Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VENSESEVAL at Semeval-2016 Task 2 iSTS - with a full-fledged rule-based approach

In our paper we present our rule-based system for semantic processing. In particular we show examples and solutions that may be challenge our approach. We then discuss problems and shortcomings of Task 2 – iSTS. We comment on the existence of a tension between the inherent need to on the one side, to make the task as much as possible “semantically feasible”. Whereas the detailed presentation and some notes in the guidelines refer to inferential processes, paraphrases and the use of commonsense knowledge of the world for the interpretation to work. We then present results and some conclusions.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Contributions from Dms and Ship Emissions to Ccn Observed over the Summertime North Pacific

Measurements of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) made over the North Pacific Ocean in July 2002 are analysed with concurrent measurements of aerosol number, mass and composition. Overall the CCN are controlled by the sulphate, including one case that suggests particle nucle-ation and growth resulting from dimethyl sulphide oxidation that enhanced CCN concentrations. Hourly CCN concentrations are correlated with concentrations of sulphate plus methanesulphonic acid (MSA) over the entire study period (r 2 =0.43 and 0.52 for supersaturations of 0.34% and 0.19%, respectively), and are not well correlated with other organ-ics (r 2 <0.2). One case study reveals elevated mass and number concentrations of ultrafine and fine organic particles due to regional ship emissions, identified through quadrupole aerosol mass spectrometer (Q-AMS) measurements, during which organic mass concentrations are correlated with CCN values (r 2 =0.39 and 0.46 for supersaturations of 0.19% and 0.34%, respectively). The evolution of the time series and mass distributions of organics, sulphate and MSA over this timeframe indicate that the regional distribution of small, diffuse ship-sourced organic particles act as condensation sites for sulphur species, resulting in a subsequent increase in number concentrations of CCN. We conclude that, where present, direct emissions of anthropogenic organic particles may exert a strong control on marine CCN concentrations once diffused into the marine atmosphere, by acting as condensation sites for biogenic and anthropogenic sulphur species.
Effect of Lysyl Oxidase Inhibition on Angiotensin II-Induced Arterial Hypertension, Remodeling, and Stiffness

It is well accepted that angiotensin II (Ang II) induces altered vascular stiffness through responses including both structural and material remodeling. Concurrent with remodeling is the induction of the enzyme lysyl oxidase (LOX) through which ECM proteins are cross-linked. The study objective was to determine the effect of LOX mediated cross-linking on vascular mechanical properties. Three-month old mice were chronically treated with Ang II with or without the LOX blocker, β -aminopropionitrile (BAPN), for 14 days. Pulse wave velocity (PWV) from Doppler measurements of the aortic flow wave was used to quantify in vivo vascular stiffness in terms of an effective Young’s modulus. The increase in effective Young’s modulus with Ang II administration was abolished with the addition of BAPN, suggesting that the material properties are a major controlling element in vascular stiffness. BAPN inhibited the Ang II induced collagen cross-link formation by 2-fold and PWV by 44% (P<0.05). Consistent with this observation, morphometric analysis showed that BAPN did not affect the Ang II mediated increase in medial thickness but significantly reduced the adventitial thickness. Since the hypertensive state contributes to the measured in vivo PWV stiffness, we removed the Ang II infusion pumps on Day 14 and achieved normal arterial blood pressures. With pump removal we observed a decrease of the PWV in the Ang II group to 25% above that of the control values (P=0.002), with a complete return to control values in the Ang II plus BAPN group. In conclusion, we have shown that the increase in vascular stiffness with 14 day Ang II administration results from a combination of hypertension-induced wall strain, adventitial wall thickening and Ang II mediated LOX ECM cross-linking, which is a major material source of vascular stiffening, and that the increased PWV was significantly inhibited with co-administration of BAPN.
Chapter 9. United Nations Partnerships: Working Together for a Better World

The United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) plays a lead role in forging new partnerships in development assistance. Building partnerships for development with the private sector and civil society, UNFIP mobilizes intellectual capital, technology, expertise, delivery systems and other resources, in addition to funding, in order to advance global causes. The UN, composed of 191 Member States, provides the opportunity for a truly global partnership. For instance, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) alone has a presence in 166 countries. UN partnerships range from global multi-stakeholder, multi-issue initiatives to local projects between two partners. Innovative partnerships are a promising avenue, but not a panacea, for tackling global problems. The United Nations is identifying methodologies for assessing partnerships based on best practices. The possibilities for partnership and cooperation with the UN are endless. Keywords: global multi-stakeholder; innovative partnerships; UN partnerships; UNFIP; United Nations development program (UNDP)
Research on Case Representation Method Based on Image Information

