Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thou Shalt Not Take Sides: Cognition, Logic and the Need for Changing How We Believe

We believe, in the sense of supporting ideas and considering them correct while dismissing doubts about them. We take sides about ideas and theories as if that was the right thing to do. And yet, from a rational point of view, this type of support and belief is not justifiable at all. The best we can hope when describing the real world, as far as we know, is to have probabilistic knowledge, to have probabilities associated to each statement. And even that can be very hard to achieve in a reliable way. Far worse, when we defend ideas and believe them as if they were true, Cognitive Psychology experiments show that we stop being able to analyze the question we believe at with competence. In this paper, I gather the evidence we have about taking sides and present the obvious but unseen conclusion that these facts combined mean that we should actually never believe in anything about the real world, except in a probabilistic way. We must actually never take sides because taking sides destroy out abilities to seek for the most correct description of the world. That means we need to start reformulating the way we debate ideas, from our teaching to our political debates, if we actually want to be able to arrive at the best solutions as suggested by whatever evidence we might have. I will show that this has deep consequences on a number of problems, ranging from the emergence of extremism to the reliability of whole scientific fields. Inductive reasoning requires that we allow every idea to make predictions so that we may rank which ideas are better and that has important consequences in scientific practice. The crisis around $p$-values is also discussed and much better understood under the light of this paper results. Finally, I will debate possible ideas to try to minimize the problem.
Closed-Loop Control of Fluid Flow : a Review of Linear Approaches and Tools for the Stabilization of Transitional Flows

Flow control is concerned with the targeted manipulation of intrinsic flow behavior to optimally satisfy prescribed objectives. This article will give an overview of the most common tools for the design of control strategies. We focus on linear control that is aimed at stabilizing fixed points of the Navier-Stokes equations, such as those existing in the case of transitional flows. Key steps to build a Galerkin-based and a data-based model will be presented and illustrated on two generic flow configurations: flow over an open cavity and over a backward-facing step. In the former case, a feedback configuration will result and particular attention will be paid to performance measures and robustness analyses. For the latter case, a feedforward setup has been chosen and a system-identification method will be employed to extract the fluid behavior from data sequences, via statistical learning techniques.
The role of teamwork in software development: Microsoft case study

Software development is a complex activity that requires a group of individuals working effectively as a team. Studies have shown that the performance of an effective team exceeds that of individuals acting independently. However, achieving effectiveness is a challenging task that needs investment and commitment. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics that differentiate effective teams from all others. To observe these characteristics within real software teams, we have chosen the Microsoft company as a case study and have analyzed Microsoft's teams with respect to the characteristics that we define.
Regional cerebral blood flow as a diagnostic tool in frontal lobe dementia of non-Alzheimer type

This paper concerns about regional cerebral blood flow measurements in patients suffering from frontal lobe dementia. The purpose of the study was to contribute of drawing a picture of a diagnostic asset, help making an early contribution to distinguish different kinds of dementia. The 25 female and 18 male patients are a part of The Longitudinal Dementia Study in Lund. Their rCBF measurements have been thoroughly examined to possibly find blood flow changes in particular areas in the brain. The result shows noticeable focal impairments in the frontal and fronto-temporal areas, mostly bilaterally, as well as severe subnormal blood flow levels in 18 patients. This makes an important platform for further research. Key words: Frontal lobe dementia, regional Cerebral Blood Flow, early diagnose (Less)
Mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis of the spectacled salamander, Salamandrina terdigitata (Urodela: Salamandridae), supports the existence of two distinct species

Salamandrina is a monotypic genus of the family Salamandridae endemic to Italy. Forty five individuals of the spectacled salamander, Salamandrina terdigitata, representing 11 populations throughout the whole distribution range were examined for sequence variation of three mitochondrial DNA genes encoding the 12S and 16S ribosomal RNA’s and cytochrome b (1324 bp). The results indicate the existence of two genetically distinct and geographically non-overlapping mtDNA lineages. The first lineage includes the southern populations and the second one comprises the central-northern populations. The degree of genetic divergence between the two groups is high and comparable to distances calculated from homologous sequences available in GenBank between other Salamandrid species. As a result, the genus Salamandrina probably requires splitting into two species. We also compare substitution rates associated with the mitochondrial genes employed across all Salamandrids studied so far, and discuss two possible palaeogeographic scenarios which could have shaped the splitting of the two Salamandrina lineages. These findings have also important implications for management and conservations of the spectacled salamander, which is protected under several international and regional conventions and directives.
A Structured Vector Space Model for Hidden Attribute Meaning in Adjective-Noun Phrases

