Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Forum Posts Written by Patients and Health Professionals

Online health fora are increasingly visited by both patients and health professionals. For online fora visitors, posts written by health professionals may be more interesting since the professionals are able to well explain the problems, the symptoms, correct false affirmations and give useful advices, etc. Objective: To automatically distinguish posts written by health professionals from those written by patients.
Personal spaces for multisensory stimulation as support to rehabilitate patients with cognitive disabilities

This paper1 presents the work conducted as part of a doctoral thesis. Its objective is to establish and describe the concept of Personal Space for Multisensory Stimulation (PS4MS) in the field of rehabilitation for patients with cognitive disabilities. It aims at defining a set of design guidelines to be used by developers looking at providing technological support in this type of spaces. We detail the activities of the proposed methodology to conduct the work and present the main findings obtained so far.
Organization of predator assemblages in Neotropical tree holes : effects of abiotic factors and priority

1. Water-filled tree holes in a lowland forest in Panama harbour an assemblage of large predators consisting of the larvae of five common species of Odonata, the mosquito Toxorhynchites theobaldi , and tadpoles of Dendrobates auratus . Odonate females oviposit in both large and small tree holes. However, the three largest species emerge from larger tree holes, on average, than do the two smallest species. Can assembly rules explain this and other patterns of predator distribution? 2. Past experiments suggested that fast growth of the largest, but later-colonizing odonates enabled them to out-compete the smaller, slower-growing Mecistogasterin large holes. In small holes, however, the first predator, regardless of species, should presumably kill any later arrivals. Priority effects in small holes were tested for their consistency across predator species. Two alternative explanations for differential odonate survivorship were also tested: abiotic conditions and the effect of non-odonate predators. 3. Diurnal fluctuations in oxygen content, pH, and temperature within holes were as great as the variation found between large and small tree holes; abiotic conditions were poor predictors of species occupancy. 4. Exchanging the largest and smallest odonate species from their original holes did not affect survivorship, suggesting that the observed patterns of emergence are unlikely to result from differential tolerance to abiotic factors that were not measured. 5. When larger and smaller predators were paired in 400-ml pots and provided with alternative prey, typically only the larger predator survived, regardless of species. The exception wasT. theobaldi , which was often killed by odonates and tadpoles smaller than itself . 6. Between May and July, the occurrence of Mecistogasterin large tree holes declined, before larvae could have emerged. Neither abiotic effects nor differential predation by non-odonates could explain this habitat-specific decrease in survivorship. This temporal pattern is most consistent with the previous conclusion that in large holes, Mecistogastersuffer intraguild predation from later-colonizing, but fastergrowing Megaloprepusand aeshnids. Whereas Mecistogastercan pre-empt guild members from small tree holes, they cannot do so in large holes where predators with fast initial growth realize a competitive advantage.
The IPD and IMGT/HLA database: allele variant databases

The Immuno Polymorphism Database (IPD) was developed to provide a centralized system for the study of polymorphism in genes of the immune system. Through the IPD project we have established a central platform for the curation and publication of locus-specific databases involved either directly or related to the function of the Major Histocompatibility Complex in a number of different species. We have collaborated with specialist groups or nomenclature committees that curate the individual sections before they are submitted to IPD for online publication. IPD consists of five core databases, with the IMGT/HLA Database as the primary database. Through the work of the various nomenclature committees, the HLA Informatics Group and in collaboration with the European Bioinformatics Institute we are able to provide public access to this data through the website http://www.ebi. ac.uk/ipd/. The IPD project continues to develop with new tools being added to address scientific developments, such as Next Generation Sequencing, and to address user feedback and requests. Regular updates to the website ensure that new and confirmatory sequences are dispersed to the immunogenetics community, and the wider research and clinical communities.
On maximizing the performance of SC-FDMA systems with rotated constellation

In this paper, we consider the optimization of Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) performance using rotated constellation. Using maximum-likelihood (ML) detection, it was previously shown that the diversity order of SC-FDMA is upper-bounded by the number of multi-paths or the number of subcarriers employed. As in OFDM, channel coding is usually required in SC-FDMA system in order to maximize the frequency diversity performance, especially when number of subcarriers is small. By using rotated constellation and the proposed angles of rotation, we show that the SC-FDMA system may attain the maximum diversity and coding performance without a reduction in bandwidth-efficiency or a significant change in the peak-to-average power ratio. Furthermore, when the number of subcarriers allocated in a SC-FDMA system is small, it becomes feasible to employ high-complexity detection methods such as ML or QR-decomposition method. In particular, to handle resource blocks of various sizes, we propose that the block of subcarriers be divided into pairs so that rotation can be separately applied in each pair over the block. As such, ML detection and flexible allocation of subcarriers can be facilitated for short or long resource block in the proposed SC-FDMA system. Simulations have shown that the proposed SC-FDMA system may outperform the ordinary SC-FDMA system and OFDM system in situations where coding rate is high.
Retrieving Speech Correctly Despite the Recognition Errors

