Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Skip-Thought Memory Networks

Question Answering (QA) is fundamental to natural language processing in that most nlp problems can be phrased as QA (Kumar et al., 2015). Current weakly supervised memory network models that have been proposed so far struggle at answering questions that involve relations among multiple entities (such as facebook's bAbi qa5-three-arg-relations in (Weston et al., 2015)). To address this problem of learning multi-argument multi-hop semantic relations for the purpose of QA, we propose a method that combines the jointly learned long-term read-write memory and attentive inference components of end-to-end memory networks (MemN2N) (Sukhbaatar et al., 2015) with distributed sentence vector representations encoded by a Skip-Thought model (Kiros et al., 2015). This choice to append Skip-Thought Vectors to the existing MemN2N framework is motivated by the fact that Skip-Thought Vectors have been shown to accurately model multi-argument semantic relations (Kiros et al., 2015).
2 . Question and Answer Selection Based on TimeML Annotations

Answering questions that ask about temporal information involves several forms of inference. In order to develop question answering capabilities that benefit from temporal inference, we believe that a large corpus of questions and answers that are discovered based on temporal information should be available. This paper describes our methodology for creating AnswerTime-Bank, a large corpus of questions and answers on which Question Answering systems can operate using complex temporal inference.
Effect of Superhydrophobic Titanium Surface on Initial Salivary Pellicle Acquisition and Oral Biofilm Formation

Colonization by oral microorganisms on dental abutment surfaces can result in inflammatory reactions such as peri-implantitis that may ultimately jeopardize the long-term prognosis of the dental implant. Previous studies have shown that superhydrophobic surfaces reduced bacterial colonization and subsequent biofilm formation. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of superhydrophobic modified titanium (SH-Ti) surface on salivary pellicle acquisition and development of a multi-species oral biofilm. Our results showed that SH-Ti substrates significantly reduced the volume of salivary pellicle. Surprisingly, superhydrophobicity did not prevent biofilm formation. SH-Ti had an increase in live cells and a decrease in dead cells in 72h-old biofilm in comparison with non-treated surfaces. Scanning electron microscopy confirmed that SH-Ti surfaces increased bacterial colonization preferentially in the microtopographical crevices. In conclusion, our results indicate that modification of surface wettability may affect the biological response around the dental implant and abutment.
Sample and Feedback Efficient Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning from Human Preferences

While reinforcement learning has led to promising results in robotics, defining an informative reward function is challenging. Prior work considered including the human in the loop to jointly learn the reward function and the optimal policy. Generating samples from a physical robot and requesting human feedback are both taxing efforts for which efficiency is critical. We propose to learn reward functions from both the robot and the human perspectives to improve on both efficiency metrics. Learning a reward function from the human perspective increases feedback efficiency by assuming that humans rank trajectories according to a low-dimensional outcome space. Learning a reward function from the robot perspective circumvents the need for a dynamics model while retaining the sample efficiency of model-based approaches. We provide an algorithm that incorporates bi-perspective reward learning into a general hierarchical reinforcement learning framework and demonstrate the merits of our approach on a toy task and a simulated robot grasping task.
Environmental Enrichment Alters Splenic Immune Cell Composition and Enhances Secondary Influenza Vaccine Responses in Mice

Chronic stress has deleterious effects on immune function, which can lead to adverse health outcomes. However, studies investigating the impact of stress reduction interventions on immunity in clinical research have yielded divergent results, potentially stemming from differences in study design and genetic heterogeneity, among other clinical research challenges. To test the hypothesis that reducing glucocorticoid levels enhances certain immune functions, we administered influenza vaccine once (prime) or twice (boost) to mice housed in either standard control caging or environmental enrichment (EE) caging. We have shown that this approach reduces mouse corticosterone production. Compared with controls, EE mice had significantly lower levels of fecal corticosterone metabolites (FCMs) and increased splenic B and T lymphocyte numbers. Corticosterone levels were negatively associated with the numbers of CD19+ (r2 = 0.43, p = 0.0017), CD4+ (r2 = 0.28, p = 0.0154) and CD8+ cells (r2 = 0.20, p = 0.0503). Vaccinated mice showed nonsignificant differences in immunoglobulin G (IgG) titer between caging groups, although EE mice tended to exhibit larger increases in titer from prime to boost than controls; the interaction between the caging group (control versus EE) and vaccine group (prime versus boost) showed a strong statistical trend (cage-group*vaccine-group, F = 4.27, p = 0.0555), suggesting that there may be distinct effects of EE caging on primary versus secondary IgG vaccine responses. Vaccine-stimulated splenocytes from boosted EE mice had a significantly greater frequency of interleukin 5 (IL-5)-secreting cells than boosted controls (mean difference 7.7, IL-5 spot-forming units/106 splenocytes, 95% confidence interval 0.24–135.1, p = 0.0493) and showed a greater increase in the frequency of IL-5-secreting cells from prime to boost. Our results suggest that corticosterone reduction via EE caging was associated with enhanced secondary vaccine responses, but had little effect on primary responses in mice. These findings help identify differences in primary and secondary vaccine responses in relationship to stress mediators that may be relevant in clinical studies.
A single photon detector implemented in a 130nm CMOS imaging process

