Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bayesian game theory in practice: A framework for online reputation systems

As the number of online auction sites has increased the interest towards providing reliable summaries, reputations, about the past behaviour of the sellers has risen. However, many of the existing approaches are based on various heuristics and properly evaluating the systems is difficult. To improve the situation, we first introduce a game-theoretical model for reputation in online auctions. Furthermore, we show how mixture models can be used as a proper framework for integrating information from various sources into the model. We also discuss practical aspects and evaluate an experimental online reputation system that has been implemented based on the proposed framework. Our results show that, using this framework, the number of successful transactions increases significantly (in statistical sense) and that the framework is robust for changes in the behaviour of the participants. Computing Reviews (1998)
Impact of FTTH deployment on live streaming delivery systems

Video contents are now dominant in the Internet traffic and more and more people watch Live streamed contents. Started with a simple client/server architecture, Live streaming is now evolving towards a CDN-based network or a P2P-based distribution. The evolution is expected to provide a better quality to end-users while reducing costs for the content providers. In parallel with the evolution of the architectures, the access networks of the customers are also evolving, in terms of link capacities. More and more people can have a high broadband access connection. This is linked to evolution of xDSL networks but also to the deployment of FTTH (Fiber To The Home) networks. With the FTTH deployment, the issue of the best delivery model is raised up. Started from the current situation in the France Telecom network, we forecasted a deployment of FTTH customers (5 to 25% of ADSL customers migrating to FTTH) and evaluated the network load as well as the cost for a network operator to provide a live streaming service to its customers, on various architectures: Centralised server, regional servers (operator CDN-like network), and both assisted with a national P2P network and with a regional P2P network (e.g. ALTO-like systems where local peers are preferred to remote peers). The results of our techno-economic assessment highlight the benefit of a P2P-based delivery system in relation with the deployment of FTTH, more visible in case of network-aware (regional) P2P.
Phosphatase Activity Toward Abnormally Phosphorylated τ: Decrease in Alzheimer Disease Brain

Abstract: Microtubule‐associated protein τ is abnormally hyperphosphorylated and aggregated in affected neurons of Alzheimer disease brain. This hyperphosphorylated τ can be dephosphorylated at some of the abnormal phosphorylated sites by purified protein phosphatase‐1, 2A, and 2B in vitro. In the present study, we have developed an assay to measure protein phosphatase activity toward τ‐1 sites (Ser199/Ser202) using the hyperphosphorylated τ isolated from Alzheimer disease brain as substrate. Using this assay, we have identified that in normal brain, protein phosphatase‐2A and 2B and, to a lesser extent, 1 are involved in the dephosphorylation of τ. The Km values of dephosphorylation of the hyperphosphorylated τ by protein phosphatase‐2A and 2B are similar. The τ phosphatase activity is decreased by ∼30% in brain of Alzheimer disease patients compared with those of age‐matched controls. These findings suggest that a defect of protein phosphatase could be the cause of the abnormal hyperphosphorylation of τ in Alzheimer disease.
Determinants of Exposure to Fragranced Product Chemical Mixtures in a Sample of Twins

