Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Tale of Clouds: Paradigm Comparisons and Some Thoughts on Research Issues

Cloud computing is an emerging computing paradigm. It aims to share data, calculations, and services transparently among users of a massive grid. Although the industry has started selling cloud-computing products, research challenges in various areas, such as UI design, task decomposition, task distribution, and task coordination, are still unclear. Therefore, we study the methods to reason and model cloud computing as a step toward identifying fundamental research questions in this paradigm. In this paper, we compare cloud computing with service computing and pervasive computing. Both the industry and research community have actively examined these three computing paradigms. We draw a qualitative comparison among them based on the classic model of computer architecture. We finally evaluate the comparison results and draw up a series of research questions in cloud computing for future exploration.
Beyond Piaget: a Perspective from Studies of Children’s Problem Solving Abilities

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) remains unchallenged as the most influential developmental psychologist in history. Indeed, as one prominent researcher put it over 25 years ago, “Before Piaget began his work, no recognizable field of cognitive development existed” (Siegler, 1986 ,pp 21 - 22 ). The vast sweep of Piaget’s theories , and his ingenious approaches to studying the development of children’s minds have profoundly impacted the field. And even though the field has moved well beyond its long period of almost total acceptance of Piagetian stage theory, his detailed analyses of children’s behavior at specific points in development remain a source of continued experimental and theoretical inspiration. Because Piaget published his early work – starting nearly a century ago – in French, his influence on English - speaking developmental psychologists didn’t really take off until the late 1950s when his papers and books began to be translated into English. Of particular importance was John Flavell’s (1963) interpretive volume which made Piaget (and Flavell! ) widely read in English
Title: Stress Distinction in German: Simulating Kinematic Parameters of Tongue Tip Gestures Running Title: Simulating Apical Gesture Reduction

Levels of stress are not only distinguished by varying fundamental frequency contours but also by changes of supralaryngeal parameters, e.g. unstressed syllables exhibit reduced movement amplitudes and durations compared to stressed syllables. To investigate the effect of deaccentuation on apical gestures in /tVt/ sequences with all vowels of German we recorded lingual movements of five speakers by means of EMMA. Movement paths of recorded stressed items were manipulated to simulate kinematic parameters of recorded unstressed items in three different ways: truncation, rescaling and combined truncation and rescaling. We assumed that the simulation type that generated parameters most similar to recorded unstressed items can be interpreted in terms of a generalised motor program for deaccentuation. The following parameters of simulated movements were compared to measured unstressed items: movement durations, peak velocities, distances, interval between velocity peaks in percent of syllable duration, symmetry of velocity profiles and number of acceleration peaks between velocity peaks. Combined simulations resembled most closely the kinematic parameters of unstressed items but could not generate the smaller amplitudes of unstressed syllables with lax vowels, since durational reduction of lax vowels due to deaccentuation was very small, i.e. the spatial reduction was not proportional to the temporal reduction for lax items. Therefore it can be concluded that with the method used here no single parameter or pattern could be found whose manipulation results in the kinematic characteristics of unstressed syllables, which speaks against the concept of a generalised motor program for deaccentuation.
A boundary criterion for cubulation

We give a criterion in terms of the boundary for the existence of a proper cocompact action of a word-hyperbolic group on a ${\rm CAT}(0)$ cube complex. We describe applications towards lattices and hyperbolic 3-manifold groups. In particular, by combining the theory of special cube complexes, the surface subgroup result of Kahn-Markovic, and Agol's criterion, we find that every subgroup separable closed hyperbolic 3-manifold is virtually fibered.
Overview of the implant of intraneural multielectrodes in human for controlling a 5-fingered hand prosthesis, delivering sensorial feedback and producing rehabilitative neuroplasticity

In spite of critical rearrangements following amputation, recent findings show how neural connections can be exploited by neural interfaces. Four intraneural multielectrodes have been implanted in an amputee's for four weeks for recording neural signals and eliciting sensorial feedback. Recorded neural signals were mapped in real-time onto three actions of the robotic hand through amplitude on the best matching channel threshold method, with an 85% accuracy achieved thanks to an AI classifier trained offline. When analyzed only in time windows compatible with the transmission delay of the motor command from the cortex, identified as an event related desynchronization of the electroencephalographic (EEG) rhythm, reliability reached almost 100%. Training for robotic hand control and for sensory perception produced normalization in the EEG activation pattern and a reorganization of the motor cortical maps distinguished by TMS, with restriction of the cortical overrepresentation of muscles proximal to the stump. In parallel, a clinical improvement of phantom limb pain has been observed, that recognizes in the correction of the aberrant plasticity its anatomical substrate. Purpose of this paper is to give a comprehensive overview of all the results obtained from the in-human implant experiment and to critically compare it with previous similar experiences.
Analysis of 809 Facial Bone Fractures in a Pediatric and Adolescent Population

