Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Content development using N-gram model in custom writing style

Amateur writers usually find it difficult and often make errors while building up content when they are doing so in a style different from their own writing style. This causes loss of interest by the readers and sometimes even misinterpretations of actual thoughts desired to be conveyed by author. This work attempts to embark upon this problem statement by ranking the best available choices of words fitting the style of writing that the author would like to adopt. Our methodology allows authors to choose from amongst default, formal and literature style of writing. Also, authors can infer words and traces from his own past writings by developing a custom corpus of his own write-ups. A spell checker and N-gram based statistical model along with a corpus based technique is proposed to achieve above objectives. Rank 4 N-gram along with backoff smoothing provided optimum results for our work. To showcase the effectiveness of this method, we have tested it on real time data and performance evaluation fetched satisfactory results.
Function is not the sum of an object’s parts

Abstract Prior research shows adults believe objects exist for specialised purposes. This “one tool, one function” cognitive bias promotes efficient mastery of artefact function but could mean individuals overlook an object’s suitability for other functions. Across three studies, the initial trajectory of learning about functions was investigated to better depict when adults are constrained versus open in the assignment of functions to objects. Studies 1 and 2 employed an online format to deemphasise social expectations and explore how rapidly adults make exclusive tool-function pairings. Participants showed fixity immediately upon learning an object’s function. Study 3 confirmed this with an in-person design. Furthermore, Study 3 evaluated descriptions adults gave to known and novel objects; for known items, adults focussed on functions and failed to note physical features. Adults appear deeply compelled to attach functions to objects, but in so doing, they may be less likely to perceive an object’s potential for other uses.
Inhibition of fatty acid biosynthesis prevents adipocyte lipotoxicity on human osteoblasts in vitro

Although increased bone marrow fat in age‐related bone loss has been associated with lower trabecular mass, the underlying mechanism responsible remains unknown. We hypothesized that marrow adipocytes exert a lipotoxic effect on osteoblast function and survival through the reversible biosynthesis of fatty acids (FA) into the bone marrow microenvironment. We have used a two‐chamber system to co‐culture normal human osteoblasts (NHOst) with differentiating pre‐adipocytes in the absence or presence of an inhibitor of FA synthase (cerulenin) and separated by an insert that allowed unidirectional trafficking of soluble factors only and prevented direct cell–cell contact. Supernatants were assayed for the presence of FA using mass spectophotometry. After 3 weeks in co‐culture, NHOst showed significantly lower levels of differentiation and function based on lower mineralization and expression of alkaline phosphatase, osterix, osteocalcin and Runx2. In addition, NHOst survival was affected by the presence of adipocytes as determined by MTS‐formazan and TUNEL assays as well as higher activation of caspases 3/7. These toxic effects were inhibited by addition of cerulenin. Furthermore, culture of NHOst with either adipocyte‐conditioned media alone in the absence of adipocytes themselves or with the addition of the most predominant FA (stearate or palmitate) produced similar toxic results. Finally, Runx2 nuclear binding was affected by addition of either adipocyte conditioned media or FA into the osteogenic media. We conclude that the presence of FA within the marrow milieu can contribute to the age‐related changes in bone mass and can be prevented by the inhibition of FA synthase.
Bioacoustics for species management: two case studies with a Hawaiian forest bird

Abstract The management of animal endangered species requires detailed information on their distribution and abundance, which is often hard to obtain. When animals communicate using sounds, one option is to use automatic sound recorders to gather information on the species for long periods of time with low effort. One drawback of this method is that processing all the information manually requires large amounts of time and effort. Our objective was to create a relatively “user‐friendly” (i.e., that does not require big programming skills) automatic detection algorithm to improve our ability to get basic data from sound‐emitting animal species. We illustrate our algorithm by showing two possible applications with the Hawai'i ‘Amakihi, Hemignathus virens virens, a forest bird from the island of Hawai'i. We first characterized the ‘Amakihi song using recordings from areas where the species is present in high densities. We used this information to train a classification algorithm, the support vector machine (SVM), in order to identify ‘Amakihi songs from a series of potential songs. We then used our algorithm to detect the species in areas where its presence had not been previously confirmed. We also used the algorithm to compare the relative abundance of the species in different areas where management actions may be applied. The SVM had an accuracy of 86.5% in identifying ‘Amakihi. We confirmed the presence of the ‘Amakihi at the study area using the algorithm. We also found that the relative abundance of ‘Amakihi changes among study areas, and this information can be used to assess where management strategies for the species should be better implemented. Our automatic song detection algorithm is effective, “user‐friendly” and can be very useful for optimizing the management and conservation of those endangered animal species that communicate acoustically.
Chinese calligraphy system in CADAL