We present an approach to model hidden attributes in the compositional semantics of adjective-noun phrases in a distributional model. For the representation of adjective meanings, we reformulate the pattern-based approach for attribute learning of Almuhareb (2006) in a structured vector space model (VSM). This model is complemented by a structured vector space representing attribute dimensions of noun meanings. The combination of these representations along the lines of compositional semantic principles exposes the underlying semantic relations in adjective-noun phrases. We show that our compositional VSM outperforms simple pattern-based approaches by circumventing their inherent sparsity problems.
Preliminary Experience with Small Animal SPECT Imaging on Clinical Gamma Cameras

The traditional lack of techniques suitable for in vivo imaging has induced a great interest in molecular imaging for preclinical research. Nevertheless, its use spreads slowly due to the difficulties in justifying the high cost of the current dedicated preclinical scanners. An alternative for lowering the costs is to repurpose old clinical gamma cameras to be used for preclinical imaging. In this paper we assess the performance of a portable device, that is, working coupled to a single-head clinical gamma camera, and we present our preliminary experience in several small animal applications. Our findings, based on phantom experiments and animal studies, provided an image quality, in terms of contrast-noise trade-off, comparable to dedicated preclinical pinhole-based scanners. We feel that our portable device offers an opportunity for recycling the widespread availability of clinical gamma cameras in nuclear medicine departments to be used in small animal SPECT imaging and we hope that it can contribute to spreading the use of preclinical imaging within institutions on tight budgets.
Significance of galactinol and raffinose family oligosaccharide synthesis in plants

Abiotic stress induces differential expression of genes responsible for the synthesis of raffinose family of oligosaccharides (RFOs) in plants. RFOs are described as the most widespread D-galactose containing oligosaccharides in higher plants. Biosynthesis of RFOs begin with the activity of galactinol synthase (GolS; EC 2.4.1.123), a GT8 family glycosyltransferase that galactosylates myo-inositol to produce galactinol. Raffinose and the subsequent higher molecular weight RFOs (Stachyose, Verbascose, and Ajugose) are synthesized from sucrose by the subsequent addition of activated galactose moieties donated by Galactinol. Interestingly, GolS, the key enzyme of this pathway is functional only in the flowering plants. It is thus assumed that RFO synthesis is a specialized metabolic event in higher plants; although it is not known whether lower plant groups synthesize any galactinol or RFOs. In higher plants, several functional importance of RFOs have been reported, e.g., RFOs protect the embryo from maturation associated desiccation, are predominant transport carbohydrates in some plant families, act as signaling molecule following pathogen attack and wounding and accumulate in vegetative tissues in response to a range of abiotic stresses. However, the loss-of-function mutants reported so far fail to show any perturbation in those biological functions. The role of RFOs in biotic and abiotic stress is therefore still in debate and their specificity and related components remains to be demonstrated. The present review discusses the biology and stress-linked regulation of this less studied extension of inositol metabolic pathway.
Affective Analysis of Abstract Paintings Using Statistical Analysis and Art Theory

A novel approach to the emotion classification of abstract paintings is proposed. Based on a user study, we employ computer vision techniques to understand what makes an abstract artwork emotional. Our aim is to identify and quantify which are the emotional regions of abstract paintings, as well as the role of each feature (colour, shapes and texture) on the human emotional response. In addition, we investigate the link between the detected emotional content and the way people look at abstract paintings by using eye-tracking recordings. A bottom-up saliency model was applied to compare with eye-tracking in order to predict the emotional salient regions of abstract paintings. In future, we aim to extract metadata associated to the paintings (e.g., title, keywords, textual description, etc.) in order to correlate it with the emotional responses of the paintings. This research opens opportunity to understand why a specific painting is perceived as emotional on global and local scales.
How important are early investment experiences on subsequent investment decisions? A laboratory experiment on asset allocation

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of early investment experiences on subsequent portfolio allocation decisions in a laboratory setting. Design/methodology/approach - – In an experiment in which the task consisted of allocating a portfolio between a risky and riskless asset for 20 periods, two groups of subjects were confronted with either a market boom or bust in the initial four periods. Findings - – The findings suggest that after controlling for demographic characteristics, the timing of a boom or bust during the investment lifecycle matters greatly. Subjects that faced a bust early in their investment lifecycle held less of the risky asset in subsequent periods compared to subjects who experienced an early boom. Originality/value - – To the best of the authors knowledge this is the first laboratory study investigating the role of early aggregate shocks on subsequent investment behavior.
miR-BAG: Bagging Based Identification of MicroRNA Precursors

