Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robo Topobo: improvisational performance with robotic toys

Introduction Over the past twenty years, the types of toys that young children play with have undergone fundamental changes. While construction sets like blocks and LEGOs were once popular, now video games are the norm. Video games introduce elements of interactive, competitive, and dynamic play. These games often provide the player with a character on screen, allowing children a chance at performance, competition and expression not possible with constructive assembly toys. However, children can be more inventive with constructive assembly kits, creating their own physical objects that evoke a sense of ownership and pride. Work in digital manipulatives [Resnick et al. 1998] and tangible interfaces [Ishii and Ullmer, 1997] has sought to turn children into designers of both physical form and digital behavior, leveraging the immediacy of physical modeling and the dynamics of embedded computer systems. While such systems can make complex ideas salient for children, most of them focus on engineering and design processes. Robo Topobo (Figure 1) introduces improvisational performance, typical of interactive systems like video games, as an approach to motivate children to engage in hands-on learning. 2 Approach " Robo " is a controller that allows users to save, replay, and modulate playback of up to four kinetic recordings created with Topobo, a modular robotic constructive assembly system. Topobo is composed of Passive components and Active (robotic) components with kinetic memory – the ability to record and playback physical motion. A child can construct a Topobo creation and physically program it to perform a motion repeatedly. Just as children learn about static structures by playing with blocks, they can learn about dynamic systems playing with Topobo [Raffl e et al. 2004]. With Robo, children can save up to four kinetic Topobo recordings and spontaneously playback one of them with the touch of a button. Children can play recordings backwards, and can alter the speed and size of the Actives' motions using two joysticks on the controller. While Topobo alone offers an interactive way for children to construct and animate their own dynamic creations, Robo adds an aspect of performance and improvisation. Having the ability to alter the motion of the creation remotely is very similar to controlling a character in a video game. This control lends itself to interaction between multiple children in story-telling and competitive endeavors. A child fi rst builds a creation with Topobo. To record a motion, she presses a button and moves …
A Utility for Estimating the Relative Contributions of Wiki Authors

Wikis were originally designed to hide the association between a wiki page and the authors who have produced it. However, there is evidence suggesting that corporate wiki users require an attribution mechanism that would automatically record (and present) the relative contribution of each author. In this paper we introduce an algorithm for assessing the contributions of wiki authors that is based on the notion of sentence ownership. The results of an empirical evaluation comparing the algorithm’s output to manual evaluations reveal the type of contributions captured by our algorithm. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Ill-conditioning and bandwidth expansion in linear prediction of speech

This paper examines schemes that modify linear prediction (LP) analysis for speech signals. First, techniques which improve the conditioning of the LP equations are examined. White noise compensation for the correlations is justified from the point of view of reducing the range of values which the predictor coefficients take on. The efficacy of the procedure is measured over a large speech database. Various techniques for bandwidth expansion of the LP spectral peaks are also examined. These include lag windowing of the correlation, windowing of the predictor coefficients, and modification of the line spectral frequencies. New formulas for the bandwidth expansion factor are given.
Correlation of 99mTc-sestamibi SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging with absolute coronary flow reserve by a new noninvasive Doppler method in patients with stenoses of the left anterior descending coronary artery. A preliminary report.

BACKGROUND Myocardial perfusion assessed by a pharmacological scintigraphic test is a time-honored method to assess the functional significance of a coronary stenosis. There is no study that has compared coronary flow reserve assessed by adenosine/base contrast-enhanced transthoracic echo Doppler in harmonic mode with myocardial perfusion by adenosine/base 99mTc-sestamibi SPECT. The aim of this study was to compare the absolute coronary flow reserve measured in the left anterior descending coronary artery using a new noninvasive method (transthoracic harmonic Doppler) with adenosine/base 99mTc-sestamibi SPECT. METHODS Twenty-two patients scheduled for coronary angiography underwent evaluation of basal and hyperemic flow in the left anterior descending coronary artery using transthoracic harmonic Doppler. Simultaneously (during the same adenosine infusion) the patients were injected with 99mTc-sestamibi (10 mCi). Baseline scintigraphic study was obtained 4 hours later (99mTc-sestamibi, 30 mCi). RESULTS Angiography showed in the left anterior descending coronary artery no or not significant stenosis (< 40% lumen narrowing) in 14 patients (Group I) and a severe stenosis (> 75%) in the remaining 8 patients (Group II). Coronary flow reserve dichotomized as normal (> or = 2.0) or abnormal (< 2.0) gave concordant results with SPECT. Overall, in fact, 18 studies (81%) were in agreement (k = 0.48, p = 0.02). In addition, coronary flow reserve proved to be a useful complementary tool to SPECT in patients with severe multivessel disease (and global hypoperfusion; 2 cases) and left bundle branch block (1 case). CONCLUSIONS Coronary flow reserve assessed by transthoracic harmonic Doppler gives concordant results with SPECT perfusion scintigraphy. The diagnostic potential of SPECT may be increased by the noninvasive assessment of coronary flow reserve in the left anterior descending coronary artery.
Decoding the Interactions Regulating the Active State Mechanics of Eukaryotic Protein Kinases