We report on a new single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) fabricated in a 130 nm CMOS imaging process. A novel circular structure combining shallow trench isolation (STI) and a passivation implant creates an effective guard ring against premature edge breakdown. Thanks to this guard ring, unprecedented levels of miniaturization may be reached at no cost of added noise, decreased sensitivity or timing resolution. The detector integrated along with quenching and read out electronics was fully characterized. Optical measurements show the effectiveness of the guard ring and the high degree of electric field planarity across the sensitive region of the detector. With a photon detection probability of up to 30% and a timing jitter of 125 ps at full-width-half-maximum this SPAD is well suited for applications such as 3-D imaging, fluorescence lifetime imaging and biophotonics.
The Protist Ribosomal Reference database (PR2): a catalog of unicellular eukaryote Small Sub-Unit rRNA sequences with curated taxonomy

The interrogation of genetic markers in environmental meta-barcoding studies is currently seriously hindered by the lack of taxonomically curated reference data sets for the targeted genes. The Protist Ribosomal Reference database (PR2, http://ssu-rrna.org/) provides a unique access to eukaryotic small sub-unit (SSU) ribosomal RNA and DNA sequences, with curated taxonomy. The database mainly consists of nuclear-encoded protistan sequences. However, metazoans, land plants, macrosporic fungi and eukaryotic organelles (mitochondrion, plastid and others) are also included because they are useful for the analysis of high-troughput sequencing data sets. Introns and putative chimeric sequences have been also carefully checked. Taxonomic assignation of sequences consists of eight unique taxonomic fields. In total, 136 866 sequences are nuclear encoded, 45 708 (36 501 mitochondrial and 9657 chloroplastic) are from organelles, the remaining being putative chimeric sequences. The website allows the users to download sequences from the entire and partial databases (including representative sequences after clustering at a given level of similarity). Different web tools also allow searches by sequence similarity. The presence of both rRNA and rDNA sequences, taking into account introns (crucial for eukaryotic sequences), a normalized eight terms ranked-taxonomy and updates of new GenBank releases were made possible by a long-term collaboration between experts in taxonomy and computer scientists.
Citizen Participation and Transparency in Local Government: Do Participation Channels and Policy Making Phases Matter?

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between citizen engagement in various public participation programs and the participants’ assessment of transparency in local government. To examine this relationship, the study focused on three aspects of citizen participation: (1) citizen engagement in participation programs generally, (2) online versus offline participation, and (3) online or offline participation in policymaking phases specifically. A 2009 survey of residents of Seoul, South Korea, was used to test the study hypotheses, as it provided information from 1,014 respondents on their citizen participation and their perceptions of transparency in government. Surprisingly, citizens’ engagement in public participation programs was not significantly associated with perceptions of transparency in government. Moreover, citizen participation in online programs had a marginally negative association with assessments of government transparency. However, citizens who engaged in offline participation programs during the policy agenda setting phase indicated a more favorable assessment of transparency in local government.
Understanding the ERP Post-Implementation Discourse

: This paper presents the first stage of a larger research project focusing on understanding the emergence of ERP II. ERP is now being seen for what it really is: ‘a means to an end’, in that, its primary benefit is in the integrated infrastructure that it introduces and its ability to support future IS investments. The paper focuses on the changes that have been observed in the services offered by vendors and consultants in the now renamed ERP II market. Now terms like ‘ERP’ and ‘e-business’ are for the most part avoided by vendors and consultants as they are perceived to be out-of-date. For example, SAP once promoted that fact that they were ‘29 years in the business of e-business’ with ‘the best-run e-businesses run SAP’, but now their message promotes, ‘30 years in the business of helping businesses grow’ with ‘the best-run businesses run SAP’. In this paper, issues of concern with the realities of ERP post-implementation are presented through examining: benefits realisation; informational requirements; and generic to specific solutions. While we would argue that it is difficult to understand the rationale for the introduction of these ‘newer’ ERP extensions, we must acknowledge that a market has been created and that once again the ‘new-look’ ERP vendors are the dominant ERP II players. This leads us to question whether there is anything new in ERP II.
CONSORT-EHEALTH Checklist V1.6.2 Report