Non-coding elements such as miRNAs play key regulatory roles in living systems. These ultra-short, ∼21 bp long, RNA molecules are derived from their hairpin precursors and usually participate in negative gene regulation by binding the target mRNAs. Discovering miRNA candidate regions across the genome has been a challenging problem. Most of the existing tools work reliably only for limited datasets. Here, we have presented a novel reliable approach, miR-BAG, developed to identify miRNA candidate regions in genomes by scanning sequences as well as by using next generation sequencing (NGS) data. miR-BAG utilizes a bootstrap aggregation based machine learning approach, successfully creating an ensemble of complementary learners to attain high accuracy while balancing sensitivity and specificity. miR-BAG was developed for wide range of species and tested extensively for performance over a wide range of experimentally validated data. Consideration of position-specific variation of triplet structural profiles and mature miRNA anchored structural profiles had a positive impact on performance. miR-BAG’s performance was found consistent and the accuracy level was observed to be >90% for most of the species considered in the present study. In a detailed comparative analysis, miR-BAG performed better than six existing tools. Using miR-BAG NGS module, we identified a total of 22 novel miRNA candidate regions in cow genome in addition to a total of 42 cow specific miRNA regions. In practice, discovery of miRNA regions in a genome demands high-throughput data analysis, requiring large amount of processing. Considering this, miR-BAG has been developed in multi-threaded parallel architecture as a web server as well as a user friendly GUI standalone version.
Circadian clock protein cryptochrome regulates the expression of proinflammatory cytokines

Chronic sleep deprivation perturbs the circadian clock and increases susceptibility to diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and cancer. Increased inflammation is one of the common underlying mechanisms of these diseases, thus raising a hypothesis that circadian-oscillator components may regulate immune response. Here we show that absence of the core clock component protein cryptochrome (CRY) leads to constitutive elevation of proinflammatory cytokines in a cell-autonomous manner. We observed a constitutive NF–κB and protein kinase A (PKA) signaling activation in Cry1−/−;Cry2−/− cells. We further demonstrate that increased phosphorylation of p65 at S276 residue in Cry1−/−;Cry2−/− cells is due to increased PKA signaling activity, likely induced by a significantly high basal level of cAMP, which we detected in these cells. In addition, we report that CRY1 binds to adenylyl cyclase and limits cAMP production. Based on these data, we propose that absence of CRY protein(s) might release its (their) inhibition on cAMP production, resulting in elevated cAMP and increased PKA activation, subsequently leading to NF–κB activation through phosphorylation of p65 at S276. These results offer a mechanistic framework for understanding the link between circadian rhythm disruption and increased susceptibility to chronic inflammatory diseases.
Japanese Opinion Extraction System for Japanese Newspapers Using Machine -Learning Method

We constructed a Japanese opinion extraction system for Japanese newspaper articles using a machinelearning method for the system. We used opinionannotated articles as learning data for the machinelearning method. The system extracts opinionated sentences from newspaper articles, and specifies opinion holders and opinion polarities of the extracted sentences. The system also evaluates whether or not the sentences of the articles are relevant to the given topic. We conducted experiments using the NTCIR-6 opinion extraction subtask data collection and obtained the following accuracy rates using a lenient gold standard: opinion extraction, 42.88%; opinion holder extraction, 14.31%; polarity decision, 19.90%; and relevance evaluation, 63.15%.
New insights into the structure of abasic DNA from molecular dynamics simulations

