Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic estimation of scaling factors among probabilistic models in speech recognition

We propose an efficient new method for estimating scaling factors among probabilistic models in speech recognition. Most speech recognition systems consist of an acoustic and a language model, and require scaling factors to balance probabilities among them. The scaling factors are conventionally optimized in recognition tests. In our proposed method, the scaling factors are regarded as parameters of a log-linear model, and they are estimated using a gradient-ascent method based on the maximum a posteriori probability criterion. Posterior probability is computed using word-lattices. We employ an iteration technique which repeats a word-lattice-generation/scalingfactor-estimation process, and the resulting scaling factor estimation is robust with respect to the changes in initial values. In experiments, estimated scaling factors were nearly identical to optimal values obtained in a greedy grid search, and they changed little with variations in initial values.
Concentration- Dependent Effects of Curcumin on 5-Fluorouracil Efficacy in Bladder Cancer Cells

Purpose: Curcumin (Cur), a herbal ingredient with anticancer properties, has been shown to inhibit growth of malignant cells in vivo and in vitro. However, studies on combination therapy of Cur with chemotherapeutic drugs have been limited. Here, effects of Cur on the cytotoxicity of 5-Fluorouracil (FU) were investigated with epithelial bladder cancer cells (EJ138) in vitro. Methods: EJ138 cells were treated with 5 and 15 µM of Cur and/ or 100 µM of FU. Cell viability was measured by sulforhodamine B colorimetric assay. The glucose concentration as an index of cell metabolism was evaluated by an enzymatic method. Total oxidant and antioxidant capacities were estimated by the ferrous oxidation-xylenol (FOX1) method and ferric reducing antioxidant power assay (FRAP), respectively. Results: Combination of 5 µM Cur with FU significantly reduced its cytotoxicity in EJ138 cells, while 15 µM Cur caused an opposite increase. Significant increase in glucose concentration at 24 h and decrease in the FRAP value at 48 h incubation was observed in cells treated with FU in combination with Cur. There were no significant changes in total oxidant capacity with the combination therapy. Conclusion: Our findings suggest a crucial role of Cur concentration in regulating chemotherapeutic agent-induced cytotoxicity. Further investigations are needed to understand the precise mechanisms of action of Cur and determine appropriate doses with combination therapy for clinical application against human cancers.
Pharmacologic treatments for fatigue associated with palliative care.

What is the best available evidence regarding pharmacologic treatments used to relieve nonspecific fatigue in people with advanced disease? Type of Review A systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was conducted. Meta-analysis was performed when two or more studies of the same substance could be analyzed in a subpopulation of participants (i.e., with the same illness). Relevance to Nursing Fatigue is the most commonly reported symptom in individuals who have cancer and also is highly prevalent in populations with progressive life-threatening conditions. Fatigue presents a challenge for healthcare professionals because it can be nonspecific to treatment or illness, ongoing, subjective, and disabling to patients. In addition, the actual causes of fatigue are difficult to isolate, particularly in the person who is receiving palliative care because the symptom usually overlaps with concurrent disease-related problems such as malnutrition, sleep disturbances, pain, depression, asthenia, infections, and anemia. No consensus exists on the definition of fatigue or a standardized method of assessment. The working diagnosis used for the purpose of this review was “fatigue is a subjective feeling of tiredness, weakness or lack of energy” (Radbruch et al., 2008, p. 15). In the context of palliative and advanced disease, fatigue can be viewed as an inevitable characteristic of the last phase of life. However, several pharmacologic treatments have been studied in an attempt to reduce the severity of the symptom and thereby improve the overall quality of life. Knowledge of effective medical treatments will be of particular interest to nurses who care for patients who frequently experience debilitating fatigue.
An experience report on using collaboration technologies for distance and on-campus learning

This paper summarises our experiences and observations using two online collaboration technologies, Blackboard and Wimba Live Classroom, while teaching Software Engineering courses. Blackboard is used to make announcements and course materials available. The Wiki facility of Blackboard is used to update information about software tools used in the course. In addition to the text chat and record feature in Blackboard, Wimba Live Classroom is used for audio chatting with application sharing and the whiteboard facility, and also to record lectures. Blended learning, which combines traditional face-to-face teaching with online methods, can improve the quality, convenience and flexibility of communication for participants and student satisfaction. This paper reports our experiences using Blackboard and Wimba in a blended-learning environment and presents our suggestions for using collaboration technologies in teaching.
Reassessment of the role of plasma membrane domains in the regulation of vesicular traffic in yeast

