Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Early Bilingual Acquisition: A Case Study in Iran

This study takes a look at the acquisition of early bilingualism of Persian and English languages by a five year old boy named Daniel in Iran. It aims to find out the progress he has made while acquiring these languages simultaneously, degree of his success or failure in communication in each language, his code switching and mother tongue dominancy during the five year period since his birth. The result of this study shows that early bilingualism has not caused delay either in Daniel’s speech or his language acquisition process. Also it reveals that few code switchings Daniel has made are quite part of his normal language learning process and not indicative of his insufficient knowledge or his difficulty in using and communicating in either language. Moreover, it demonstrates that Daniel’s mother tongue has mostly been dominant during the period although Daniel’s mother has been communicating with him only in English which is not her first language. For this study, a descriptive method has been used based on his parents’ observations, audio and video recordings and taking notes of his bilingual communication developments since his birth.
Semi-active learning to rank algorithms for document retrieval

Recently, several search engine applications are using learning to rank technologies to train their ranking models whose performance is strongly affected by labelled examples' number in the training set. Since these labels might be costly to acquire as labelling is usually scarce and expensive to get, active learning and semi-supervised learning technologies aim to reduce manual labelling workload. In this paper, we propose two inductive learning to rank strategies of alternatives that combine active and semi-supervised learning to assign the relevance scores to an unlabeled set of document-query pairs, using selectively sampled and automatically labelled data. These propositions enable the exploitation of all collected data and the avoidance of some problems caused by employing only active or semi-supervised learning. We showed through different ranking measures that the algorithms proposed yielded into competitive results compared to some other semi-supervised and active ranking algorithms on collections from the standard benchmark Letor.
General properties and heavy metal content in background and polluted soils Depth

The podzolic soils of the Kola Peninsula, Russia, have in localised areas been highly contaminated with copper and nickel from smelting activities. Migration and retention of these metals were investigated in undisturbed soil columns irrigated with simulated background and polluted precipitation in order to study the temporal processes of retention and release within the soil. The mineral layers were strongly acidified by the contaminated precipitation. Forest floor layers demonstrated a high capacity to retain input Ni and Cu under all conditions. Mineral layers accumulated some Cu, but released Ni. In general, Ni leached through the soil faster than Cu. Since metals are strongly retained in the forest floor layer, even after reduction or cessation of inputs there may be a significant long–term risk of their leaching to deeper soil and groundwater. This risk cannot be ameliorated without remediative intervention.
Return rates in studies of life history evolution: Are biases large?

Studies of life history evolution in passerine birds often depend on examination of annual survival probability of adult birds. Most studies rely on return rates (proportion of marked individuals released in one year that are recaptured in the next year) to estimate annual survival probability. Yet, return rate includes both the probability of survival and the probability of recapturing or resighting the bird in the next time interval. We use numerical estimation to illustrate the increasing bias in return rate as an estimator of annual survival probability as recapture/resighting probability decreases. Recapture/resighting probability is normally assumed to be high and relatively invariant for recapture/resighting studies of color-banded territorial birds. We tested this assumption through examination of 11 color-banding studies of passerines. These studies showed that recapture/resighting probabilities vary strongly and cannot be generalized as high. In short, return rates generally are poor estimators .
Comparison of diagnostic values of ultrasound micro-flow imaging and contrast-enhanced ultrasound for neovascularization in carotid plaques

The aim of the present study was to compare the diagnostic values of ultrasound micro-flow imaging (SMI) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) for neovascularization in carotid plaques, and to investigate their capacities for predicting the risks of cerebral stroke. A total of 39 patients (64 carotid plaques) with severe carotid artery stenosis undergoing carotid endarterectomy were selected between February 2015 and February 2016, and SMI and CEUS were used to detect neovascularization in plaques. According to the CEUS dynamic graph of plaques, the enhanced intensity visual scales and contrast parameters were obtained. Carotid atherosclerotic plaques were divided into 4 groups. The differences in the enhanced intensity visual scales, contrast parameters, and gray-scale median (GSM) values among the 4 groups were analyzed. Carotid plaque tissue samples from patients were stained for CD34, and the consistency of the methods for the diagnosis of neovascularization in plaques was analyzed. The differences in GSM values, enhanced intensities, and enhanced densities among the 4 groups of plaques were statistically significant (F=29.365, χ2=29.025, χ2=30.871, P<0.001); the differences in enhanced intensities of carotid atherosclerotic plaques with different echo types were statistically significant (χ2=17.951, P<0.001). The enhanced intensity of plaques was negatively correlated with the GSM value (r=−0.376, P<0.01), and the enhanced density of plaques was negatively correlated with the GSM value (r=−0.252, P<0.01). SMI and CEUS grading had good consistency (κ=0.860>0), there were statistically significant differences in new vessel densities with different SMI gradings (P<0.001), and the clinical symptoms and severity were positively correlated with SMI grading (rs=0.592>0). In conclusion, SMI and CEUS have good consistency for evaluating neovascularization in carotid plaques, and have good clinical value for evaluating neovascularization in carotid plaques.
The Gold Nanorod-Biology Interface: From Proteins to Cells to Tissue.

