Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic Detection of Syllable Boundaries Combining the Advantages of Treebank and Bracketed Corpora Training

An approach to automatic detection of syllable boundaries is presented. We demonstrate the use of several manually constructed grammars trained with a novel algorithm combining the advantages of treebank and bracketed corpora training. We investigate the effect of the training corpus size on the performance of our system. The evaluation shows that a hand-written grammar performs better on finding syllable boundaries than does a treebank grammar.
Clinical aspects of infertile 47,XYY patients: a retrospective study

Abstract 47,XYY syndrome is a sex chromosomal anomaly in men, which may be associated with infertility and has an incidence of 0.1% of male births. The clinical and paraclinical characteristics of men suffering from this anomaly have not been fully described. In this retrospective study, we present 37 cases of 47,XYY infertile men with sperm counts varying from normal to azoospermia, referred to the Genetics Laboratory at the Royan Institute, Iran. Thirteen individuals were mosaic and 24 non-mosaics. Non-mosaic patients were classified as azoospermic (nine cases) and normospermic/oligozoospermic men (15 cases). Two of the non-mosaic and three mosaic patients had secondary infertility. In addition, 13 of them underwent IUI, IVF or ICSI, and in seven cases, there was a biochemical pregnancy. The remaining 14 patients did not have ART. The 47,XYY syndrome is relatively unusual and can be missed clinically because of the lack of symptoms and of diverse phenotypes. Diagnosis of this aneuploidy can provide valuable data for counselling and early management of the patients who undergo fertility evaluation.
Computationally-Tractable Approximate PHD and CPHD Filters for Superpositional Sensors

In this paper we derive computationally-tractable approximations of the Probability Hypothesis Density (PHD) and Cardinalized Probability Hypothesis Density (CPHD) filters for superpositional sensors with Gaussian noise. We present implementations of the filters based on auxiliary particle filter approximations. As an example, we present simulation experiments that involve tracking multiple targets using acoustic amplitude sensors and a radio-frequency tomography sensor system. Our simulation study indicates that the CPHD filter provides promising tracking accuracy with reasonable computational requirements.
The Utah paradigm of skeletal physiology: what is it?

Summary An elegant design stratagem for an organ intended to carry loads for life without fracturing, rupturing or wearing out would make those loads determine the organ's strength. It seems load-bearing mammalian bones, joints, fascia, ligaments and tendons do exactly that. Physiologists begin to understand how they do it, and that led to the Utah paradigm of skeletal physiology. Those adaptations occur in two major steps. The first step creates the genetically predetermined newborn skeleton with its anatomical relationships and biologic machinery. The second step adds to the first one all postnatal adaptations to mechanical and other challenges that would affect an organ's strength, size, architecture and composition. During postnatal growth, increasing loads make tissue-level biologic mechanisms correspondingly increase the strength of such organs. Mechanical strain-dependent signals help to control that process, which muscle strength, muscle anatomy and neuromuscular physiology strongly influence. Its problems seem to cause or help to cause numerous skeletal and some extraskeletal disorders. A Table in the article lists examples of them. This article summarizes salient features of the Utah paradigm, which includes both facts and some meanings inferred from them. Other times and people must resolve any questions about those meanings and about the devils that can lie in the details. Parenthetically, instead of the accuracy of the facts on which that paradigm stands, the above questions usually concern the different meanings people can infer from facts, and whether particular facts and ideas would be relevant to a particular issue.
Competing basal ganglia pathways determine the difference between stopping and deciding not to go

The architecture of corticobasal ganglia pathways allows for many routes to inhibit a planned action: the hyperdirect pathway performs fast action cancellation and the indirect pathway competitively constrains execution signals from the direct pathway. We present a novel model, principled off of basal ganglia circuitry, that differentiates control dynamics of reactive stopping from intrinsic no-go decisions. Using a nested diffusion model, we show how reactive braking depends on the state of an execution process. In contrast, no-go decisions are best captured by a failure of the execution process to reach the decision threshold due to increasing constraints on the drift rate. This model accounts for both behavioral and functional MRI (fMRI) responses during inhibitory control tasks better than alternative models. The advantage of this framework is that it allows for incorporating the effects of context in reactive and proactive control into a single unifying parameter, while distinguishing action cancellation from no-go decisions. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.08723. 001
Asymmetry of Daily Temperature Records

The authors study the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis temperature records and find that surface daily mean temperature cools rapidly and warms gradually at the midlatitudes (around 40°N and 40°S). This “asymmetry” is partially related to the midlatitude cyclone activity, in which cold fronts are significantly faster and steeper than warm fronts, and to intrusions of cold air. The gradual warming may be attributed also to the radiative relaxation to average atmospheric conditions after the passage of cold fronts or other intrusions of cold air. At the high latitudes there is an opposite asymmetry with rapid warming and gradual cooling; this asymmetry may be attributed to the radiative relaxation to average cold atmospheric conditions after the passage of warm fronts or intrusions of warm air.
Catching the Wily Hacker: A multilayer deception system