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae plasma membrane has been proposed to contain two stably distributed domains. One of these domains, known as MCC (membrane compartment of Can1) or eisosomes, consists of furrow-like membrane invaginations and associated proteins. The other domain, called MCP (membrane compartment of Pma1), consists of the rest of the membrane area surrounding the MCC patches. The role of this plasma membrane domain organization in endocytosis is under debate. Here we show by live-cell imaging that vesicular traffic is restricted to the MCP and the distribution of endocytic and exocytic sites within the MCP is independent of the MCC patch positions. Photobleaching experiments indicated that Can1 and Tat2, two MCC-enriched permeases, exchange quickly between the two domains. Total internal reflection fluorescence and epi-fluorescence microscopy showed that the enrichment of Can1 at the MCC persisted after addition of its substrate, whereas the enrichment of Tat2 disappeared within 90 seconds. The rates of stimulated endocytosis of Can1 as well as Tat2 were similar in both wild-type cells and pil1Δ cells, which lack the MCC. Thus, our data suggest that the enrichment of certain plasma membrane proteins in the MCC does not regulate the rate of their endocytosis.
Phase III trial of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with invasive bladder cancer treated with selective bladder preservation by combined radiation therapy and chemotherapy: initial results of radiation therapy oncology group 89-03.

PURPOSETo assess the efficacy of neoadjuvant methotrexate, cisplatin, and vinblastine (MCV) chemotherapy in patients with muscle-invading bladder cancer treated with selective bladder preservation.PATIENTS AND METHODSOne hundred twenty-three eligible patients with tumor, node, metastasis system clinical stage T2 to T4aNXMO bladder cancer were randomized to receive (arm 1, n=61 ) two cycles of MCV before 39.6-Gy pelvic irradiation with concurrent cisplatin 100 mg/m2 for two courses 3 weeks apart. Patients assigned to arm 2 (n=62) did not receive MCV before concurrent cisplatin and radiation therapy. Tumor response was scored as a clinical complete response (CR) when the cystoscopic tumor-site biopsy and urine cytology results were negative. The CR patients were treated with an additional 25.2 Gy to a total of 64.8 Gy and one additional dose of cisplatin. Those with less than a CR underwent cystectomy. The median follow-up of all patients who survived is 60 months.RESULTSSeventy-four percent of the patients.
Automatic Reconstruction of 3D CAD Models from Digital Scans

We present an approach for the reconstruction and approximation of 3D CAD models from an unorganized collection of points. Applications include rapid reverse engineering of existing objects for use in a virtual prototyping environment, including computer aided design and manufacturing. Our reconstruction approach is flexible enough to permit interpolation of both smooth surfaces and sharp features, while placing few restrictions on the geometry or topology of the object. Our algorithm is based on alpha-shapes to compute an initial triangle mesh approximating the surface of the object. A mesh reduction technique is applied to the dense triangle mesh to build a simplified approximation, while retaining important topological and geometric characteristics of the model. The reduced mesh is interpolated with piecewise algebraic surface patches which approximate the original points. The process is fully automatic, and the reconstruction is guaranteed to be homeomorphic and error bounded with respect to the original model when certain sampling requirements are satisfied. The resulting model is suitable for typical CAD modeling and analysis applications.
SELF EFFICACY KARIR SISWA KELAS XII TEKSTIL SMK N 1 ROTA BAYAT TAHUN AJARAN 2013/2014

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui gambaran tingkat self efficacy karir siswa kelas XII Tekstil SMK N 1 ROTA Bayat baik secara umum maupun dalam dimensi tingkat (level), dimensi generalisasi (generality) dan dimensi kekuatan (strength) serta faktor apa saja yang dapat mempengaruhinya. Penelitian ini menggunakan jenis pendekatan kuantitatif, metode penelitian deskriptif dengan jenis penelitian adalah penelitian survei. Subjek penelitian adalah siswa kelas XII Tekstil 2 dengan jumlah siswa sebanyak 33 orang yang diperoleh dengan teknik cluster sampling. Penelitian dilakukan di Kabupaten Klaten dengan metode pengumpulan data berupa angket dalam bentuk skala self efficacy karir dan wawancara dalam bentuk pedoman wawancara. Uji validitas menggunakan validitas kriterion untuk instrumen skala self efficacy karir dengan perolehan skor bergerak dari 0,437 sampai 0,724 dan validitas konstruk/uji ahli untuk instrumen pedoman wawancara. Uji reliabilitas menggunakan rumus alpha cronbach dengan perolehan koefisien skala self efficacy karir sebesar 0,805. Uji validitas dan uji reliabilitas menggunakan bantuan program spss versi 16. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan yaitu analisis variabel tunggal. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan: (1) tingkat self efficacy karir siswa kelas XII Tekstil SMK N 1 ROTA Bayat berada pada kategori sedang (63,6%), (2) tingkat self efficacy karir siswa kelas XII Tekstil dalam dimensi-dimensinya: (a) dimensi tingkat (level) berada pada kategori sedang (51,5%), (b) dimensi generalisasi (generality) berada pada kategori sedang (90,9%) dan (c) dimensi kekuatan (strength) berada pada kategori tinggi (54,5%) dan (3) faktor-faktor yang dapat mempengaruhi tingkat self efficacy karir siswa yaitu: (a) faktor pribadi siswa (41,2%), (b) faktor teman sebaya (11,8%) dan (c) faktor lingkungan sekolah (47%). Kata Kunci: Self Efficacy, Karir, Siswa SMK
Automatic WordNet Construction Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo

