Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrating embodied conversational agent components with a generic framework

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are computer generated life-like characters that interact with human users in face-to-face conversations. To achieve natural multi-modal conversations, ECA systems are sophisticated and require numbers of building assemblies. They are thus difficult for an individual research group to develop. To address this problem, we are developing an approach to connect those components with a Generic ECA (GECA) framework. GECA is composed with a blackboard-model based platform, a high-level protocol and a set of APIs which are meant for easing component wrapper development. As an expectation, with such a generic ECA framework, rapid ECA system prototyping is possible while research result sharing and the collaboration between ECA researchers can be facilitated. This paper describes the basic concepts of this framework, an initial implementation and evaluations of actually using it to build a realistic ECA application.
The Relationship Between Musical Complexity and Liking in Jazz and Bluegrass

Berlyne (1971) and others have proposed that liking of music is an inverted-U shaped function of its complexity. Past research has been inconclusive concerning the generality of the inverted-U relationship. The present studies tested the generality of this relationship across related but distinct musical styles. Our experimental participants judged the complexity and liking of short pieces of music created by professional musicians who where instructed to improvise at different levels of complexity. Experiment 1 tested whether the inverted-U relationship was present between perceived complexity and liking for jazz and bluegrass when each style was presented separately. Experiment 2 replicated the findings from Experiment 1 under interleaved presentation conditions. The results support the inverted-U shaped relationship between perceived complexity and liking for bluegrass but not for jazz. It is possible that the relationship between liking and perceived musical complexity varies across musical styles.
Developing local government managers ‐ sourcing development requirements: competence versus change process frameworks

Reports on the introduction and implementation of a corporate management development strategy for a local council, which intended to become more customer‐centred and less employment‐centred, more financially and commercially efficient and less bureaucratic in its internal processes. Analyses the development needs of managers facing change in a local authority. Draws some conclusions about competence versus change process frameworks as models for sourcing development requirements.
Contingent consumer decision making in the wine industry: the role of hedonic orientation

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate the relationships among consumer expertise, hedonic orientation, price consciousness, and consumption using wine as the focal product. While these variables' impact on decision making within this industry have been examined in isolation, this is believed to be the first study marrying these hedonic and non‐hedonic characteristics.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from a convenience sample of wine purchasers consisting of faculty, staff and upper level students at a major southwestern university using a 95 item questionnaire. In total, 241 usable surveys were included in the analysis.Findings – The findings indicate support for all five hypothesized relationships. The importance of hedonic orientation as a psychographic characteristic emerges. The relationship between expertise and consumption is moderated by hedonic orientation as is the relationship between expertise and price consciousness. Price consciousness mediates the relationship between expert.
Activation of liver X receptor protects inner retinal damage induced by N-methyl-D-aspartate.

PURPOSE To investigate whether activation of liver X receptors (LXRs) protects N-methyl-D-aspartic (NMDA)-induced retinal neurotoxicity in mice and to explore the underlying mechanism. METHODS Inner retinal damage was induced by intravitreal injection of NMDA. A synthetic LXR ligand TO901317 (TO90, 50 mg/kg/d) or vehicle was intragastrically administrated from 3 days before to 1 day or 7 days after NMDA injection. The severity of retinal damage was evaluated with histological analysis and TUNEL staining, and retinal functions were evaluated by ERG. The expressions of caspase-3, bax, bcl-2, TNF-α, and BACE1, the rate-limiting enzyme in the formation of amyloid β (Aβ), in the retina were examined by real-time PCR and ELISA. The levels of LXRs, NF-κB subunit p65, p-p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), and an LXR target gene ABCA1 were detected with real-time PCR and Western blotting. The localization and protein expression of Aβ in the retina was assessed by immunohistochemistry and Western blotting. RESULTS The NMDA enhanced the expression of LXRβ but not LXRα and ABCA1 in mouse retina. Nevertheless, administration of TO90 after NMDA injection not only enhanced the expression of LXRβ but also upregulated the level of ABCA1, suggesting retinal LXRs were activated in a ligand-dependent manner. The LXRα expression was unchanged in the vehicle and the TO90-treated groups. Activation of LXRβ with TO90 inhibited cell death in the ganglion cell layer (GCL) and inner nuclear layer (INL), preserved ERG b- and a-wave amplitudes, and the b/a ratio in the NMDA-treated mice. Meanwhile, TO90 suppressed the elevation of apoptosis factors caspase-3 and bax induced by NMDA and upregulated the level of an antiapoptotic factor bcl-2. The TO90 also inhibited the increase of p-p38 MAPK and proinflammatory cytokine TNF-α after NMDA injection. Furthermore, activation of LXR attenuated the activation of NF-κB, and reduced gene expression of BACE1 and accumulation of Aβ induced by NMDA. CONCLUSIONS Activation of LXRβ with a synthetic LXR ligand TO90 protects the inner retinal damage induced by NMDA in mice. We speculate the protective effect is associated with inhibition of the NF-κB signaling pathway and reduction of Aβ formation in retina. The LXR agonists may become a new class of neuroprotective agent for retinal diseases associated with glutamate-induced excitotoxicity.
Estimation of the Performance Improvement of Pre-Amplified PAM4 Systems When Using Multi-Section Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

