Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bitext Maps and Alignment via Pattern Recognition

Texts that are available in two languages (bitexts) are becoming more and more plentiful, both in private data warehouses and on publicly accessible sites on the World Wide Web. As with other kinds of data, the value of bitexts largely depends on the efficacy of the available data mining tools. The first step in extracting useful information from bitexts is to find corresponding words and/or text segment boundaries in their two halves (bitext maps). This article advances the state of the art of bitext mapping by formulating the problem in terms of pattern recognition. From this point of view, the success of a bitext mapping algorithm hinges on how well it performs three tasks: signal generation, noise filtering, and search. The Smooth Injective Map Recognizer (SIMR) algorithm presented here integrates innovative approaches to each of these tasks. Objective evaluation has shown that SIMR's accuracy is consistently high for language pairs as diverse as French/English and Korean/English. If necessary, SIMR's bitext maps can be efficiently converted into segment alignments using the Geometric Segment Alignment (GSA) algorithm, which is also presented here.SIMR has produced bitext maps for over 200 megabytes of French-English bitexts. GSA has converted these maps into alignments. Both the maps and the alignments are available from the Linguistic Data Consortium.
Performance of broadband arrays using convolution constraints

Broadband antenna arrays are pre-steered to compensate for the misalignment between the sensors and the look direction. The process is difficult and may cause loss of performance. This paper discusses a set of linear constraints referred to as “convolution constraints” for broadband beam-forming which eliminates the need for presteering and evaluates the performance of the array processor using these constraints to show that these are easy to implement, suitable for existing adaptive weight update methods and do not add any extra computational demands as is the case for some existing methods. Using these constraints an array designer is able to specify the frequency response of an element space time domain beamformer in any direction over the band of interest without using steering delays.
A high-performance Click-based packet classifier on GPU

In this paper, design and configuration of a high-performance Click-based packet classifier on GPU is presented. In this regard, Bloom filter-based classification algorithm is used in order to design and implement the Click-based packet classifier elements (processors) on Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). On one hand, utilization of Bloom filter data structure leads to memory usage reduction of the router. On the other hand, the parallel nature of Bloom filter and GPU architecture bring higher throughput of the software router. The analysis results indicate approximately five times speedup of the proposed Click-based classifier on GPU compared with the standard Click-based classifier.
Does the discussion help? The impact of a formally assessed online discussion on final student results

While there is agreement that participation in online asynchronous discussions can enhance student learning, it has also been identified that there is a need to investigate the impact of participation in online discussions on student course performance. This paper presents a case study based on an undergraduate engineering management unit employing a formally assessed online discussion area. It was observed that while many students read a significant number of discussion postings, generally, the posting of new and reply messages occurred at the minimum level required to qualify for the assignment marks. Based on correlation and multiple regression analysis, it was observed that two variables were significantly related to a student's final unit mark—prior academic ability and the number of new postings made to the online discussion. Each new posting contributed three times as much to the final unit mark as its nominal assessment value, suggesting that the work in preparing their new discussion postings assisted students in the completion of a range of assessable tasks for the unit. The number of postings read was not significantly correlated with the final unit mark, suggesting that passive lurking in this online discussion did not significantly contribute to student learning outcomes.
Prediction of toxicity and pharmacological potential of selected spice compounds

The use of computational tools in the prediction of ADME/Tox properties of compounds is growing rapidly in drug discovery as the benefits they provide in high throughput and early application in drug design are realized. Numerous examples exist of drugs that have had to be withdrawn, because of unacceptable toxicity, in clinical trials and even after reaching the market. In this study phytochemicals from selected spices were used to predict their rodent carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, PPB and BBB. Out of 108 compounds analysed, we found that only five compounds as non-mutagenic and non-carcinogenic and all the remaining were toxic in a pharmacological perspective. The five non-toxic compounds are alpha-zingiberene, delphinidin, laurotetanine, malabaricone-B and malabaricone-C. The PPB values of alpha-zingiberene, delphinidin and laurotetanine are in the <90% range (57.58, 88.41, 52.59, respectively) indicating that the three compounds were weakly bound to plasma proteins and the other two (malabaricone-B and malabaricone-C) strongly binds to plasma protein. The identification of delphinidin as a naturally occurring inhibitor of VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) receptors suggests that this molecule possesses important antiangiogenic properties that may be helpful for the prevention and treatment of cancer. The healing activity of malabaricone B and malabaricone C, the major antioxidant constituents of Myristaceae family, against indomethacin-induced gastric ulceration in mice has been studied. Though spices are well known for their antioxidant, antimicrobial, antinflammatory properties etc., this study clearly indicates the plethora of carcinogenic behaviour of spice compounds.
ε-Sarcoglycan Replaces α-Sarcoglycan in Smooth Muscle to Form a Unique Dystrophin-Glycoprotein Complex*

