Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TR 09-012 A Unified View of Graph-based Semi-Supervised Learning : Label Propagation , Graph-Cuts , and Embeddings

Recent years have seen a growing number of graph-based semisupervised learning methods. While the literature currently contains several of these methods, their relationships with one another and with other graph-based data analysis algorithms remain unclear. In this paper, we present a unified view of graph-based semi-supervised learning. Our framework unifies three important and seemingly unrelated approaches to semi-supervised learning, viz label propagation, graph cuts and manifold embeddings. We show that most existing label propagation methods solve a special case of a generalized label propagation (GLP) formulation which is a constrained quadratic program involving a graph Laplacian. Different methods arise simply based on the choice of the Laplacian and the nature of the constraints. Further, we show that semi-supervised graph-cut problems can also be viewed and solved as special cases of the GLP formulation. In addition, we show that semi-supervised non-linear manifold embedding methods also solve variants of the GLP problem and propose a novel family of semi-supervised algorithms based on existing embedding methods. Finally, we present comprehensive empirical performance evaluation of the existing label propagation methods as well as the new ones derived from manifold embedding. The new family of embedding based label propagation methods are found to be competitive on several datasets.
Analyzing Real-Time Behavior of Flash Memories

Flash memories are used as the main storage in many portable consumer electronic devices because they are more robust than hard drives. This document gives an overview of existing consumer flash memory technologies which are mostly removable flash memory cards. It discusses to which degree consumer flash devices are suitable for real-time systems and provides a detailed timing analysis of some consumer flash devices. Further, it describes methods to analyze mount times, access performance and timing predictability of flash memories. Important factors which influence access timings of flash memories are pointed out and different flash file systems are evaluated with regard to their suitability for real-time systems. Some remaining problems of existing flash file system implementations concerning real-time use are discussed.
Gender inequalities in the workplace: the effects of organizational structures, processes, practices, and decision makers’ sexism

Gender inequality in organizations is a complex phenomenon that can be seen in organizational structures, processes, and practices. For women, some of the most harmful gender inequalities are enacted within human resources (HRs) practices. This is because HR practices (i.e., policies, decision-making, and their enactment) affect the hiring, training, pay, and promotion of women. We propose a model of gender discrimination in HR that emphasizes the reciprocal nature of gender inequalities within organizations. We suggest that gender discrimination in HR-related decision-making and in the enactment of HR practices stems from gender inequalities in broader organizational structures, processes, and practices. This includes leadership, structure, strategy, culture, organizational climate, as well as HR policies. In addition, organizational decision makers’ levels of sexism can affect their likelihood of making gender biased HR-related decisions and/or behaving in a sexist manner while enacting HR practices. Importantly, institutional discrimination in organizational structures, processes, and practices play a pre-eminent role because not only do they affect HR practices, they also provide a socializing context for organizational decision makers’ levels of hostile and benevolent sexism. Although we portray gender inequality as a self-reinforcing system that can perpetuate discrimination, important levers for reducing discrimination are identified.
IS managers' innovation toward telecommuting: a structural equation model

Telecommuting is the practice of working at some remote location via the use of telecommunications equipment and a personal computer. Since the adoption and acceptance of this practice has not kept pace with other technological innovations, it seems important to investigate the factors affecting this phenomenon. Information Systems (IS) managers were identified as the population to study since they are usually heavily involved in technological decisions. A structural equation model (SEM) was used to test for relationship among the variables under investigation. Several organizational and personal factors were found to be significant in this model.
Calibration-free gaze tracking using a binocular 3D eye model

This paper presents a calibration-free method for estimating the point of gaze (POG) on a display by using two pairs of stereo cameras. By using one pair of cameras and two light sources, the optical axis of the eye and the position of the center of the cornea can be estimated. This estimation is carried out by using a spherical model of the cornea. One pair of cameras is used for the estimation of the optical axis of the left eye, and the other pair is used for the estimation of the optical axis of the right eye. The point of intersection of optical axis with the display is termed the point of the optical axis (POA). The POG is approximately estimated as the midpoint of the line joining POAs of both the eyes with the display. We have developed a prototype system based on this method and demonstrated that the midpoint of POAs was closer to the fiducial point that the user gazed at than each POA.
A generalization of Cahn‐Hilliard inpainting for grayvalue images