In this paper, a novel Chinese calligraphy system is presented and implemented. It is designed as a new version of the calligraphy system in CADAL, and will be online in several months instead of the current version developed some years ago. In this system, users can browse and retrieve the calligraphy books, calligraphy works and calligraphy characters, user can generate a calligraphy tablet, a user can write one or more characters with common-used input devices and render them with the strokes of a specific calligrapher and a user can view the writing process of some calligraphy characters. Many latest technologies are integrated in the proposed system. The key technologies are shape based calligraphy character retrieval, style-consistent calligraphy character synthesis and calligraphy tablet generation, calligraphy character rendering, and calligraphy character writing process simulation. The system is well designed and all the subsystems work well in our experiments.
A cell-engineered system to assess tumor cell sensitivity to CD8+ T cell-mediated cytotoxicity

ABSTRACT In vitro assays that evaluate CD8+ T cell-mediated cytotoxicity are important to aid in the development of novel therapeutic approaches to enhance anti-tumor immune responses. Here, we describe a novel cytotoxicity co-culture assay that circumvents the problem of highly variable allogeneic responses and obviates the constraints of HLA-restriction between effector and target cells. We show that this assay can be easily applied to a panel of tumor cell lines to provide additional insights into intrinsic drivers of sensitivity/resistance to T cell-mediated killing, and to evaluate the impact of targeted therapies on both tumor and T cell compartments.
Symmetric Tensor Completion from Multilinear Entries and Learning Product Mixtures over the Hypercube

We give an algorithm for completing an order-$m$ symmetric low-rank tensor from its multilinear entries in time roughly proportional to the number of tensor entries. We apply our tensor completion algorithm to the problem of learning mixtures of product distributions over the hypercube, obtaining new algorithmic results. If the centers of the product distribution are linearly independent, then we recover distributions with as many as $\Omega(n)$ centers in polynomial time and sample complexity. In the general case, we recover distributions with as many as $\tilde\Omega(n)$ centers in quasi-polynomial time, answering an open problem of Feldman et al. (SIAM J. Comp.) for the special case of distributions with incoherent bias vectors. Our main algorithmic tool is the iterated application of a low-rank matrix completion algorithm for matrices with adversarially missing entries.
Modulation of Endothelial Inflammation by Low and High Magnitude Cyclic Stretch

Excessive mechanical ventilation exerts pathologic mechanical strain on lung vascular endothelium and promotes endothelial cell (EC) inflammatory activation; however, the specific mechanisms underlying EC inflammatory response caused by mechanical ventilation related cyclic stretch (CS) remain unclear. This study investigated the effects of chronic exposure to CS at physiologic (5%) and pathologic (18%) magnitude on pulmonary EC inflammatory status in control conditions and bacterial lipopolysacharide (LPS)-stimulated conditions. EC exposure to high or low CS magnitudes for 28–72 hrs had distinct effects on EC inflammatory activation. 18% CS increased surface expression of endothelial adhesion molecule ICAM1 and release of its soluble form (sICAM1) and inflammatory cytokine IL-8 by CS-stimulated pulmonary endothelial cells (EC). EC inflammatory activation was not observed in EC exposed to 5% CS. Chronic exposure to 18% CS, but not to 5% CS, augmented ICAM1 and IL-8 production and EC monolayer barrier disruption induced by LPS. 18% CS, but not 5% CS, stimulated expression of RhoA GTPase-specific guanine nucleotide exchange factor GEF-H1. GEF-H1 knockdown using gene-specific siRNA abolished 18% CS-induced ICAM1 expression and sICAM1 and IL-8 release by EC. GEF-H1 knockdown also prevented disruption of EC monolayer integrity and attenuated sICAM1 and IL-8 release in the two-hit model of EC barrier dysfunction caused by combined stimulation with 18% CS and LPS. These data demonstrate that exacerbation of inflammatory response by pulmonary endothelium exposed to excessive mechanical stretch is mediated by CS-induced induction of Rho activating protein GEF-H1.
Tree-Based Methods for Fuzzy Rule Extraction

This paper is concerned with the application of a treebased regression model to extract fuzzy rules from highdimensional data. We introduce a locally weighted scheme to the identification of Takagi-Sugeno type rules. It is proposed to apply the sequential least-squares method to estimate the linear model. A hierarchical clustering takes place in the product space of systems inputs and outputs and each path from the root to a leaf corresponds to a fuzzy IF-THEN rule. Only a subset of the rules is considered based on the locality of the input query data. At each hierarchy, a discriminating subspace is derived from the high-dimensional input space for a good generalization capability. Both a synthetic data set as well as a real-world robot navigation problem are considered to illustrate the working and the applicability of the algorithm.
Aero-Marker : Blimp-based Augmented Reality Marker

