Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanisms Controlling Arsenic Uptake in Rice Grown in Mining Impacted Regions in South China

Foods produced on soils impacted by Pb-Zn mining activities are a potential health risk due to plant uptake of the arsenic (As) associated with such mining. A field survey was undertaken in two Pb-Zn mining-impacted paddy fields in Guangdong Province, China to assess As accumulation and translocation, as well as other factors influencing As in twelve commonly grown rice cultivars. The results showed that grain As concentrations in all the surveyed rice failed national food standards, irrespective of As speciation. Among the 12 rice cultivars, “SY-89” and “DY-162” had the least As in rice grain. No significant difference for As concentration in grain was observed between the rice grown in the two areas that differed significantly for soil As levels, suggesting that the amount of As contamination in the soil is not necessarily the overriding factor controlling the As content in the rice grain. The iron and manganese plaque on the root surface curtailed As accumulation in rice roots. Based on our results, the accumulation of As within rice plants was strongly associated with such soil properties such as silicon, phosphorus, organic matter, pH, and clay content. Understanding the factors and mechanisms controlling As uptake is important to develop mitigation measures that can reduce the amount of As accumulated in rice grains produced on contaminated soils.
XcelLog: a deductive spreadsheet system

Abstract The promise of rule-based computing was to allow end-users to create, modify, and maintain applications without the need to engage programmers. But experience has shown that rule sets often interact in subtle ways, making them difficult to understand and reason about. This has impeded the widespread adoption of rule-based computing. This paper describes the design and implementation of XcelLog, a user-centered deductive spreadsheet system, to empower non-programmers to specify and manipulate rule-based systems. The driving idea underlying the system is to treat sets as the fundamental data type and rules as specifying relationships among sets, and use the spreadsheet metaphor to create and view the materialized sets. The fundamental feature that makes XcelLog suitable for non-programmers is that the user mainly sees the effect of the rules; when rules or basic facts change, the user sees the impact of the change immediately. This enables the user to gain confidence in the rules and their modification, and also experiment with what-if scenarios without any programming. Preliminary experience with using XcelLog indicates that it is indeed feasible to put the power of deductive spreadsheets for doing rule-based computing into the hands of end-users and do so without the requirement of programming or the constraints of canned application packages.
Adaptive type-2 fuzzy tracking control of wheeled mobile robots

This paper mainly confers the development of tracking controller design for wheeled mobile robots with plant uncertainties and external disturbances. This paper proposes a unified and systematic procedure to design adaptive fuzzy tracking controllers for such system. At first an adaptive fuzzy tracking controller (AFTC) is designed for the nonholonomic constrained wheeled mobile robots without considering the model of DC motors. Furthermore, an AFTC and an adaptive type-2 fuzzy tracking controller (AT2FTC) are presented for wheeled mobile robots with the model of DC motors, where the backstepping techniques are adopted. The stability of closed-loop system and the convergence of the proposed tracking controllers are proved by using the Lyapunov and uniformly ultimately bounded stability theories. Finally, several simulation results of adaptive fuzzy tracking and adaptive type-2 fuzzy tracking controlled wheeled mobile robots are executed, where the AT2FTC provides the best tracking performance.
Off-pump coronary surgery in a patient with multiple sclerosis

Surgery in patients with multiple sclerosis, the most common autoimmune demyelinating disorder of the central nervous system, represents a challenge for surgeons and anesthesiologists because of the reported risk of relapse of the neurologic symptoms in the perioperative period. In this report, we describe the management of a patient with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis and critical coronary artery disease, who underwent an uneventful off-pump coronary artery revascularization. The issues pertaining to the performance of coronary surgery revascularization on patients with multiple sclerosis are discussed.
Tax Effects on the Value of Incentive Stock Options (ISOs) and the Decision to Go Public

The incentive stock options (ISOs) are similar to the regular stock call options. However, when one considers various taxing laws regarding the ISO stocks, the ISOs have unique features differentiated from the regular stock call options. In general, no income from ISOs is realized, for tax purposes, either upon the grant or exercise of the ISOs, until the ISO stock is actually sold. This poses an interesting question to executives with ISOs about when the firm should go public. In fact, a significant wealth can accrue to executives with the ISO stocks, when the firm’s stock becomes publicly traded. Therefore, any changes in the tax law may affect the financial value of ISOs and also the firm’s decision to go public. The present paper examines the valuation process of the ISOs and investigates the economic effects of tax law changes on “going public. ” The result suggests that the 1986 TRA may have delayed the firm’s decision to go public, while the U.S. Administration’s recent individual income tax hike to finance the government deficit may somewhat encourage the firm’s activity to go public.
Cortical and Subcortical Connectivity Changes during Decreasing Levels of Consciousness in Humans: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study using Propofol