Eukaryotic protein kinases regulate most cellular functions by phosphorylating targeted protein substrates through a highly conserved catalytic core. In the active state, the catalytic core oscillates between open, intermediate, and closed conformations. Currently, the intramolecular interactions that regulate the active state mechanics are not well understood. Here, using cAMP-dependent protein kinase as a representative model coupled with biochemical, biophysical, and computational techniques, we define a set of highly conserved electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions working harmoniously to regulate these mechanics. These include the previously identified salt bridge between a lysine from the β3-strand and a glutamate from the αC-helix as well as an electrostatic interaction between the phosphorylated activation loop and αC-helix and an ensemble of hydrophobic residues of the Regulatory spine and Shell. Moreover, for over three decades it was thought that the highly conserved β3-lysine was essential for phosphoryl transfer, but our findings show that the β3-lysine is not required for phosphoryl transfer but is essential for the active state mechanics.
Argument-Head Distance and Processing Complexity: Explaining both Locality and Antilocality Effects

Although proximity between arguments and verbs (locality) is a relatively robust determinant of sentence-processing difficulty (Hawkins 1998, 2001, Gibson 2000), increasing argument-verb distance can also facilitate processing (Konieczny 2000). We present two self-paced reading (SPR) experiments involving Hindi that provide further evidence of antilocality, and a third SPR experiment which suggests that similarity-based interference can attenuate this distance-based facilitation. A unified explanation of interference, locality, and antilocality effects is proposed via an independently motivated theory of activation decay and retrieval interference (Anderson et al. 2004).
Multiscale Inference for High-Frequency Data

This paper proposes a novel multiscale estimator for the integrated volatility of an Ito process, in the presence of market microstructure noise (observation error). The multiscale structure of the observed process is represented frequency-by-frequency and the concept of the multiscale ratio is introduced to quantify the bias in the realized integrated volatility due to the observation error. The multiscale ratio is estimated from a single sample path, and a frequency-by-frequency bias correction procedure is proposed, which simultaneously reduces variance. We extend the method to include correlated observation errors and provide the implied time domain form of the estimation procedure. The new method is implemented to estimate the integrated volatility for the Heston and other models, and the improved performance of our method over existing methods is illustrated by simulation studies.
Leveraging fairness and reactance theories to deter reactive computer abuse following enhanced organisational information security policies: an empirical study of the influence of counterfactual reasoning and organisational trust

Research shows that organisational efforts to protect their information assets from employee security threats do not always reach their full potential and may actually encourage the behaviours they attempt to thwart, such as reactive computer abuse (CA). To better understand this dilemma, we use fairness theory (FT) and reactance theory (RT) to explain why employees may blame organisations for and retaliate against enhanced information security policies (ISPs). We tested our model with 553 working professionals and found support for most of it. Our results show that organisational trust can decrease reactive CA. FT suggests that explanation adequacy (EA) is an important factor that builds trust after an event. Our results also suggest that trust both fully mediates the relationship between EA and CA and partially mediates the relationship between perceived freedom restrictions related to enhanced ISPs and reactive CA. EA also had a strong negative relationship with freedom restrictions. Moreover, organisational security education, training and awareness (SETA) initiatives decreased the perceptions of external control and freedom restrictions and increased EA, and advance notification of changes increased EA. We also included 14 control variables and rival explanations to determine with more confidence what drove reactive CA in our context. Notably, the deterrence theory (DT)‐based constructs of sanction severity, certainty and celerity had no significant influence on reactive CA. We provide support for the importance of respectful communication efforts and SETA programmes, coupled with maximising employee rights and promoting trust and fairness to decrease reactive CA. These efforts can protect organisations from falling victim to their own organisational security efforts.
Modeling Stochastic Correlated Failures and their Effects on Network Reliability

The physical infrastructure of communication networks is vulnerable to spatially correlated failures arising from various physical stresses such as natural disasters (earthquakes and hurricanes) as well as malicious coordinated attacks using weapons of mass destruction. Some disaster events such as earthquakes and terrorist attacks may occur in more than one location in a short period of time. Hence multiple sets of correlated link failures may occur if more events occurred before the previous set of failed links were repaired. Here, the statistical properties of induced-failure patterns depend upon the spatial interaction among stress centers (e.g., interaction among earthquake or attack locations). This paper presents a stochastic model, based on spatial point processes, for representing stress centers in geographical plane in order to facilitate the modeling of spatially inhomogeneous and correlated link failures in communication networks. This model is then used to further generate scenarios with inhibition or clustering between stress centers, which enables detailed assessment of vulnerabilities of the network to the level of inhomogeneity and spatial correlation in the stress-event centers. Detailed simulation results are presented to compare network reliability for various scenarios of link failures and to find geographically vulnerable areas of a network as well as worst-case scenarios of stress-events. Overall, this effort will provide some critical knowledge and simulation capability for other focus areas of research in network reliability and survivability.
Persistent Recovery of Normal Left Ventricular Function and Dimension in Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy During Long‐Term Follow‐up: Does Real Healing Exist?

