Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving the accuracy of predicting secondary structure for aligned RNA sequences

Considerable attention has been focused on predicting the secondary structure for aligned RNA sequences since it is useful not only for improving the limiting accuracy of conventional secondary structure prediction but also for finding non-coding RNAs in genomic sequences. Although there exist many algorithms of predicting secondary structure for aligned RNA sequences, further improvement of the accuracy is still awaited. In this article, toward improving the accuracy, a theoretical classification of state-of-the-art algorithms of predicting secondary structure for aligned RNA sequences is presented. The classification is based on the viewpoint of maximum expected accuracy (MEA), which has been successfully applied in various problems in bioinformatics. The classification reveals several disadvantages of the current algorithms but we propose an improvement of a previously introduced algorithm (CentroidAlifold). Finally, computational experiments strongly support the theoretical classification and indicate that the improved CentroidAlifold substantially outperforms other algorithms.
Considering Primary-Aged English-Language Learners’ Peripherality and Legitimacy in Multimodal Literacy Lessons

Supervisory Committee Dr. Ruthanne Tobin, Department of Curriculum and Instruction Supervisor Dr. Alison Preece, Department of Curriculum and Instruction Co-Supervisor or Dr. Robert Dalton, Department of Curriculum and Instruction Departmental Member Dr. Carolyn Crippen, Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies Outside Member This dissertation presents findings from a six-month qualitative case study that carefully examined the use of a multimodal literacy approach (anchored in graphic novels) in a 3 rd grade classroom made up of Spanishspeaking English language learners (ELLs). The multimodal teaching approach (anchored in graphic novels) served as a focusing lens in which to investigate the larger complexities of ELLs’ classroom membership and participation. The focus of the study was examining whether a multimodal literacy approach (anchored in graphic novels) can be used as an instructional tool to enhance ELLs’ perceptions of belonging and acceptance through enhanced participation. Multiple, multimodal opportunities were provided to ELLs to express their sense of belonging, sense of agency, and overall perceptions of acceptance. The findings indicate that multimodal literacy practices can increase ELLs’ peripherality in cognitively and socially complex tasks and that this enhanced peripherality can lead to successful participation and engagement in cognitively demanding and socially complex tasks. Additionally, findings suggest that ELLs’ successful participation and engagement in cognitively and socially demanding tasks, as a result of the use of multimodal literacy practices, leads to increased legitimacy and peripherality for these ELLs. The findings also provide insight into the best practices for implementing a multimodal literacy approach (anchored in graphic novels) into multilingual classrooms.
Benzodiazepine impairment of perirhinal cortical plasticity and recognition memory

Benzodiazepines, including lorazepam, are widely used in human medicine as anxiolytics or sedatives, and at higher doses can produce amnesia. Here we demonstrate that in rats lorazepam impairs both recognition memory and synaptic plastic processes (long‐term depression and long‐term potentiation). Both impairments are produced by actions in perirhinal cortex. The findings thus establish a mechanism by means of which benzodiazepines impair recognition memory. The findings also strengthen the hypotheses that the familiarity discrimination component of recognition memory is dependent on reductions in perirhinal neuronal responses when stimuli are repeated and that these response reductions are due to a plastic mechanism also used in long‐term depression.
Waste management in leaf-cutting ants

Hygienic behaviour is an important aspect of social organisation because living in aggregations facilitates the spread of disease. Leaf-cutting ants face the additional problem of an obligatory dependency on a fungus, which itself is also susceptible to parasites. In this study we provide evidence for the importance of effective waste management in colonies of several Panamanian species of Atta and Acromyrmex leaf-cutting ants, differing in colony size and typical mode of waste accumulation (external or internal dumps). We show that: (1) waste is dangerous for the ants, which die at a higher rate in the presence of waste; (2) waste is dangerous for the mutualistic fungus because waste in field colonies is infected with the specialised fungal parasite Escovopsis; (3) the ants allocate considerable effort to active management of waste in order to reduce these dangers. This management follows a “conveyer belt” model according to which increasingly dangerous tasks are performed by older workers, who are less valuable to their colony. Our approach is kaleidoscopic, as different species of leafcutting ants are unequally suitable for direct observation and experimental manipulation, and suggests that more in depth studies of waste management in attine ants would be highly rewarding.
Improving the Efficiency of Storing for Small Files in HDFS

HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) is the popular file system. But HDFS has inefficient issue with small files. Traditional method has the drawback of high resource consumption and low efficiency performance. In order to resolve this problem, this paper proposes a novel approach for small files process, which works as an engine independent with the HDFS. This engine can reduce the overhead of HDFS effectively. It uses Reactor multiplexed IO to build the server and uses non-blocking IO to merge and read small files. And the engine has a cache of small files that can make the reading efficiently. This paper presents the small files processing strategy for files efficient merger, which builds the file index and uses boundary file block filling mechanism to accomplish files separation and files retrieval. At last the experimental results show that the novel approach has improved the efficiency of storing and processing massive small files in HDFS.
Islamic Finance: Principles and Practice (paperback)