The Cahn‐Hilliard equation has its origin in material sciences and serves as a model for phase separation and phase coarsening in binary alloys. A new approach in the class of fourth order inpainting algorithms is inpainting of binary images using the Cahn‐Hilliard equation. We will present a generalization of this fourth order approach for grayvalue images. This is realized by using subgradients of the total variation functional within the flow, which leads to structure inpainting with smooth curvature of level sets. We will present some numerical examples for this approach and analytic results concerning existence and convergence of solutions. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
A cloud of UAVs for the Delivery of a Sink As A Service to Terrestrial WSNs

One of the primary tasks of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is the collection of data from a field of interest. However, in practice, maintaining a total connectivity between sensors is not always possible, and sensors may be scattered along the sensing area, forming a set of isolated cluster of nodes that are unable to deliver the collected data. In this paper, we provide a three-layer based cloud architecture, showing the use of a network of drone quadcopters for the delivery of a Sink As A Service to terrestrial mobile sensor nodes. The set of quadcopters are in charge of coordinating their movement to collect data from terrestrial cluster heads (local data collectors) and cooperate together to relay these data to the nearest base station. As the used number of terrestrial collectors (i.e., clusters heads) has a great impact on the data delivery delay and also on the energy consumption of the quadcopters, we develop an analytical model that allows determining the optimal number of terrestrial clusters of sensors. A numerical analysis is conducted to assess the variation of the optimal values of clusters' width, delivery delay, and consumer energy, with respect to the quadcopters speed, the network throughput, and the total number of sensors.
Software-Based Fault Tolerance in Computer Vision

Manufacturing and process scaling are providing significant challenges in producing reliable transistors for future technologies. Many academic experts, industry consortia and research panels have warned that future generations of silicon technology are likely to be significantly less reliable [11]. A recent Computing Community Consortium Visioning Study [1] conclude that handling reliability will probably become a first-order constraint.
Image Classification using SVM-RBF in the field of Image Processing

Multi- class classification plays an important role in image classification. In this paper a feature sampling technique of image classification is to be proposed. For the process of optimization we used radial basis function algorithm for the proper selection of feature sub set selection. A function is radial basis (RBF) if its output depends on the distance of the input from a given stored vector. In a RBF network one hidden layer uses neurons with RBF activation functions describing local receptors. Then one output node is used to combine linearly the outputs of the hidden neurons. Different possibilities include: Modify the design of the SVM, as in order to incorporate the multi-class learning directly in the quadratic solving algorithm. Combine several binary classifiers: "One-against- One" (OAO) applies pair wise comparisons between classes, while "One-against-All" (OAA) compares a given class with all the others put together. OAO and OAA classification based on SVM technique is efficient process, but this SVM based feature selection generate result on the unclassified of data. When the scale of data set increases the complexity of pre-processing is also increases, it is difficult to reduce noise and outlier of data set.
Hypertonicity Sensing in Organum Vasculosum Lamina Terminalis Neurons: A Mechanical Process Involving TRPV1 But Not TRPV4

