillance Affect Global Expression of the Yeast Transcriptome

ABSTRACT mRNAs are monitored for errors in gene expression by RNA surveillance, in which mRNAs that cannot be fully translated are degraded by the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay pathway (NMD). RNA surveillance ensures that potentially deleterious truncated proteins are seldom made. NMD pathways that promote surveillance have been found in a wide range of eukaryotes. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the proteins encoded by the UPF1, UPF2, andUPF3 genes catalyze steps in NMD and are required for RNA surveillance. In this report, we show that the Upf proteins are also required to control the total accumulation of a large number of mRNAs in addition to their role in RNA surveillance. High-density oligonucleotide arrays were used to monitor global changes in the yeast transcriptome caused by loss of UPF gene function. Null mutations in the UPF genes caused altered accumulation of hundreds of mRNAs. The majority were increased in abundance, but some were decreased. The same mRNAs were affected regardless of which of the three UPF gene was inactivated. The proteins encoded byUPF-dependent mRNAs were broadly distributed by function but were underrepresented in two MIPS (Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences) categories: protein synthesis and protein destination. In a UPF+ strain, the average level of expression of UPF-dependent mRNAs was threefold lower than the average level of expression of all mRNAs in the transcriptome, suggesting that highly abundant mRNAs were underrepresented. We suggest a model for how the abundance of hundreds of mRNAs might be controlled by the Upf proteins.