WordNet is used extensively as a major lexical resource in information retrieval tasks. However, the qualities of existing Persian WordNets are far from perfect. They are either constructed manually which limits the coverage of Persian words, or automatically which results in unsatisfactory precision. This paper presents a fully-automated approach for constructing a Persian WordNet: A Bayesian Model with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation. We model the problem of constructing a Persian WordNet by estimating the probability of assigning senses (synsets) to Persian words. By applying MCMC techniques in estimating these probabilities, we integrate prior knowledge in the estimation and use the expected value of generated samples to give the final estimates. This ensures great performance improvement comparing with Maximum-Likelihood and Expectation-Maximization methods. Our acquired WordNet has a precision of 90.46% which is a considerable improvement in comparison with automatically-built WordNets in Persian
Betrayal Trauma: Relationship to Physical Health, Psychological Distress, and a Written Disclosure Intervention

ABSTRACT In the current study we sought, first, to distinguish associations with health arising from types of trauma as indicated by betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1996, 2001), and, second, to investigate the impact of disclosing a trauma history in survey form and/or writing essays about betrayal traumas. We recruited 99 community adults reporting at least 12 months of chronic medical illness or pain, 80 of whom completed all four sessions of this six-month longitudinal intervention study. Participants were randomly assigned to write about betrayal traumas or neutral events, and they were randomly assigned to complete an extensive trauma survey or a long personality inventory, producing four groups of participants. All 99 participants were assessed at their initial visit for trauma history using the Brief Betrayal Trauma Survey (BBTS) and physical and mental symptoms. The BBTS assesses exposure to both traumas high in betrayal (such as abuse by a close other) and traumas low in betrayal but high in life-threat (such as an automobile accident). Exposure to traumas with high betrayal was significantly correlated with number of physical illness, anxiety, dissociation, and depression symptoms. Amount of exposure to other types of traumas (low betrayal traumas) did not predict symptoms over and above exposure to betrayal trauma. While neither the survey manipulation nor the writing intervention led to main effects on change in symptoms over time, there were interactions between betrayal trauma history and condition such that participants with many betrayal traumas fared better in the control conditions while participants with fewer betrayal traumas had better outcomes if they were placed in the trauma writing and/or survey conditions. We discuss ongoing and future research aimed at evaluating the role of increased structure in writing assignments as beneficial for those with severe histories of betrayal trauma.
Vibrotactile Display of Music on the Human Back

We present an experiment designed to reveal characteristics of a tactile display that presents vibrations representing music to the back of the body. Based on the model human cochlea, a sensory substitution system aimed at translating music into vibrations, we are investigating the use of larger contactor sizes (over 10mm in diameter) as an effective device for the detection of signals originating from music. Using the method of limits, we measured ability to discriminate the frequency of vibrotactile stimuli across a wide range of frequencies common to western classical harmonic music. Vibrotactile stimuli were presented to artificially deafened participants using a large contactor applied to the back. Between 65 Hz (C2) and 1047 Hz (C6), frequency difference limens (FDL) were consistently less than 1/3 of an octave and as small as 200 cents. These findings suggest that vibrotactile information can be used to support the experience of music even in the absence of sound, and that voice coils are effective in presenting some characteristics of sound as vibrations.
Lens fibre cell differentiation and organelle loss: many paths lead to clarity

The programmed removal of organelles from differentiating lens fibre cells contributes towards lens transparency through formation of an organelle-free zone (OFZ). Disruptions in OFZ formation are accompanied by the persistence of organelles in lens fibre cells and can contribute towards cataract. A great deal of work has gone into elucidating the nature of the mechanisms and signalling pathways involved. It is apparent that multiple, parallel and redundant pathways are involved in this process and that these pathways form interacting networks. Furthermore, it is possible that the pathways can functionally compensate for each other, for example in mouse knockout studies. This makes sense given the importance of lens clarity in an evolutionary context. Apoptosis signalling and proteolytic pathways have been implicated in both lens fibre cell differentiation and organelle loss, including the Bcl-2 and inhibitor of apoptosis families, tumour necrosis factors, p53 and its regulators (such as Mdm2) and proteolytic enzymes, including caspases, cathepsins, calpains and the ubiquitin–proteasome pathway. Ongoing approaches being used to dissect the molecular pathways involved, such as transgenics, lens-specific gene deletion and zebrafish mutants, are discussed here. Finally, some of the remaining unresolved issues and potential areas for future studies are highlighted.
A Parallel Algorithm for Datacleansing in Incomplete Information Systems Using MapReduce