Fragranced product chemical mixtures may be relevant for environmental health, but little is known about exposure. We analyzed results from an olfactory challenge with the synthetic musk fragrance 1,3,4,6,7,8-hexahydro-4,6,6,7,8,8-hexamethyl-cyclopento-γ-2-benzopyran (HHCB), and a questionnaire about attitudes toward chemical safety and use of fragranced products, in a sample of 140 white and 17 black twin pairs attending a festival in Ohio. Data for each product were analyzed using robust ordered logistic regressions with random intercepts for “twin pair” and “sharing address with twin”, and fixed effects for sex, age, education, and “ever being bothered by fragrances”. Due to the small number of black participants, models were restricted to white participants except when examining racial differences. Overall patterns of association were summarized across product-types through random-effects meta-analysis. Principal components analysis was used to summarize clustering of product use. The dominant axis of variability in fragranced product use was “more vs. less”, followed by a distinction between household cleaning products and personal care products. Overall, males used fragranced products less frequently than females (adjusted proportionate odds ratio 0.55, 95% confidence interval 0.33, 0.93). This disparity was driven by personal care products (0.42, 95% CI: 0.19, 0.96), rather than household cleaning products (0.79, 95% CI: 0.49, 1.25) and was particularly evident for body lotion (0.12, 95% CI: 0.05, 0.27). Overall usage differed by age (0.64, 95% CI: 0.43, 0.95) but only hand soap and shampoo products differed significantly. “Ever being bothered by fragrance” had no overall association (0.92, 95% CI: 0.65, 1.30) but was associated with laundry detergent use (0.46, 95% CI: 0.23, 0.93). Similarly, black vs. white differences on average were not significant (1.34, 95% CI: 0.55, 3.28) but there were apparent differences in use of shampoo (0.01, 95% CI: 0.00, 0.69), body lotion (4.67, 95% CI: 1.18, 18.47), and perfume (6.22, 95% CI:1.08, 35.89). There was no overall association with thinking about product risks (0.90, 95% CI: 0.79, 1.02), nor with inability to smell HHCB (0.84, 95% CI: 0.63, 1.12). Exposure to fragranced products may differ demographically. The relevance for health disparities should be studied.
University of Birmingham Competition and constraint drove Cope's rule in the evolution of giant flying reptiles

The pterosaurs, Mesozoic ﬂying reptiles, attained wingspans of more than 10 m that greatly exceed the largest birds and challenge our understanding of size limits in ﬂying animals. Pterosaurs have been used to illustrate Cope’s rule, the inﬂuential generalization that evolutionary lineages trend to increasingly large body sizes. However, unambiguous examples of Cope’s rule operating on extended timescales in large clades remain elusive, and the phylogenetic pattern and possible drivers of pterosaur gigantism are uncertain. Here we show 70 million years of highly constrained early evolution, followed by almost 80 million years of sustained, multi-lineage body size increases in pterosaurs. These results are supported by maximum-likelihood modelling of a comprehensive new pterosaur data set. The transition between these macroevolutionary regimes is coincident with the Early Cretaceous adaptive radiation of birds, supporting controversial hypotheses of bird–pterosaur competition, and suggesting that evolutionary competition can act as a macroevolutionary driver on extended geological timescales. make.era. map compared using
Video-recorded participant behaviours: the association between food choices and observed behaviours from a web-based diet history interview.

BACKGROUND Automation of dietary assessments allows participant behaviour to be captured by video observation. It also allows clinicians to identify areas that effect reporting accuracy. The present observational study describes the differences in behaviour according to the type of foods selected by participants using a dietary assessment website encompassing diet history methodology. METHODS Eleven free-living adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus were video recorded while using a dietary assessment website in a laboratory setting. Significant observable events were identified using TRANSANA software and matched for time of occurrence with grouped food item selections from the website. The frequency and proportion of behaviour types per food group were calculated and trends of associations between food groups and observed behaviour type were determined using weighted chi-square analyses. RESULTS Sixteen categories of observed behaviour type were constructed from 7724 significant observable events. The food groups with the highest percentage of observed behaviour types were savoury sauces (7.66%), takeaways (6.47%), sugary foods (6.27%), fats and oils (5.93%), and alcoholic beverages (5.93%), which are all socially undesirable food groups. Self-touching of the face, head movement, postural movement and movement in the chair were observed significantly more often than other observed behaviour types across all food groups. CONCLUSIONS Behaviours related to the reporting of foods during a dietary assessment may have significant implications for dietary practice.
Stability of Dynamical Systems: Continuous, Discontinuous, and Discrete Systems