According to the fact that it's more likely to consider the image as the field of knowledge, and the image has the features of intuitivism, ample content, no language limited and convenient for communicating internationally, this article use the case-based reasoning method to decrease the difficulty of obtaining the knowledge, and then propose the case representation method based on image information. We have studied the RGB color model and HSV color model, and then discuss the conversion formula between them. What's more, we have studied the method of extracting the image color characteristics as image case attributes' description, make a model of image case, and then make a case representation on the forest fire early warning image.
In-flight Corrections to the WFC3 UVIS Flat Fields

Improved flat fields for the entire set of 42 full frame UVIS filters were ingested into the HST archive on December 14, 2011. These new reference files typically improve the accuracy of point source photometry by 0.6 to 1.8% (rms), with maximum differences of ~3 to 6% depending on filter. The flat fields in use prior to this date were obtained from ground test data and contained a set of four internal window reflections affecting ~45% of the detector field of view, with a typical 0.5-2.0% effect on photometry. A simplified geometric model was used to remove this artifact from the flat fields. Additional lowfrequency residuals, caused by differences in the ground and in-flight optical paths, were then computed using relative photometry of bright stars in Omega Centauri measured at multiple positions across the detector. These calibration data have been used to study the UVIS PSF in more detail, and for aperture radii smaller than 0.4" (10 pixels) the encircled energy is found to vary strongly with detector position. The photometric response for any given star using the revised flat fields is accurate to ±1% over the detector for most UVIS filters. Flat fields for the 4 bluest UV filters were obtained ‘warm’ (-49C versus -82C) during ground testing, and these show ± 2-3% residuals in a ‘crosshatch’ pattern across the detector. Several calibration programs are underway to model and correct this residual flat field structure. For sources with SED’s significantly different than the average Omega Centauri population, color terms of up to a few percent may be present.
An experimental comparison of localization accuracy of affine region detectors

Previous comparison about localization accuracy of affine region detectors is focused on the overlap error between corresponding regions, which is not sufficient for some applications such as wide baseline matching, registration, structure from motion etc., in which localization accuracy in position is especially important. In this paper, we make a experimental comparison about the localization accuracy of position of CGR(Center of Gravity of Region) of the detected corresponding regions on a set of test images under varying conditions. Three methods of the state of the art in affine region detectors are included: MSER, Hessians Affine and Harris Affine. This comparison is complementary with previous similar work. The performance is measured against changes in viewpoint, scale, illumination, defocus and image compression.
Predictors of an accurate preoperative sestamibi scan for single-gland parathyroid adenomas.

OBJECTIVE To investigate why some patients with single parathyroid adenomas have negative preoperative sestamibi scans. DESIGN Retrospective review. SETTING Tertiary care center. PATIENTS Twenty-one patients with false-negative (FN) scans were compared with 22 patients with true-positive (TP) scans. All patients had single parathyroid adenomas. INTERVENTIONS Neck exploration and removal of parathyroid adenomas. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Age; sex; preoperative serum calcium and parathyroid hormone levels; gland weight; location; and pathologic features. RESULTS There was no significant difference in age or preoperative serum calcium or parathyroid hormone levels. Gland weight was greater in the TP group compared with the FN group (mean +/- SD, 1336 +/- 1603 mg vs 475 +/- 365 mg; P = .04); 13 (62%) of the 21 glands in the FN group were located in the upper position, compared with 6 (27%) of the 22 glands in the TP group (P = .03). Ten of the 22 glands in the TP group consisted predominantly of oxyphil cells, compared with 2 of the 21 glands in the FN group (P = .02). A multivariate logistic regression model yielded the following factors that predicted an accurate scan: higher percentage of oxyphil cells (P = .03), heavier gland (P = .03), female sex (P = .04), and gland location in the lower position (P = .04). CONCLUSIONS Smaller-volume parathyroid adenomas and those in the upper position are less likely to be localized with sestamibi scans. A TP scan correlates with oxyphil cell predominance, supporting a role for the mitochondrial-rich cell in sestamibi uptake and retention.
Extinction within 10° of the Galactic centre using 2MASS