Multi-section semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) have been shown to have superior noise and linearity performance compared with single section SOAs. We show how to create a simplified numerical model for multi-section SOAs that is suitable for optical communication system simulations and use that model to investigate the amplification performance of 56 Gbit/s four-level pulse amplitude modulation signals. We find that a multi-section SOA could provide an improvement in input power dynamic range exceeding 3 dB compared to a single section SOA that has the same unsaturated gain.
Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor and Angiogenesis

Angiogenesis is a hallmark of wound healing, the menstrual cycle, cancer, and various ischemic and inflammatory diseases. A rich variety of pro- and antiangiogenic molecules have already been discovered. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is an interesting inducer of angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis, because it is a highly specific mitogen for endothelial cells. Signal transduction involves binding to tyrosine kinase receptors and results in endothelial cell proliferation, migration, and new vessel formation. In this article, the role of VEGF in physiological and pathological processes is reviewed. We also discuss how modulation of VEGF expression creates new therapeutic possibilities and describe recent developments in this field.
Development of Therapeutic-Grade Small Interfering RNAs by Chemical Engineering

Recent successes in clinical trials have provided important proof of concept that small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) indeed constitute a new promising class of therapeutics. Although great efforts are still needed to ensure efficient means of delivery in vivo, the siRNA molecule itself has been successfully engineered by chemical modification to meet initial challenges regarding specificity, stability, and immunogenicity. To date, a great wealth of siRNA architectures and types of chemical modification are available for promoting safe siRNA-mediated gene silencing in vivo and, consequently, the choice of design and modification types can be challenging to individual experimenters. Here we review the literature and devise how to improve siRNA performance by structural design and specific chemical modification to ensure potent and specific gene silencing without unwarranted side-effects and hereby complement the ongoing efforts to improve cell targeting and delivery by other carrier molecules.
A field demonstration of the costs and benefits of group living to edible and defended prey

Both theoretical and laboratory research suggests that many prey animals should live in a solitary, dispersed distribution unless they lack repellent defences such as toxins, venoms and stings. Chemically defended prey may, by contrast, benefit substantially from aggregation because spatial localization may cause rapid predator satiation on prey toxins, protecting many individuals from attack. If repellent defences promote aggregation of prey, they also provide opportunities for new social interactions; hence the consequences of defence may be far reaching for the behavioural biology of the animal species. There is an absence of field data to support predictions about the relative costs and benefits of aggregation. We show here for the first time using wild predators that edible, undefended artificial prey do indeed suffer heightened death rates if they are aggregated; whereas chemically defended prey may benefit substantially by grouping. We argue that since many chemical defences are costly to prey, aggregation may be favoured because it makes expensive defences much more effective, and perhaps allows grouped individuals to invest less in chemical defences.
Improving Monte Carlo Localization in sparse environments using structural environment information

This paper presents a combination of the BVP-path planner and Monte Carlo localization to assist a robot in the global localization problem in sparse environments. This kind of environment poses a very difficult situation in this problem, since several of its regions do not provide relevant information to permit the robot to recover its pose. This paper proposes a strategy that distributes particles only in relevant parts of the environment using the information about the environment structure. Afterwards, it leads the robot along these regions using the numeric solution of a BVP involving Laplace equation. In the experiments, we also show that the information about robot motion can be used to improve the convergence rate to the correct robot pose. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the potential of the method.
Towards fast decentralized construction of locality-aware overlay networks

