Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Insights into reading processes through investigating diversity

The general goal of reading is to obtain meaning from what is written on the page or screen. The numerous scripts around the world used to write different languages vary in terms of what aspects of language are encoded in the written form. The aim of the current review is to examine some recent research on lesser‐studied orthographies, in particular Thai, to illustrate the benefits of comparative studies in building a greater understanding of what processes are common or distinct when reading diverse writing systems. Three areas of reading are focused on where there is substantial variation across orthographies: (1) reading with and without interword spaces, (2) flexibility in letter position coding and initial letter position advantage, and (3) the role of lexical tone when reading. In order to effectively read a script, readers need to attend to the critical features of the script that interface with the particular language of the speaker. For example, in scripts with interword spaces, these salient visual cues form clear word boundaries, whereas in unspaced scripts other orthography‐specific cues need to be identified and utilised. Furthermore, comparative research shows that letter position encoding varies across languages, which is shaped by the characteristics of the orthography. Finally, research on Thai and Chinese indicates that tone takes a secondary role in comparison to segmental information (consonantal and vowel information) and appears to be processed at a later stage.
Probabilistic Risk Analysis and Project Capital Structures

Increases in the securitization and syndication of credit have led to a growing distance between borrowers and the ultimate lenders. As trends continue to encourage the efficient packaging and sale of loans, it has become important for lead lenders to convince fellow syndicate banks of the risk profile of the credit as quickly and effectively as possible. Likewise, having an understanding of how a firm's value has changed as a result of financial distress is invaluable during a restructuring process. A key element in understanding the impact of risk on firm values is the differential response of the managers (equity) and lenders (debt) toward volatility. This article develops a framework for using simulation analysis as a common platform from which to communicate about financing risks and capital structure. The methods outlined here can be used to optimize responses to restructuring scenarios by enabling a better match between expected cash flows and capital commitments.
A slot antenna with multiple steps for mobile phone applications

A novel slot antenna is proposed for mobile phone applications. The antenna has two slots named Slotl and Slot2, respectively. Slot1 has a hybrid shape of the combination of a circle and a rectangle with four steps located at the lower edge of the rectangle. Slot2 is of rectangular shape. The two slots are opened at opposite edges of the system board. The antenna is fed with a folded shaped 50 Ω microstrip connected to a circular patch and a rectangular patch. There are four steps located at the lower edge of the rectangular patch. The measured −6 dB bandwidths of the antenna are 0.67–1.03, 1.58–2.13, 2.30–2.78, 3.48–6.8 GHz.
Constructing high complexity synthetic libraries of long ORFs using in vitro selection.

We present a method that can significantly increase the complexity of protein libraries used for in vitro or in vivo protein selection experiments. Protein libraries are often encoded by chemically synthesized DNA, in which part of the open reading frame is randomized. There are, however, major obstacles associated with the chemical synthesis of long open reading frames, especially those containing random segments. Insertions and deletions that occur during chemical synthesis cause frameshifts, and stop codons in the random region will cause premature termination. These problems can together greatly reduce the number of full-length synthetic genes in the library. We describe a strategy in which smaller segments of the synthetic open reading frame are selected in vitro using mRNA display for the absence of frameshifts and stop codons. These smaller segments are then ligated together to form combinatorial libraries of long uninterrupted open reading frames. This process can increase the number of full-length open reading frames in libraries by up to two orders of magnitude, resulting in protein libraries with complexities of greater than 10(13). We have used this methodology to generate three types of displayed protein library: a completely random sequence library, a library of concatemerized oligopeptide cassettes with a propensity for forming amphipathic alpha-helical or beta-strand structures, and a library based on one of the most common enzymatic scaffolds, the alpha/beta (TIM) barrel.
Independent Component Analysis

Die Independent Component Analysis ist ein statistisches Verfahren, um Daten so linear zu transformieren, dass die Ergebnisse statistisch unabhangig sind. Diese statistische Unabhangigkeit kann z. B. durch Maximierung der Nicht-Gausahnlichkeit oder durch Minimierung der gemeinsamen Information erreicht werden. Ein durch ein kunstliches neuronales Netz implementierbares Verfahren hierzu ist der Infomax Algorithmus. Die ICA kann unter anderem dazu eingesetzt werden, EEG Daten zu analysieren oder Basisvektoren ahnlich den Gaborfunktionen aus naturlichen Bildern zu extrahieren. Es gibt Anhaltspunkte, dass auch im primaren visuellen Kortex von Tieren und Menschen solch eine Verarbeitung stattfindet.
Growth and Division in a Dynamic Protocell Model

