Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Data Placement on Disks: A Comprehensive Solution for Different Technologies

The problem of optimally placing data on disks (ODP) to maximize disk-access performance has long been recognized as important. Solutions to this problem have been reported for some widely available disk technologies, such as magnetic CAV and optical CLV disks. However, important new technologies such as multizoned magnetic disks, have been recently introduced. For such technologies no formal solution to the ODP problem has been reported. In this paper, we first identify the fundamental characteristics of disk-device technologies which influence the solution to the ODP problem. We develop a comprehensive solution to the problem that covers all currently available disk technologies. We show how our comprehensive solution can be reduced to the solutions for existing disk technologies, contributing thus a solution to the ODP problem for multizoned disks. Our analytical solution has been validated through simulations and through its reduction to the known solutions for particular disks. Finally, we study how the solution for multizoned disks is affected by the disk and data characteristics.
MODELING MORPHOSYNTAX WITH FINITE-STATE TRANSDUCERS AND ITS APPLICATION TO HUNGARIAN LVCSR

Large vocabulary speech recognition systems for several languages have to use morphemes as the basic recognition units. Such systems are frequently suffering from the over-generation property of the smoothed N -gram language model. The source of the problem is that most of the function-morphemes are very short and their unigram likelihood is high. These morphemes are inserted frequently in the recognition result when the correct word is misrecognized. We observed in our Hungarian dictation system that in many cases the result of such recognition errors is an invalid morpheme combination, e.g., a noun suffix attached to a verb. In this article we describe and evaluate a method that filters out these invalid morpheme combinations. The error rate of the recognizer decreased between 5 and 18% when the baseline N -gram language model was replaced by the proposed stochastic morphosyntactic language model. Our recognizer (as well as the proposed method) is based on the weighted finite-state transducer (WFST) paradigm, therefore in the next section we review the basics of WFST-based speech recognition. Then we describe the proposed language model in Section 3 and present the experimental results in Section 4. We conclude the paper in Section 5 with a brief summary.
Performance enhancement of DQMAN-based wireless ad hoc networks in multi-hop scenarios

Two mechanisms to improve the performance of wireless ad hoc networks in multi-hop scenarios wherein the distributed queuing MAC protocol for mobile ad hoc networks (DQMAN) is executed are proposed and evaluated in this paper. DQMAN organizes the network into dynamic clusters forming spontaneous master-slave architectures to manage the radio resources. In multihop settings its performance is hampered by intercluster interference (interference caused between adjacent clusters) and the presence of isolated nodes that cannot get associated to any cluster. The Three Hop Master minislot (3HMS) and the active listening (AL) mechanisms are presented in this paper to cope with these problems. It is worth noting that these mechanisms could be indeed applied to any centralized network or any clustered ad hoc network. Computer simulations show an overall improvement of the system performance in terms of throughput and average packet transmission delay in comparison to both the basic definition of DQMAN and the legacy IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol in ad hoc mode (DCF) when the enhanced mechanisms are used.
Uniqueness for ab initio phase retrieval in macromolecular X-ray crystallography

Protein X-ray crystallography, the determination of three-dimensional structures of protein molecules from crystal X-ray diffraction data, requires determining the phases of the diffraction signal, since only the amplitude is measured. This so-called phase problem is a key component of protein X-ray crystallography. Most current methods for phasing are experimentally based and utilise either additional diffraction data from modified crystals or knowledge of the structure of a related protein. Ab initio phasing refers to computational methods that utilise only the measured diffraction amplitudes and some a priori information on protein electron densities, and potentially offer a dramatic reduction in effort over experimental methods. A key question in ab initio phasing is whether the diffraction amplitudes and the a priori information are sufficient to uniquely define the phases. The question of uniqueness is examined here for the case of a priori information on the molecular envelope.
Analyzing students records to identify patterns of students' performance

Academic failures among university students have been the subject of interest in higher education community. Students drop out due to poor academic performance as early as in the first year of their university enrolment. Many interested parties' debate and try to find reasons for this poor performance. Consequently, the ability to predict a student's performance could be useful in many ways to stakeholders of higher education institutions. This paper discusses the data mining technique used to identify the significant variables that affects and influences the performance of undergraduate students. Students' demographic and past academic performance data are then used to study the academic pattern. Early phases of the CRISP-DM methodology is also described in detail consisting business understanding, data understanding and data preparation. The data modeling and mining tool used identifies the most significant correlation of variables associated with academic success based on the past ten years of demographic and students' performance data of the College of Information Technology, Universiti Tenaga Nasional. Finally, the results from the application of the CHAID algorithm aimed at predicting students' academic success is presented.
Passive Immunization with Tau Oligomer Monoclonal Antibody Reverses Tauopathy Phenotypes without Affecting Hyperphosphorylated Neurofibrillary Tangles

