Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coreference Systems Based on Kernels Methods

Various types of structural information - e.g., about the type of constructions in which binding constraints apply, or about the structure of names - play a central role in coreference resolution, often in combination with lexical information (as in expletive detection). Kernel functions appear to be a promising candidate to capture structure-sensitive similarities and complex feature combinations, but care is required to ensure they are exploited in the best possible fashion. In this paper we propose kernel functions for three subtasks of coreference resolution - binding constraint detection, expletive identification, and aliasing - together with an architecture to integrate them within the standard framework for coreference resolution.
Live Adaptations of Low-power MAC Protocols

This article aims at observing in an interactive manner the impact of modification of preamble and sampling periods at the low-power family of MAC protocols, and thus, illustrating in real-time the energy consumption and delay performance of each node accordingly. To do so, we implemented the ability for users to generate traffic at some remote nodes that are involved in two distinct deployed topologies. Those deployed networks operate with either a statically configured network, by employing X-MAC on top of the Contiki OS, or T-AAD, a lightweight traffic auto-adaptive protocol that allows live and automatic modifications of duty-cycle configurations.
Extracting Actionability from Machine Learning Models by Sub-optimal Deterministic Planning

A main focus of machine learning research has been improving the generalization accuracy and efficiency of prediction models. Many models such as SVM, random forest, and deep neural nets have been proposed and achieved great success. However, what emerges as missing in many applications is actionability, i.e., the ability to turn prediction results into actions. For example, in applications such as customer relationship management, clinical prediction, and advertisement, the users need not only accurate prediction, but also actionable instructions which can transfer an input to a desirable goal (e.g., higher profit repays, lower morbidity rates, higher ads hit rates). Existing effort in deriving such actionable knowledge is few and limited to simple action models which restricted to only change one attribute for each action. The dilemma is that in many real applications those action models are often more complex and harder to extract an optimal solution. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that achieves actionability by combining learning with planning, two core areas of AI. In particular, we propose a framework to extract actionable knowledge from random forest, one of the most widely used and best off-the-shelf classifiers. We formulate the actionability problem to a sub-optimal action planning (SOAP) problem, which is to find a plan to alter certain features of a given input so that the random forest would yield a desirable output, while minimizing the total costs of actions. Technically, the SOAP problem is formulated in the SAS+ planning formalism, and solved using a Max-SAT based approach. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach on a personal credit dataset and other benchmarks. Our work represents a new application of automated planning on an emerging and challenging machine learning paradigm.
A new wave of hormone research: crosstalk mechanisms.

Phytohormones regulate numerous aspects of plant growth,development,and responses to biotic and abiotic stress conditions.At least seven groups of phytohormones have been well characterized,including abscisic acid (ABA),auxin,brassinosteroid (BR),cytokinin (CK),ethylene,gibberellin (GA),and jasmonate (JA). Hormone research in the past decades has focused on elucidating signal transduction pathways from hormone perception to response and such effort has been well paid off by recent discoveries of almost all receptors for major classes of plant hormones.While receptors and pathways for individual hormones are being illustrated,mounting evidence suggests that these signaling pathways are interconnected in a complex network,in which phytohormones not only orchestrate intrinsic developmental cues,but also convey environmental inputs by means of synergistic or antagonistic actions referred to as signaling crosstalk.In this context,Molecular Plant published a special issue focusing on hormone action and crosstalk (Volume 4,Number 4,2011),which has had free access online since July 2012.
Calcium ion presence as a trait of receptivity in tenuinucellar ovules of Galanthus nivalis L.

