Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Explanation and Partiality in Semantic Theory

In this paper, I shall argue for a form of partiality in semantics. In particular, I shall argue that semantics, narrowly construed as part of our linguistic competence, is only a partial determinant of content. Likewise, semantic theories in linguistics function as partial theories of content. I shall go on to offer an account of where and how this partiality arises, which focuses on how lexical meaning combines elements of distinctively linguistic competence with elements from our broader cognitive resources. This account shows how we can accommodate some partiality in semantic theories without falling into skepticism about semantics or its place in linguistic theory. In recent years, there have been a number of challenges to semantics. For instance, Chomsky (e.g. Chomsky, 2000) has in effect argued that semantics is not an aspect of linguistic competence, and so, is not on par with syntax or phonology (cf. Pietroski, 2005b). Also, a number of views sometimes grouped together as ‘radical contextualism’ have sought to shift much of the burden of explaining the contents of utterances from semantics onto pragmatics (e.g. Carston, 2002; Recanati, 2004, 2010; Sperber and Wilson, 1986; Travis, 1996).
Non-recursive trade-offs for two-way machines

If the machines of some type A have enough resources to (i) solve problems that no machine of type B can solve, and (ii) simulate any unary two-way deterministic finite automaton that has access to a linearly-bounded counter, then typically no recursive function can upper bound the increase in the size of description when a machine of type A is replaced by an equivalent machine of type B.
Covariation of metabolic rates and cell size in coccolithophores

Abstract. Coccolithophores are sensitive recorders of environmental change. The size of their coccosphere varies in the ocean along gradients of environmental conditions and provides a key for understanding the fate of this important phytoplankton group in the future ocean. But interpreting field changes in coccosphere size in terms of laboratory observations is hard, mainly because the marine signal reflects the response of multiple morphotypes to changes in a combination of environmental variables. In this paper I examine the large corpus of published laboratory experiments with coccolithophores looking for relations between environmental conditions, metabolic rates and cell size (a proxy for coccosphere size). I show that growth, photosynthesis and, to a lesser extent, calcification covary with cell size when pCO2, irradiance, temperature, nitrate, phosphate and iron conditions change. With the exception of phosphate and temperature, a change from limiting to non-limiting conditions always results in an increase in cell size. An increase in phosphate or temperature (below the optimum temperature for growth) produces the opposite effect. The magnitude of the coccosphere-size changes observed in the laboratory is comparable to that observed in the ocean. If the biological reasons behind the environment–metabolism–size link are understood, it will be possible to use coccosphere-size changes in the modern ocean and in marine sediments to investigate the fate of coccolithophores in the future ocean. This reasoning can be extended to the size of coccoliths if, as recent experiments are starting to show, coccolith size reacts to environmental change proportionally to coccosphere size. The coccolithophore database is strongly biased in favour of experiments with the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi (E. huxleyi; 82 % of database entries), and more experiments with other species are needed to understand whether these observations can be extended to coccolithophores in general. I introduce a simple model that simulates the growth rate and the size of cells forced by nitrate and phosphate concentrations. By considering a simple rule that allocates the energy flow from nutrient acquisition to cell structure (biomass) and cell maturity (biological complexity, eventually leading to cell division), the model is able to reproduce the covariation of growth rate and cell size observed in laboratory experiments with E. huxleyi when these nutrients become limiting. These results support ongoing efforts to interpret coccosphere and coccolith size measurements in the context of climate change.
A preliminary examination of vocabulary and word learning in African American toddlers from middle and low socioeconomic status homes.

PURPOSE This study examined the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on the early lexical performance of African American children. METHOD Thirty African American toddlers (30 to 40 months old) from low-SES (n = 15) and middle-SES (n = 15) backgrounds participated in the study. Their lexical-semantic performance was examined on 2 norm-referenced standardized tests of vocabulary, a measure of lexical diversity (number of different words) derived from language samples, and a fast mapping task that examined novel word learning. RESULTS Toddlers from low-SES homes performed significantly poorer than those from middle-SES homes on standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary tests and on the number of different words used in spontaneous speech. No significant SES group differences were observed in their ability to learn novel word meanings on a fast mapping task. CONCLUSION The influence of socioeconomic background on African American children's lexical semantic tasks varies with the type of measure used.
Multimodal characterization of compositional, structural and functional features of human atherosclerotic plaques