Abasic (AP) sites constitute a common form of DNA damage, arising from the spontaneous or enzymatic breakage of the N-glycosyl bond and the loss of a nucleotide base. To examine the effects of such damage on DNA structure, especially in the vicinity of the abasic sugar, four 1.5 ns molecular dynamics simulations of double-helical DNA dodecamers with and without a single abasic (tetrahydrofuran, X) lesion in a 5'-d(CXT) context have been performed and analyzed. The results indicate that the abasic site does not maintain a hole or gap in the DNA, but instead perturbs the canonical structure and induces additional flexibility close to the abasic site. In the apurinic simulations (i.e., when a pyrimidine is opposite the AP site), the abasic sugar flipped in and out of the minor groove, and the gap was water filled, except during the occurrence of a novel non-Watson-Crick C-T base pair across the abasic site. The apyrimidinic gap was not penetrated by water until the abasic sugar flipped out and remained extrahelical. Both AP helices showed kinks of 20-30 degrees at the abasic site. The Watson-Crick hydrogen bonds are more transient throughout the DNA double helices containing an abasic site. The abasic sugar displayed an unusually broad range of sugar puckers centered around the northern pucker. The increased motion of the bases and backbone near the abasic site appear to correlate with sequence-dependent helical stability. The data indicate that abasic DNA contorts more easily and in specific ways relative to unmodified DNA, an aspect likely to be important in abasic site recognition and hydrolysis.
Immuno-histochemical localization of endothelial nitric oxide synthase in testicular cells of men with non-obstructive azoospermia

Background: Non obstructive azoospermia (NOA) is one of the causes of male infertility in which spermatogenesis process is disturbed. Recent studies suggested the possible role of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) in spermatogenesis process. Objective: The aim of the present study is to evaluate the expression of eNOS in human testicular tissue in men with NOA and men with normal spermatogenesis by using immunocytochemistry. Materials and Methods: In this case-control study, testicular biopsies were obtained from 10 men with NOA and 7 men with normospermia who were attended to infertility center for diagnosis or infertility treatment. Immunohistochemistry was used to localize the isoform of eNOS in these tissues and the intensity of staining was semi quantitively assessed. In addition, the histopathological evaluation was examined in both groups. Results: The isoform of eNOS enzyme activity was detected in the cytoplasm of sertoli and leydig cells in both groups. There was, however, a considerable variability in the intensity of staining between two groups. The expression of eNOS in Leydig cells in control group was significantly (p<0.05) higher than those in the NOA group. In contrast, expression of eNOS in Sertoli cells in NOA was more than those in the control group. eNO Simmune staining was absent in the normal germ cells but was intense in the abnormal germ cells with piknotic neucleous. The most histopathological finding were hypospermatogenesis (27.2%), Sertoli cell only syndrome (18.1%) and tubular fibrotic (13.6%). Conclusion: These results suggested that increase level of eNOS may play an important role in the apoptosis process in the abnormal germ cells and disturbance of spermatogenesis process.
VCloud: adding interactiveness to word clouds for knowledge exploration in large unstructured texts

The identification of relevant information in large text databases is a challenging task. One of the reasons is human beings' limitations in handling large volumes of data. A common solution for scavenging data from texts are word clouds. A word cloud illustrates word usage in a document by resizing individual words in documents proportionally to how frequently they appear. Even though word clouds are easy to understand, they are not particularly efficient, because they are static. In addition, the presented information lacks context, i.e., words are not explained and they may lead to radically erroneous interpretations. To tackle these problems we developed VCloud, a tool that allows the user to interact with word clouds, therefore allowing informative and interactive data exploration. Furthermore, our tool also allows one to compare two data sets presented as word clouds. We evaluated VCloud using real data about the evolution of gastritis research through the years. The papers indexed by Pubmed related to this medical context were selected for visualization and data analysis using VCloud. A domain expert explored these visualizations, being able to extract useful information from it. This illustrates how can VCloud be a valuable tool for visual text analytics.
Transmission quality in MC-CDMA radio interface with turbo codes

Multi-Carrier Code Division Multiple Access techiques is a combination of two radio access techniques: Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Orthogonal Frequency-called Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and has the advantages of both techniques. The paper presents the design of transmitter and receiver for MC-CDMA radio interface and the simulation results of the transmission quality in AWGN channel.
Applications of texture mapping to volume and flow visualization

The authors describe six visualization methods which take advantage of hardware polygon scan conversion, texture mapping, and compositing, to give interactive viewing of 3D scalar fields, and motion for 3D flows. For volume rendering, these are splatting of an optimized 3D reconstruction filter, and tetrahedral cell projection using a texture map to provide the exponential per pixel necessary for accurate opacity calculation. For flows, these are the above tetrahedral projection method for rendering the ``flow volume`` dyed after passing through a dye releasing polygon, ``splatting`` of cycled anisotropic textures to provide flow direction and motion visualization, splatting motion blurred particles to indicate flow velocity, and advecting a texture directly to show the flow motion. All these techniques are tailored to take advantage of existing graphics pipelines to produce interactive visualization tools.