1b-i) Key features/functionalities/components of the intervention and comparator in the METHODS section of the ABSTRACT We note that the intervention included: "automated smoking cessation messages tailored to individual’s stage of smoking cessation, specialized messages provided on-demand based on user requests for additional support, and a peer-to-peer social support network. " 1b-ii) Level of human involvement in the METHODS section of the ABSTRACT “Adult took part in a single individual smoking cessation counseling session. ” The text message intervention is noted as being "automated," and including "a peer-to-peer social support network. " 1b-iii) Open vs. closed, web-based (self-assessment) vs. face-to-face assessments in the METHODS section of the ABSTRACT Participants were recruited from the community via offline radio and newspaper advertisements, as well as online advertisements. Outcomes were assessed via self-report questionnaires and the trial was unblinded. 1b-iv) RESULTS section in abstract must contain use data Thirty participants were randomized each to the intervention and control groups. 83% of the intervention group and 90% of the control group completed the full 8 weeks of the intervention. 1b-v) CONCLUSIONS/DISCUSSION in abstract for negative trials This trial was not a negative trial. INTRODUCTION 2a-i) Problem and the type of system/solution “It is estimated that 19.3% (45.3 million) of U.S. adults are smokers, with higher rates among younger adults and individuals with lower socioeconomic status [1]. Smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke kills more than 440,000 people in the U.S. every year, is associated with numerous chronic health conditions, and results in nearly $100 billion in healthcare costs and productivity losses annually [2,3]. Estimates suggest 69% of smokers want to quit, and in 2010 more than half of all smokers attempted to quit [1]. Although evidence-based behavioral smoking treatments exist, research suggests these resources are used by less than 10% of smokers attempting to quit [4,5]. Frequently cited barriers to utilizing behavioral interventions include the cost, time commitments, and logistics (e.g., travel, scheduling appointments) associated with these treatments [6]. To effect significant reductions in smoking rates, innovative interventions and delivery systems are needed that reach smokers effectively and efficiently [7]. “
D-SLAM: A Decoupled Solution to Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

The main contribution of this paper is the reformulation of the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem for mobile robots such that the mapping and localization can be treated as two concurrent yet separated processes: D-SLAM (decoupled SLAM). It is shown that SLAM with a range and bearing sensor in an environment populated with point features can be decoupled into solving a nonlinear static estimation problem for mapping and a low-dimensional dynamic estimation problem for localization. This is achieved by transforming the measurement vector into two parts: one containing information relating features in the map and another with information relating the map and robot. It is shown that the new formulation results in an exactly sparse information matrix for mapping when it is solved using an Extended Information Filter (EIF). Thus a significant saving in the computational effort can be achieved for large-scale problems by exploiting the special properties of sparse matrices. An important feature of D-SLAM is that the correlation among features in the map are still kept and it is demonstrated that the uncertainty of the feature estimates monotonically decreases. The algorithm is illustrated and evaluated through computer simulations and experiments.
Chicken Selenium Status when Fed a Diet Supplemented with Se-Yeast

Kuricova S. , K. BoldiIarova, a. Gre‰akova, M. Levkut, a. Leng: Chicken Selenium Satus When Fed a Diet Supplemented with Se-Yeast. Acta Vet. Brno 2003, 72: 339-346. This experiment was designed to investigate the effects of the feed supplementation with inorganic and organic forms of Se on the activity of blood glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and the Se levels in blood and tissues in young female chickens of the laying strain Isa Brown. The first group of birds received the basic diet (BD) with Se content 0.12 mg.kg -1 of dry matter (DM). Diets for Groups 1, 2 and 3 consisted of BD supplemented with sodium selenite 0.2 mg·kg-1 of DM, Se-enriched yeast 0.2 and 0.7 mg·kg -1 of DM, respectively. The experiment lasted from hatching until 7 weeks of age. The activity of blood GSH-Px was found to be dose-dependent throughout the experiment with no differences due to the form of Se administered. The selenium analysis in blood and liver samples revealed also the Se dose dependent responses but with significantly higher values recorded in chickens aged 5 weeks and older chickens and supplied with the equivalent amounts of organic Se source. Other tissue Se levels were also highest (P < 0.05) in the group with its largest intake. The values of Se content in the breast muscle were higher (P < 0.001) in chicks of Group 3 during entire experiment and they reached the doubled values than in the birds given selenite (11.54 ± 0.4 vs. 5.47 ± 0.2 µmol·kg-1 of DM, in 7-weekold birds). On the other hand, no differences in this parameter were determined between the chicks fed just BD or BD supplemented with Na 2 SeO 3 . At the end of experiment, the intake of Se-yeast (Group 3) resulted in significantly (P < 0.05) higher Se levels in the heart, in lungs and in the gizzard than BD with selenite. No effects of the form of selenium used could be found in the spleen and kidney samples of 7-week-old chicks. The results demonstrate the evident advantage of supplementation of poultry feed with the selenium-enriched yeast due to more effective Se utilization and formation of mobile body deposits of this microelement than in the case of supplementation with selenite. Poultry, selenium, bioavailability, glutathione peroxidase, striated muscle, liver
Pharmaceutical Strategies for the Topical Dermal Delivery of Peptides/Proteins for Cosmetic and Therapeutic Applications