Detection of atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability has critical clinical implications for avoiding sudden death in patients with high risk of plaque rupture. We report on multimodality imaging of ex-vivo human carotid plaque samples using a system that integrates fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM), ultrasonic backscatter microscopy (UBM), and photoacoustic imaging (PAI). Biochemical composition is differentiated with a high temporal resolution and sensitivity at the surface of the plaque by the FLIM subsystem. 3D microanatomy of the whole plaque is reconstructed by the UBM. Functional imaging associated with optical absorption contrast is evaluated from the PAI component. Simultaneous recordings of the optical, ultrasonic, and photoacoustic data present a wealth of complementary information concerning the plaque composition, structure, and function that are related to plaque vulnerability. This approach is expected to improve our ability to study atherosclerotic plaques. The multimodal system presented here can be translated into a catheter based intraluminal system for future clinical studies.
Structures of Arg‐ and Gln‐type bacterial cysteine dioxygenase homologs

In some bacteria, cysteine is converted to cysteine sulfinic acid by cysteine dioxygenases (CDO) that are only ∼15–30% identical in sequence to mammalian CDOs. Among bacterial proteins having this range of sequence similarity to mammalian CDO are some that conserve an active site Arg residue (“Arg‐type” enzymes) and some having a Gln substituted for this Arg (“Gln‐type” enzymes). Here, we describe a structure from each of these enzyme types by analyzing structures originally solved by structural genomics groups but not published: a Bacillus subtilis “Arg‐type” enzyme that has cysteine dioxygenase activity (BsCDO), and a Ralstonia eutropha “Gln‐type” CDO homolog of uncharacterized activity (ReCDOhom). The BsCDO active site is well conserved with mammalian CDO, and a cysteine complex captured in the active site confirms that the cysteine binding mode is also similar. The ReCDOhom structure reveals a new active site Arg residue that is hydrogen bonding to an iron‐bound diatomic molecule we have interpreted as dioxygen. Notably, the Arg position is not compatible with the mode of Cys binding seen in both rat CDO and BsCDO. As sequence alignments show that this newly discovered active site Arg is well conserved among “Gln‐type” CDO enzymes, we conclude that the “Gln‐type” CDO homologs are not authentic CDOs but will have substrate specificity more similar to 3‐mercaptopropionate dioxygenases.
An Exploration of the Role of System Level Variable Choice in Multidisciplinary Design

The process of designing large engineering systems can involve extensive sharing of resources among many competing subsystems. These resources may be represented as design parameters that are shared between the system level and each subsystem. Frameworks for understanding the role of the choice of system level design variables on overall system design may be valuable for the synthesis of complex engineering systems. This paper examines the outcome of Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) using three distinct combinations of system level variables on a satellite design example. The results of these sets of system level variables are compared on their convergence time and robustness.
Real-Time Robotic Hand Control Using Hand Gestures

this paper presents a new approach for controlling robotic hand or an individual robot by merely showing hand gestures in front of a camera. With the help of this technique one can pose a hand gesture in the vision range of a robot and corresponding to this notation, desired action is performed by the robotic system. Simple video camera is used for computer vision, which helps in monitoring gesture presentation. This approach consists of four modules: (a) A real time hand gesture formation monitor and gesture capture, (b) feature extraction, (c) Pattern matching for gesture recognition, (d) Command determination corresponding to shown gesture and performing action by robotic system. Real-time hand tracking technique is used for object detection in the range of vision. If a hand gesture is shown for one second, the camera captures the gesture. Object of interest is extracted from the background and the portion of hand, representing the gesture, is cropped out using the statistical property of hand. Extracted hand gesture is matched with the stored database of hand gestures using pattern matching. Corresponding to the matched gesture, action is performed by the robot
Involvement of cathepsin D in chemotherapy-induced cytochrome c release, caspase activation, and cell death

Treatment of cells with chemotherapy drugs activates the intrinsic mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis and the caspase protease cascade. Recently, the lysosomal protease cathepsin D has been implicated in apoptosis caused by oxidative stress, inhibition of protein kinase C, and stimulation of the TNFR1 and Fas death receptors. However, the role of cathepsin D in chemotherapy-induced cell death has remained largely unexplored. In this report, we show that treatment of U937 leukemia cells with the chemotherapy drug etoposide (VP-16) results in cathepsin D release into the cytosol within 4 hours after initiation of drug treatment. VP-16-induced cathepsin D release was not inhibited by z-VAD-FMK or pepstatin A, suggesting that it occurred independently of the activities of caspase proteases or cathepsin D. Down-regulation of cathepsin D expression in suspension U937 cells or adherent HeLa cells using cathepsin D small interfering RNA partially inhibited cell death resulting from treatment of cells with tumor necrosis factor-α, tumor necrosis factor–related apoptosis inducing ligand, or the chemotherapy drugs VP-16, cisplatin, and 5-fluorouracil. Moreover, cathepsin D down-regulation significantly delayed cytochrome c release and caspase-3 activation in response to chemotherapy treatment. Incubation of isolated mitochondria with cathepsin D–treated cytosolic extracts resulted in potent release of cytochrome c, indicating that a cytoplasmic substrate mediates the effects of cathepsin D on mitochondria. Together, these findings show that cathepsin D plays an important role in chemotherapy-induced cell death, and that cathepsin D lies upstream of cytochrome c release and caspase-3 activation in the chemotherapy-induced execution pathway.
System and design of Clothbot: A robot for flexible clothes climbing