We extract J and K s magnitudes from the 2MASS Point Source Catalog for approximately 6 × 10 6 stars with 8 ≤ K s ≤ 13 in order to build an A K extinction map within 10° of the Galactic centre. The extinction was determined by fitting the upper giant branch of (K s , J -K s ) colour-magnitude diagrams to a dereddened upper giant branch mean locus built from previously studied bulge fields. The extinction values vary from A K = 0.05 in the edges of the map up to A K = 3.2 close to the Galactic centre. The 2MASS extinction map was compared to that recently derived from DENIS data. Both maps agree very well up to A K = 1.0. Above this limit, the comparison is affected by increased internal errors in both extinction determination methods. The 2MASS extinction values were also compared to those obtained from dust emission in the far-infrared using DIRBE/IRAS. Several systematic effects likely to bias this comparison were addressed, including the presence of dust on the background of the bulk of 2MASS stars used in the extinction determination. For the region with 3° < ‖b‖ < 5°, where the dust contribution on the far side of the Galaxy is 5 per cent, the two extinction determinations correlate well, but the dust emission A K values are systematically higher than those from 2MASS. A calibration correction factor of 76 per cent for the DIRBE/IRAS dust emission extinction is needed to eliminate this systematic effect. Similar comparisons were also carried out for the 1° < ‖b‖ < 3° and ‖b‖ < 0.5° strips, revealing an increasing complexity in the relation between the two extinction values. Discrepancies are explained in terms of the calibration factor, increasing background dust contribution, temperature effects influencing the dust emission extinction and limitations in the 2MASS extinction determination in very high extinction regions (‖b‖ < 0.5°). An asymmetry relative to the Galactic plane is observed in the dust maps, roughly in the sense that A K values are 60 per cent smaller in the south than in the north for 1° < ‖b‖ < 5°. This asymmetry is due to the presence of foreground dust clouds mostly in the northern region of the bulge.
SDHB-Associated Paraganglioma in a Pediatric Patient and Literature Review on Hereditary Pheochromocytoma-Paraganglioma Syndromes

Pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma are rare in the pediatric population occurring in approximately 1 in 50,000 children. While some cases are sporadic, they have commonly been associated with syndromes such as von Hippel-Lindau, multiple endocrine neoplasia types IIa and IIb, neurofibromatosis type 1, and hereditary pheochromocytoma-paraganglioma syndromes. In children less than 18 years of age approximately 60% of pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas are associated with a germline mutation. We present an 11-year-old child with an abdominal paraganglioma related to a succinate dehydrogenase subunit B gene mutation whose father had a previously resected abdominal paraganglioma and was found to carry the same mutation. In addition, we review the etiology, genetics, diagnostic approach, and challenges of preoperative management of secretory pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas in children.
Inflammatory basis of exercise-induced bronchoconstriction.

RATIONALE Exercise-induced bronchoconstriction (EIB) is a highly prevalent condition with unclear pathogenesis. Two competing theories of the pathogenesis of EIB differ regarding the inflammatory basis of this condition. OBJECTIVES Our goals were to establish whether epithelial cell and mast cell activation with release of inflammatory mediators occurs during EIB and how histamine and cysteinyl leukotriene antagonists alter the airway events occurring during EIB. METHODS Induced sputum was used to measure mast cell mediators and eicosanoids at baseline and 30 minutes after exercise challenge in 25 individuals with asthma with EIB. In a randomized, double-blind crossover study, the cysteinyl leukotriene antagonist montelukast and antihistamine loratadine or two matched placebos were administered for two doses before exercise challenge. MAIN RESULTS The percentage of columnar epithelial cells in induced sputum at baseline was associated with the severity of EIB. After exercise challenge, histamine, tryptase, and cysteinyl leukotrienes significantly increased and prostaglandin E(2) and thromboxane B(2) significantly decreased in the airways, and there was an increase in columnar epithelial cells in the airways. The concentration of columnar epithelial cells was associated with the levels of histamine and cysteinyl leukotrienes in the airways. Treatment with montelukast and loratadine inhibited the release of cysteinyl leukotrienes and histamine into the airways, but did not inhibit the release of columnar epithelial cells into the airways. CONCLUSIONS These data indicate that epithelial cells, mast cell mediators, and eicosanoids are released into the airways during EIB, supporting an inflammatory basis for EIB.
RECENT PROPOSALS INTRODUCE A RANGE OF MECHANISMS FOR TACKLING THIS PROBLEM . POWER-AND COMPLEXITY-AWARE ISSUE QUEUE DESIGNS

Current microprocessors are designed to execute instructions in parallel and out of order. In general, superscalar processors fetch instructions in order. After the branch prediction logic determines whether a branch is taken (or not) and its target address, the processor decodes the instructions and renames the register operands, removing name dependences introduced by the compiler. Because processors generally have more physical than logical registers, multiple instructions with the same logical destination can be in flight simultaneously. The renamed instructions then go into the issue queue where they wait until their operands are ready and their required resources are available. At the same time, instructions go into the reorder buffer, where they remain until they commit their results. When an instruction executes, the wakeup logic notifies dependent instructions that the corresponding operand is available. Finally, instructions commit their results in program order. This article focuses on the design of the logic that stores the instructions waiting for execution, as well as the logic associated with identifying whether operands are ready and selecting the instructions that start execution every cycle. All these components are part of the issue logic. Issue logic is one of the most complex parts of superscalar processors, one of the largest consumers of energy, and one of the main sites of power density. Its design is therefore critical for performance. Researchers have used a variety of schemes to implement the issue queue. In particular, several recent proposals have attempted to reduce the issue logic’s complexity and power. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first attempt to perform a comprehensive and thorough survey of the issue logic design space.
Climbot: A modular bio-inspired biped climbing robot