This work studies ways to recover from speech recognition errors in retrieving spoken documents. The methods are evaluated by Finnish news reading data using an unlimited vocabulary recognizer with language models for unsupervised morpheme-like units. Recognition errors can naturally be reduced by improving the recognizer, but the focus here is on the attempts to improve the search index more directly, namely by adding new index terms to replace those lost due to recognition errors. 1 Spoken document retrieval (SDR) A fundamental difference between retrieving spoken and written documents is that for the speech, the index is usually based on an output of an automatic speech recognizer. This implies that the retrieval has to cope with a significant word error rate. The more spontaneous and noisy the speech is, the more errors. Typically, the error rate in different speech sections varies between 20–50 %. Naturally, the SDR may be improved by just improving the speech recognition. The performance of our recognizer has, indeed, recently improved significantly by implementing a new decoder that efficiently operates high-order n-grams and cross-word phoneme models and new context-dependent triphones including explicit duration modeling. However, it is still possible to get even better results with less efforts by focusing on improving the index directly. In this paper we examine three advanced indexing approaches: A subword index, document expansion by pruned terms, and query expansion with text corpora. The main novelty of this paper is the study of the ways to recover from speech recognition errors in the framework of unlimited vocabulary speech recognition based on morpheme-like language units instead of words. It continues to evaluate the SDR in the same new Finnish database as in MLMI’04 [1] reflecting the performance in an highly inflected, compounding and agglutinative language. 2 Using extra output from the speech recognizer In information retrieval stemming is often used to associate all the inflected word forms to the same index term. In English the inflections and suffixes may not be a common source for speech recognition errors, but in highly inflected and particularly in the agglutinative languages with long words this is important.
Bilateral Consequences of Chronic Unilateral Deafferentation in the Auditory System of the Cricket Gryllus bimaculatus

The auditory system of the cricket has the unusual ability to respond to deafferentation by compensatory growth and synapse formation. Auditory interneurons such as ascending neuron 2 (AN-2) in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus possess a dendritic arbor that normally grows up to, but not over, the midline of the prothoracic ganglion. After chronic deafferentation throughout larval development, however, the AN-2 dendritic arbor changes dramatically, and medial dendrites sprout across the midline where they form compensatory synapses with the auditory afferents from the contralateral ear. We quantified the extent of the effects of chronic, unilateral deafferentation by measuring several cellular parameters of 3 different neuronal components of the auditory system: the deafferented AN-2, the contralateral (or nondeafferented) AN-2 and the contralateral auditory afferents. Neuronal tracers and confocal microscopy were used to visualize neurons, and double-label experiments were performed to examine the cellular relationship between pairs of cells. Dendritic complexity was quantified using a modified Sholl analysis, and the length and volume of processes and presynaptic varicosities were assessed under control and deafferented conditions. Chronic deafferentation significantly influenced the morphology of all 3 neuronal components examined. The overall dendritic complexity of the deafferented AN-2 dendritic arbor was reduced, while both the contralateral AN-2 dendritic arbor and the remaining, intact, auditory afferents grew longer. We found no significant changes in the volume or density of varicosities after deafferentation. These complex cellular changes after deafferentation are interpreted in the light of the reported differential regulation of vesicle-associated membrane protein and semaphorin 2a.
Information sharing and the stability of cooperation in research joint ventures*

The model studies information sharing and the stability of cooperation in cost reducing Research Joint Ventures (RJVs). In a three-stage game-theoretic framework, firms decide on participation in a RJV, information sharing along with R&D expenditures, and output. An important feature of the model is that voluntary information sharing between cooperating firms increases information leakage from the RJV to outsiders. It is found that RJVs representing a larger portion of firms in the industry are more likely to share information. It is also found that when sharing information is costless, firms generally don't choose intermediate levels of information sharing: they share all the information or none at all. The size of the RJV is found to depend on three effects: a coordination effect, an information sharing effect, and a competition effect. Depending on the relative magnitudes of these effects, the size of the RJV may increase or decrease with spillovers. In response to an increase in leakages, RJV members reduce their R&D spending. In addition, they either increase the RJV size while maintaining information sharing unchanged (when leakages are low), or they reduce both information sharing and RJV size (when leakages are high).
Adverse metabolic and cardiovascular consequences of circadian misalignment