This paper presents a novel climbing robot called Clothbot which has high maneuverability on flexible clothes. It has a novel gripper consisting of two parallel wheels that can grip continuously and stably on various kinds of clothes. Clothbot also has an omni-directional tail of two DOFs so that it can change its center of gravity to control the moving direction on complex and undeterminate clothes. Consequently, Clothbot is able to access most positions of the clothes by moving straight and turning around with only four motors. It is compact, small and light-weighted but has a load capacity six times its own weight. A series of experiments validate its high performance on flexible clothes.
European cancer mortality predictions for the year 2014.

BACKGROUND From most recent available data, we projected cancer mortality statistics for 2014, for the European Union (EU) and its six more populous countries. Specific attention was given to pancreatic cancer, the only major neoplasm showing unfavorable trends in both sexes. PATIENTS AND METHODS Population and death certification data from stomach, colorectum, pancreas, lung, breast, uterus, prostate, leukemias and total cancers were obtained from the World Health Organisation database and Eurostat. Figures were derived for the EU, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK. Projected 2014 numbers of deaths by age group were obtained by linear regression on estimated numbers of deaths over the most recent time period identified by a joinpoint regression model. RESULTS In the EU in 2014, 1,323,600 deaths from cancer are predicted (742,500 men and 581,100 women), corresponding to standardized death rates of 138.1/100,000 men and 84.7/100,000 women, falling by 7% and 5%, respectively, since 2009. In men, predicted rates for the three major cancers (lung, colorectum and prostate cancer) are lower than in 2009, falling by 8%, 4% and 10%, respectively. In women, breast and colorectal cancers had favorable trends (-9% and -7%), but female lung cancer rates are predicted to rise 8%. Pancreatic cancer is the only neoplasm with a negative outlook in both sexes. Only in the young (25-49 years), EU trends become more favorable in men, while women keep registering slight predicted rises. CONCLUSIONS Cancer mortality predictions for 2014 confirm the overall favorable cancer mortality trend in the EU, translating to an overall 26% fall in men since its peak in 1988, and 20% in women, and the avoidance of over 250,000 deaths in 2014 compared with the peak rate. Notable exceptions are female lung cancer and pancreatic cancer in both sexes.
Body contouring.

Body contour surgery concerns the correction of diverse morphological abnormalities of the body which may occur due to various acquired and congenital etiologies. The concept of surgical body sculpting has achieved widespread recognition and acceptance because it safely alters such deformities yielding functionally aesthetic results. Several factors account for the current popularity of body contouring. Foremost among them, is the considerably increased exposure of the body which is seen in most modem cultures, particularly in warm climates. In no other period in the history of western civilization have men and women been so revealingly attired. In addition, today's competitive society strongly encourages the maintenance of a lean athletic body, as a symbol of good health, youth and vigor. The reality of achieving this physical ideal becomes increasingly less likely because of current sedentary lifestyles and dietary excesses. These factors combine to create a disturbing disequilibrium between an individual's desired condition and his actual state. Regular adherence to proper diet and exercise must be stressed, but unfortunately some of these deformities remain resistant to the most sincere of such efforts. Subsequently, there are increasingly greater numbers of people who seek surgical correction for specific abnormalities. Body contour surgery is also an important reconstructive tool in the correction of extremely lax skin in obese patients who have recently undergone dramatic weight loss.
Programmable Donations: Exploring Escrow-Based Conditional Giving

This paper reports on a co-speculative interview study with charitable donors to explore the future of programmable, conditional and data-driven donations. Responding to the rapid emergence of blockchain-based and AI-supported financial technologies, we specifically examine the potential of automated, third-party 'escrows', where donations are held before they are released or returned based on specified rules and conditions. To explore this we conducted pilot workshops with 9 participants and an interview study in which 14 further participants were asked about their experiences of donating money, and invited to co-speculate on a service for programmable giving. The study elicited how data-driven conditionality and automation could be leveraged to create novel donor experiences, however also illustrated the inherent tensions and challenges involved in giving programmatically. Reflecting on these findings, our paper contributes implications both for the design of programmable aid platforms, and the design of escrow-based financial services in general.
Development of Micro-precision agriculture by plant factory.