Gold nanorods absorb and scatter light strongly in the near-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, making them ideal tissue contrast agents for imaging techniques such as optical coherence tomography (OCT). Strong interactions occur at the nano-bio interface, such as proteins binding to gold nanorods forming a 'corona. ' To fulfill the promise of nanorods for applications such as contrast agents, we must better understand the intrinsic interactions of these nanomaterials with biological systems at the molecular, cellular and tissue level. In this paper, we briefly review the nanorod-protein interface. We then present some new fast relaxation imaging (FReI) measurements of how the presence of strongly-absorbing gold nanorods affects protein binding and folding, taking into account inner filter effects and the strong quenching effect of nanorods on fluorescent-labeled proteins. Next we show that two-photon photoluminescence of the gold nanorods can be used to image the nanorods in tissue constructs, allowing us to independently study their tissue distribution so they can be used successfully as contrast agents in optical coherence microscopy.
Characterizing Fine-Grain Parallelism on Modern Multicore Platform

Since chip multiprocessors have dominated the processor market, developing a parallel programming model with proper trade-off between productivity and efficiency become increasingly important. As a typical fine-grain parallelism model, Intel Threading Building Blocks (TBB) simplifies parallel programming by runtime schedule. Despite its simplicity, it costs non-trivial runtime overhead which may increase as the thread counts increase. In this work, we conduct an experiment on real commodity hardware to evaluate performance scalability of TBB using PARSEC benchmark suite. We first compare TBB with Pthreads to show that TBB applications can achieve comparable performance as Pthreads applications. To find the performance bottleneck of TBB applications, we measure the runtime overhead of TBB focused on 3 basic TBB runtime activities. The result provides valuable implications which can be used to develop scalable runtime libraries and architectural support for alleviating performance bottlenecks.
Reasoning about rationality and beliefs

In order to succeed, agents playing games must reason about the mechanics of the game, the strategies of other agents, other agentsý reasoning about their strategies, and the rationality of agents. This paper presents a compact, natural and highly expressive language for reasoning about the beliefs and rationality of agentsý decision-making processes in games. It extends a previous version of the language in a number of important ways. Agents can reason directly about the rationality of other agents; agentsý beliefs are allowed to conflict with one another, including situations in which these beliefs form a cyclic structure; agentsý play can deviate from the normative game theoretic solution. The paper formalizes the equilibria that holds with respect to agentsý models and behavior, and provides algorithms for computing it. It also shows that the language is strictly more expressive than that of Bayesian games.
Exploring the determinants of publication of scientific data in open data initiative

This research provides a preliminary analysis of determinants of the likelihood of researchers to publish their research datasets online. The data is derived from a preliminary survey conducted as part of the DataONE project; an international federated data repository of ecological data. The survey of 1,329 researchers was conducted by the Usability and Assessment Working Group of DataONE from October 2009 to July 2010. The analysis of the data is threefold, namely: visualization of a 2-mode network, descriptive statistics, and ordered logistic regression. The visualization of the affiliated network shows a disconnected access pattern. With the majority of researchers accessing one database and only a few connecting or accessing more than one database. The results of the survey using descriptive and inferential statistics pointed at two key determinants of publishing research datasets online, namely: data management and attribution to the datasets owner. The importance of data management manifests on two ways, the significant of data management skills and organizational support for data management.
Broadband Antenna Array Pattern Synthesis with specified Nulls Using Eigenvector Constraints

This paper presents and compares the performance of two broadband antenna array pattern synthesis techniques with the capabilities of allowing a designer to specify the frequency response of the processor in the look direction and to place a controlled null anywhere in the pattern. Both techniques are based on an integrated power constraint over the specified null and have the potential for parallel processing to increase the computational speed in real time.
Evaluating Nearest-Neighbor Joins on Big Trajectory Data