Data cleansing is an important process of data mining. It is the key technology for ensuring the quality of the data. Classical data pre-processing technique has limitation in processing massive data with missing information, and sometimes it can not obtain precise and reasonable results, which leads to low-quality data. To this end, through deep analysis of the classical pre-processing, combining with the MapReduce programming model, A parallel algorithm for data cleansing in incomplete information systems using MapReduce is put forward to process the massive data with missing information. Finally, the new algorithm is applied to incomplete decision information system, and the analysis results show that the new algorithm is effective.
Anatomical pathways for color vision in the human retina

Abstract The major neurons and neural circuits that are involved in the transmission of color signals through the human retina to produce the color and spatially opponent P cell or midget ganglion cell responses are described. The older findings of single cone to midget bipolar connectivity is reviewed, and the single midget bipolar cell to midget ganglion cell connectivity as revealed by a recent serial section electron microscope study is described in detail. Our present knowledge concerning the discrimination of the blue-cone subtype from the other longer wavelength cones in the human at the outer plexiform layer is summarized, and our most recent findings concerning horizontal cell connectivity to the different spectral types of cones are discussed. Finally, a hypothetical pathway is proposed for color-opponent surrounds of midget ganglion cells using both horizontal cells at the outer plexiform layer and amacrine cell pathways at the inner plexiform layer.
Observational evidence of sensitivity of surface climate changes to land types and urbanization

Sensitivity of surface climate change to land types is investigated for the Northern Hemisphere by subtracting the reanalysis from the observed surface temperature (OMR). The basis of this approach is that while reanalysis represents the large‐scale climate changes due to greenhouse gases and atmospheric circulation, it is less sensitive to regional surface processes associated with land types. OMR trends derived from two independent reanalyses (ERA40 and NNR) and two observations (CRU and GHCN) show similar dependence upon land types, suggesting the attribution of OMRs to different land types is robust. OMR trends reveal 1) Warming over barren areas is larger than most other land types. 2) Urban areas show large warming second only to barren areas. 3) Croplands with agricultural activity show a larger warming than natural broadleaf forests. The overall assessment indicates surface warming is larger for areas that are barren, anthropogenically developed, or covered with needle‐leaf forests.
TRANSMIT / RECEIVE ANTENNA SELECTION FOR MIMO SYSTEMS TO IMPROVE ERROR PERFORMANCE OF LINEAR RECEIVERS

Recent work has shown that multiple antenna transceivers can be used to enhance the data-rates and coverage of wireless links as compared to single antenna transceivers. However, using multiple antennas requires costly hardware and is computationally intensive. Antenna selection could be done at the transmitter and/or the receiver to overcome these disadvantages while incurring minimal loss in performance. Considerable work has been done to provide the solution for antenna selection that maximizes channel capacity. However, for finite complexity receivers this solution is not optimal. In this paper, we present optimal antenna selection solutions to minimize the error rates of linear receivers. Several greedy algorithms are developed to improve the error performance of linear receivers. The proposed algorithms have low implementation complexity and offer near optimal error performance.
Clustering by Nonnegative Matrix Factorization Using Graph Random Walk

Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is a promising relaxation technique for clustering analysis. However, conventional NMF methods that directly approximate the pairwise similarities using the least square error often yield mediocre performance for data in curved manifolds because they can capture only the immediate similarities between data samples. Here we propose a new NMF clustering method which replaces the approximated matrix with its smoothed version using random walk. Our method can thus accommodate farther relationships between data samples. Furthermore, we introduce a novel regularization in the proposed objective function in order to improve over spectral clustering. The new learning objective is optimized by a multiplicative Majorization-Minimization algorithm with a scalable implementation for learning the factorizing matrix. Extensive experimental results on real-world datasets show that our method has strong performance in terms of cluster purity.
The use of Evolving Graph Combinatorial Model in Routing Protocols for Dynamic Networks

The assessment of routing protocols for ad hoc networks is a difficult task, due to the networks’ highly dynamic behavior and the absence of benchmarks. Recently, a graph theoretic model – the evolving graphs – was proposed to help capture the network topology changes during time, with predictable dynamics at least. The algorithms and insights obtained through this model are theoretically very efficient and intriguing. However, there is no study about the use of such theoretical results into practical situations. We used the NS2 network simulator to first implement an evolving graph based routing protocol, and then used it as a benchmark when comparing four major ad-hoc routing protocols. Interestingly, our experiments showed that evolving graphs have the potential to be an effective and powerful tool. In order to make this model widely applicable, however, some practical issues still have to be addressed and incorporated into the model.