Contents: Introduction 1. Why Islamic Finance? 2. Sources of Islamic Law 3. The Islamic Economy 4. Financial Instruments 5. Islamic Banks 6. Special Sectors 7. Public Finance and the Monetary Authorities 8. Islamic Finance: A Tentative Verdict Appendices A. The Quran on Riba B. The Quran on Maysir C. The Bible on Interest D. Useful Web Adresses References Index
A method for detecting human face region based on generation and selection of kernel features

Recent researches for detecting face regions from images have paid attention to high dimensional kernel features (KFs), which are obtained by a non-linear transformation of original features extracted from images. A support vector machine (SVM) is one of the most prominent learning algorithms for KFs. However, SVM is time-consuming because of needing a large number of KFs to improve the accuracy of the classification. This paper proposes a new method that constructs a classifier between face and non-face regions by generating and choosing KFs based on Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD). The KLD means a distance between two distributions of face and non-face data under a given KF, and some KFs of large KLDs are selected for the face detection. Moreover, the use of KLD enables us to generate new KFs. and to deal with different kinds of KFs concurrently. Some experiments show that our method can reduce the number of KFs much more than SVM, and achieve almost equal or better detection rate than that of SVM.
Human Hand Recognition Using IPCA-ICA Algorithm

A human hand recognition system is introduced. First, a simple preprocessing technique which extracts the palm, the four fingers, and the thumb is introduced. Second, the eigenpalm, the eigenfingers, and the eigenthumb features are obtained using a fast incremental principal non-Gaussian directions analysis algorithm, called IPCA-ICA. This algorithm is based on merging sequentially the runs of two algorithms: the principal component analysis (PCA) and the independent component analysis (ICA) algorithms. It computes the principal components of a sequence of image vectors incrementally without estimating the covariance matrix (so covariance-free) and at the same time transforming these principal components to the independent directions that maximize the non-Gaussianity of the source. Third, a classification step in which each feature representation obtained in the previous phase is fed into a simple nearest neighbor classifier. The system was tested on a database of 20 people (100 hand images) and it is compared to other algorithms.
A Case of Rectal Squamous Cell Carcinoma with Metachronous Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma in an HIV-Infected Patient

Diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is one of the most common acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)-defining malignancies among human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients, and rectal cancer has recently emerged as a prevalent non-AIDS-defining malignancy. We report a case of rectal squamous cell carcinoma that was metachronous with DLBCL in an HIV-infected patient who was receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy. The patient was diagnosed with DLBCL and showed complete remission after chemotherapy. Follow-up imaging showed increased uptake at the rectum, previously treated as lymphoma. Repeated biopsy was performed and squamous cell carcinoma of the rectum was reported. After concurrent chemoradiation therapy, curative resection was performed.
Capitalism's Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System

Prologue. Chapter 1: Global Capitalism: Savior or Predator? PART I: Illegality: We Like the Money. Chapter 2: Playing the Game. The Dirty-Money User Manual. You're in Business. Chapter 3: Dirty Money at Work. The Corruption Industry. The Criminal Component: Drugs, Thugs, and Terrorists. Global Commerce and Tax Evasion: Coin of the Realm. Chapter 4: Magnitudes and Misunderstandings. How Much Money? A Failure Rate of 99.9 Percent. Well-Intentioned Efforts. The Patriot Act. Dirty Money Is on the Rise. Chasing Terrorists' Money. Ill-Intentioned Loopholes. Haven and Secrecy Structure. Falsified Pricing Structure. We Like the Money. Challenge. PART II: Inequality: The Gap Matters. Chapter 5: The Global Divide. The Quintile Canyon. Measure for Measure. It's an Uncertain World. The Monkey Wrench. Chapter 6: "I Don't Understand" and "Don't Tell Anyone". Myths. "Don't Tell Anyone". Corruption-At Long Last! Filling Western Coffers: Mum's the Word. Debtor's Prison. What If? Intellectual Gap or Character Gap? Chapter 7: It's the 70 to 90 Percent that Matters. It Can't Last. Convergence? The Gap Matters. Challenge. PART III: Disutility: Bentham KOs Smith. Chapter 8: The Anguish of Adam Smith. Theory of Moral Sentiments. Wealth of Nations. Invisible Hand. Das Adam Smith Problem. The Tears of Adam Smith. Chapter 9: The Joys of Jeremy Bentham. Jurisprudence. Utilitarianism. Related Interests. John Stuart Mill. Problems. Chapter 10: Philosophy Becomes Culture. The Great Infusion. Twentieth-Century Utility. Twentieth-Century Utilitarianism. Inoperable Doctrine, Deadly Practice. Disutility. Challenge. PART IV: Run It Right: Trust the System. Chapter 11: Capitalism's Achilles Heel. Chapter 12: Spreading Prosperity. Delegitimizing Dirty Money. Tougher on Corruption. Reining in the Support Structure. Mispricing and Transfer Pricing. Capitalism's Contribution to Slashing Inequality. ". When You Pay Me What You Owe Me". Reconstitute the World Bank. Justice First. Chapter 13: Renewing Capitalism. Acknowledgments. Notes. Index.
On Topology in Multidimensional Discrete Spaces