Background Facial fractures are infrequent in children and adolescents and have different clinical features from those in adults. The low incidence in children and adolescents reflects the flexibility and underdevelopment of their facial skeletons, as well as their more protected environments. Only a few reports have reviewed such patients in Korea. The authors performed a retrospective study to analyze the characteristics of facial fractures in the Korean pediatric population. Methods We conducted a retrospective review on a series of 741 patients, aged <18 years, with facial fractures who had been treated at our hospital between 2006 and 2010. The following parameters were evaluated: age, sex, cause, location and type of fractures, associated injuries, treatment and complications. Results A total of 741 consecutive patients met the inclusion criteria. The ratio of boys to girls was 5.7:1. Facial fractures most commonly occurred in patients between 13 and 15 years of age (36.3%). The most common causes of injury was violence. The nasal fracture was the most common type of fracture (69%) and the blowout fracture was the second most common (20%). Associated injuries occurred in 156 patients (21%). Conclusions The incidence of pediatric facial fractures caused by violence is high in Korea. Our results show that as age increases, etiological factors and fracture patterns gradually shift towards those found in adults. This study provides an overview of facial fractures in these age groups that helps illustrate the trends and characteristics of the fractures and may be helpful in further evaluation and management.
How Was Your Day? Evaluating a Conversational Companion

The "How Was Your Day" (HWYD) companion is an embodied conversational agent that can discuss work-related issues, entering free-form dialogues while discussing issues surrounding a typical work day. The open-ended nature of these interactions requires new models of evaluation. Here, we describe a paradigm and methodology for evaluating the main aspects of such functionality in conjunction with overall system behavior, with respect to three parameters: functional ability (i.e., does it do the "rightâ thing conversationally), content (i.e., does it respond appropriately to the semantic context), and emotional behavior (i.e., given the emotional input from the user, does it respond in an emotionally appropriate way). We demonstrate the functionality of our evaluation paradigm as a method for both grading current system performance, and targeting areas for particular performance review. We show correlation between, for example, automatic speech recognition performance and overall system performance (as is expected in systems of this type), but beyond this, we show where individual utterances or responses, indicated as positive or negative, characterize system performance, and demonstrate how our combination evaluation approach highlights issues (both positive and negative) in the companion system's interaction behavior.
Revealing Mammalian Evolutionary Relationships by Comparative Analysis of Gene Clusters

Many software tools for comparative analysis of genomic sequence data have been released in recent decades. Despite this, it remains challenging to determine evolutionary relationships in gene clusters due to their complex histories involving duplications, deletions, inversions, and conversions. One concept describing these relationships is orthology. Orthologs derive from a common ancestor by speciation, in contrast to paralogs, which derive from duplication. Discriminating orthologs from paralogs is a necessary step in most multispecies sequence analyses, but doing so accurately is impeded by the occurrence of gene conversion events. We propose a refined method of orthology assignment based on two paradigms for interpreting its definition: by genomic context or by sequence content. X-orthology (based on context) traces orthology resulting from speciation and duplication only, while N-orthology (based on content) includes the influence of conversion events. We developed a computational method for automatically mapping both types of orthology on a per-nucleotide basis in gene cluster regions studied by comparative sequencing, and we make this mapping accessible by visualizing the output. All of these steps are incorporated into our newly extended CHAP 2 package. We evaluate our method using both simulated data and real gene clusters (including the well-characterized α-globin and β-globin clusters). We also illustrate use of CHAP 2 by analyzing four more loci: CCL (chemokine ligand), IFN (interferon), CYP2abf (part of cytochrome P450 family 2), and KIR (killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors). These new methods facilitate and extend our understanding of evolution at these and other loci by adding automated accurate evolutionary inference to the biologist's toolkit. The CHAP 2 package is freely available from http://www.bx. psu.edu/miller_lab.
Music-Based Emotion and Social Interaction Therapy for Children with Autism Using Interactive Robots

With the number of children being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on the rise, finding new therapeutic approaches especially in the domain of emotional and social interaction is becoming more of a concern. The purpose of this research is to develop and evaluate a multisensory robotic therapy system to stimulate the emotional and social interactivity of children with autism and to integrate music into the learning environment in hopes of observing if and how it could help children in relating body movements and gestures to specific emotions.
Ethical, eco, organic, green…what does it all mean?