In this paper a new model of growing and dividing protocells is described, whose main features are (i) a lipid container that grows according to the composition of the molecular milieu (ii) a set of “genetic memory molecules” (GMMs) that undergo catalytic reactions in the internal aqueous phase and (iii) a set of stochastic kinetic equations for the GMMs. The mass exchange between the external environment and the internal phase is described by simulating a semipermeable membrane and a flow driven by the differences in chemical potentials, thereby avoiding to resort to sometimes misleading simplifications, e.g., that of a flow reactor. Under simple assumptions, it is shown that synchronization takes place between the rate of replication of the GMMs and that of the container, provided that the set of reactions hosts a so-called RAF (Reflexive Autocatalytic, Food-generated) set whose influence on synchronization is hereafter discussed. It is also shown that a slight modification of the basic model that takes into account a rate-limiting term, makes possible the growth of novelties, allowing in such a way suitable evolution: so the model represents an effective basis for understanding the main abstract properties of populations of protocells.
The perspectives of secondary school students with special needs in Spain during the crisis

This paper presents an overview of a situational analysis of inclusive schooling in Spain from the perspective of students with special educational needs. The purpose of this work was to learn how young people collectively considered their experiences of school inclusion. The participants—aged 12–19 years who attended six different settings—highlighted the school community, resources, teacher pedagogy, support and social cohesion as germane aspects of their inclusion. Through a presentation of these characteristics, this analysis demonstrates how schools can effectively fulfil the core requirement of teaching and supporting diversity and, in so doing, how they can incite included subjectivities of differently abled students. This analysis is positioned within the climate of economic instability in Spain, which threatens to derail the headway made towards inclusive schooling via the introduction of severe austerity measures.
The Role of MicroRNAs in Myeloproliferative Neoplasia

MiRs are 17-25 nucleotide non-coding RNAs. These RNAs target approximately 80% of protein coding mRNAs. MiRs control gene expression and altered expression of them affects the development of cancer. MiRs can function as tumor suppressor via down-regulation of proto-oncogenes and may function as oncogenes by suppressing tumor suppressors. Myeloproliferative neoplasias (formerly known as chronic myeloproliferative disorders) form a class of hematologic malignancies demonstrating the expansion of stem cells in one or more hematopoietic cell lines. CML results from an acquired translocation known as BCR-ABL (Philadelphia chromosome). JAK2V617F mutation is present in over 95% of PV, 55% of ET and 65% of PMF cases. Aberrant expression of miR is associated with myeloproliferative neoplasias, pathogenesis, disease progress and response to treatment. MiRs can also be potential therapeutic targets. CML is mainly treated by tyrosine kinase inhibitors such as Imatinib. In addition, altered function of miRs may be used as a prognostic factor in treatment. Resistance to Imatinib is currently a major clinical problem. The role of a number of miRs has been demonstrated in this resistance. Changing expression pattern of miRs can be effective in response to treatment and inhibition of drug resistance. In this paper, we set out to evaluate the effect of miRs in pathogenesis and treatment of MPN.
Ultrastructure of Rickettsia rickettsiiActin Tails and Localization of Cytoskeletal Proteins

ABSTRACT Actin-based motility (ABM) is a mechanism for intercellular spread that is utilized by vaccinia virus and the invasive bacteria within the genera Rickettsia, Listeria, andShigella. Within the Rickettsia, ABM is confined to members of the spotted fever group (SFG), such asRickettsia rickettsii, the agent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Infection by each agent induces the polymerization of host cell actin to form the typical F (filamentous)-actin comet tail. Assembly of the actin tail propels the pathogen through the host cytosol and into cell membrane protrusions that can be engulfed by neighboring cells, initiating a new infectious cycle. Little is known about the structure and morphogenesis of the Rickettsia rickettsii actin tail relative to Shigellaand Listeria actin tails. In this study we examined the ultrastructure of the rickettsial actin tail by confocal, scanning electron, and transmission electron microscopy. Confocal microscopy of rhodamine phalloidin-stained infected Vero cells revealed the typhus group rickettsiae, Rickettsia prowazekii andRickettsia typhi, to have no actin tails and short (∼1- to 3-μm) straight or hooked actin tails, respectively. The SFG rickettsia, R. rickettsii, displayed long actin tails (>10 μm) that were frequently comprised of multiple, distinct actin bundles, wrapping around each other in a helical fashion. Transmission electron microscopy, in conjunction with myosin S1 subfragment decoration, revealed that the individual actin filaments of R. rickettsii tails are >1 μm long, arranged roughly parallel to one another, and oriented with the fast-growing barbed end towards the rickettsial pole. Scanning electron microscopy of intracellular rickettsiae demonstrated R. rickettsii to have polar associations of cytoskeletal material and R. prowazekii to be devoid of cytoskeletal interactions. By indirect immunofluorescence, both R. rickettsii and Listeria monocytogenesactin tails were shown to contain the cytoskeletal proteins vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein profilin, vinculin, and filamin. However, rickettsial tails lacked ezrin, paxillin, and tropomyosin, proteins that were associated with actin tails of cytosolic or protrusion-bound Listeria. The unique ultrastructural and compositional characteristics of the R. rickettsii actin tail suggest that rickettsial ABM is mechanistically different from previously described microbial ABM systems.
NF-κB Controls Cell Fate Specification, Survival, and Molecular Differentiation of Immunoregulatory Natural T Lymphocytes1