The sarcoglycan complex has been well characterized in striated muscle, and defects in its components are associated with muscular dystrophy and cardiomyopathy. Here, we have characterized the smooth muscle sarcoglycan complex. By examination of embryonic muscle lineages and biochemical fractionation studies, we demonstrated that ε-sarcoglycan is an integral component of the smooth muscle sarcoglycan complex along with β- and δ-sarcoglycan. Analysis of genetically defined animal models for muscular dystrophy supported this conclusion. The δ-sarcoglycan-deficient cardiomyopathic hamster and mice deficient in both dystrophin and utrophin showed loss of the smooth muscle sarcoglycan complex, whereas the complex was unaffected in α-sarcoglycan null mice in agreement with the finding that α-sarcoglycan is not expressed in smooth muscle cells. In the cardiomyopathic hamster, the smooth muscle sarcoglycan complex, containing ε-sarcoglycan, was fully restored following intramuscular injection of recombinant δ-sarcoglycan adenovirus. Together, these results demonstrate a tissue-dependent variation in the sarcoglycan complex and show that ε-sarcoglycan replaces α-sarcoglycan as an integral component of the smooth muscle dystrophin-glycoprotein complex. Our results also suggest a molecular basis for possible differential smooth muscle dysfunction in sarcoglycan-deficient patients.
PROCHLO: Strong Privacy for Analytics in the Crowd

The large-scale monitoring of computer users’ software activities has become commonplace, e.g., for application telemetry, error reporting, or demographic profiling. This paper describes a principled systems architecture—Encode, Shuffle, Analyze (ESA)—for performing such monitoring with high utility while also protecting user privacy. The ESA design, and its PROCHLO implementation, are informed by our practical experiences with an existing, large deployment of privacy-preserving software monitoring. With ESA, the privacy of monitored users’ data is guaranteed by its processing in a three-step pipeline. First, the data is encoded to control scope, granularity, and randomness. Second, the encoded data is collected in batches subject to a randomized threshold, and blindly shuffled, to break linkability and to ensure that individual data items get “lost in the crowd” of the batch. Third, the anonymous, shuffled data is analyzed by a specific analysis engine that further prevents statistical inference attacks on analysis results. ESA extends existing best-practice methods for sensitivedata analytics, by using cryptography and statistical techniques to make explicit how data is elided and reduced in precision, how only common-enough, anonymous data is analyzed, and how this is done for only specific, permitted purposes. As a result, ESA remains compatible with the established workflows of traditional database analysis. Strong privacy guarantees, including differential privacy, can be established at each processing step to defend against malice or compromise at one or more of those steps. PROCHLO develops new techniques to harden those steps, including the Stash Shuffle, a novel scalable and efficient oblivious-shuffling algorithm based on Intel’s SGX, and new applications of cryptographic secret sharing and blinding. We describe ESA and PROCHLO, as well as experiments that validate their ability to balance utility and privacy. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). SOSP ’17, October 28, 2017, Shanghai, China c © 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5085-3/17/10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3132747.3132769 Reprinted from SOSP ’17,, [Unknown Proceedings], October 28, 2017, Shanghai, China, pp. 1–19.
Corticothalamic Synaptic Noise as a Mechanism for Selective Attention in Thalamic Neurons

A reason why the thalamus is more than a passive gateway for sensory signals is that two-third of the synapses of thalamocortical neurons are directly or indirectly related to the activity of corticothalamic axons. While the responses of thalamocortical neurons evoked by sensory stimuli are well characterized, with ON- and OFF-center receptive field structures, the prevalence of synaptic noise resulting from neocortical feedback in intracellularly recorded thalamocortical neurons in vivo has attracted little attention. However, in vitro and modeling experiments point to its critical role for the integration of sensory signals. Here we combine our recent findings in a unified framework suggesting the hypothesis that corticothalamic synaptic activity is adapted to modulate the transfer efficiency of thalamocortical neurons during selective attention at three different levels: First, on ionic channels by interacting with intrinsic membrane properties, second at the neuron level by impacting on the input-output gain, and third even more effectively at the cell assembly level by boosting the information transfer of sensory features encoded in thalamic subnetworks. This top-down population control is achieved by tuning the correlations in subthreshold membrane potential fluctuations and is adapted to modulate the transfer of sensory features encoded by assemblies of thalamocortical relay neurons. We thus propose that cortically-controlled (de-)correlation of subthreshold noise is an efficient and swift dynamic mechanism for selective attention in the thalamus.
Time to progression of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma from low-to-high tumour stages