The goal of this book is to provide a reference text for graduate students and researchers on stability theory for the class of systems encountered in modern applications. This goal is achieved since the book offers a self-contained presentation of stability theory. The book is organized in nine chapters, most of which include sections with notes and references, problems, and bibliography. Some of the topics covered include: the history of stability theory; dynamical systems; invariance theory; discrete-event systems; finite-dimensional systems; linear systems; pulse-width-modulated feedback systems; digital filters; and stability issues for infinite-dimensional (continuous and discontinuous) systems. The book is clearly written, and difficult concepts are illustrated by means of good examples. The book should provide a useful reference for researchers working in control theory as well as for Ph.D. students.
Deep Relational Model: A Joint Probabilistic Model with a Hierarchical Structure for Bidirectional Estimation of Image and Labels

Two different types of representations, such as an image and its manually-assigned corresponding labels, generally have complex and strong relationships to each other. In this paper, we represent such deep relationships between two different types of visible variables using an energy-based probabilistic model, called a deep relational model (DRM) to improve the prediction accuracies. A DRM stacks several layers from one visible layer on to another visible layer, sandwiching several hidden layers between them. As with restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs) and deep Boltzmann machines (DBMs), all connections (weights) between two adjacent layers are undirected. During maximum likelihood (ML) -based training, the network attempts to capture the latent complex relationships between two visible variables with its deep architecture. Unlike deep neural networks (DNNs), 1) the DRM is a totally generative model and 2) allows us to generate one visible variables given the other, and 2) the parameters can be optimized in a probabilistic manner. The DRM can be also finetuned using DNNs, like deep belief nets (DBNs) or DBMs pre-training. This paper presents experiments conduced to evaluate the performance of a DRM in image recognition and generation tasks using the MNIST data set. In the image recognition experiments, we observed that the DRM outperformed DNNs even without fine-tuning. In the image generation experiments, we obtained much more realistic images generated from the DRM more than those from the other generative models. key words: image classification, image generation, deep learning, generative model, Boltzmann distribution
Identification of Genetic Determinants and Enzymes Involved with the Amidation of Glutamic Acid Residues in the Peptidoglycan of Staphylococcus aureus

The glutamic acid residues of the peptidoglycan of Staphylococcus aureus and many other bacteria become amidated by an as yet unknown mechanism. In this communication we describe the identification, in the genome of S. aureus strain COL, of two co-transcribed genes, murT and gatD, which are responsible for peptidoglycan amidation. MurT and GatD have sequence similarity to substrate-binding domains in Mur ligases (MurT) and to the catalytic domain in CobB/CobQ-like glutamine amidotransferases (GatD). The amidation of glutamate residues in the stem peptide of S. aureus peptidoglycan takes place in a later step than the cytoplasmic phase – presumably the lipid phase - of the biosynthesis of the S. aureus cell wall precursor. Inhibition of amidation caused reduced growth rate, reduced resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics and increased sensitivity to lysozyme which inhibited culture growth and caused degradation of the peptidoglycan.
Different functions of the C3HC4 zinc RING finger peroxins PEX10, PEX2, and PEX12 in peroxisome formation and matrix protein import