Ontogenetic, homeostatic, and functional deficiencies within immunoregulatory natural T (iNKT) lymphocytes underlie various inflammatory immune disorders including autoimmunity. Signaling events that control cell fate specification and molecular differentiation of iNKT cells are only partly understood. Here we demonstrate that these processes within iNKT cells require classical NF-κB signaling. Inhibition of NF-κB signaling blocks iNKT cell ontogeny at an immature stage and reveals an apparent, novel precursor in which negative selection occurs. Most importantly, this block occurs due to a lack of survival signals, as Bcl-xL overexpression rescues iNKT cell ontogeny. Maturation of immature iNKT cell precursors induces Bcl-2 expression, which is defective in the absence of NF-κB signaling. Bcl-xL overexpression also rescues this maturation-induced Bcl-2 expression. Thus, antiapoptotic signals relayed by NF-κB critically control cell fate specification and molecular differentiation of iNKT cells and, hence, reveal a novel role for such signals within the immune system.
Technical debt interest assessment: from issues to project

The interest of Technical Debt (TD) is difficult to calculate, especially on a project level. Current approaches are based on fine-grain issue assessment, but there is no evidence about how TD is assessed on a project level. A few tools use an aggregation function that sum the TD issues on a project level. We conducted a multiple case-study on four different projects. We asked the project teams to assess the TD both on an issue level and on a project level. We also asked the product manager and a senior developer to assess the TD on a project level. We found that the function mapping the interest of TD to a project overall is not the sum of issue-level TD. We report the quantitative results of the performed experiment and we also developed a qualitative explanation of the results based on interviews with the development team. This paper represents a first step towards assessing the interest of TD at a project level.
Application of a chronic illness model as a means of understanding pre-operative psychological adjustment in coronary artery bypass graft patients.

OBJECTIVES To increase understanding of the factors associated with pre-operative psychological adjustment in coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients by assessing the utility of a chronic illness model developed by Scharloo, Kaptein, Weinman, Willems, and Rooijmans (2000). DESIGN A cross-sectional design was employed. METHOD Elective CABG patients (N=119) completed self-report measures of illness representation, self-rated health, social support, coping methods, and pre-operative adjustment (depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology) an average of 30 days prior to surgery. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to assess the mediational relationships proposed by the chronic illness model. RESULTS Five 3-variable mediational chains were assessed. In all instances, the results conformed to the relationships suggested by the chronic illness model where the strength of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables was reduced when the mediator variable was controlled. However, a significant reduction of this relationship was found in three of the five chains examined. The most rigorous support for the model occurred, where increased use of avoidance coping mediated the relationship between poorer self-rated health and increased PTSD symptomatology, and also where increased use of avoidance coping partially mediated the relationship between a more negative illness representation and increased PTSD symptomatology, and poorer self-rated health and increased depression. CONCLUSIONS The chronic illness model of Scharloo and colleagues shows potential in explaining pre-operative adjustment in CABG patients. Longitudinal examination of the model is recommended.
Modularizing Theorems for Software Product Lines: The Jbook Case Study

A goal of software product lines is the economical assembly of programs in a family of programs. In this paper, we explore how theorems about program properties may be integrated into feature-based development of software product lines. As a case study, we analyze an existing Java/JVM compilation correctness proof for defining, interpreting, compiling, and executing bytecode for the Java language. We show how features modularize program source, theorem statements and their proofs. By composing features, the source code, theorem statements and proofs for a program are assembled. The investigation in this paper reveals a striking similarity of the refinement concepts used in Abstract State Machines (ASM) based system development and Feature-Oriented Programming (FOP) of software product lines. We suggest to exploit this observation for a fruitful interaction of researchers in the two communities.
Eigenvalue Maximization in Sparse PCA