Background An important number of patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy have dramatically improved left ventricular function with optimal treatment; however, little is known about the evolution and long‐term outcome of this subgroup, which shows apparent healing. This study assesses whether real healing actually exists in dilated cardiomyopathy . Methods and Results Persistent apparent healing was evaluated among 408 patients with dilated cardiomyopathy receiving tailored medical treatment and followed over the very long‐term. Persistent apparent healing was defined as left ventricular ejection fraction ≥50% and indexed left ventricular end‐diastolic diameter ≤33 mm/m2 at both mid‐term (19±4 months) and long‐term (103±9 months) follow‐up. At mid‐term, 63 of 408 patients (15%) were apparently healed; 38 (60%; 9% of the whole population) showed persistent apparent healing at long‐term evaluation. No predictors of persistent apparent healing were found. Patients with persistent apparent healing showed better heart transplant–free survival at very long‐term follow‐up (95% versus 71%; P=0.014) compared with nonpersistently normalized patients. Nevertheless, in the very long term, 37% of this subgroup experienced deterioration of left ventricular systolic function, and 5% died or had heart transplantation. Conclusions Persistent long‐term apparent healing was evident in a remarkable proportion of dilated cardiomyopathy patients receiving optimal medical treatment and was associated with stable normalization of main clinical and laboratory features. This condition can be characterized by a decline of left ventricular function over the very long term, highlighting the relevance of serial and individualized follow‐up in all patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, especially considering the absence of predictors for long‐term apparent healing.
A semantic-web-technology-based framework for supporting knowledge-driven digital forensics

The usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) pervades everyday's life. If it is true that ICT contributed to improve the quality of our life, it is also true that new forms of (cyber)crime have emerged in this setting. The diversity and amount of information forensic investigators need to cope with, when tackling a cyber-crime case, call for tools and techniques where knowledge is the main actor. Current approaches leave to the investigator the chore of integrating the diverse sources of evidence relevant for a case thus hindering the automatic generation of reusable knowledge. This paper describes an architecture that lifts the classical phases of a digital forensic investigation to a knowledge-driven setting. We discuss how the usage of languages and technologies originating from the Semantic Web proposal can complement digital forensics tools so that knowledge becomes a first-class citizen. Our architecture enables to perform in an integrated way complex forensic investigations and, as a by-product, build a knowledge base that can be consulted to gain insights from previous cases. Our proposal has been inspired by real-world scenarios emerging in the context of an Italian research project about cyber security.
Meta Learning Algorithms for Credit Card Fraud Detection 1

Due to the rapid advancement of electronic commerce technology, there is a great and dramatic increase in credit card transactions. As credit card becomes the most popular mode of payment for both online as well as regular purchase, cases of fraud associated with it are also rising; to detect credit card frauds in electronic transactions becomes the focus of risk of control of banks. The proposed work in this paper is the combination of five supervised machine learning algorithms, Classification and Regression Tree (CART), Adaboost and Logitboost,Bagging and Dagging are proposed for classification of credit card data. These resulted forms help researchers to detect fraud in credit card. The experimental result shows the performance analysis of different meta-learning algorithms and also compared on the basis of misclassification and correct classification rate. Smaller misclassification reveals that bagging algorithm performs better classification of Credit card fraud detection technique.
Association of the tyrosine kinase LCK with phospholipase C-gamma 1 after stimulation of the T cell antigen receptor

Stimulation of the T cell antigen receptor (TCR) activates a protein tyrosine kinase and leads to the tyrosine phosphorylation of phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C-gamma 1 (PLC gamma 1). The molecular interactions involved in this phosphorylation are not known. After stimulation of the TCR on Jurkat T cells, tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins of 36, 38, 58, and 63 kD coprecipitate with PLC gamma 1. An identical pattern of proteins precipitate with TrpE fusion proteins that contain the Src homology (SH) 2 domains of PLC gamma 1, indicating that these regions of PLC gamma 1 are responsible for binding. TCR stimulation leads to an association between the SH2 domains of PLC gamma 1 and a protein tyrosine kinase, which, by peptide mapping, is identical to p56lck. These studies establish that p56lck associates with PLC gamma 1 as a result of TCR stimulation of Jurkat cells, suggesting that p56lck plays a central role in coupling the TCR to the activation of PLC gamma 1.
Positive regulators of the lineage-specific transcription factor GATA-1 in differentiating erythroid cells