The LISA (Low-Input Sustainable Agriculture) program was launched to reduce the use of off-farm inputs with the greatest potential to harm the environment or the health of farmers and consumers. This is one of the operational definitions of sustainable agriculture. However, LISA has not gained appreciable support from the agricultural sector, since the nature of LISA decreases profits. On the other hand, the implementation of Precision Agriculture (PA) has been embraced. The difference between PA and LISA is that PA requires technological innovation, whereas LISA always involves revising or improving traditional practices. The extensive application of information technology, including GPS and GIS, to agriculture, and the development of agricultural machinery for PA are major factors for the difference between PA and LISA. The machinery includes equipment to implement variable rate technologies, and vehicles specifically designed to gather the information required to generate yield and soil maps.There are quite a few plant factories operating commercially in Japan. PA is nothing but integrated technology, designed to optimize the cultivation process. The fully controlled environment of a plant factory can be considered as an ideal cultivation system in terms of alternative agriculture. Most of the environmental factors in a fully controlled plant factory are observable and controllable; a plant factory can be optimized more easily than an open field. Microprecision agriculture can be attained by using plant factories to realize profitable alternative agriculture. This article reviews the scientific and technological achievements of plant factories as alternative agriculture, and introduces a hardware system developed to implement microprecision agriculture in a plug seedling production factory.
An LTI control toolbox — Simplifying optimal feedback controller design

This paper presents a novel LTI control toolbox, aiming at transparent optimal feedback controller design. It provides a compact and intuitive syntax to model the control configuration and to formulate performance specifications based on an criterion. Its core contains state-of-the-art solvers which are able to handle unstable weights. Moreover, improper weighting functions can be handled and state measurements are exploited to reduce the controller order. On account of these aspects, the synthesized controllers require no post-processing. A comparison with Matlab's robust control toolbox shows a clear improvement regarding the expression of controller specifications and the computation time.
Exploring the connectivity between the cerebellum and motor cortex in humans

Animal studies have shown that cerebellar projections influence both excitatory and inhibitory neurones in the motor cortex but this connectivity has yet to be demonstrated in human subjects. In human subjects, magnetic or electrical stimulation of the cerebellum 5–7 ms before transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the motor cortex decreases the TMS‐induced motor‐evoked potential (MEP), indicating a cerebellar inhibition of the motor cortex (CBI). TMS also reveals inhibitory and excitatory circuits of the motor cortex, including a short‐interval intracortical inhibition (SICI), long‐interval intracortical inhibition (LICI) and intracortical facilitation (ICF). This study used magnetic cerebellar stimulation to investigate connections between the cerebellum and these cortical circuits. Three experiments were performed on 11 subjects. The first experiment showed that with increasing test stimulus intensities, LICI, CBI and ICF decreased, while SICI increased. The second experiment showed that the presence of CBI reduced SICI and increased ICF. The third experiment showed that the interaction between CBI and LICI reduced CBI. Collectively, these findings suggest that cerebellar stimulation results in changes to both inhibitory and excitatory neurones in the human motor cortex.
On the performance of amplifier-aware dense networks: Finite block-length analysis

In this paper, we investigate the performance of dense Poisson-point-process-based cellular networks using finite length codewords. Taking the properties of the power amplifiers (PAs) into account, we derive the outage probability, the per-user throughput and the area spectral efficiency in different conditions. Our analysis is based on some recent results on the achievable rates of finite-length codes and we investigate the effect of the codeword length/PAs properties on the system performance. Our numerical and analytical results indicate that the inefficiency of the PAs affects the performance of dense networks substantially. Also, for a given number of information nats per codeword, there is an optimal finite codeword length maximizing the throughput.
Dynamic Heterogeneous Robot Teams Engaged in Adversarial Tasks

As we progress towards a world where robots play an integral role, a critical problem that remains to be solved is that of dynamically formed heterogeneous robot teams where little information is known a-priori about the tasks, the robots, and the environments in which they will operate. We define this challenge as the Pickup Team Challenge. Successful solutions to forming pickup teams will enable researchers to experiment with larger numbers of robots; beyond what they can support and maintain. Additionally, enabling such teams will have a large impact on the ability of industry to efficiently and cost-effectively integrate new robot technology with existing legacy teams. In this paper, we define the challenge of pickup teams and relate its importance to multi-robot research. In our prior work, we have developed techniques for effective collaboration using marketbased techniques and for synchronizing team activity through plays. We build on these prior approaches to move towards a complete system that is able to allocate roles amongst robots in a pickup team, and to execute synchronized team actions to accomplish a complex task.
Tool Support for Model-driven Development of Web Applications

This article describes the engineering foundations of VisualWADE, a CASE tool to automate the production of Web applications. VisualWADE follows a model-driven approach focusing on requirements analysis, high level design, and rapid prototyping. In this way, an application evolves smoothly from the first prototype to the final product, and its maintenance is a natural consequence of development. The article also discusses the lessons learned in the development of the tool and its application to several case studies in the industrial context.