Primary osmosensory neurons in the mouse organum vasculosum lamina terminalis (OVLT) transduce hypertonicity via the activation of nonselective cation channels that cause membrane depolarization and increased action potential discharge, and this effect is absent in mice lacking expression of the transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (Trpv1) gene (Ciura and Bourque, 2006). However other experiments have indicated that channels encoded by Trpv4 also contribute to central osmosensation in mice (Liedtke and Friedman, 2003; Mizuno et al., 2003). At present, the mechanism by which hypertonicity modulates cation channels in OVLT neurons is unknown, and it remains unclear whether Trpv1 and Trpv4 both contribute to this process. Here, we show that physical shrinking is necessary and sufficient to mediate hypertonicity sensing in OVLT neurons isolated from adult mice. Steps coupling progressive decreases in cell volume to increased neuronal activity were quantitatively equivalent whether shrinking was evoked by osmotic pressure or mechanical aspiration. Finally, modulation of OVLT neurons by tonicity or mechanical stimulation was unaffected by deletion of trpv4 but was abolished in cells lacking Trpv1 or wild-type neurons treated with the TRPV1 antagonist SB366791. Thus, hypertonicity sensing is a mechanical process requiring Trpv1, but not Trpv4.
Inferring Shallow-Transfer Machine Translation Rules from Small Parallel Corpora

This paper describes a method for the automatic inference of structural transfer rules to be used in a shallow-transfer machine translation (MT) system from small parallel corpora. The structural transfer rules are based on alignment templates, like those used in statistical MT. Alignment templates are extracted from sentence-aligned parallel corpora and extended with a set of restrictions which are derived from the bilingual dictionary of the MT system and control their application as transfer rules. The experiments conducted using three difierent language pairs in the free/open-source MT platform Apertium show that translation quality is improved as compared to word-for-word translation (when no transfer rules are used), and that the resulting translation quality is close to that obtained using hand-coded transfer rules. The method we present is entirely unsupervised and benefits from information in the rest of modules of the MT system in which the inferred rules are applied.
Measuring Memory in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer ’ s Disease

and controls, respectively). Unbiased stereologic analysis (3) and our own previous studies show that this region contains 6000 to 8000 cholinergic neurons in adult rats. The septal/diagonal band complex of mice is smaller than that in rats, and it is clear from brain sections that mice have about half the cholinergic neu-rons per section of equal thickness as do rats. Our numbers and those reported by others (4) for mice (3000 to 4000 total) are consistent with this observation. The greater volume and total cholin-ergic neuron number in the Peterson et al. study may be indicative of some systematic error in their calculations. One factor that could have contributed to the discrepancy would be the possibility that Peterson et al. used tissue sections that were not representative of the medial septum/diagonal band or used a sampling grid that did not give neurons an equal likelihood of being counted. However, it is unclear from their comment how many sections were analyzed , what internal reference point was used to ensure that similar sections were sampled between animal groups, from which rostro-caudal level the sections were taken, and how the sampling grid was applied (interpoint distance and so forth). Cholinergic neurons are not distributed in a homogeneous fashion, and small differences in the sampling area in any of the three dimensions would result in substantial numerical differences. If these sampling errors exist, they could be exaggerated if a brain region that includes large areas that are not occupied by cholinergic neurons is used as the reference volume. In addition, some mouse strains are known to lack (to various degrees between animals) fusion of the corpus callosum, which can prevent accurate determination of the genu of the corpus callosum (one of the boundaries used by Peterson et al.), which would make accurate volume determination difficult. In conclusion, we have confirmed our previous published results by using the optical disector method for counting neu-rons in the entire coronal plane of the medial septum in every third section through the septal nucleus (which represents the entire 3-dimensional extent of the nucleus). Therefore, the apparent discrepancy between our results and those of Peterson et al. is most likely not due to differences in quantification methods, but may reflect a genetic difference between the two mouse colonies that is not related to p75. Our results (1), that p75-deficient mice have more basal forebrain cholin-ergic neurons than control …
Impairment of insulin-stimulated GLUT4 translocation in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue in the Tsumura Suzuki obese diabetic mouse: a new genetic animal model of type 2 diabetes.