The highly motivated ethical consumer has been under investigation since the mid 1970’s, defined as a distinct consumer segment most notably since the early 1990s and been relatively well documented in terms of behaviours, values, decision making, attitudes and motivation. Despite the recent mainstreaming of a broad range of ethical products and a steady increase in media presentation of ethical issues, the perceptions of the mainstream consumer remain relatively under researched. This paper reports upon the exploratory investigation undertaken to examine the nature of the ethical fashion message presented in popular print media. The aim of this first phase of study was to gain insight into the extent to which, the terms used in the communication of ethical fashion are understood by female consumers who are representative of the wider British public. A qualitative methodology was carried out using a grounded theory approach via the methods of qualitative content analysis, Q Method, word association and focus group discussion. Data sources and data collection methods were selected for their relevance in progressing the development of insights to the sending and receiving of the ethical fashion message. The findings of this research demonstrate the extent to which the ethical fashion message varies in its delivery. Outcomes suggest that the complexity of the message leads to confusion and poor levels of engagement amongst mainstream consumers. Findings provide evidence that the mainstream consumer does understand the ‘ethical language’, the question raised is the extent to which this understanding is transferable to ethical fashion. Further analysis of the nature and source of this confusion may provide a route map for the successful marketing of ethical fashion products.
Niche-specific regulation of central metabolic pathways in a fungal pathogen

To establish an infection, the pathogen Candida albicans must assimilate carbon and grow in its mammalian host. This fungus assimilates six‐carbon compounds via the glycolytic pathway, and two‐carbon compounds via the glyoxylate cycle and gluconeogenesis. We address a paradox regarding the roles of these central metabolic pathways in C. albicans pathogenesis: the glyoxylate cycle is apparently required for virulence although glyoxylate cycle genes are repressed by glucose at concentrations present in the bloodstream. Using GFP fusions, we confirm that glyoxylate cycle and gluconeogenic genes in C. albicans are repressed by physiologically relevant concentrations of glucose, and show that these genes are inactive in the majority of fungal cells infecting the mouse kidney. However, these pathways are induced following phagocytosis by macrophages or neutrophils. In contrast, glycolytic genes are not induced following phagocytosis and are expressed in infected kidney. Mutations in all three pathways attenuate the virulence of this fungus, highlighting the importance of central carbon metabolism for the establishment of C. albicans infections. We conclude that C. albicans displays a metabolic program whereby the glyoxylate cycle and gluconeogenesis are activated early, when the pathogen is phagocytosed by host cells, while the subsequent progression of systemic disease is dependent upon glycolysis.
Evolution of non-coding regulatory sequences involved in the developmental process: Reflection of differential employment of paralogous genes as highlighted by Sox2 and group B1 Sox genes

In higher vertebrates, the expression of Sox2, a group B1 Sox gene, is the hallmark of neural primordial cell state during the developmental processes from embryo to adult. Sox2 is regulated by the combined action of many enhancers with distinct spatio-temporal specificities. DNA sequences for these enhancers are conserved in a wide range of vertebrate species, corresponding to a majority of highly conserved non-coding sequences surrounding the Sox2 gene, corroborating the notion that the conservation of non-coding sequences mirrors their functional importance. Among the Sox2 enhancers, N-1 and N-2 are activated the earliest in embryogenesis and regulate Sox2 in posterior and anterior neural plates, respectively. These enhancers differ in their evolutionary history: the sequence and activity of enhancer N-2 is conserved in all vertebrate species, while enhancer N-1 is fully conserved only in amniotes. In teleost embryos, Sox19a/b play the major pan-neural role among the group B1 Sox paralogues, while strong Sox2 expression is limited to the anterior neural plate, reflecting the absence of posterior CNS-dedicated enhancers, including N-1. In Xenopus, neurally expressed SoxD is the orthologue of Sox19, but Sox3 appears to dominate other B1 paralogues. In amniotes, however, Sox19 has lost its group B1 Sox function and transforms into group G Sox15 (neofunctionalization), and Sox2 assumes the dominant position by gaining enhancer N-1 and other enhancers for posterior CNS. Thus, the gain and loss of specific enhancer elements during the evolutionary process reflects the change in functional assignment of particular paralogous genes, while overall regulatory functions attributed to the gene family are maintained.
A New Optimization Method of Large-Scale SVMs Based on Kernel Distance Clustering