Objective Although pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is considered a rapidly progressive disease, mathematical models estimate that it takes many years for an initiating pancreatic cancer cell to grow into an advanced stage cancer. In order to estimate the time it takes for a pancreatic cancer to progress through different tumor, node, metastasis (TNM) stages, we compared the mean age of patients with pancreatic cancers of different sizes and stages. Design Patient age, tumour size, stage and demographic information were analysed for 13 131 patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma entered into the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. Multiple linear regression models for age were generated, adjusting for patient ethnicity, gender, tumour location and neoplastic grades. Results African-American ethnicity and male gender were associated with an earlier age at diagnosis. Patients with stage I cancers (mean age 64.8 years) were on average 1.3 adjusted years younger at diagnosis than those with stage IV cancers (p=0.001). Among patients without distant metastases, those with T1 stage cancers were on average 1.06 and 1.19 adjusted years younger, respectively, than patients with T3 or T4 cancers (p=0.03 for both). Among patients with stage IIB cancers, those with T1/T2 cancers were 0.79 adjusted years younger than those with T3 cancers (p=0.06). There was no significant difference in the mean adjusted age of patients with stage IA versus stage IB cancers. Conclusions These results are consistent with the hypothesis that once pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas become detectable clinically progression from low-stage to advanced-stage disease is rapid.
Mining Opinion in Online Messages

The number of messages that can be mined from online entries increases as the number of online application users increases. In Malaysia, online messages are written in mixed languages known as ‘Bahasa Rojak’. Therefore, mining opinion using natural language processing activities is difficult. This study introduces a Malay Mixed Text Normalization Approach (MyTNA) and a feature selection technique based on Immune Network System (FS-INS) in the opinion mining process using machine learning approach. The purpose of MyTNA is to normalize noisy texts in online messages. In addition, FS-INS will automatically select relevant features for the opinion mining process. Several experiments involving 1000 positive movies feedback and 1000 negative movies feedback have been conducted. The results show that accuracy values of opinion mining using Naive Bayes (NB), k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) and Sequential Minimal Optimization (SMO) increase after the introduction of MyTNA and FS-INS.
Multi-Modal Data Fusion for Person Authentication using SVM

In the context of multi-modal person authentication, a set of experts (face recognizer, speaker recognizer, etc. ) give their opinion about the identity of an individual. The opinions of the experts can be combined to form a final decision (rejecting or accepting the claim). We show that the final decision is a binary classification problem and propose to solve it by a Support Vector Machine (SVM). We compare our approach with other proposed methods for an identical verification task and show that it leads to considerably higher performance.
Dosing of daptomycin in intensive care unit patients with acute kidney injury undergoing extended dialysis--a pharmacokinetic study.

BACKGROUND Daptomycin is a new intravenous cyclic lipopeptide antibiotic, licensed for the treatment of complicated skin and soft tissue infections caused by Gram-positive organisms including both susceptible and resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus and for the treatment of various infections due to susceptible organisms, including serious and life-threatening Gram-positive infections, vancomycin-resistant enterococcal infections and right-sided endocarditis with associated bacteremia. Currently, no dosing recommendations exist for this drug for patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) undergoing renal replacement therapy. The aim of this study was to evaluate pharmacokinetics of daptomycin in critically ill patients with AKI undergoing extended dialysis (ED), a frequently used mean of renal replacement therapies in intensive care units (ICUs) around the world. Patients and methods. A prospective, single-dose pharmacokinetic study was performed in the medical and surgical ICUs of a tertiary care center. The aim was to investigate critically ill patients with anuric AKI being treated with ED and receiving daptomycin (n = 10). Daptomycin (6 mg/kg) was administered 8 h before ED was started. RESULTS Key pharmacokinetic parameters like half-life in critically ill patients treated with ED were comparable to healthy controls. The dialyser clearance for daptomycin was 63 +/- 9 ml/min. Based on the amount of the drug recovered from the collected spent dialysate, the mean fraction of the drug removed by one dialysis treatment was 23.3%. CONCLUSION Our data suggest that patients treated with ED using a high-flux dialyzer (polysulphone, 1.3 m(2); blood and dialysate flow, 160 ml/min; ED time, 480 min) and employing current dosing regimen, 6 mg/kg daptomycin every 48 h, run the risk of becoming significantly under dosed if one adheres to a twice daily dosing schedule that is recommended for patients on maintenance haemodialysis. Our data suggest that a daily dose of 6 mg/kg daptomycin is necessary in this special patient population to avoid under dosing, which may have detrimental effects in critically ill patients suffering from life-threatening infections.
Daily Dysfunction of Autonomic Regulation Based on Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring in Patients with Neurally Mediated Reflex Syncope

The onset of neurally mediated reflex syncope (NMRS) is associated with dysfunction of the autonomic regulatory system. Yet relatively little is known about the daily conditions of the autonomic regulation system in patients with NMRS. This study elucidated characteristics of daily autonomic function using ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) and evaluated the utility of ABPM for NMRS diagnosis.
A quality of service architecture that combines resource reservation and application adaptation