We describe an augmented reality (AR) marker that has both a virtual appearance and physical features. We integrate a blimp with an AR marker to overcome two problems found in conventional AR applications. One problem is mobility. While a conventional AR marker is generally paper-based and static, " Aero-Marker " floats in the air and moves toward the user. Thus, the relationship between the user and marker changes. The other problem is physicality. Unlike a paper-based marker, Aero-Marker has physical volume because it uses a physical blimp. Virtual information is overlaid on the entire surface of the blimp, like texture mapping in 3D computer graphics, making the virtual information tangible. Thus, the interaction between the user and marker changes.
Recognizing Emotions Conveyed through Facial Expressions

Emotional communication is a key element of habilitation care of persons with dementia. It is, therefore, highly preferable for assistive robots that are used to supplement human care provided to persons with dementia, to possess the ability to recognize and respond to emotions expressed by those who are being cared-for. Facial expressions are one of the key modalities through which emotions are conveyed. This work focuses on computer vision-based recognition of facial expressions of emotions conveyed by the elderly. Although there has been much work on automatic facial expression recognition, the algorithms have been experimentally validated primarily on young faces. The facial expressions on older faces has been totally excluded. This is due to the fact that the facial expression databases that were available and that have been used in facial expression recognition research so far do not contain images of facial expressions of people above the age of 65 years. To overcome this problem, we adopt a recently published database, namely, the FACES database, which was developed to address exactly the same problem in the area of human behavioural research. The FACES database contains 2052 images of six different facial expressions, with almost identical and systematic representation of the young, middle-aged and older age-groups. In this work, we evaluate and compare the performance of two of the existing imagebased approaches for facial expression recognition, over a broad spectrum of age ranging from 19 to 80 years. The evaluated systems use Gabor filters and uniform local binary patterns (LBP) for feature extraction, and AdaBoost.MH with multi-threshold stump learner for expression classification. We have experimentally validated the hypotheses that facial expression recognition systems trained only on young faces perform poorly on middle-aged and older faces, and that such systems confuse ageing-related facial features on neutral faces with other expressions of emotions. We also identified that, among the three age-groups, the middle-aged group provides the best generalization performance across the entire age spectrum. The performance of the systems was also compared to the performance of humans in recognizing facial expressions of emotions. Some similarities were observed, such as, difficulty in recognizing the expressions on older faces, and difficulty in recognizing the expression of sadness. The findings of our work establish the need for developing approaches for facial expression recognition that are robust to the effects of ageing on the face. The scientific results of our work can be used as a basis to guide future research in this direction.
ZMP trajectory control of a humanoid robot using different controllers based on an offline trajectory generation

In this paper a zero moment point (ZMP) trajectory of a humanoid robot model, Surena II, is presented. Humanoid stability is controlled by a PID and a fuzzy controller at two conditions, with and without the presence of external disturbance. Dynamic modeling and control implementation is performed simultaneously in the simulation. The angles of joints are set by offline method, unless the waist angle, which is the control joint and its amplitude is set by the controllers.
Cooperative spectrum sensing in IEEE 802.22 standard

IEEE is developing a wireless communication standard that will take place in cognitive radio class and be valid in the world. Data communication capability supporting is aimed with this standard called IEEE 802.22 to the rural area users in TV bands. In the TV bands, not to cause harmful interference to the existing TV receivers and to communicate in unused channels, effective detection of unused channels is needed. This is succeeded with effective spectrum sensing. Understanding of presence of TV signal in channel tracked is more possible with that reason. In this paper, it is demonstrated with detailed simulations that a base station and users in an IEEE 802.22 cell sense TV signals better with setting up cooperation and it is reached to the better performance result with adding time diversity to this cooperation.
Cognitive architecture for an Attention-based and Bidirectional Loop-closing Domain (CABILDO)

This Ph. D. Thesis presents a novel attention-based cognitive architecture for social robots. The architecture aims to join perception and reasoning considering a double and simultaneous imbrication: the ongoing task biases the perceptual process to obtain only useful elements whereas perceived items determine the behaviours to be accomplished. Therefore, the proposed architecture represents a bidirectional solution to the perception-reasoning-action loop closing problem. The basis of the architecture is an Object-Based Visual Attention model. This perception system draws attention over perceptual units of visual information, called proto-objects. In order to highlight relevant elements, not only several intrinsic basic features (such as colour, location or shape) but also the constraints provided by the ongoing behaviour and context are considered. The proposed architecture is divided into two levels of performance. The lower level is concerned with quantitative models of execution, namely tasks that are suitable for the current work conditions, whereas a qualitative framework that describes and defines tasks relationships and coverages is placed at the top level. Perceived items determine the tasks that can be executed in each moment, following a need-based approach. Thereby, the tasks that better fit the perceived environment are more likely to be executed. Finally, the cognitive architecture has been tested using a real and unrestricted scenario that involves a real robot, time-varying tasks and daily life situations, in order to demonstrate that the proposal is able to efficiently address time- and behaviour-varying environments, overcoming the main drawbacks of already existing models.
A Portuguese spoken and multi-modal dialog corpora