BACKGROUND In skeletal muscle and adipocytes, insulin-stimulated glucose transport has been known to occur through the translocation of glucose transporter (GLUT) 4 from the intracellular pool to the plasma membrane. The Tsumura Suzuki obese diabetic (TSOD) mouse, a new genetic animal model of type 2 diabetes, develops moderate degrees of obesity and diabetes that are especially apparent in animals more than 11 weeks old. A defect in insulin stimulation of GLUT4 translocation also contributes to the characteristics of type 2 diabetes. OBJECTIVE To characterize this mouse further, we examined the alteration in insulin-stimulated GLUT4 translocation in the skeletal muscle and adipose tissue. METHODS For glucose and insulin tolerance tests, the mice were given glucose or insulin and blood samples were collected. After isolation of low-density microsomal membrane and plasma membrane from skeletal muscle and adipose tissue, insulin-stimulated translocation of GLUT4 in these TSOD mice was examined by Western blot. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS TSOD mice showed a significant increase in blood glucose after the glucose load, and exhibited a significantly attenuated decrease in blood glucose concentrations after administration of insulin, compared with that in control Tsumura Suzuki non-obese (TSNO) mice. The insulin-stimulated translocation of GLUT4 from low-density microsomal membranes to plasma membrane was significantly reduced in both skeletal muscle and adipose tissue of TSOD mice. These results indicate that the reduced insulin sensitivity in diabetic TSOD mice is presumably due, at least in part, to the impaired GLUT4 translocation by insulin in both skeletal muscle and adipocytes.
Intravenous Infusion of an Antisense Oligonucleotide Results in Exon Skipping in Muscle Dystrophin mRNA of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a fatal muscle wasting disease that is characterized by muscle dystrophin deficiency. We report that intravenous (IV) infusion of an antisense oligonucleotide created an in-frame dystrophin mRNA from an out-of-frame DMD mutation (via exon skipping) which led to muscle dystrophin expression. A 10-year-old DMD patient possessing an out-of-frame, exon 20 deletion of the dystrophin gene received a 0.5 mg/kg IV infusion of an antisense 31-mer phosphorothioate oligonucleotide against the splicing enhancer sequence of exon 19. This antisense construct was administered at one-week intervals for 4 wk. No side effects attributable to infusion were observed. Exon 19 skipping appeared in a portion of the dystrophin mRNA in peripheral lymphocytes after the infusion. In a muscle biopsy one week after the final infusion, the novel in-frame mRNA lacking both exons 19 and 20 was identified and found to represent approximately 6% of the total reverse transcription PCR product. Dystrophin was identified histochemically in the sarcolemma of muscle cells after oligonucleotide treatment. These findings demonstrate that phosphorothioate oligonucleotides may be administered safely to children with DMD, and that a simple IV infusion is an effective delivery mechanism for oligonucleotides that lead to exon skipping in DMD skeletal muscles.
Field Note—From MSW to J-O-B: Using Field Seminar to Prepare Students for Employment

ABSTRACT Social work field education is expected to help students transition from the classroom to the practice setting. Yet, few social work programs adequately provide career development support to increase students’ employability. This Field Note presents practical, relevant and immediate strategies for implementing the MSW to J-O-B curriculum innovation in the field practicum seminar. The purpose is to help students clarify professional goals and successfully obtain employment or career advancement opportunities following graduation. Formative evaluation results for this professional development curriculum are presented.
Solution Structure of Kurtoxin: A Gating Modifier Selective for Cav3 Voltage-Gated Ca2+ Channels