In Galanthus nivalis during the progamic phase, both the embryo sac and somatic cells of the ovule change their ultrastructure and physiology, as observed by light, fluorescence, and electron microscopy. Fresh ovules from buds, opening flowers, and from cross-pollinated flowers were stained in toto to detect pectins, acidic polysaccharides, proteins, lipids, callose, free calcium ions and membrane-bound calcium. These substances were found only in the micropylar part of fertile ovules. All stainings were negative in sterile ovules. In EM, the somatic cells in the micropylar part of the ovule were observed to develop secretion activity. Their exudates passed to the intercellular spaces, mainly to the micropylar canal. The amount of the exudate increased after pollination. Free or loosely bound calcium ions were present in extracellular regions of the micropylar part of fertile ovules. The substances detected in the micropylar exudate of fertile ovules are suggested to support and direct pollen tube growth to the embryo sac.
Ultrasound Doppler Probing of Flows Transverse with Respect to Beam Axis

It is an accepted fact that transverse Doppler effects of the first order in v/c are nonexistent for all physical wave phenomena, including acoustics, i.e., the Doppler effect is zero for radiation normal to the direction of motion. However, this statement assumes that the incident field is a plane wave, which is not true in general for finite aperture sources. Consequently, the probing of flows transverse to the axis of finite diameter beams, particularly focused beams, is feasible. This geometry will be advantageous in many applications where the classical orientation of the sound beam, oblique to the flow, is not possible. With this motivation in mind, the theory and experimental feasibility of measuring Doppler spectra in transverse geometries is presently investigated.
Impulsive ankle push-off powers leg swing in human walking

Rapid unloading and a peak in power output of the ankle joint have been widely observed during push-off in human walking. Model-based studies hypothesize that this push-off causes redirection of the body center of mass just before touch-down of the leading leg. Other research suggests that work done by the ankle extensors provides kinetic energy for the initiation of swing. Also, muscle work is suggested to power a catapult-like action in late stance of human walking. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the biomechanical process leading to this widely observed high power output of the ankle extensors. In our study, we use kinematic and dynamic data of human walking collected at speeds between 0.5 and 2.5 m s−1 for a comprehensive analysis of push-off mechanics. We identify two distinct phases, which divide the push-off: first, starting with positive ankle power output, an alleviation phase, where the trailing leg is alleviated from supporting the body mass, and second, a launching phase, where stored energy in the ankle joint is released. Our results show a release of just a small part of the energy stored in the ankle joint during the alleviation phase. A larger impulse for the trailing leg than for the remaining body is observed during the launching phase. Here, the buckling knee joint inhibits transfer of power from the ankle to the remaining body. It appears that swing initiation profits from an impulsive ankle push-off resulting from a catapult without escapement.
Paving the Path to Automatic User Task Identification

Web site personalization could be immensely improved if the user's current intentions could be recognized by the surfing behavior. The latter can be captured in the form of events occurring in the browser, like mouse moves or opening Web pages. But which aspects of the user's behavior best contribute to the recognition of the task a user is performing? Is it the number of mouse clicks, the amount of time spent on each page, the use of the back button or anything else? First results of an exploratory study give hint that already simple attributes, such as the average page view duration, the number of page views per minute and the number of different URLs requested, may be usable for the automatic user task identification. 20 participants solved exemplary exercises which corresponded to the user tasks Fact Finding, Information Gathering and Just Browsing. Due to the event logging, true display times were identified, even cached pages and the use of browser tabs were recorded.
Evaluating the structural integrity of high strength low alloy steels considered for shipbuilding using acoustic emission

The main objectives of this project have been to assess the applicability of various HSLA steel grades in ships as a possible replacement to conventional maritime steel grades such as the AH36 and DH36 high strength steels. For this reason, the mechanical properties of three different HSLA steel grades (X65, S690 and FCA) of different plate thicknesses were assessed using metallography, fractography, hardness, tensile, fatigue and impact testing. Acoustic emission (AE) testing was carried out in parallel with tensile and fatigue testing in order to ascertain qualitatively and quantitatively the evolution of damage in the samples tested and verify the level of severity. Various methods have been applied for the analysis of the AE data acquired in order to correlate them with the mechanical testing results obtained in parallel. It has been revealed that HSLA steel grades exhibit superior crack initiation and propagation resistance than conventional steel grades. Moreover, they exhibit better or comparable tensile properties and thus they qualify for ship building applications. It has been found that indeed AE can be used to detect crack growth. It can also potentially be used to assess the rate at which a crack grows using AE energy release rate.
Robust Brain Hyperglycemia during General Anesthesia: Relationships with Metabolic Brain Inhibition and Vasodilation