Recent findings suggest that tau oligomers, which form before neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), are the true neurotoxic tau entities in neurodegenerative tauopathies, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). Studies in animal models of tauopathy suggest that tau oligomers play a key role in eliciting behavioral and cognitive impairments. Here, we used a novel tau oligomer-specific monoclonal antibody (TOMA) for passive immunization in mice expressing mutant human tau. A single dose of TOMA administered either intravenously or intracerebroventricularly was sufficient to reverse both locomotor and memory deficits in a mouse model of tauopathy for 60 d, coincident with rapid reduction of tau oligomers but not phosphorylated NFTs or monomeric tau. Our data demonstrate that antibody protection is mediated by extracellular and rapid peripheral clearance. These findings provide the first direct evidence in support of a critical role for tau oligomers in disease progression and validate tau oligomers as a target for the treatment of AD and other neurodegenerative tauopathies.
Bronchoalveolar Lavage Galactomannan in Diagnosis of Invasive Pulmonary Aspergillosis among Solid-Organ Transplant Recipients

ABSTRACT We review the experience at our institution with galactomannan (GM) testing of bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid in the diagnosis of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) among solid-organ transplant recipients. Among 81 patients for whom BAL GM testing was ordered (heart, 24; kidney, 22; liver, 19; lung, 16), there were five cases of proven or probable IPA. All five patients had BAL GM of ≥2.1 and survived following antifungal therapy. The sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values for BAL GM testing at a cutoff of ≥1.0 were 100%, 90.8%, 41.7%, and 100%, respectively. The sensitivity of BAL GM testing was better than that of conventional tests such as serum GM or BAL cytology and culture. Moreover, a positive BAL GM test diagnosed IPA several days to 4 weeks before other methods for three patients. Twelve patients had BAL GM of ≥0.5 but no evidence of IPA. Among these, lung transplant recipients accounted for 41.7% (5/12) of the false-positive results, reflecting frequent colonization of airways in this population. Excluding lung transplants, the specificity and positive predictive value for other solid-organ transplants increased to 92.9% and 62.5%, respectively (cutoff, ≥1.0). In conclusion, BAL GM testing facilitated more-rapid diagnoses of IPA and the institution of antifungal therapy among non-lung solid-organ transplant recipients and helped to rule out IPA.
Design of the tourism-information-service-oriented collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm

Personalized recommendation technology is one key application in modern Electronic commerce field with optimistic prospect. As the urgency of the use of recommendation technology in tourism industry, the authors try to design a collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm integrating with nearest neighbor recommendation and cluster analysis referring to national criteria “Classification, Investigation and Evaluation of Tourism Resource” on the base of existing collaborative filtering recommendation technology. Theoretical mechanism and realization method of this improved collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm will be also discussed.
Geolocation of a known altitude target using azimuth angle measurements

This paper considers geolocating a target with known altitude using azimuth angle measurements obtained at multiple spatially separated ground sensors. Under Gaussian noise model, the target position Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRL-B) is derived and the geolocation problem is formulated as an inequality-constrained weighted least squares (WLS) optimization problem. A new two-step algorithm that mainly involves the bisection search and root-finding operations is proposed to solve it globally. We show analytically and by simulations that the proposed method can attain the CRLB accuracy when the angle measurement noise is small.
Nonequilibrium Temperature for Open Boson and Fermion Systems

The effective theory of an open boson or fermion system is studied, which evolves out of equilibrium with time-dependent Hamiltonian $\hat{H}(t)$. A measure of nonequilibrium temperature for the open system evolving from an equilibrium is proposed as the time-averaged energy expectation value $T(t) = T_i(\bar{ _{\Psi}}/ \bar{ _{\Psi}})$, where $\hat{I} (t)$, the action operator, satisfies the quantum Liouville-von Neumann equation and determines the true density operator. It recovers the result for the adiabatic (quasi-equilibrium) and nonadiabatic (out of equilibrium) evolution from one static Hamiltonian to another and takes into account the particle production due to the intermediate processes.
Barriers to Seeking School Counselling: Malaysian Chinese School Students’ Perspectives

School counselling services have always been unpopular among Malaysian students. Many researchers have studied what prevents students from seeking mental health services. However, there is a lack of study on the barriers to seeking help in the context of Malaysian school counselling services. Using a sample of Chinese high school students (N = 277), this qualitative study explored the under-utilisation of school counselling services. A thematic analysis was used to analyse an open-ended question, and the findings uncovered contextualised issues such as: conceptualisation of problems and the shameful, fearful, concerned, and responsible self that contributes to the under-utilisation of school counselling services.
Activation profiles of human kallikrein-related peptidases by matrix metalloproteinases