Trajectory data are abundant and prevalent in systems that monitor the locations of moving objects. In a vehicle location-based service, the positions of vehicles are continuously monitored through GPS; each vehicle is associated with a trajectory that describes its movement history. In species monitoring, animals are attached with sensors, whose positions can be frequently traced by scientists. An interesting avenue to generate and discover new knowledge from these data is by querying them. In this paper, we study the evaluation of the join operator on trajectory data. Given two sets of trajectory data, M and R, our goal is to find, for each entity in M , its k nearest neighbors from R. Existing solutions for this query are designed for a single machine. Due to the abundance and size of trajectory data, such solutions are no longer adequate. We hence examine how this query can be evaluated in cloud environments. This problem is not trivial, due to the complexity of the trajectory structure, as well as the fact that both the spatial and temporal dimensions of the data have to be handled. To facilitate this operation, we propose a parallel solution framework using MapReduce. We also develop a novel bounding technique, which enables trajectories to be pruned in parallel. Our approach can be used to parallelize single-machine-based algorithms. We further study a variant of the join operator, which allows query efficiency to be improved. To evaluate the efficiency and the scalability of our approaches, we have performed extensive experiments on large real and synthetic datasets.
The optimal exercise to rest ratios in repeated sprint ability training in youth soccer players.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to investigate the applicability of three different exercise to rest ratios in RSA training in youth soccer players, applying those ones already adopted in adult players, when performing three different sprinting modes (straight, shuttle and sprinting with changing of direction). METHODS Eighteen young trained male soccer players (Height: 1.66±0.07 m; weight: 58.22±7.64 kg; BMI 19.37±3.42 kg·m-2; age:14 years) participated to the study. In order to compare the different values of the time recorded, a Fatigue Index (FI) was used. Recovery times among trials in the sets were administered according to the 1:5, 1:3; 1:2 exercise to rest ratio, respectively. RESULTS Significant differences among trials within each set (Repeated Measures Anova; P<0.05) were found. as evidence of fatigue over time. with an average decay of performance of about 4%, but no significant differences were found in FI%, among the three different sprinting modalities when applying the investigated exercise to rest ratios (Factorial Anova; between; P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS The results of this study confirm that the exercise to rest ratios considered in this study might be suitable to design effective testing protocols and training sessions aimed at the development of the RSA in youth soccer players, keeping the performances in the speed domain (FI%< ≈7-8%) but inducing the fatigue processes sought with this kind of training method.
Cytoplasmic Localization of Pregnane X Receptor and Ligand-dependent Nuclear Translocation in Mouse Liver*

The pregnane X receptor (PXR) plays an important role in the response to xenobiotics and endogenous toxins. We have used a specific anti-PXR antibody in the Western blotting of mouse liver nuclear extracts to show that PXR is accumulated in the nucleus after treatment with 5-pregnen-3β-ol-20-one-16α-carbonitrile (PCN), followed by an increase in Cyp3a11 mRNA. Expression of wild type PXR and various mutants as green fluorescent fusion proteins in mouse livers showed that PXR was retained in the cytoplasm from where PCN treatment translocated PXR into the nucleus. Furthermore, the xenochemical response signal, the nuclear translocation signal, and the activation function 2 domain were all required for the nuclear translocation to occur. Immunoprecipitation experiments using the hsp90 antibody demonstrated the presence of PXR in a complex with the endogenous cytoplasmic constitutive active/androstane receptor retention protein (CCRP) in HepG2 cells. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer analysis of mouse liver sections after co-expression of cyan fluorescent protein-CCRP and yellow fluorescent protein-PXR also indicated that CCRP and PXR were closely associated in vivo. Overexpression of exogenous CCRP increased the cytoplasmic level of the PXR·CCRP·hsp90 complex, whereas a decrease in endogenous CCRP by treatment with small interfering RNA for CCRP repressed the PXR-mediated reporter activity in HepG2 cells. We conclude that the CCRP mediates the retention of PXR in the cytosol and modulates the activation of PXR in response to PCN treatment.
Phonological Processing and Word Reading in Typically Developing and Reading Disabled Children: Severity Matters

In this study word reading (WR) fluency was used to dichotomously classify 1,598 Dutch children at different cutoffs, indicating (very) poor or (very) good reading performance. Analysis of variance and receiver operating characteristics were used to investigate the effects of rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonemic awareness (PA) in predicting group membership. The highest predictive values were found for the combination of RAN and PA, particularly for the poorest readers. Furthermore, results indicate that with the severity of impairment, WR is more dominated by deficient PA, which is interpreted as an enduring problem with sublexical processing. Another main result is that with the increase of reading skill, the contribution of PA diminishes, whereas the contribution of RAN remains fairly constant for the whole reading fluency continuum. These results warrant the conclusion that whereas PA hallmarks reading disability, RAN appears to be the default predictor for above-average or excellent reading proficiency.
Living a Virtual Life: Social Dynamics of Online Gaming

home about archive Castulus Kolo has a Doctoral degree (1995) in physics. From 1991 additional studies in social anthropology and sociology at the LudwigMaximilians University, Munich and second doctoral degree (1997). Thesis on computer simulations of sociocultural processes. From 1998 consulting and contract research as an executive in different positions within the FraunhoferSociety in the domain of information and communicati Living a Virtual Life: Social Dynamics of Online Gaming
Polymorphisms in the gene for lymphotoxin-alpha predispose to chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy.