High-rise tasks in agriculture, forestry and building industry requires robots possessing climbing function. Motivated by these potential applications and inspired by the climbing motion of animals such as inchworms, we have developed a novel biped climbing robot - Climbot. Built with a modular approach, the robot consists of five 1-DoF joint modules connected in series and two special grippers mounted at the ends. With this configuration, Climbot is able not only to climb a variety of media, but also to grasp and manipulate objects, and hence is a “mobile” manipulator. In this paper, we first introduce the development of this novel robot, and then illustrate three climbing gaits based on the unique configuration of the robot. Experiments of climbing poles are carried out to verify the climbing functions and to demonstrate potential application of the proposed robot.
Hochschild cohomology and moduli spaces of strongly homotopy associative algebras

Motivated by ideas from stable homotopy theory we study the space of strongly homotopy associative multiplications on a two-cell chain complex. In the simplest case this moduli space is isomorphic to the set of orbits of a group of invertible power series acting on a certain space. The Hochschild cohomology rings of resulting A1-algebras have an interpretation as totally ramified extensions of discrete valuation rings. All A1-algebras are supposed to be unital and we give a detailed analysis of unital structures which is of independent interest.
Extracting Knowledge from Web Search Engine Results

Nowadays, people frequently use search engines in order to find the information they need on the web. However, usually web search engines return web page references in a global ranking making it difficult to the users to browse different topics captured in the result set and thus making it difficult to find quickly the desired web pages. There is need for special computational systems, that will discover knowledge in these web search results providing the user with the possibility to browse different topics contained in a given result set. In this paper, we focus on the problem of determining different thematic groups on web search engine results that existing web search engines provide. We propose a novel system that exploits a set of reformulation strategies so as to help users gain more relevant results to their desired query. It additionally tries to discover among the result set different topic groups, according to the various meanings of the provided query. The proposed method utilizes a number of semantic annotation techniques using Knowledge Bases, like Word Net and Wikipedia, in order to perceive the different senses of each query term. Finally, the method annotates the extracted topics using information derived from the clusters and presents them to the end user.
Globalization and its impacts on the quality of PhD education : forces and forms in doctoral education worldwide

• How are research doctoral education and the research PhD degree evolving in different national contexts? • How do researchers in the early stage of their careers assess the value of doctoral education? • What are the challenges of using international demographic data from existing PhD programs to analyze trends in doctoral education? • What can happen when regional issues intersect with the need to evaluate doctoral education and ensure its quality? • Which quality-assurance model has been gaining favor in PhD education, and what challenges does it pose? • What accounts for conflict between national interests and international collaboration in doctoral education? • Is there empirical evidence of globalization’s impact on doctoral education and the labor market for PhD graduates?
$l_{q}$  Sparsity Penalized Linear Regression With Cyclic Descent

Recently, there has been a lot of focus on penalized least squares problems for noisy sparse signal estimation. The penalty induces sparsity and a very common choice has been the convex l1 norm. However, to improve sparsity and reduce the biases associated with the l1 norm, one must move to non-convex penalties such as the lq norm . In this paper we present a novel cyclic descent algorithm for optimizing the resulting lq penalized least squares problem. Optimality conditions for this problem are derived and competing ones clarified. Coordinate-wise convergence as well as convergence to a local minimizer of the algorithm, which is highly non-trivial, is proved and we illustrate with simulations comparing the signal reconstruction quality with three penalty functions: l0, l1 and lq with 0 <; q <; 1.
Exact Performance Analysis of MIMO Zero Forcing Detection for Transmit Correlated Rician Rayleigh Fading

This paper reveals a previously unknown infinite linear combination of Gamma distributions with simple coefficients for the symbol detection signal to noise ratio (SNR) in multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communications employing spatial multiplexing and zero forcing detection (ZF), whereby the intended (detected) and interfering symbol streams experience correlated Rician and Rayleigh fading, respectively. Our derivation of the exact moment generating function (m.g.f.) of the ZF SNR for the Rician fading stream bypasses the noncentral Wishart distribution, whose intractability has previously required approximation with a central Wishart distribution of equal mean. We also express exactly the ZF SNR moments and probability density function, as well as the ZF average error probability, outage probability, and ergodic capacity. Numerical results from analysis and Monte Carlo simulations confirm the accuracy of our new expressions and reveal that the symbol detection performance for the Rician fading stream is: 1) unaffected by the direction of the channel vector mean, 2) unaffected by transmit correlation, unlike for Rayleigh Rayleigh fading, 3) seriously degraded by Rayleigh fading interference, which is of concern in heterogeneous networks.