We consider a large overlay network where any two nodes can communicate directly via the underlying Internet as long as the sender knows the recipient's ip-address. Due to the scalability requirement, the overlay network must be sparse: a given node can store at most a polylogarithmic number of ip-addresses. A notion of distance (locality) in the network is given by node-to-node round-trip times. We assume that initially the overlay links are random, and hence have no explicit locality-aware properties. We provide fast distributed constructions for various locality-aware (low-stretch) distributed data structures, such as: distance labeling schemes, name-independent routing schemes, and multicast trees. In previous work, such data structures have only been constructed via centralized algorithms. Our constructions complete in poly-logarithmic time (and thus induce at most a poly-logarithmic load on every given node), and achieve quality guarantees similar to those of the corresponding centralized algorithms. Our algorithms use a common locality-aware, small-world-like overlay framework, constructed via concurrent random walks. Our guarantees are for growth-constrained metrics, a well-studied family of metrics which have been proposed as a reasonable abstraction of round-trip times in the Internet.
Effects of graded levels of Fusarium toxin-contaminated wheat and of a detoxifying agent in broiler diets on performance, nutrient digestibility and blood chemical parameters

1. A growth experiment was carried out with male broilers from d 1 to d 35 of age in order to evaluate the effects of the addition of a detoxifying agent (Mycofix® Plus, Biomin GmbH, Herzogenburg, Austria) at different dietary proportions of wheat (0, 16·5, 33, 49·5 and 66%) contaminated with Fusarium mycotoxins (21·2 mg of deoxynivalenol and 406 µg of zearalenone, ZON, per kg of wheat) on growth performance, nutrient and zearalenone balance and clinical-chemical parameters. 2. An increase in dietary mycotoxin concentration resulted in a linearly related decrease in feed intake, a slight decrease in weight gain and an improvement in feed to gain ratio. 3. Apparent protein digestibility and net protein utilisation were higher in diets containing exclusively Fusarium toxin-contaminated wheat than control diets. 4. The proportions of β-zearalenol, α-zearalenol and ZON of total ZON metabolites in excreta of broilers fed on the diets containing the Fusarium toxin-contaminated wheat were approximately 3, 21 and 76%. 5. Serum antibody titres to Newcastle disease virus decreased in a linear fashion with increasing mycotoxin concentration in the diets, whereas other clinical-chemical serum parameters (liver cell and muscle cell necrosis indicating enzymes, haemoglobin, haematocrit, magnesium, inorganic phosphate) were not influenced by increasing Fusarium toxin concentrations. 6. Supplementation of the diets with Mycofix® Plus decreased performance in a manner independent of mycotoxin concentration. Moreover, some clinical-chemical serum parameters were significantly altered due to Mycofix® Plus but also independently of the dietary mycotoxin concentration.
E/P‐selectin‐deficient mice: an optimal mutation for abrogating antigen but not tumor necrosis factor‐α‐induced immune responses

Leukocyte recruitment in cremaster microcirculation was visualized by intravital microscopy, either in ovalbumin sensitized and challenged animals, or in response to TNF‐α. In antigen‐challenged mice a significant increase in leukocyte rolling (∼ 50 to 200–300 cells/min) and adhesion (2 to 15–20 cells/100 μm), and a very dramatic increase in emigration (∼ 1 to >40 cells/field) was observed over 24 h. Although rolling and adhesion was dramatically blunted in P‐selectin‐ or P selectin/ICAM‐1‐deficient mice, emigrated cell number was similar to that observed in wild‐type mice. Leukocyte rolling, adhesion and emigration was almost entirely abrogated over 24 h in E/P‐selectin‐deficient mice, demonstrating that antigen‐induced leukocyte recruitment can be entirely disrupted in the absence of both endothelial selectins. However, E/P‐selectin‐deficient mice were able to recruit leukocytes at 24 h after TNF‐α challenge. Rolling 24 h post‐TNF‐α in E/P‐selectin‐deficient mice was not inhibitable with anti‐L‐selectin antibody, suggesting an entirely selectin‐independent pathway of rolling. We identified this pathway to be α 4‐integrin dependent and demonstrated that VCAM‐1 expression was increased only in mice challenged with TNF‐α. These data demonstrate that, in vivo, sufficient amounts of TNF‐α can recruit leukocytes independently of selectins, whereas inhibition of endothelial selectins is the optimal intervention in reducing the immune response to antigen.
Functional Characterization of Three GlnB Homologs in the Photosynthetic Bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum: Roles in Sensing Ammonium and Energy Status

ABSTRACT The GlnB (PII) protein, the product ofglnB, has been characterized previously in the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum. Here we describe identification of two other PII homologs in this organism, GlnK and GlnJ. Although the sequences of these three homologs are very similar, the molecules have both distinct and overlapping functions in the cell. While GlnB is required for activation of NifA activity in R. rubrum, GlnK and GlnJ do not appear to be involved in this process. In contrast, either GlnB or GlnJ can serve as a critical element in regulation of the reversible ADP ribosylation of dinitrogenase reductase catalyzed by the dinitrogenase reductase ADP-ribosyl transferase (DRAT)/dinitrogenase reductase-activating glycohydrolase (DRAG) regulatory system. Similarly, either GlnB or GlnJ is necessary for normal growth on a variety of minimal and rich media, and any of the proteins is sufficient for normal posttranslational regulation of glutamine synthetase. Surprisingly, in their regulation of the DRAT/DRAG system, GlnB and GlnJ appeared to be responsive not only to changes in nitrogen status but also to changes in energy status, revealing a new role for this family of regulators in central metabolic regulation.
A Combination of Stop-and-Go and Electro-Tricycle Laser Scanning Systems for Rural Cadastral Surveys