There is considerable epidemiological evidence that shift work is associated with increased risk for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, perhaps the result of physiologic maladaptation to chronically sleeping and eating at abnormal circadian times. To begin to understand underlying mechanisms, we determined the effects of such misalignment between behavioral cycles (fasting/feeding and sleep/wake cycles) and endogenous circadian cycles on metabolic, autonomic, and endocrine predictors of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular risk. Ten adults (5 female) underwent a 10-day laboratory protocol, wherein subjects ate and slept at all phases of the circadian cycle—achieved by scheduling a recurring 28-h “day. ” Subjects ate 4 isocaloric meals each 28-h “day. ” For 8 days, plasma leptin, insulin, glucose, and cortisol were measured hourly, urinary catecholamines 2 hourly (totaling ≈1,000 assays/subject), and blood pressure, heart rate, cardiac vagal modulation, oxygen consumption, respiratory exchange ratio, and polysomnographic sleep daily. Core body temperature was recorded continuously for 10 days to assess circadian phase. Circadian misalignment, when subjects ate and slept ≈12 h out of phase from their habitual times, systematically decreased leptin (−17%, P < 0.001), increased glucose (+6%, P < 0.001) despite increased insulin (+22%, P = 0.006), completely reversed the daily cortisol rhythm (P < 0.001), increased mean arterial pressure (+3%, P = 0.001), and reduced sleep efficiency (−20%, P < 0.002). Notably, circadian misalignment caused 3 of 8 subjects (with sufficient available data) to exhibit postprandial glucose responses in the range typical of a prediabetic state. These findings demonstrate the adverse cardiometabolic implications of circadian misalignment, as occurs acutely with jet lag and chronically with shift work.
Semi-analytic progressive Gaussian filtering

As an alternative to Kalman filters and particle filters, recently the progressive Gaussian filter (PGF) was proposed for estimating the state of discrete-time stochastic nonlinear dynamic systems. Like Kalman filters, the estimate of the PGF is a Gaussian distribution, but like particle filters, its measurement update works directly with the likelihood function in order to avoid the inherent linearization of the Kalman filters. However, compared to particle filters, the PGF allows for much faster state estimation and circumvents the severe problem of particle degeneracy by gradually transforming its prior Gaussian distribution into a posterior one. In this paper, we further enhance the estimation quality and runtime of the PGF by proposing a semi-analytic measurement update applicable to likelihood functions that only depend on a subspace of the system state. In fact, the proposed semi-analytic measurement update is not limited to the PGF and can be used by any nonlinear state estimator as long as its state estimate is Gaussian, e.g., the Gaussian particle filter.
Repeated Moral Hazard and Contracts with Memory: The Case of Risk‐Neutrality

We consider a repeated moral hazard problem, where both the principal and the wealth-constrained agent are risk-neutral. In each of two periods, the agent can exert unobservable effort, leading to success or failure. Incentives provided in the second period act as carrot and stick for the first period, so that the effort level induced in the second period is higher after a first-period success than after a failure. If renegotiation cannot be prevented, the principal may prefer a project with lower returns; i.e., a project may be "too good" to be financed or, similarly, an agent can be "overqualified. "
Jackknife distances for clustering time – course gene expression data

Clustering time–course gene expression data is a common tool to find co–regulated genes and groups of genes with similar temporal or spatial expression patterns. The distance measure used for clustering has major impact on the properties of the resulting clusters. As technical problems can easily distort the microarray data there is a need for distance measures which are able to deal with outliers. Here we present new so-called ”Jackknife” distance measures which can handle outlier time points. In a simulation study on a publicly available dataset from yeast the utility of such distance measures is investigated.
Stereo-correspondence using Gabor logons and neural networks

Stereo-correspondence is the most important issue in stereopsis. Feature extraction and matching are the basic steps involved in the solution of the stereo-correspondence problem. The article examines the effectiveness of Gabor logons as a pre-processing technique compared to the intensity image. The matching is performed using a Hopfield network and simulated annealing. The performance of these matching techniques with respect to their accuracy and execution speed is analysed. The effect of weightages to constraints and network parameters is also analysed. Simulated annealing is found to give much faster convergence compared to the Hopfield network.
Bridging Domains with Words: Opinion Analysis with Matrix Tri-factorizations

With the explosion of user-generated web2.0 content in the form of blogs, wikis and discussion forums, the Internet has rapidly become a massive dynamic repository of public opinion on an unbounded range of topics. A key enabler of opinion extraction and summarization is sentiment classification: the task of automatically identifying whether a given piece of text expresses positive or negative opinion towards a topic of interest. Building high-quality sentiment classifiers using standard text categorization methods is challenging due to the lack of labeled data in a target domain. In this paper, we consider the problem of cross-domain sentiment analysis: can one, for instance, download rated movie reviews from rottentomatoes.com or IMBD discussion forums, learn linguistic expressions and sentiment-laden terms that generally characterize opinionated commentary and then successfully transfer this knowledge to the target domain, thereby building high-quality sentiment models without manual effort? We outline a novel sentiment transfer mechanism based on constrained non-negative matrix tri-factorizations of termdocument matrices in the source and target domains. The constrained matrix factorization framework naturally incorporates document labels via a least squares penalty incurred by a certain linear model and enables direct and explicit knowledge transfer across different domains. We obtain promising empirical results with this approach.
Adapting reservoirs to get Gaussian distributions