Against the low efficiency of training on large-scale SVM, a reduction approach based on kernel distance clustering is proposed. The kernel distance's formulation is brought in to cluster the highly-dimensioned dataset, and the clustering step will reduce a large amount of unsupport vectors during training, thereby, the training time will decrease. The experiments show that this new training algorithm is able to speed up the training process and improve the classification's precision. This paper presents a new approach called Kernel Distance Clustering-Based SVM (KDC-SVM) for scalable and reliable SVM classification. The key idea of KDC-SVM is to use Kernel Distance Clustering algorithm proposed in this paper too, to reduce the number of a given training dataset for large- scale SVM classification. The algorithm combines different kinds of kernel functions, and is applicable to both linear and nonlinear problems. The experiments show that the SVM's training speed and classification accuracy are improved.
Association of serum alanine aminotransferase and γ-glutamyltransferase levels within the reference range with metabolic syndrome and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Background/Aims Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has recently been found to be a novel component of metabolic syndrome (MS), which is one of the leading causes of chronic liver disease. The serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT) levels are suggested to affect liver fat accumulation and insulin resistance. We assessed the associations of serum ALT and GGT concentrations within the reference ranges with MS and NAFLD. Methods In total, 1,069 subjects enrolled at the health promotion center of Wonkwang University Hospital were divided into 4 groups according to serum ALT and GGT concentrations levels within the reference ranges. We performed biochemical tests, including liver function tests and lipid profiles, and diagnosed fatty liver by ultrasonography. Associations of ALT and GGT concentrationgrading within the reference range with fatty liver and/or MS were investigated. Results The presence of MS, its components, and the number of metabolic abnormalities [except for high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) and fasting blood glucose] increased with the ALT level, while the presence of MS, its components, and the number of metabolic abnormalities (except for HDL-C) increased with the GGT level. The odds ratios for fatty liver and MS increased with the ALT level (P<0.001 and P=0.049, respectively) and the GGT level (P=0.044 and P=0.039, respectively). Conclusions Serum ALT and GGT concentrations within the reference ranges correlated with the incidence of NAFLD and MS in a dose-dependent manner. There associations need to be confirmed in large, prospective studies.
Hyperbolic Voronoi Diagrams Made Easy

We present a simple framework to compute hyperbolic Voronoi diagrams of finite point sets as affine diagrams.We prove that bisectors in Klein's non-conformal disk model are hyperplanes that can be interpreted as power bisectors of Euclidean balls.Therefore our method simply consists in computing an equivalent clipped power diagram followed by a mapping transformation depending on the selected representation of the hyperbolic space (e.g., Poincare conformal disk or upper-plane representations). We discuss on extensions of this approach to weighted and $k$-order diagrams, and describe their dual triangulations.Finally, we consider two useful primitives on the hyperbolic Voronoi diagrams for designing tailored user interfaces of an image catalog browsing application in the hyperbolic disk:(1) finding nearest neighbors, and (2) computing smallest enclosing balls.
Presynaptic Release Probability and Readily Releasable Pool Size Are Regulated by Two Independent Mechanisms during Posttetanic Potentiation at the Calyx of Held Synapse

At the immature calyx of Held, the fast decay phase of a Ca2+ transient induced by tetanic stimulation (TS) was followed by a period of elevated [Ca2+]i for tens of seconds, referred to as posttetanic residual calcium (Cares). We investigated the source of Cares and its contribution to posttetanic potentiation (PTP). After TS (100 Hz for 4 s), posttetanic Cares at the calyx of Held was largely abolished by tetraphenylphosphonium (TPP+) or Ru360, which inhibit mitochondrial Na+-dependent Ca2+ efflux and Ca2+ uniporter, respectively. Whereas the control PTP lasted longer than Cares, inhibition of Cares by TPP+ resulted in preferential suppression of the early phase of PTP, the decay time course of which well matched with that of Cares. TS induced significant increases in release probability (Pr) and the size of the readily releasable pool (RRP), which were estimated from plots of cumulative EPSC amplitudes. TPP+ or Ru360 suppressed the posttetanic increase in Pr, whereas it had little effect on the increase in RRP size. Moreover, the posttetanic increase in Pr, but not in RRP size, showed a linear correlation with the amount of Cares. In contrast, myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) inhibitors and blebbistatin reduced the posttetanic increase in RRP size with no effect on the increase in Pr. Application of TPP+ in the presence of MLCK inhibitor peptide caused further suppression of PTP. These findings suggest that Cares released from mitochondria and activation of MLCK are primarily responsible for the increase in Pr and that in the RRP size, respectively.