Abstract The 15 human kallikrein-related peptidases (KLKs) are clinically important biomarkers and therapeutic targets of interest in inflammation, cancer, and neurodegenerative disease. KLKs are secreted as inactive pro-forms (pro-KLKs) that are activated extracellularly by specific proteolytic release of their amino-terminal pro-peptide, and this is a key step in their functional regulation. Physiologically relevant KLK regulatory cascades of activation have been described in skin desquamation and semen liquefaction, and work by a large number of investigators has elucidated pairwise and autolytic activation relationships among the KLKs with the potential for more extensive activation cascades. More recent work has asked whether functional intersection of KLKs with other types of regulatory proteases exists. Such studies show a capacity for members of the thrombostasis axis to act as broad activators of pro-KLKs. In the present report, we ask whether such functional intersection is possible between the KLKs and the members of the matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) family by evaluating the ability of the MMPs to activate pro-KLKs. The results identify MMP-20 as a broad activator of pro-KLKs, suggesting the potential for intersection of the KLK and MMP axes under pathological dysregulation of MMP-20 expression.
Implementation feasibility of convex recursive deletion regions using multi-layer perceptrons

A constructive algorithm to implement convex recursive deletion regions via two-layer perceptrons has been presented in a recent study. In the algorithm, the absolute values of the weights become larger and larger when the number of nested layers of a convex recursive deletion region increases. In addition, the absolute values of the weights are determined according to the complexity of the structure of the convex recursive deletion region. More complicated convex recursive deletion regions result in larger values of weights. Besides, the constructive procedure is needed to get the parameters (weights and thresholds) for the neural networks. In this paper, we propose a simple three-layer network structure to implement the convex recursive deletion regions in which all weights of the second and third layers are all 1's and the thresholds for the nodes in the second layer are pre-determined according to the structures of the convex recursive deletion regions. This paper also provides the activation function for the output node. In brief, all of parameters (weights and activation functions) in the proposed structure are pre-determined and no constructive algorithm is needed for solving the convex recursive deletion region problems. We prove the feasibility of the proposed structure and give an illustrative example to demonstrate how the proposed structure implements the convex recursive deletion regions. Finally, we provide the conceptual diagram of the hardware implementation of the proposed network structure.
On the role of self-organised criticality in accretion systems

Self-organised criticality (SOC) has been suggested as a potentially powerful unifying paradigm for interpreting the structure of, and signals from, accretion systems. After review- ing the most promising sites where SOC might be observable, we consider the theoretical arguments for supposing that SOC can occur in accretion discs. Perhaps the most rigorous evidence is provided by numerical modelling of energy dissipation due to magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in accretion discs by G Geertsema & A Achterberg (AA we inves- tigate how "sandpile"-type dynamics arise in this model. It is concluded that the potential sites for SOC in accretion systems are numerous and observationally accessible, and that theoreti- cal support for the possible occurrence of SOC can be derived from first principles.
High levels of oncomiR-21 contribute to the senescence-induced growth arrest in normal human cells and its knock-down increases the replicative lifespan

Cellular senescence of normal human cells has by now far exceeded its initial role as a model system for aging research. Many reports show the accumulation of senescent cells in vivo, their effect on their microenvironment and its double‐edged role as tumour suppressor and promoter. Importantly, removal of senescent cells delays the onset of age‐associated diseases in mouse model systems. To characterize the role of miRNAs in cellular senescence of endothelial cells, we performed miRNA arrays from HUVECs of five different donors. Twelve miRNAs, comprising hsa‐miR‐23a, hsa‐miR‐23b, hsa‐miR‐24, hsa‐miR‐27a, hsa‐miR‐29a, hsa‐miR‐31, hsa‐miR‐100, hsa‐miR‐193a, hsa‐miR‐221, hsa‐miR‐222 and hsa‐let‐7i are consistently up‐regulated in replicatively senescent cells. Surprisingly, also miR‐21 was found up‐regulated by replicative and stress‐induced senescence, despite being described as oncogenic. Transfection of early passage endothelial cells with miR‐21 resulted in lower angiogenesis, and less cell proliferation mirrored by up‐regulation of p21CIP1 and down‐regulation of CDK2. These two cell‐cycle regulators are indirectly regulated by miR‐21 via its validated direct targets NFIB (Nuclear factor 1 B‐type), a transcriptional inhibitor of p21CIP1, and CDC25A, which regulates CDK2 activity by dephosphorylation. Knock‐down of either NFIB or CDC25A shows a phenocopy of over‐expressing miR‐21 in regard to cell‐cycle arrest. Finally, miR‐21 over‐epxression reduces the replicative lifespan, while stable knock‐down by sponges extends the replicative lifespan of endothelial cells. Therefore, we propose that miR‐21 is the first miRNA that upon its knock‐down extends the replicative lifespan of normal human cells.
Active Semi-Supervised Concept Hierarchy Refinement