To study topology in digital binary images, different discrete connectivities have to be used for both the object and the background. We prove equivalences between discrete connectivities, as they are usually defined in a digital space and connectivity in a continuous space. For that purpose, we introduce the notion of regularization of a set of voxels. It will permit us to define continuous sets from discrete ones. We discuss then the choice of a good couple of discrete connectivities for both the object and the background and provide a characterization of such a valid pair. Finally, we use our best choice to demonstrate a separation theorem in dimension n for surfaces made of voxels.
Foundations 2025: a Value Model for Evaluating Future Air and Space Forces

Air Force 2025 was a study directed by the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force to identify key system concepts and technologies for achieving air and space dominance in the year 2025. The study was a large effort in which over 200 military experts participated for more than one year. We developed a Value-Focused Thinking model, which we used to evaluate which futuristic system concepts have the greatest potential to ensure future U.S. air and space dominance. We named the value model Foundations 2025 because it represented a return to the basics of air and space dominance. We used the "silver standard" approach for value hierarchy development. The participants identified key verbs to describe tasks that must be performed in 2025 to ensure air and space dominance. The value hierarchy was developed bottom-up by aggregating these verbs into higher order tasks using affinity diagrams. Using the value hierarchy, we used multiattribute decision analysis techniques to develop an additive value model with 134 attributes. The Foundations 2025 value model was successfully used to score 43 futuristic system concepts and provide insights about the most promising system concepts and technologies. The analysis results directly supported the study director and the senior leadership of the United States Air Force.
Sanction-based Obligations in a Qualitative Game Theory

Goffman argues that agents should depict in their mind the decision making of other agents and gives a game-theoretic interpretation of obligations , but decision and game theory are criticized for their ideality assumptions. For example, Simon argues for limited or bounded ratio-nality, and more recently Gmytrasiewitcz and Durfee argue for recursive modelling. In this paper we use recursive modelling to formalize sanction-based obligations in a qualitative game theory. In particular, we formalize an agent who attributes mental attitudes such as beliefs, goals and desires to the normative – e.g. legal, moral – system which creates and controls its obligations. The wishes (goals, desires) of the normative system are the commands (obligations) of the agent. We propose a framework with three dimensions: the agents, the mental attitudes, and the distinction between violations and sanctions. We introduce obligations in this framework , and we discuss various examples in which the agent reasons about what counts as a violation and when and which sanctions are applied. We introduce a formalization of the framework and the definition of obligation , and we show how the examples can be formalized. Since the agent is able to reason about the normative system's behavior, our model accounts for many ways in which an agent can violate a norm without believing to be sanctioned.
Exploring the Effectiveness of Video Viewing in an Introductory x-MOOC of Algebra

The huge amount of gathered data in a MOOC allows providing professors and course managers with insightful information about real course usage and consumption. The main aim of this work is to explore how efficient the video viewing is for completing and passing the first course offered by UCATx.cat platform, “Decoding Algebra”, in order to improve its design and resources. The statistical method used is the principal component analysis but using polychoric correlation matrix between the binary variables involved in each group. The main result suggests that the participants’ behavior is polarized in two extremes: they view all videos and pass the course or, on the contrary, they do not watch any one and they do not pass the test either. This information can be used by course managers to provide learners with better strategies for achieving their learning goals.
Taking Linux Filesystems to the Space Age : Space Maps in Ext 4