We examine the problem of approximating a positive, semidefinite matrix Σ by a dyad xxT , with a penalty on the cardinality of the vector x. This problem arises in the sparse principal component analysis problem, where a decomposition of Σ involving sparse factors is sought. We express this hard, combinatorial problem as a maximum eigenvalue problem, in which we seek to maximize, over a box, the largest eigenvalue of a symmetric matrix that is linear in the variables. This representation allows to use the techniques of robust optimization, to derive a bound based on semidefinite programming. The quality of the bound is investigated using a primalization technique inspired by Nemirovski and Ben-Tal (2002). Notation. The notation 1 denotes the vector of ones (with size inferred from context), while Card(x) denotes the cardinality of a vector x (number of non-zero elements). We denote by ei the unit vectors of R . For a n × n matrix X, X 0 means X is symmetric and positive semi-definite. The notation B+, for a symmetric matrix B, denotes the matrix obtained from B by replacing negative eigenvalues by 0. Throughout, the symbol E refers to expectations taken with respect to the normal Gaussian distribution.
Invention, the mother of necessity: archival research in 2020. Commentaries

Research in the archives of 2020 will seek to understand why the twentieth century was an age of technological and scientific discovery, perhaps the greatest age of invention since 1620. Researchers will be seeking to discover the origins of what was meant by research itself-why research assumed technical methodologies and questions. Therefore the archives of 2020 must allow the researcher to explore the relationship between military invention and politics, between printing and modern science and communications technology, and the evolution of the modern sense of an environment and ecology from the compass, the technology of discovery.
Continuous emotion detection in response to music videos

Viewers' preference for multimedia selection depends highly on their emotional experience. In this paper, we present an emotion detection method for music videos using central and peripheral nervous system physiological signals as well as multimedia content analysis. A set of 40 music clips eliciting a broad range of emotions were first selected. After extracting the one minute long emotional highlight of each video, they were shown to 32 participants while their physiological responses were recorded. Participants self-reported their felt emotions after watching each clip by means of arousal, valence, dominance, and liking ratings. The physiological signals included electroencephalogram, galvanic skin response, respiration pattern, skin temperature, electromyograms and blood volume pulse using plethysmograph. Emotional features were extracted from the signals and the multimedia content. The emotional features were used to train a linear ridge regressor to detect emotions for each participant using a leave-one-out cross-validation strategy. The performance of the personalized emotion detection is shown to be significantly superior to a random regressor.
An embedded language for programming protocol stacks in embedded systems

Protocol stack specifications are well-structured documents that follow a number of conventions and notations that have proven very useful for the design and dissemination of communication protocols. Protocol stack implementations on the other hand, are done in low-level languages, using error-prone programming techniques resulting in programs that are difficult to relate to the specifications, difficult to maintain, modify, extend and reuse. To overcome these problems we propose a domain-specific language that provides abstractions close to the notations used in protocol specifications. From descriptions in our language we generate C programs that can be integrated with other systems software. The language provides constructs to describe packet formats, including physical layout, constraints and dependencies. It also provides constructs for state machines and for layering protocols into stacks. Experiments show that the C programs we generate are comparable in performance and binary size to hand-crafted C programs.
Pediatric Resident Attitudes Toward Caring for Children with Severe Disabilities

Edwards JD, Davidson EJ, Houtrow AJ, Graham RJ: Pediatric resident attitudes toward caring for children with severe disabilities. Objective:To survey pediatric residents' attitudes toward caring for children with severe disabilities. Design:A cross-sectional survey of residents in a university-affiliated pediatric residency program between October and December 2005. Residents were asked to complete a newly designed, 13-item survey. For each item, participants selected the degree to which they did or did not agree with a statement about disabilities or caring for children with severe disabilities. Results:Fifty-five (43%) of 129 eligible residents participated. Eighty-nine percent felt that caring for children with severe disabilities was as rewarding as caring for other children. Ninety-two percent felt that there is a societal responsibility to care for such children; 98% felt families of children with disabilities love their children as much as other families. Two-thirds (66%) admitted frustration related to caring for children who cannot be cured or function independently, and 71% questioned the aggressive treatment of such children. Residents in their second and third postgraduate years were more likely to question the aggressive treatment compared with their junior colleagues. Conclusions:Although pediatric residents had positive attitudes toward children with severe disabilities, emotional and moral tensions did arise around their care.
Robust direct visual inertial odometry via entropy-based relative pose estimation

Visual solution methods, like monocular visual odometry and monoSLAM, have attracted increasingly interests in robotics area. However, due to the large computational burden around volume sequential images processing, it is still hard to make numerous visual-based algorithms applying in highly agile platforms like Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) in real-time circumstance. In this paper, we present a method, which combines the direct image information from monocular camera and the measurements from inertial sensor in an Extend Kalman Filter (EKF) framework to perform an effective odometry solution. In contrast to other odometry methods, our solution gets rid of traditional feature extraction and expression, using the mutual information between images to perform the tracking. This entropy based tracking method enhances the robustness to illumination variation. The result of our method has been tested on real data.