The zinc finger transcription factor GATA-1 is a major regulator of gene expression in erythroid, megakaryocyte, and mast cell lineages. GATA-1 binds to WGATAR consensus motifs in the regulatory regions of virtually all erythroid cell-specific genes. Analyses with cultured cells and cell-free systems have provided strong evidence that GATA-1 is involved in control of globin gene expression during erythroid differentiation. Targeted mutagenesis of the GATA-1 gene in embryonic stem cells has demonstrated its requirement in normal erythroid development. Efficient rescue of the defect requires an intact GATA element in the distal promoter, suggesting autoregulatory control of GATA-1 transcription. To examine whether GATA-1 expression involves additional regulatory factors or is maintained entirely by an autoregulatory loop, we have used a transient heterokaryon system to test the ability of erythroid factors to activate the GATA-1 gene in nonerythroid nuclei. We show here that proerythroblasts and mature erythroid cells contain a diffusible activity (TAG) capable of transcriptional activation of GATA-1 and that this activity decreases during the terminal differentiation of erythroid cells. Nuclei from GATA-1- mutant embryonic stem cells can still be reprogrammed to express their globin genes in erythroid heterokaryons, indicating that de novo induction of GATA-1 is not required for globin gene activation following cell fusion.
Position-Annotated Photographs: A Geotemporal Web

With the advent of digital cameras, photographs are no longer gathering dust, forgotten in old shoeboxes. Instead, they are lying unused in hard disk dircctories and on CDs. The Geotemporal Web system, belonging to the "capture and access" class of ubiquitous computing applications, addresses this phenomenon by automatically converting raw data from the typical vacation trip into a lively Web site. Exploiting the synergies of integrating different consumer-grade information appliances and publicly accessible databases, a GTWeb site presents a trip overview, timelines, maps, and annotated photographs.
Vision under mesopic and scotopic illumination

Evidence has accumulated that rod activation under mesopic and scotopic light levels alters visual perception and performance. Here we review the most recent developments in the measurement of rod and cone contributions to mesopic color perception and temporal processing, with a focus on data measured using a four-primary photostimulator method that independently controls rod and cone excitations. We discuss the findings in the context of rod inputs to the three primary retinogeniculate pathways to understand rod contributions to mesopic vision. Additionally, we present evidence that hue perception is possible under scotopic, pure rod-mediated conditions that involves cortical mechanisms.
Genome-scale phylogenetic analysis finds extensive gene transfer among fungi

Although the role of lateral gene transfer is well recognized in the evolution of bacteria, it is generally assumed that it has had less influence among eukaryotes. To explore this hypothesis, we compare the dynamics of genome evolution in two groups of organisms: cyanobacteria and fungi. Ancestral genomes are inferred in both clades using two types of methods: first, Count, a gene tree unaware method that models gene duplications, gains and losses to explain the observed numbers of genes present in a genome; second, ALE, a more recent gene tree-aware method that reconciles gene trees with a species tree using a model of gene duplication, loss and transfer. We compare their merits and their ability to quantify the role of transfers, and assess the impact of taxonomic sampling on their inferences. We present what we believe is compelling evidence that gene transfer plays a significant role in the evolution of fungi.
Pancreatic Beta Cell Toxicity by Streptozotocin Anomers

D-glucose in the pyranose (ring) form exists as two anomers. The α-anomer is more effective than the β-anomer in promoting insulin secretion, suppressing that of glucagon, and protecting β-cells against alloxan toxicity. Streptozotocin (SZ), a beta cell toxin, is composed of a cytotoxk moiety, 1-methyl 1-nitrosourea, attached to carbon-2 of glucose and exists as either of rwo anomers in the pyranose form. In 24-hour-fasted male rats, predominantly α-or predominantly β-SZ was injected intravenously and plasma glucose levels were obtained 48 hours later. The α-anomer produced significantly greater β-cell necrosis at doses of 30, 35, and 40 mg. / kg. body weight. At higher doses, no differences between the α and βanomers were observed. 3-O-Methyl glucose (3-OMG) protected against both SZ anomers; however, the α-SZ remained more toxic. Larger doses of glucose protected against the lower doses of SZ and, under such conditions, the individual glucose anomers appeared equally potent. Finally, mannitol at comparable molar concentrations was ineffective in protecting against the SZ toxkity. This study suggests that streptozotocin's beta cell toxicity is mediated through recognition by the beta cell. In addition, 3-OMG and, to a lesser but significant extent, glucose were shown to protect against the streptozotocin toxkity, whereas mannitol did not.