This paper presents an overview of the spoken and multi-modal dialog Portuguese corpora collected in the context of the FASiL (Flexible and Adaptive Spoken Language and Multi-Modal Interfaces) project. The project developed a Virtual Personal Assistant application in the Personal Information Management domain, exploiting the state-of-the-art of speech and multi-modal technology. The FASiL corpora were collected to obtain acoustic and language modelling data for the spoken language components, to study adaptative dialogue management techniques and to support multi-modal interface research tasks. As spoken and multi-modal resources availability is key to the research, development and acceptability of new multi-modal services and applications the corpora will be available to interested parties through ELRA.
A Partitioning Method based on Convex Hulls for Crowd Simulations

Resumen—Simulating the realistic behavior of large crowds of autonomous agents is still a challenge for the computer graphics community. In order to handle large crowds, some scalable architectures have been proposed. Nevertheless, the effective use of distributed systems requires the use of partitioning methods that can properly assign different sets of agents to the existing distributed resources. In this paper, we propose the improvement of the partitioning method for distributed crowd simulations by using irregular shape regions. Concretely, we propose the partition of the virtual world using convex hulls. The performance evaluation results show that the Convex Hull method outperforms the rest of the considered methods in terms of both fitness function values and execution times, regardless of the movement pattern followed by the agents. These results show that the shape of the regions in the partition can improve the performance of the partitioning method, rather than the heuristic method used.
EpiReview: tuberculosis in NSW, 2008.

AIM To describe the epidemiology of tuberculosis cases notified in NSW in 2008. METHOD Data on tuberculosis cases resident in NSW that were reported in 2008 were extracted from the Notifiable Diseases Database. Demographic, microbiological, clinical and other characteristics of cases were described. Incidence rates per 100 000 were calculated. RESULTS In 2008, 498 tuberculosis cases were notified in NSW (7.1 cases per 100 000 population). Most cases were newly diagnosed (n = 479, 96%). The lung was the most common site of disease (n = 304, 61%). Eight of 269 tested cases (1.6%) had a HIV-tuberculosis co-infection. One case had multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Most cases reported past residence (n = 429, 86%) or birth (n = 378, 76%) in a country with a high incidence of tuberculosis. CONCLUSION The incidence of tuberculosis in NSW increased slightly in 2008. Most cases had links to countries with a high tuberculosis incidence.
Betrayal Trauma

Betrayal trauma, or trauma perpetrated by someone with whom a victim is close, is strongly associated with a range of negative psychological and physical health outcomes. However, few studies have examined associations between different forms of trauma and emotional and physical symptoms. The present study compared betrayal trauma to other forms of trauma as predictors of young adults’ psychological and physical symptoms, and explored potential mediators. A total of 185 university undergraduate students completed the Brief Betrayal Trauma Survey, the Trauma Symptom Checklist, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and the Pennebaker Inventory of Limbic Languidness. For each set of symptoms, simultaneous multiple regressions assessed the relative contributions of low versus high betrayal trauma to psychological and physical health reports. Structural equation models examined traumatic stress symptoms and alexithymia as mediators of the relationship between betrayal trauma and physical health symptoms. A total of 151 participants (82%) reported exposure to at least 1 of 11 forms of trauma queried (M = 2.08, SD = 1.94); 96 participants (51.9%) reported at least 1 betrayal trauma. Traumas characterized by high betrayal predicted alexithymia, anxiety, depression, dissociation, physical health complaints, and the number of days students reported being sick during the past month, whereas other traumas did not. Structural equation modeling revealed that traumatic stress symptoms and alexithymia mediated the association between betrayal trauma and physical health complaints. These results indicate that betrayal trauma is associated with young adults’ physical and mental health difficulties to a greater extent than are other forms of trauma. Results may inform assessment, intervention, and prevention efforts.
Improved video compression for indoor video surveillance application

This paper describes a new method to improve the compression ratio of H.264 when used in indoor video surveillance with static camera. Motion detection technique is introduced into H.264. The proposed motion detection algorithm consists of motion detection of successive frames and background frame subtraction. The motion detection of temporal frame is used in this system for detecting whether there are continuously moving objects between two consecutive frames. The background frame subtraction is used for detecting moving objects in current frame. Test results show that bit rate of video surveillance system can be reduced from 10% to 15% for the selected test sequences.