Kurtoxin is a 63-amino acid polypeptide isolated from the venom of the South African scorpion Parabuthus transvaalicus. It is the first and only peptide ligand known to interact with Cav3 (T-type) voltage-gated Ca2+ channels with high affinity and to modify the voltage-dependent gating of these channels. Here we describe the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) solution structure of kurtoxin determined using two- and three-dimensional NMR spectroscopy with dynamical simulated annealing calculations. The molecular structure of the toxin was highly similar to those of scorpion α-toxins and contained an α-helix, three β-strands, and several turns stabilized by four disulfide bonds. This so-called “cysteine-stabilized α-helix and β-sheet (CSαβ)” motif is found in a number of functionally varied small proteins. A detailed comparison of the backbone structure of kurtoxin with those of the scorpion α-toxins revealed that three regions [first long loop (Asp8–Ile15), β-hairpin loop (Gly39–Leu42), and C-terminal segment (Arg57–Ala63)] in kurtoxin significantly differ from the corresponding regions in scorpion α-toxins, suggesting that these regions may be important for interacting with Cav3 (T-type) Ca2+ channels. In addition, the surface profile of kurtoxin shows a larger and more focused electropositive patch along with a larger hydrophobic surface compared to those seen on scorpion α-toxins. These distinct surface properties of kurtoxin could explain its binding to Cav3 (T-type) voltage-gated Ca2+ channels.
Molecular Characterization of a Highly-Active Thermophilic β-Glucosidase from Neosartorya fischeri P1 and Its Application in the Hydrolysis of Soybean Isoflavone Glycosides

Isoflavone occurs abundantly in leguminous seeds in the form of glycoside and aglycone. However, isoflavone glycoside has anti-nutritional effect and only the free type is beneficial to human health. In the present study we identified a β-glucosidase from thermophilic Neosartorya fischeri P1, termed NfBGL1, capable of efficiently converting isoflavone glycosides into free isoflavones. The gene, belonging to glycoside hydrolase family 3, was successfully overexpressed in Pichia pastoris at high cell density in a 3.7-l fermentor. Purified recombinant NfBGL1 had higher specific activity (2189±1.7 U/mg) and temperature optimum (80°C) than other fungal counterparts when using p-nitrophenyl β-d-glucopyranoside as the substrate. It retained stable at temperatures up to 70°C and over a broad pH range of 3.0−10.0. NfBGL1 had broad substrate specificity including glucosidase, cellobiase, xylanase and glucanase activities, and displayed preference for hydrolysis of β-1,2 glycosidic bond rather than β-1,3, β-1,4, β-1,6 bonds. The enzyme showed high bioconversion ability for major soybean isoflavone glycosides (daidin, gensitin and glycitin) into free forms. These properties make NfBGL1 potential for the wide use in the food, feed, pharmacy and biofuel industries.
What is the long-term impact of changes?

During their life cycle, programs undergo many changes. Each of these changes may introduce new features---or new problems. While most of the impact of a change is immediate, some of the impact may become evident only in the long term. For instance, suppose we make the internals of a component accessible to its clients. In itself, this does not introduce a problem. In the long term, though, this will most likely lead to maintainability issues. We are currently exploring ways to identify this long-term impact of change. We want to show how a change eventually impacts program quality (in terms of defects), program maintainability, and development effort. Identifying those changes with the greatest impact will foster our understanding of a program's history, and help us in learning lessons for future projects. Eventually, such lessons may come as automated recommendations regarding long-term impact: "In the long run, this change will cause maintainability issues. Do you want to reconsider? "
Scalability of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: Theory vs practice

Over the past decade, the theoretical or asymptotic scalability of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) has been extensively studied. However, the implication of these asymptotic results on finite, brigade-sized networks with reallife assumptions is not well-understood. We present a two-pronged study on the scalability of military networks with assumptions and goals pertinent to such networks: 1) we investigate the traffic distribution characteristics in a typical military network and show that it follows a power law which exhibits very good scaling properties; 2) we introduce the notion of “in practice” scalability and derive an expression for the in-practice scalability of a simple example network. Our study indicates that MANETs may well be adequately scalable in practice even if they are asymptotically unscalable, and that military MANETs may also even be asymptotically scalable by virtue of their traffic characteristics.
generalised q-deformed oscillators and their statistics

We consider a version of generalised $q$-oscillators and some of their applications. The generalisation includes also "quons" of infinite statistics and deformed oscillators of parastatistics. The statistical distributions for different $q$-oscillators are derived for their corresponding Fock space representations. The deformed Virasoro algebra and SU(2) algebra are also treated.