Concept hierarchy generation has multiple applications, including creating ontologies and data mining. When performed manually, it is a very time consuming task. On the other hand, unsupervised techniques often provide very limited or inaccurate results. There have been some attempts to address it with semi-supervised methods, however they still require significant human effort and are mostly limited to simple cluster hierarchies. This paper presents a new algorithm for active semi-supervised concept hierarchy refinement, which can be used together with any unsupervised method. We propose a very simple query format, which can be answered by a human expert with minimal effort. Moreover, an active learning strategy is presented for improving the results. The algorithm is tested in conjunction with two concept hierarchy generation techniques. The results show great improvement of accuracy even with small human effort and a significant benefit from utilizing active learning.
Clustered mutations in hominid genome evolution are consistent with APOBEC3G enzymatic activity

The gradual accumulation of mutations by any of a number of mutational processes is a major driving force of divergence and evolution. Here, we investigate a potentially novel mutational process that is based on the activity of members of the AID/APOBEC family of deaminases. This gene family has been recently shown to introduce—in multiple types of cancer—enzyme-induced clusters of co-occurring somatic mutations caused by cytosine deamination. Going beyond somatic mutations, we hypothesized that APOBEC3—following its rapid expansion in primates—can introduce unique germline mutation clusters that can play a role in primate evolution. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by performing a comprehensive comparative genomic screen for APOBEC3-induced mutagenesis patterns across different hominids. We detected thousands of mutation clusters introduced along primate evolution which exhibit features that strongly fit the known patterns of APOBEC3G mutagenesis. These results suggest that APOBEC3G-induced mutations have contributed to the evolution of all genomes we studied. This is the first indication of site-directed, enzyme-induced genome evolution, which played a role in the evolution of both modern and archaic humans. This novel mutational mechanism exhibits several unique features, such as its higher tendency to mutate transcribed regions and regulatory elements and its ability to generate clusters of concurrent point mutations that all occur in a single generation. Our discovery demonstrates the exaptation of an anti-viral mechanism as a new source of genomic variation in hominids with a strong potential for functional consequences.
Complexity, specificity, and the timescales of developing expectations in visual perception

Perception is strongly influenced by our expectations, especially under situations of uncertainty. A growing body of work suggests that perception is akin to Bayesian Inference in which expectations can be viewed as ‘prior’ beliefs that are combined via Bayes’ rule with sensory evidence to form the ‘posterior’ beliefs. In this thesis, I aim to answer open questions regarding the nature of expectations in perception, and, in particular, what the limits of complexity and specificity in developing expectations are, and how expectations of different temporal properties develop and interact. First, I conducted a psychophysical experiment to investigate whether human observers are able to implicitly develop distinct expectations using colour as a distinguishing factor. I interleaved moving dot displays of two different colours, either red or green, with different motion direction distributions. Results showed that statistical information can transfer from one group of stimuli to another but observers are also able to learn two distinct priors under specific conditions. In a collaborative work, I implemented an online learning computational model, which showed that subjects’ behaviour was not in disagreement with a near-optimal Bayesian observer, and suggested that observers might prefer simple models which are consistent with the data over complex models. Next, I investigated experimentally whether selective manipulation of rewards can affect an observer’s perceptual performance in a similar manner to manipulating the statistical properties of stimuli. Results showed that manipulation of the reward scheme had similar effects on perception as statistical manipulations in trials where a stimulus was presented but not in the absence of stimulus. Finally, I used a novel visual search task to investigate how expectations of different timescales (from the last few trials to hours to long-term statistics of natural scenes) interact to alter perception. Results suggested that recent exposure to a stimulus resulted in significantly improved detection performance and significantly more visual ‘hallucinations’ but only at positions at which it was more probable that a stimulus would be presented. These studies provide new insights into the approximations that neural systems must make to implement Bayesian inference. Complexity does not seem to necessarily be a prohibitive factor in learning but the system also factors the provided evidence and potential gain in regards to learning complex priors and applying them in distinct contexts. Further, what aspects of the statistics of the stimuli are learned and used, and how selective attention modulates learning can crucially depend on specific task properties such as the timeframe of exposure, complexity, or the observer’s current goals and beliefs about the task.