With the ever increasing filesystem sizes, there is a constant need for faster filesystem access. A vital requirement to achieve this is efficient filesystem metadata management. The bitmap technique currently used to manage free space in Ext4 is faced by scalability challenges owing to this exponential increase. This has led us to re-examine the available choices and explore a radically different design of managing free space called Space Maps. This paper describes the design and implementation of space maps in Ext4. The paper also highlights the limitations of bitmaps and does a comparative study of how space maps fare against them. In space maps, free space is represented by extent based red-black trees and logs. The design of space maps makes the free space information of the filesystem extremely compact allowing it to be stored in main memory at all times. This significantly reduces the long, random seeks on the disk that were required for updating the metadata. Likewise, analogous on-disk structures and their interaction with the in-memory space maps ensure that filesystem integrity is maintained. Since seeks are the bottleneck as far as filesystem performance is concerned, their extensive reduction leads to faster filesystem operations. Apart from the allocation/deallocation improvements, the log based design of Space Maps helps reduce fragmentation at the filesystem level itself. Space Maps uplift the performance of the filesystem and keep the metadata management in tune with the highly scalable Ext4.
Knowledge representation and reasoning based on FRSN P system

Spiking neural P systems are a new class of emerging and promising computing models, but so far their ability to deal with fuzzy knowledge representation and fuzzy reasoning is hardly ever studied. In this paper, we extend the works in [6] and present a fuzzy reasoning spiking neural P system (FRSN P system) model to express fuzzy knowledge in which rule neurons are divided into three sub-categories which just correspond to the types of fuzzy production rules in the knowledge base of a rule-based system. The new proposed model is more flexible and reasonable than the one we have presented before.
Surveillance measures of the hips of children with bilateral cerebral palsy

Gradually developing deformity can be an insidious complication of bilateral cerebral palsy and it is one which can all too easily be overlooked by the paediatrician already coping with the many other developmental, social, and educational problems presented by these children and their families. Although the orthopaedic management of some deformity can be deferred, this is not so for all deformities. Hip and spinal deformities can benefit from early intervention. In the past, gradual hip subluxation, often leading to dislocation, has often been referred to as ‘developmental dislocation’, but this term has become associated with congenital dislocation of the hip and it is confusing to continue its use in cerebral palsy and similar situations where there is no primary abnormality of the hip joint. The medium to long term consequences of increasing hip deformity are subluxation/dislocation of the hip. Subsequently, loss of hip flexion causes kyphotic sitting with an increased risk of spinal deformity and, in a significant number of children and young adults, nursing/daily living problems increase, often accompanied by hip pain.1 Asymmetrical deformity will cause pelvic obliquity with a greatly increased risk of scoliosis.2 The hip of a child with hemiplegic cerebral palsy appears to avoid this complication, although a child diagnosed as having ‘hemiplegia’, but in reality having a markedly asymmetrical bilateral disorder, can be affected. From our review of the children who had attended one tertiary referral orthopaedic clinic over a period of 17 years and of the publications relating to hip problems in cerebral palsy, it was obvious that certain basic information from a prospective population based study of this complication was lacking and so the incidence and natural history were not known, although the severity of cerebral palsy and the age of pulling to stand were useful indicators of risk.3 There …
Segmenting bangla text for optical recognition

One of the important reasons for poor recognition rate in optical character recognition (OCR) system is the error in character segmentation. Existence of different type of characters in the scanned documents is a major problem to design an effective character segmentation procedure. In this paper, a new technique is presented for identification and segmentation of Bengali printed characters. This paper focuses on the segmentation of printed Bengali characters for efficient recognition of the characters. Our Line segmentation success rate is 99.7 % for 1000 lines, we have tested. Our Word segmentation success rate is 99.8 % for 4900 words tested. From the experiment we noticed that isolated characters fall into isolated group in 99.50 % cases. Most of the errors come from connected characters and characters having tau in front of them as segmenting tau we take the help of width. From the experiment we noticed that most of the errors came from components having multi-touching points between two characters.
Articular area responses to mechanical loading: effects of exercise, age, and skeletal location.

How reliable are reconstructions of body mass and joint function based on articular surface areas? While the dynamic relationship between mechanical loading and cross-sectional geometry in long bones is well-established, the effect of loading on the subchondral articular surface area of epiphyses (hereafter, articular surface area, or ASA) has not been experimentally tested. The degree to which ASA can change in size and shape is important, because articular dimensions are frequently used to estimate body mass and positional behavior in fossil species. This study tests the hypothesis that mechanical loading influences ASA by comparing epiphyses of exercised and sedentary sheep from three age categories: juvenile, subadult, and adult (n = 44). ASA was measured on latex molds of subchondral articular surfaces of 10 epiphyses from each sheep. Areas were standardized by body mass, and compared to diaphyseal cross-sectional geometrical data. Nonparametric statistical comparisons of exercised and control individuals found no increases in ASA in response to mechanical loading in any age group. In contrast, significant differences in diaphyseal cross-sectional geometry were detected between exercised and control groups, but mostly in juveniles. The conservatism of ASA supports the hypothesis that ASA is ontogenetically constrained, and related to locomotor behavior at the species level and to body mass at the individual level, while variations in diaphyseal cross-sectional geometry are more appropriate proxies for individual variations in activity level.