We present an online adaptation rule for reservoirs that is inspired by Intrinsic Plasiticity (IP). The IP rule maximizes the informa- tion content of the reservoir state by adapting it so that the distribution approximates a given target. Here we fix the variance of the target distri- bution, which results in a Gaussian distribution. We apply the rule to two tasks with quite different temporal and computational characteristics.
A New Residue to Binary Converter Based on Mixed-Radix Conversion

In this paper, an efficient design of the residue to binary converter for the new moduli set {2<sup>n</sup>-1, 2<sup>n</sup>, 2<sup>2n+1</sup>-1} based on mixed-radix conversion (MRC) is presented. The moduli set {2<sup>n</sup>-1, 2<sup>n</sup>, 2<sup>2n+1</sup>-1} is obtained by enhancing one of the moduli of the recently introduced moduli set {2<sup>n</sup>-1, 2<sup>n</sup>, 2<sup>2n+1</sup>-1}. The proposed moduli set includes well-formed moduli which can result in efficient residue to binary conversion as well as binary to residue conversion. The presented residue to binary converter is adder based and requires less conversion time and lower hardware cost, compared to the residue to binary converters for a moduli set with similar dynamic range.
Gamma Ray Bursts Cook Book I: Formulation

Since the suggestion of relativistic shocks as the origin of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in early 90's, the mathematical formulation of this process has stayed at phenomenological level. One of the reasons for the slow development of theoretical works has been the simple power-law behaviour of the afterglows hours or days after the prompt gamma-ray emission. It was believed that they could be explained with these formulations. Nowadays with the launch of the Swift satellite and implementation of robotic ground follow-ups, gamma-ray bursts and their afterglow can be observed in multi-wavelength from a few tens of seconds after trigger onward. These observations have leaded to the discovery of features unexplainable by the simple formulation of the shocks and emission processes used up to now. Some of these features can be inherent to the nature and activities of the GRBs central engines which are not yet well understood. On the other hand devil is in details and others may be explained with a more detailed formulation of these phenomena and without adhoc addition of new processes. Such a formulation is the goal of this work. We present a consistent formulation of the kinematic and dynamics of the collision between two spherical relativistic shells, their energy dissipation, and their coalescence. It can be applied to both internal and external shocks. Notably, we propose two phenomenological models for the evolution of the emitting region during the collision. One of these models is more suitable for the prompt/internal shocks and the other for the afterglow/external collisions. We calculate a number of observables such as flux, lag between energy bands, and hardness ratios. One of our aims has been a formulation enough complex to include the essential processes, but enough simple such that the data can be directly compared with the theory to extract the value and evolution of physical quantities. To accomplish this goal, we also suggest a procedure for extracting parameters of the model from data. In a following paper we numerically calculate the evolution of some simulated models and compare their features with the properties of the observed gamma-ray bursts.
Container based virtual honeynet for increased network security

Honeynet represents a new strategy in defending the computer networks and systems against unauthorized access or hacking attempts. Not only it can detect and display the attack pattern or the tools utilized, it can also help in eliminating access to real systems by representing an emulation of the physical systems and services present within the network, thus delaying or confusing the intruder. In this paper we provide an overview of a lightweight container based deployment that emulates popular Linux and Windows services to unsuspecting intruders. Results show the real world attacks against the deployed system.
Approaches to cloud computing fault tolerance

Fault tolerance in cloud computing platforms and applications is a crucial issue. This issue is especially difficult since cloud computing relies by nature on a complex splitting into many layers. From a technical point of view, most cloud computing platforms exploit virtualization, which implies that they are split into 3 layers: hosts, virtual machines and applications. From an administration point of view, they are split into 2 layers: the cloud provider who manages the hosting center and the customer who manages his application in the cloud. This paper analyses the implementation of fault tolerance in such a complex cloud computing environment with a focus on autonomic repair. We show that in most of current approaches, fault tolerance is exclusively handled by the provider or the customer which leads to partial or inefficient solutions, while collaborative solutions are much promising. We illustrate this discussion with experiments where exclusive and collaborative fault tolerance solutions are implemented in an autonomic cloud infrastructure that we prototyped.