The integral peroxisomal membrane proteins PEX10, PEX2, and PEX12 contain a zinc RING finger close to the C terminus. Loss of function of these peroxins causes embryo lethality at the heart stage in Arabidopsis. Preventing the coordination of Zn2+ ions by amino acid substitutions in PEX10, PEX2, and PEX12 and overexpressing the resulting conditional sublethal mutations in WT uncovered additional functions of PEX10. Plants overexpressing ΔZn-mutant PEX10 display deformed peroxisomal shapes causing diminished contact with chloroplasts and possibly with mitochondria. These changes correlated with impaired metabolite transfer and, at high CO2, recoverable defective photorespiration plus dwarfish phenotype. The N-terminal PEX10 domain is critical for peroxisome biogenesis and plant development. A point mutation in the highly conserved TLGEEY motif results in vermiform peroxisome shape without impairing organelle contact. Addition of an N-terminal T7 tag to WT PEX0 resulted in partially recoverable reduced growth and defective inflorescences persisting under high CO2. In contrast, plants overexpressing PEX2-ΔZn-T7 grow like WT in normal atmosphere, contain normal-shaped peroxisomes, but display impaired peroxisomal matrix protein import. PEX12-ΔZn-T7 mutants exhibit unimpaired import of matrix protein and normal-shaped peroxisomes when grown in normal atmosphere. During seed germination, glyoxysomes form a reticulum around the lipid bodies for mobilization of storage oil. The formation of this glyoxysomal reticulum seemed to be impaired in PEX10-ΔZn but not in PEX2-ΔZn-T7 or PEX12-ΔZn-T7 plants. Both cytosolic PEX10 domains seem essential for peroxisome structure but differ in metabolic function, suggesting a role for this plant peroxin in addition to the import of matrix protein via ubiquitination of PEX5.
Regulatory T-Cells in Pregnancy: Historical Perspective, State of the Art, and Burning Questions

In this review, we first revisit the original concept of “suppressor T-cells” in pregnancy, put it in a historical perspective, and then highlight the main data that licensed its resurrection and revision into the concept of “regulatory T-cells” (Tregs) in pregnancy. We review the evidence for a major role of Tregs in murine and human pregnancy and discuss Treg interactions with dendritic and uterine natural killer cells, other players of maternal–fetal tolerance. Finally, we highlight what we consider as the most important questions in the field.
HRItk: The Human-Robot Interaction ToolKit Rapid Development of Speech-Centric Interactive Systems in ROS

Developing interactive robots is an extremely challenging task which requires a broad range of expertise across diverse disciplines, including, robotic planning, spoken language understanding, belief tracking and action management. While there has been a boom in recent years in the development of reusable components for robotic systems within common architectures, such as the Robot Operating System (ROS), little emphasis has been placed on developing components for Human-Robot-Interaction. In this paper we introduce HRItk (the Human-Robot-Interaction toolkit), a framework, consisting of messaging protocols, core-components, and development tools for rapidly building speech-centric interactive systems within the ROS environment. The proposed toolkit was specifically designed for extensibility, ease of use, and rapid development, allowing developers to quickly incorporate speech interaction into existing projects.
Rhythmic Ryanodine Receptor Ca2+ Releases During Diastolic Depolarization of Sinoatrial Pacemaker Cells Do Not Require Membrane Depolarization

Abstract— Localized, subsarcolemmal Ca2+ release (LCR) via ryanodine receptors (RyRs) during diastolic depolarization of sinoatrial nodal cells augments the terminal depolarization rate. We determined whether LCRs in rabbit sinoatrial nodal cells require the concurrent membrane depolarization, or are intrinsically rhythmic, and whether rhythmicity is linked to the spontaneous cycle length. Confocal linescan images revealed persistent LCRs both in saponin-permeabilized cells and in spontaneously beating cells acutely voltage-clamped at the maximum diastolic potential. During the initial stage of voltage clamp, the LCR spatiotemporal characteristics did not differ from those in spontaneously beating cells, or in permeabilized cells bathed in 150 nmol/L Ca2+. The period of persistent rhythmic LCRs during voltage clamp was slightly less than the spontaneous cycle length before voltage clamp. In spontaneously beating cells, in both transient and steady states, LCR period was highly correlated with the spontaneous cycle length; and regardless of the cycle length, LCRs occurred predominantly at a constant time, ie, 80% to 90% of the cycle length. Numerical model simulations incorporating LCRs reproduce the experimental results. We conclude that diastolic LCRs reflect rhythmic intracellular Ca2+ cycling that does not require the concomitant membrane depolarization, and that LCR periodicity is closely linked to the spontaneous cycle length. Thus, the biological clock of sinoatrial nodal pacemaker cells, like that of many other rhythmic functions occurring throughout nature, involves an intracellular Ca2+ rhythm.
Differential evolution cluster-based text summarization methods