Bioactive peptides and proteins have attracted great attention in the cosmetic industry for the development of new cosmetic products to reverse the signs of ageing (anti-ageing treatment). These have also led to new therapeutic agents for clinical applications associated with wound healing; fibrosis, excessive scarring, and inflammation. One of the mostly used administration routes is by topical delivery. However, the skin is an intrinsic barrier to peptide/ protein transportation across the stratum corneum. Therefore the key function of a topical delivery system is to enhance the dermal permeability of the peptide/protein enabling it to cross the epidermis and retain in the dermis. The development of pharmaceutical strategies that employ sophisticated carrier systems such as elastic vesicles (such as liposome’s, and noisome), nano fibers, micro-emulsions and conjugation with cell-penetrating peptides may hold the key to enhancing peptide/protein dermal delivery. The aim of this paper is to review noninvasive topical delivery systems that promote dermal delivery of peptides/proteins for either cosmetic purposes or clinical therapeutic applications.
Use of a Thermal Battery with a Heat Pump for Low Temperature Electric Vehicle Operation

Below 10ºC, electric vehicles suffer from reduced range, which can be as severe as a 70% reduction (at -26ºC). This is due to reduced battery performance at low temperatures and increased cabin heating demand. Heat pumps have been shown to have good steady state performance, but suffer slow and inefficient transients, while thermal storage has been shown to provide large heat flows and reduced warm up times, but space for such thermal storage is limited. Here a heat pump is combined with an optimally designed thermal battery and the simulated results are presented with improvements to energy consumption demonstrated.
Language-Independent Sentiment Polarity Detection in Movie Reviews: A Case Study of English and Spanish

We present a novel language-independent technique for determining polarity, positive or negative, of opinions expressed by diﬀer-ent individuals. The technique is based on byte-level n -gram frequency statistics method for document representation, and a variant of k nearest neighbors (kNN) (for k = 1) machine learning algorithm for categorization process. The main advantages of the technique are its simplicity and full language and topic independence. For driving experiments we used corpora of movie reviews: Cornell polarity dataset in English and Mu-choCine in Spanish. Experimental results (85 . 6% accuracy for English and 82 . 49% for Spanish corpora) conﬁrm that the presented technique is comparable with the best ranked previously published techniques, when applied to movie reviews datasets. Still, it use no additional linguistic information nor external resources.
Hippocampal Ripple-Contingent Training Accelerates Trace Eyeblink Conditioning and Retards Extinction in Rabbits

There are at least two distinct oscillatory states of the hippocampus that are related to distinct behavioral patterns. Theta (4–12 Hz) oscillation has been suggested to indicate selective attention during which the animal concentrates on some features of the environment while suppressing reactivity to others. In contrast, sharp-wave ripples (∼200 Hz) can be seen in a state in which the hippocampus is at its most responsive to any kind of afferent stimulation. In addition, external stimulation tends to evoke and reset theta oscillation, the phase of which has been shown to modulate synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. Theoretically, training on a hippocampus-dependent learning task contingent upon ripples could enhance learning rate due to elevated responsiveness and enhanced phase locking of the theta oscillation. We used a brain–computer interface to detect hippocampal ripples in rabbits to deliver trace eyeblink conditioning and extinction trials selectively contingent upon them. A yoked control group was trained regardless of their ongoing neural state. Ripple-contingent training expedited acquisition of the conditioned response early in training and evoked stronger theta-band phase locking to the conditioned stimulus. Surprisingly, ripple-contingent training also resulted in slower extinction in well trained animals. We suggest that the ongoing oscillatory activity in the hippocampus determines the extent to which a stimulus can induce a phase reset of the theta oscillation, which in turn is the determining factor of learning rate in trace eyeblink conditioning.