Glucose is the main energetic substrate for the metabolic activity of brain cells and its proper delivery into the extracellular space is essential for maintaining normal neural functions. Under physiological conditions, glucose continuously enters the extracellular space from arterial blood via gradient-dependent facilitated diffusion governed by the GLUT-1 transporters. Due to this gradient-dependent mechanism, glucose levels rise in the brain after consumption of glucose-containing foods and drinks. Glucose entry is also accelerated due to local neuronal activation and neuro-vascular coupling, resulting in transient hyperglycemia to prevent any metabolic deficit. Here, we explored another mechanism that is activated during general anesthesia and results in significant brain hyperglycemia. By using enzyme-based glucose biosensors we demonstrate that glucose levels in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) strongly increase after iv injection of Equthesin, a mixture of chloral hydrate and sodium pentobarbital, which is often used for general anesthesia in rats. By combining electrochemical recordings with brain, muscle, and skin temperature monitoring, we show that the gradual increase in brain glucose occurring during the development of general anesthesia tightly correlate with decreases in brain-muscle temperature differentials, suggesting that this rise in glucose is related to metabolic inhibition. While the decreased consumption of glucose by brain cells could contribute to the development of hyperglycemia, an exceptionally strong positive correlation (r = 0.99) between glucose rise and increases in skin-muscle temperature differentials was also found, suggesting the strong vasodilation of cerebral vessels as the primary mechanism for accelerated entry of glucose into brain tissue. Our present data could explain drastic differences in basal glucose levels found in awake and anesthetized animal preparations. They also suggest that glucose entry into brain tissue could be strongly modulated by pharmacological drugs via drug-induced changes in metabolic activity and the tone of cerebral vessels.
Domain Adaptation in Semantic Role Labeling Using a Neural Language Model and Linguistic Resources

We propose a method for adapting Semantic Role Labeling (SRL) systems from a source domain to a target domain by combining a neural language model and linguistic resources to generate additional training examples. We primarily aim to improve the results of Location, Time, Manner and Direction roles. In our methodology, main words of selected predicates and arguments in the source-domain training data are replaced with words from the target domain. The replacement words are generated by a language model and then filtered by several linguistic filters (including Part-Of-Speech (POS), WordNet and Predicate constraints). In experiments on the out-of-domain CoNLL 2009 data, with the Recurrent Neural Network Language Model (RNNLM) and a well-known semantic parser from Lund University, we show enhanced recall and F1 without penalizing precision on the four targeted roles. These results improve the results of the same SRL system without using the language model and the linguistic resources, and are better than the results of the same SRL system that is trained with examples that are enriched with word embeddings. We also demonstrate the importance of using a language model and the vocabulary of the target domain when generating new training examples.
A study of some influencing factors in testability and diagnostics based on FSMs

It is well known that the tests and diagnostics influence greatly communication software reliability. The testability and the easiness of the diagnostic process of communication software are becoming major concerns of the design community. The fault detection and the fault localization problems are strongly related issues. The ease of diagnostics can be seen as a criterion of testability; it is in fact characterized by specific requirements at the design level. We make a clear link between these two issues and we study the influence of some testability factors on the diagnostic activity. We present our results and hints on "diagnosability" in the context of a finite state machine model.
Resveratrol attenuates C5a‐induced inflammatory responses in vitro and in vivo by inhibiting phospholipase D and sphingosine kinase activities