Over the past decade, land-based laser scanning technologies have been actively studied and implemented, in response to the need for detailed three-dimensional (3D) data about our rural and urban environment for topographic mapping, cadastral mapping, and other street-level features, which are difficult and time consuming to measure by other instruments. For rural areas in China, the complex terrain and poor planning limit the applicability of this advanced technology. To improve the efficiency of rural surveys, we present two SSW (Shoushi and SiWei) laser scanning systems for rapid topographic mapping: stop-and-go and electro-tricycle laser scanning systems. The objective of this paper is to evaluate whether laser scanning data collected by the developed SSW systems meet the accuracy requirements for rural homestead mapping. We investigated the performance of the two laser scanning systems on Ma’anshan Village, a small, typical village in Hubei Province, China. To obtain full coverage of the village, we fused the stop-and-go and electro-tricycle laser scanning data. The performance of the developed SSW systems is described by the results of building contours extracted from the fused data against the established building vector map.
Virtually Real: A Psychological Perspective on Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Massively multiplayer games (MMOs) are immersive virtual three-dimensional fantasy worlds in which people cooperate and compete with each other, as well as with the computer-generated denizens of that particular game world. Although typically seen as games, their strong social aspect suggests that they are a form of online communication tool, with which players interact to form friendships, create communities, and work together to accomplish a variety of goals. After an introduction to MMOs, this review explores how social aspects of the game imitate the real world in terms of choices that players make when interacting with others. Furthermore, player-to-player interactions are examined in terms of in-game group formation and how efficient communication is imperative for goal achievement. The review also explores how leadership skills learned in-game may be transferred to real-world scenarios. The reasons why people play MMOs are examined in terms of player motivations and how aspects of game play may have both positive and negative consequences for a player's well-being. The latter half of the review describes how MMOs are used as afterschool virtual teaching environments where students can use aspects of game play to learn, for example, leadership qualities. The review concludes with recommendations for using MMOs as virtual laboratories to explore aspects of human behavior.
ADVERSE REACTION AFTER AEROSOL INHALATION

among light drinkers. "Most frequent drinkers" increased in most categories of the population, particularly in the young category. If, as appears to be the case.b most alcoholrelated problems are increasing in our community, corrective actions would still be needed urgently, even if96· 5 0 of the population did drink moderately. L. R. H. DREW. Department of Health, P.O. Box 100, Woden, A.C. T. 2606.
Unprotected Carotid Artery Stenting in Symptomatic Patients with High-Grade Stenosis: Results and Long-Term Follow-Up in a Single-Center Experience

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The use of cerebral protection during CAS is an extended practice. Paradoxically it is open to question because it can lead to potential embolic complications. The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of CASWPD in patients with severe symptomatic carotid artery stenosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A prospective study was performed including 210 consecutive patients (201 symptomatic and 9 asymptomatic) with carotid artery stenosis >70%. All patients were treated by CASWPD. Angiographic results and neurologic complications were recorded during the procedure and within 30 days after it. All patients underwent clinical evaluation and Doppler sonography follow-up at 3, 6, and 12 months after the procedure. RESULTS: Two hundred twenty carotid arteries were treated. The average degree of stenosis was 88.9%. The procedure was successfully completed in 212 (96.4%) arteries. After stent placement, 98.6% of arteries showed no residual stenosis or <30%. Balloon angioplasty dilation before stent placement was performed in 16% of cases. During the 30-day periprocedural period, there were 3 major complications (1.4%), including 1 disabling ischemic stroke, 1 acute stent thrombosis, and 1 MI. The last 2 patients died from these complications. At 1-year follow-up 24 (12.8%) restenoses, 2 new ipsilateral strokes, 1 contralateral stroke, and 5 deaths (2.7%) had occurred. None of these deaths were related to the initial stroke. CONCLUSIONS: In our study, unprotected stent placement in symptomatic patients with severe carotid artery stenosis has demonstrated a low incidence of complications. We believe that this is due to the reduction of maneuvering and manipulation through the stenosis and to the protective effect of the stent placement before angioplasty balloon dilation.