Reservation and adaptation are two well-known and effective techniques for enhancing the end-to-end performance of network applications. However, both techniques also have limitations, particularly when dealing with high-bandwidth, dynamic flows: fixed-capability reservations tend to be wasteful of resources and hinder graceful degradation in the face of congestion, while adaptive techniques fail when congestion becomes excessive. We propose an approach to quality of service (QoS) that overcomes these difficulties by combining features of reservations and adaptation. In this approach, a combination of online control interfaces for resource management, a sensor permitting online monitoring, and decision procedures embedded in resources enable a rich variety of dynamic feedback interactions between applications and resources. We describe a QoS architecture, GARA, that has been extended to support these mechanisms, and use three examples of application-level adaptive strategies to show how this framework can permit applications to adapt both their resource requests and behavior in response to online sensor information.
Groupwise Non-rigid Image Alignment - Results of a Multiscale Iterative Best Edge Algorithm

In this paper we present an algorithm for groupwise image alignment using an iterative best edge point algorithm. Neighbouring image edge points are matched for similarity in a two directional fashion. The matches found are used to drive a regularised warp of the images into alignment. The algorithm works from low to high resolution, with the matches calculated across the set first at low resolution and towards progressively finer scales. The regularisation decreases across iterations, and the search area remains constant, so covers larger effective area in the low resolution images. We also extend the method to 3D surfaces by combining the 2D image search with a 3D ICP algorithm. The results show that this gives a very efficient algorithm that can align many different sets of 2D images and 3D surfaces.
Thinking Clearly about Performance

When I joined Oracle Corporation in 1989, performance was difficult. Only a few people claimed they could do it very well, and those people commanded high consulting rates. When circumstances thrust me into the "Oracle tuning" arena, I was quite unprepared. Recently, I’ve been introduced to the world of "MySQL tuning," and the situation seems very similar to what I saw in Oracle more than 20 years ago.
Identification of a Non-canonical Tyrosine-based Endocytic Motif in an Ionotropic Receptor* 210

Rapid modulation of the surface number of certain ionotropic receptors is achieved by altering the relative rates of insertion and internalization. These receptors are internalized by a clathrin-mediated pathway; however, a motif that is necessary for endocytosis of ionotropic receptors has not yet been identified. Here, we identified a motif that is required for constitutive and agonist-regulated internalization of the ionotropic P2X4 receptor. Three amino acids in the C terminus of P2X4 (Tyr378, Gly381, and Leu382) compose a non-canonical tyrosine-based sorting signal of the form YXXGL. We found that P2X4 protein was present in clathrin-coated vesicles isolated from rat brain and that a glutathioneS-transferase fusion of the P2X4 C terminus pulled down the adaptor protein-2 complex from brain extract. Mutation of either the tyrosine-binding pocket of the μ2 subunit of adaptor protein-2 or the YXXGL motif in the receptor C terminus caused a decrease in receptor internalization and a dramatic increase in the surface expression of P2X4 receptors. The YXXGL motif represents a non-canonical tyrosine-based sorting signal that is necessary for efficient endocytosis of the P2X4 receptor. Similar motifs are present in other receptors and may be important for the control of their functional expression.
Handover management for mobile nodes in IPv6 networks

We analyze IPv6 handover over wireless LAN. Mobile IPv6 is designed to manage mobile nodes' movements between wireless IPv6 networks. Nevertheless, the active communications of a mobile node are interrupted until the handover completes. Therefore, several extensions to Mobile IPv6 have been proposed to reduce the handover latency and the number of lost packets. We describe two of them, hierarchical Mobile IPv6, which manages local movements into a domain, and fast handover protocol, which allows the use of layer 2 triggers to anticipate the handover. We expose the specific handover algorithms proposed by all these methods. We also evaluate the handover latency over IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN. We compare the layer 2 and layer 3 handover latency in the Mobile IPv6 case in order to show the saving of time expected by using anticipation. We conclude by showing how to adapt the IEEE 802.11b control frames to set up such anticipation.
Effect of route of administration on the efficacy and pharmacokinetics of an experimental formulation of the amino-acetonitrile derivative monepantel in sheep

The effect of the route of administration (oral, intraruminal and intra-abomasal) on the efficacy and pharmacokinetics of the new anthelmintic monepantel in sheep was investigated. The target nematodes were fourth-stage Haemonchus contortus, Teladorsagia circumcincta, Trichostrongylus colubriformis and Cooperia curticei. A clear difference in efficacy was identified between the routes of administration, although the difference did not consistently reach statistical significance; oral treatment was most effective, followed by intraruminal and then intra-abomasal administration. The same pattern was observed in the pharmacokinetic analysis, with lambs treated orally having more favourable exposure to monepantel and its sulfone metabolite (albeit in all but one instance not significantly different) than the lambs treated by the other routes of administration, which were very similar for most parameters.