The anti‐inflammatory activity of the phytoalexin resveratrol (RSV) was evaluated in C5 anaphylatoxin (C5a)‐stimulated primary neutrophils and in a mouse model of acute peritonitis. Pretreatment of human and mouse neutrophils with RSV significantly blocked oxidative burst, leukocyte migration, degranulation, and inflammatory cytokine production. The anti‐inflammatory activity of RSV was a function of inhibition of sphingosine kinase (SphK) activity (IC50 ~20μM) within 5 min of exposure, its membrane localization, and SphKl‐mediated Ca2+ release. As an experimental control, the SphKl pharmacological inhibitor AAtdimethyl sphingosine (DMS) was used to compare the inhibitory effect of RSV. We also provide evidence that the SphK inhibitory effect of RSV was mediated via its ability to block phospholipase D (PLD) activity and membrane recruitment. Furthermore, RSV blocked ERK1/2 phosphorylation, which functioned independently of SphK1 in this study. To provide in vivo relevance to these data, C5a‐induced model of acute peritonitis was established, and the effects of prior injection of RSV were investigated. Indeed, prior injection of RSV virtually completely attenuated the effects of C5a on vascular permeability, neutrophil migration, release of interleukin β, tumor necrosis factor α, interleukin 6, and the chemokine MIP‐la. Taken together, these data demonstrate strong anti‐inflammatory activity of RSV in vitro and in vivo and highlight SphK1 as a potential target of this remarkable phytoalexin. These data could have tremendous implications for the clinical use of RSV in inflammatory pathologies. — Issuree, P. D. A. , Pushparaj, P. N. , Pervaiz, S. , Melendez, A J. Resveratrol attenuates C5a‐induced inflammatory responses in vitro and in vivo by inhibiting phospholipase D and sphingosine kinase activities. FASEBJ. 23, 2412–2424 (2009)
Shear strain determination of the polymer polydimethysiloxane (PMDS) using digital image correlation in different temperatures

In the present work a digital image correlation (DIC) method is used in order to analyze the adhesive shear modulus of poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) submitted to different loads and temperatures. This is an optical-numerical full-field surface displacement measurement method. It is based on a comparison between two images of a specimen coated by a random speckled pattern in the undeformed and in the deformed states. A single lap joint testing is performed. This is a standard test specimen for characterizing adhesive properties and it is considered the simplest form of adhesive joints. For the single lap joint specimen, steel adherends are bonded using a flexible rubber elastic polymer (PDMS), which is a commercially available silicone elastic rubber
Intermittent endocrine therapy for advanced prostate cancer

Twenty patients with advanced prostate cancer have been treated with an intermittent endocrine therapy schedule. Hormone therapy (diethylstilbestrol in 19 patients and flutamide in 1 patient) was administered until a clinical response was clearly demonstrated and then it was withheld until symptoms recurred. Prior to treatment 17 of 20 patients had bone pain and positive radionuclide scans, two had asymptomatic pulmonary metastases, and one had symptomatic localized disease. Duration of endocrine therapy prior to withdrawal of all treatment ranged 2 to 70 months (median, 10 months). Disease progression occurred 1 to 24 months (median, 8 months) after interruption of therapy. All patients who relapsed had a rapid clinical response following resumption of endocrine therapy. Nine of ten patients rendered impotent by endocrine therapy resumed sexual activity within 3 months of stopping treatment. This data indicates that satisfactory palliation of advanced prostatic cancer can be achieved in selected patients using intermittent endocrine therapy.
Beta-Forging of Ti6Al4V Titanium Alloy Powders Consolidated by HIP: Plastic Flow and Strain-Rate Relation

Ti6Al4V is probably the best known and studied titanium alloy, not only for aerospace applications. Nevertheless the deformation behavior still represents a challenge if any modification in the deformation process is required or introduced. This work deals with deformation behavior description of Ti6Al4V HIPped powders during high temperature deformation tests carried on in the Beta-region. Laboratory compression and tensile tests have been coupled with relaxation tests in order to achieve robust data about strain rate sensibility m-coefficient and activation energy Q. These results have been fitted for the assessment of a more general exponential deformation law. The final result is a “Dorn model” that takes into account and compare all the results from the three different laboratory techniques: compression, tensile and relaxation with a statistical correlation coefficient Rd2=0,78. The deformation tests have been carried out at temperatures ranging from 1173 K up to 1373 K and strain rate from 0,01 s-1 up to about 1 s-1, trying to describe the high temperature complex shape forging operations. The final results has been used and are in use for modeling the forging precursors and dies-shapes to optimize industrial small scale forging tests.
Natural Inhibitors of Pancreatic Lipase as New Players in Obesity Treatment