In recent years, enterprises have been facing a growing number of highly customized attacks using sophisticated techniques that seek to compromise important company assets. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer deception system that provides an in depth defense against such sophisticated attacks. Specifically, based on previous knowledge and patterns of such attacks, we model the attacker as trying to compromising an enterprise network via multiple stages of penetration and propose defenses at each of these layers using deception based detection. We present a proof of concept implementation of one of the key deception methods proposed. Due to various financial constraints of an enterprise, we model the design of the deception system as an optimization problem in order to minimize the expected losses due to system deployment and asset compromise.
mTOR signaling plays a critical role in the defects observed in muscle‐derived stem/progenitor cells isolated from a murine model of accelerated aging

Mice expressing reduced levels of ERCC1‐XPF (Ercc1−/Δ mice) demonstrate premature onset of age‐related changes due to decreased repair of DNA damage. Muscle‐derived stem/progenitor cells (MDSPCs) isolated from Ercc1−/Δ mice have an impaired capacity for cell differentiation. The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a critical regulator of cell growth in response to nutrient, hormone, and oxygen levels. Inhibition of the mTOR pathway extends the lifespan of several species. Here, we examined the role of mTOR in regulating the MDSPC dysfunction that occurs with accelerated aging. We show that mTOR signaling pathways are activated in Ercc1−/Δ MDSPCs compared with wild‐type (WT) MDSPCs. Additionally, inhibiting mTOR with rapamycin promoted autophagy and improved the myogenic differentiation capacity of the Ercc1−/Δ MDSPCs. The percent of apoptotic and senescent cells in Ercc1−/Δ MDSPC cultures was decreased upon mTOR inhibition. These results establish that mTOR signaling contributes to stem cell dysfunction and cell fate decisions in response to endogenous DNA damage. Therefore, mTOR represents a potential therapeutic target for improving defective, aged stem cells. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Orthopaedic Research Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Orthopaedic Research Society. J Orthop Res 35:1375–1382, 2017.
Validation of Two Instruments to Assess Technical Bronchoscopic Skill Using Virtual Reality Simulation

Background: In an era of increased emphasis on patient safety and competency-based education, demonstration of significant variability in the teaching of flexible bronchoscopy has led to initiatives for new standardized curricula and assessment tools. Objectives: To evaluate the efficacy of such curricula and to assess bronchoscopic skill, 2 measuring instruments have been developed: the Bronchoscopy Skills and Tasks Assessment Tool (BSTAT) and the Bronchoscopy Step-by-Step Evaluation Tool (BSET). We studied the validity and reliability of these 2 instruments. Methods: Two independent testers simultaneously scored 22 volunteer participants at 3 levels [novice (n = 7), fellow (n = 8) and attending (n = 7)] on a virtual reality bronchoscopy simulator using the 2 instruments; each participant was tested twice, in 2 separate sessions. Intertester and test-retest reliability were analyzed with intraclass correlations (ICC); ANOVA was used to assess concurrent validity based on the subjects’ expected skill level. Results: The ICCs between the testers were 0.98 for both the BSTAT and BSET. Comparison of the scores between the sessions showed high test-retest reliability by ICC (0.86 and 0.85 for BSTAT and BSET respectively), with a small yet statistically significant learning effect. The novice group’s scores were lower than the fellows’ and attendings’ (p < 0.001) for both the BSTAT and BSET; the fellows’ scores were consistently lower than the attendings’ on both tests, yet the differences were not statistically significant. Conclusion: This validation study of 2 objective tests of bronchoscopic skill demonstrated high reliability and concurrent validity. These instruments can now be used to evaluate the effectiveness of new competency-based bronchoscopy curricula.
What Determines Behavioral Decisions? Comparing the Role of Covariation Information and Attributions

This study investigated whether behavioral decisions (e.g., persistence, help seeking) are influenced by covariation information and if this influence is mediated by attributions. In Experiment 1, participants belonging to different age groups received covariation information, and causal attributions as well as behavioral-reaction decisions were assessed. Experiment 1 replicated the often-documented influence of covariation information on attributions. Furthermore, it revealed that covariation information affects behavioral decisions more strongly, and developmentally earlier, than do attributions. In Experiment 2, participants were provided with conflicting covariation information and attributions. Covariation information had a stronger impact on reaction decisions than attributions. Experiment 3 again provided participants with covariation information and assessed attributions and behavioral choices, as well as reaction times. Participants provided with covariation information needed less time to choose behavioral reactions than to choose attributions. We conclude that behavioral decisions can be directly determined by covariation information without attributional mediation.
Sustainable School Indicators: Approaching the Vision Through the Sustainable School Award