In this paper, three similarity measures; Normalized Google Distance (NGD), Jaccard and Cosine Similarity measures were employed and tested for textual based clustering problem. A robust evolutionary algorithm called Differential Evolution algorithm was also used to optimize the data clustering process and increase the quality of the generated text summaries. The Recall Oriented Under Gisting Evaluation (ROUGE) was used as an evaluation measure toolkit to assess the quality of the summaries. Experimental results showed that all of our proposed methods outperformed the benchmark methods. More importantly, the Jaccard-similarity based method surpassed all the other proposed methods in this study.
Bypassing Words in Automatic Speech Recognition

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is usually defined as the transformation of an acoustic signal to words. Though there are cases where the transformation to words is useful, the definition does not exhaust all contexts in which ASR could be used. Once the constraint that an ASR system outputs words is relaxed, modifications that reduce the search space become possible: 1) The use of syllables instead of words in the recognizer’s language model; 2) The addition of a concept model that transforms syllable strings to concept strings, where a concept collects related words and phrases. The paper presents preliminary positive results on the use of syllables and concepts in speech recognition and outlines our current efforts to verify the Syllable-Concept Hypothesis (SCH).
Classification as an aid tool for the selection of sensors used for fault detection and isolation

Complex industrial processes demand significant financial investment in sensors and automation devices to monitor and supervise the process in order to guarantee the production quality and the plant and operators safety. Fault detection is one of the multiple tasks of process monitoring and it critically depends on the sensors that measure the significant process variables. Nevertheless, most of the work on fault detection and diagnosis found in literature place more emphasis on developing procedures to perform diagnosis given a set of sensors, and less on determining the actual location of sensors for efficient identification of faults. A methodology based on learning and classification techniques and the information quantity measure, by the entropy concept, is proposed in order to address the problem of sensor location for fault identification. The proposed methodology has been applied to a new concept of intensification reactor, the Open Plate Reactor, developed by Alfa Laval and the Laboratory of Chemical Engineering located at Toulouse.
Caught in a Vise: The Challenges Facing Teacher Preparation in an Era of Accountability

Background Despite polling data that suggests that teachers are well respected by the general public, criticism of teacher preparation by various organizations and interest groups is common, often highlighting the perceived need for increasing their rigor and performance. A number of studies and reports have critiqued teacher preparation, and high-profile leaders like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have called for substantive changes. At the same time, the field of teacher preparation has been embracing change with the idea of accountability based on student performance. Indeed, recently released evidence suggests that in the area of clinical preparation, education programs require many hours of field placement experiences, countering one of the key criticisms of the preparation programs. Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the field of teacher preparation in the current era of accountability and testing. After a brief overview of the current context facing teacher preparation, the issue of outcome measures for varying professions is explored by comparing accreditation outcome measures utilized in selected professions. Then, the strengths and weaknesses of currently emerging assessment models are explored. Finally, a discussion of potential ways to assess teacher preparation program performance with an array of sources and measures is presented. Research Design The study is a combination of a secondary analysis and analytic essay. The use of outcomes associated with 10 professions was examined by reviewing accreditation standards and documentation from published reports available on websites for the specific measures used to assess student success and program outcomes. As a means of validating findings, feedback was obtained from accreditation coordinators and/or other leaders in each profession. The analysis of currently emerging assessment models for teacher preparation was based upon a review of literature on value added and other similar assessments. Conclusions/Recommendations The review of professions found that all are struggling with better means for assessing program outcomes, with a great deal of similarity in the processes currently in place used across fields. Teacher education was found to include more of the different ways for assessing outcomes than any other profession. Significant concerns with currently promoted value-added models for assessing outcomes of teacher preparation were identified, with the use of multiple measures of evidence suggested as the best means for moving forward. We argue that teacher preparation programs are caught in a vise—with an appreciation and desire among those in the field for greater accountability while being squeezed by a sense that the approaches being suggested are prone to error and misuse.