BACKGROUND Chagas disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi infection, displays clinical heterogeneity and may be attributable to differential genetic susceptibility. Chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy (CCC) develops only in a subset of T. cruzi-infected individuals and may lead to heart failure that has a worse clinical course and that leads to reduced life expectancy, compared with heart failure of other etiologies. Proinflammatory cytokines play a key role in the development of CCC. Clinical, genetic, and epidemiological studies have linked lymphotoxin-alpha (LTA), a proinflammatory cytokine, to coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction. METHODS We used polymerase chain reaction to genotype the LTA +80A-->C and LTA +252A-->G variants in 169 patients with CCC and in 76 T. cruzi-infected asymptomatic (ASY) patients. RESULTS Homozygosity with respect to the LTA +80C and LTA +252G alleles was significantly more frequent in the patients with CCC than in the ASY patients (homozygosity for LTA +80C, 47% vs. 33%; homozygosity for LTA +252G, 16% vs. 8%). Haplotype LTA +80A-252A was associated with protection against CCC, whereas haplotype LTA +80C-252G was associated with susceptibility to CCC. Furthermore, homozygosity for the LTA +80A allele correlated with the lowest levels of plasmatic tumor-necrosis factor-alpha. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that the study of genetic variations in patients with Chagas disease may help in the identification of individuals at increased risk of progressing to CCC and, by providing early treatment, reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with this disease.
Low-complexity power allocation schemes for the downlink of nonregenerative cooperative multi-user MIMO communication system

Amplify-and-forward (AF) is one of the most popular and simple approaches to transmit information over a cooperative multi-input multi-output (MIMO) relay channel. In this paper, we propose two novel power allocation methods for the downlink of multi-user multi-input multi-output AF cooperative system, which are designed to optimise the sum-rate of the cooperative system according to the weighted sum-rate criterion. The main optimisation problem is not concave and our two methods aim at simplifying it in order to turn it into a concave problem, which can then be easily solved.
Family Functioning and Family Typology after an Adolescent or Young Adult’s Sudden Violent Death

This study compared perceptions of family functioning in families bereaved by an adolescent or young adult child’s sudden violent death (accident, homicide, or suicide), parents’ perceptions of family functioning based on parental role, and described the family typologies represented in a population-based sample of parents. A sample of 135 bereaved parents provided data over three time points. Results of the study showed that bereaved mothers and fathers rated their families as more flexible than did a normative sample, and fathers rated their families as less close than the normative group. Clinical and methodological implications for the findings are discussed.
Symmetry Robust Descriptor for Non-Rigid Surface Matching

In this paper, we propose a novel shape descriptor that is robust in differentiating intrinsic symmetric points on geometric surfaces. Our motivation is that even the state-of-theart shape descriptors and non-rigid surface matching algorithms suffer from symmetry flips. They cannot differentiate surface points that are symmetric or near symmetric. Hence a left hand of one human model may be matched to a right hand of another. Our Symmetry Robust Descriptor (SRD) is based on a signed angle field, which can be calculated from the gradient fields of the harmonic fields of two point pairs. Experiments show that the proposed shape descriptor SRD results in much less symmetry flips compared to alternative methods. We further incorporate SRD into a stand-alone algorithm to minimize symmetry flips in finding sparse shape correspondences. SRD can also be used to augment other modern non-rigid shape matching algorithms with ease to alleviate symmetry confusions.
Production of a monoclonal antibody specific for Mycobacterium avium and immunological activity of the affinity-purified antigen

Three hybridomas which secrete antibodies to Mycobacterium avium were obtained by the fusion of p3u1 myeloma cells with spleen cells of mice immunized with M. avium culture sonicate. The reactivity of these monoclonal antibodies was determined in 16 species of mycobacteria by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. An antibody, designated Avi-3, reacted only with M. avium and not with the reference strains of the other 15 species of mycobacteria tested, including M. intracellulare, M. paratuberculosis, and M. lepraemurium. Specificity of the antibody was confirmed by assay, using a specific DNA probe of M. avium complex in 29 M. avium complex isolates. An antigen was purified from M. avium culture sonicate on a monoclonal antibody Avi-3-coupled affinity column. The purified antigen gave a single band (molecular size, about 27 kilodaltons) upon sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The antigen Avi-3 showed strong skin test activity in guinea pig preimmunized with heat-killed M. avium but not in those sensitized with heat-killed M. intracellulare or M. bovis BCG. Purified protein derivative elicited positive skin reactions in all the immunized guinea pigs. When heat-killed M. avium was used as the immunogen, strong lymphoproliferative responses were observed in cultures stimulated with the antigen Avi-3. These results suggest that M. avium-specific antigen Avi-3 may facilitate the diagnosis of mycobacterial infections.