Obesity is a multifactorial disease characterized by an excessive weight for height due to an enlarged fat deposition such as adipose tissue, which is attributed to a higher calorie intake than the energy expenditure. The key strategy to combat obesity is to prevent chronic positive impairments in the energy equation. However, it is often difficult to maintain energy balance, because many available foods are high-energy yielding, which is usually accompanied by low levels of physical activity. The pharmaceutical industry has invested many efforts in producing antiobesity drugs; but only a lipid digestion inhibitor obtained from an actinobacterium is currently approved and authorized in Europe for obesity treatment. This compound inhibits the activity of pancreatic lipase, which is one of the enzymes involved in fat digestion. In a similar way, hundreds of extracts are currently being isolated from plants, fungi, algae, or bacteria and screened for their potential inhibition of pancreatic lipase activity. Among them, extracts isolated from common foodstuffs such as tea, soybean, ginseng, yerba mate, peanut, apple, or grapevine have been reported. Some of them are polyphenols and saponins with an inhibitory effect on pancreatic lipase activity, which could be applied in the management of the obesity epidemic.
An Energy-Efficient VM Prediction and Migration Framework for Overcommitted Clouds

We propose an integrated, energy-efficient, resource allocation framework for overcommitted clouds. The framework makes great energy savings by 1) minimizing Physical Machine (PM) overload occurrences via VM resource usage monitoring and prediction, and 2) reducing the number of active PMs via efficient VM migration and placement. Using real Google data consisting of a 29-day traces collected from a cluster containing more than 12K PMs, we show that our proposed framework outperforms existing overload avoidance techniques and prior VM migration strategies by reducing the number of unpredicted overloads, minimizing migration overhead, increasing resource utilization, and reducing cloud energy consumption.
Detection of T‐regulatory cells has a potential role in the diagnosis of classical Hodgkin lymphoma

Previous studies have demonstrated an increase in T‐regulatory cells in the involved lymph nodes and peripheral blood of patients with Hodgkin lymphoma. Our study examined whether the detection of T‐regulatory cells by flow cytometry could distinguish classical Hodgkin lymphoma (CHL) from benign cases and B‐cell non‐Hodgkin lymphomas (B‐NHL). We measured CD4, CD25, and CD152 in 14 CHLs, 2 nodular lymphocyte‐predominant Hodgkin lymphomas, 31 B‐NHLs, and 54 benign cases. All T‐regulatory cell parameters, including percent lymphocytes CD4+/CD152+ and CD4+/CD25+/CD152+, and mean and median CD152 expression in CD4+/CD25+ lymphocytes, were higher in CHL than in B‐NHL and benign. Mean CD152 in CD4+/CD25+ lymphocytes distinguished CHL from benign with 79% sensitivity and 100% specificity, and from B‐NHL with 71% sensitivity and 90% specificity. Overall, our results show that T‐regulatory cells are increased in CHL and their detection may be a useful tool in differentiating CHL from other entities. © 2008 Clinical Cytometry Society
Periodic signal modeling for the octave problem in music transcription

Precise automatic music transcription requires accurate modeling and identification of the spectral content of the audio signal. Whereas a deterministic model in terms of modulated periodic signals allows to distinguish different notes, the presence of multiple notes separated by octaves poses a big problem since they share the same periodicity, and hence completely overlapping spectral content. In this paper we propose the introduction of a spectral model to allow distinction of such mixtures of spectral content at various octaves. Cyclic correlations are estimated at its pitch and decomposed into even and odd parts, corresponding to even and odd harmonics.