Abstract The Sustainable School Award is a project for schools that aims to integrate a sustainability perspective into all aspects of school life through sustainable school indicators. It complies with the implementation strategy of the International Plan of Action of the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) and the Strategy of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). In this paper, we present the vision of a sustainable school and an attempt to connect theory and practice of education for sustainable development in order to approach this vision. A brief report on the first year of the implementation of the project in Greece is also presented.
Describing biomedical document sets in terms of its most distinctive facts

En este articulo proponemos un metodo para describir un conjunto de documentos biomedicos, conceptualmente indexados, a traves de sus hechos mas distintivos. Estos documentos han sido recuperados como soporte de un concepto foco, el cual representa una necesidad de informacion. Los hechos utilizados para la descripcion son unidades de informacion concisas, representadas mediante tripletas con la forma entidad-verbo-entidad. Estos se presentan ordenados por su relevancia con respecto al concepto foco, la cual se calcula usando modelos de lenguajes. Los resultados experimentales, obtenidos sobre tres conjuntos de documentos de una coleccion extraida de MEDLINE, son prometedores.
Expression of pro- and anti-angiogenic isoforms of VEGF is differentially regulated by splicing and growth factors

Vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA; hereafter referred to as VEGF) is a key regulator of physiological and pathological angiogenesis. Two families of VEGF isoforms are generated by alternate splice-site selection in the terminal exon. Proximal splice-site selection (PSS) in exon 8 results in pro-angiogenic VEGFxxx isoforms (xxx is the number of amino acids), whereas distal splice-site selection (DSS) results in anti-angiogenic VEGFxxxb isoforms. To investigate control of PSS and DSS, we investigated the regulation of isoform expression by extracellular growth factor administration and intracellular splicing factors. In primary epithelial cells VEGFxxxb formed the majority of VEGF isoforms (74%). IGF1, and TNFα treatment favoured PSS (increasing VEGFxxx) whereas TGFβ1 favoured DSS, increasing VEGFxxxb levels. TGFβ1 induced DSS selection was prevented by inhibition of p38 MAPK and the Clk/sty (CDC-like kinase, CLK1) splicing factor kinase family, but not ERK1/2. Clk phosphorylates SR protein splicing factors ASF/SF2, SRp40 and SRp55. To determine whether SR splicing factors alter VEGF splicing, they were overexpressed in epithelial cells, and VEGF isoform production assessed. ASF/SF2, and SRp40 both favoured PSS, whereas SRp55 upregulated VEGFxxxb (DSS) isoforms relative to VEGFxxx. SRp55 knockdown reduced expression of VEGF165b. Moreover, SRp55 bound to a 35 nucleotide region of the 3′UTR immediately downstream of the stop codon in exon 8b. These results identify regulation of splicing by growth and splice factors as a key event in determining the relative pro-versus anti-angiogenic expression of VEGF isoforms, and suggest that p38 MAPK-Clk/sty kinases are responsible for the TGFβ1-induced DSS selection, and identify SRp55 as a key regulatory splice factor.
Multiple glycoproteins synthesized by the smallest RNA segment (S10) of bluetongue virus

The genome of bluetongue virus, an orbivirus, consists of 10 double-stranded RNAs, each encoding at least one polypeptide. The smallest RNA segment (S10) encodes two minor nonstructural proteins, NS3 and NS3A, the structures and functions of which are not understood. We have expressed these two proteins in mammalian cells by using the T7 cytoplasmic transient expression system. Using a deletion mutant (lacking the first AUG initiation codon), we have demonstrated that the second initiation codon is used to initiate the synthesis of NS3A protein and that the two initiation codons are responsible for the synthesis not only of NS3 and NS3A but also of high-molecular-weight forms of both proteins. These higher-molecular-weight forms (GNS3 and GNS3A) are glycosylated. We have also demonstrated that the carbohydrate chains of GNS3 and GNS3A could be further modified by heterogeneous extension to polylactosaminoglycan forms. The glycosylated and nonglycosylated forms are found in similar intracellular locations in the Golgi complex. In the presence of cycloheximide, NS3 and NS3A immunofluorescence staining was pronounced in the Golgi complex, confirming that NS3 and NS3A are competent for transport to the Golgi apparatus after synthesis. We conclude that S10 gene products are integral membrane glycoproteins.
Active ground vehicle control with use of a super-twisting algorithm in the presence of parameter variations

In this paper, we consider a vehicle equipped with active front steer and rear torque vectoring. While the former adds an incremental steer angle to the driver's input, the latter imposes a torque by means of the rear axle. The active front steer control is actuated through the front tires, while the rear torque vectoring can be actuated through the rear tires. A nonlinear controller using the super-twisting algorithm is designed in order to track in finite time lateral and yaw angular velocity references. We consider one estimation method, given in the literature, to estimate the tire-road coefficient, and we design a dynamic controller to estimate the perturbing terms due to the vehicle's mass and inertia variations, and due to the variation of the tire parameters. Comparisons with a simple PI-based controller are done, and some simulation results highlight the advantages of the proposed controller.
The nature of the frog skin potential.

Summary. 1. The outside of the isolated frog skin in the absence of penetrating anions behaves over a wide range of concentrations as a sodium electrode, while the inward-facing surface behaves like a potassium electrode. 2. A theory concerning the origin of the frog skin potential is put forward based on these observations and the assumption that the active transport of sodium is located at the inward-facing membrane of the epithelial cells. 3. Reasons are given for the hypothesis that the active transport of sodium in reality is a forced exchange of sodium against potassium.
Novel Capacitorless Single-Transistor Charge-Trap DRAM (1T CT DRAM) Utilizing Electrons

For the first time, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel single-transistor(1T) DRAM: Capacitorless Single-Transistor Charge-Trap DRAM (1T CT DRAM). The memory operation is obtained by engineering the body of the transistor with CTs by creating intentional electron-trapping zones. This memory makes use of charge traps and uses the existence or absence of electrons in its body instead of holes that are conventionally used in 1T DRAMs whose operation depends on floating-body effects. The DRAM operation is experimentally demonstrated.
Revisiting a role for a mammary tumor retrovirus in human breast cancer

There remains great controversy as to whether mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV), the etiological agent of mammary cancer in mice, or a closely related human retrovirus, plays a role in the development of breast cancer in humans. On one hand, retroviruses such as human T‐cell lymphotropic virus and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are known causative agents of cancer (in the case of HIV, albeit, indirectly), but attempts to associate other retroviruses with human cancers have been difficult. A recent, high profile, example has been the postulated involvement of another mouse virus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus‐related virus, in human prostate cancer, which is now thought to be due to contamination. Here, we review some of the more recent evidence for and against the involvement of MMTV in human breast cancer and suggest future studies that may allow a definitive answer to this conundrum.
Transforming the Pain: A Workbook on Vicarious Traumatization

In your profession, do you help or work with people who have been traumatized? Do you listen to stories of abuse, suffering, or trauma from your clients every day? If so, you know it is important to hear and bear witness to trauma survivors' experiences and not be changed. You know firsthand the personal cost of the work you do and the struggle to make sense of powerful, often painful, feelings and altered beliefs. This transformation of a helper's inner experience is called vicarious traumatization (VT); it is an inescapable effect of trauma work. Transforming the Pain is the first workbook to address VT. It is designed to take care of the helper - to help you asses, address, and transform your own VT. Authors Karen W. Saakvitne and Laurie Anne Pearlman define and describesthe VT process and offer reassurance that you are not alone with these painful experiences. The book includes self-assessment worksheets, and guidelines and specific exercises for addressing VT and improving self-care. It is designed to be used by a wide range of professionals and paraprofessionals, including, but not limited to, therapists, police, medical personnel, crisis workers, and clergy. After working with Transforming the Pain, you will find that you have a new awareness of the ways your work affects your life as well as new skills and tools for improving your emotional well-being.
Multi hypothesis parameter tracking in relative time of arrival

The passive non-cooperative localization and tracking of mobile terminals in urban scenarios, called blind mobile localization (BML), is a highly demanding task which occurs for instance in safety, emergency and security applications. In BML the measurement set consists out of several multipaths which are usually parametrized by their direction of arrival (DoA) and their relative time of arrival (RToA). Clutter multipaths can occur due to obstacles like pedestrians, cars, etc. near the receiver side. If a clutter multipath is received before the first measurement of a target, i.e., if it possesses a negative RToA compared to the target related measurements, the computation of the particular likelihood function is deteriorated and thus the accuracy of any BML fusion algorithm decreases. In this paper a pre-processing of the measurement set by an application of a multi-hypothesis tracking (MOT) in the parameter space is proposed. Therefore, two extensions of the MOT-approach processing additional global clutter hypothesis are derived. Finally, a ray-tracing simulation is used to numerically assess the proposed methods for different clutter levels in terms of the optimal subpattern assignment (OSPA) metric.
A precise model for contextual roles: The programming language ObjectTeams/Java

A number of proposals exist concerning how to support the concept of roles at the level of programming languages. While some of these proposals indeed exhibit very promising properties, the concept of roles has not found its way into mainstream programming languages. We argue that this is due to the richness of the concept of roles and the fact that each existing proposal focuses on some aspects of roles while neglecting others. We present the programming language ObjectTeams/Java and using the categories of Steimann (2000) we demonstrate that this language covers more aspects of roles than previous approaches. We suggest that a thoroughly defined programming language featuring roles may contribute to a better understanding also in other fields using roles.