While ubiquitous, pharmacological manipulation of consciousness remains poorly defined and incompletely understood (Prys-Roberts, 1987). This retards anesthetic drug development, confounds interpretation of animal studies conducted under anesthesia, and limits the sensitivity of clinical monitors of cerebral function to intact perception. Animal and human studies propose a functional “switch” at the level of the thalamus, with inhibition of thalamo-cortical transmission characterizing loss of consciousness (Alkire et al., 2000; Mashour, 2006). We investigated the effects of propofol, widely used for anesthesia and sedation, on spontaneous and evoked cerebral activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A series of auditory and noxious stimuli was presented to eight healthy volunteers at three behavioral states: awake, “sedated” and “unresponsive. ” Performance in a verbal task and the absence of a response to verbal stimulation, rather than propofol concentrations, were used to define these states clinically. Analysis of stimulus-related blood oxygenation level-dependent signal changes identified reductions in cortical and subcortical responses to auditory and noxious stimuli in sedated and unresponsive states. A specific reduction in activity within the putamen was noted and further investigated with functional connectivity analysis. Progressive failure to perceive or respond to auditory or noxious stimuli was associated with a reduction in the functional connectivity between the putamen and other brain regions, while thalamo-cortical connectivity was relatively preserved. This result has not been previously described and suggests that disruption of subcortical thalamo-regulatory systems may occur before, or even precipitate, failure of thalamo-cortical transmission with the induction of unconsciousness.
Cytokeratin 15 Marks Basal Epithelia in Developing Ureters and Is Upregulated in a Subset of Urothelial Cell Carcinomas

The mammalian ureter contains a water-tight epithelium surrounded by smooth muscle. Key molecules have been defined which regulate ureteric bud initiation and drive the differentiation of ureteric mesenchyme into peristaltic smooth muscle. Less is known about mechanisms underlying the developmental patterning of the multilayered epithelium characterising the mature ureter. In skin, which also contains a multilayered epithelium, cytokeratin 15 (CK15), an acidic intermediate filament protein, marks cells whose progeny contribute to epidermal regeneration following wounding. Moreover, CK15+ precursor cells in skin can give rise to basal cell carcinomas. In the current study, using transcriptome microarrays of embryonic wild type mouse ureters, Krt15, coding for CK15, was detected. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction analyses confirmed the initial finding and demonstrated that Krt15 levels increased during the fetal period when the ureteric epithelium becomes multilayered. CK15 protein was undetectable in the ureteric bud, the rudiment from which the ureter grows. Nevertheless, later in fetal development, CK15 was immunodetected in a subset of basal urothelial cells in the ureteric stalk. Superficial epithelial cells, including those positive for the differentiation marker uroplakin III, were CK15-. Transformation-related protein 63 (P63) has been implicated in epithelial differentiation in murine fetal urinary bladders. In wild type fetal ureters, CK15+ cells were positive for P63, and p63 homozygous null mutant ureters lacked CK15+ cells. In these mutant ureters, sections of the urothelium were monolayered versus the uniform multilayering found in wild type littermates. Human urothelial cell carcinomas account for considerable morbidity and mortality. CK15 was upregulated in a subset of invasive ureteric and urinary bladder cancers. Thus, in ureter development, the absence of CK15 is associated with a structurally simplified urothelium whereas, postnatally, increased CK15 levels feature in malignant urothelial overgrowth. CK15 may be a novel marker for urinary tract epithelial precursor cells.
DIstribution Of Multi-view Entertainment using content aware DElivery Systems DIOMEDES

In this paper, we propose a novel solution for the adaptive streaming of 3-D representations in the form of Multiview video by utilizing P2P overlay networks to assist the media delivery and minimize the bandwidth requirement at the server side. Adaptation to diverse network conditions is performed regarding the features of human perception to maximize the perceived 3D. We have performed subjective tests to characterize these features and determine the best adaptation method to achieve the highest possible perceived quality. Moreover, we provide novel method for mapping from scalable video elementary stream to torrent-like data chunks for adaptive video streaming and provide an optimized windowing mechanism that ensures timely delivery of the content over. The paper also describes the techniques generating scalable video chunks and methods for determining system parameters such as chunk size and window length.
The Compliance Problem in the European Union. EIPAScope 2006(1):pp. 12-18

The European Union has an implementation “deficit”. The measures adopted by the EU are not always applied – or are not applied correctly – by all Member States. This is a serious problem. If a culture of compliance is to be fostered in the EU, Member States would need to learn from the experience of those Member States that appear to be more successful at complying with EU rules. At the same time they should learn about the “typical” mistakes made by Member States so as to avoid them. The Commission is naturally placed to identify both “good” and “bad” practices and promote “best” practices.
Orbital evolution with white‐dwarf kicks

Recent observations of white dwarfs in globular clusters indicate that these stars may get a velocity kick during their time as giants. This velocity kick could originate naturally if the mass loss while on the asymptotic giant branch is slightly asymmetric. If white dwarfs get a kick comparable to the orbital velocity of the binary, the initial Runge-Lenz vector (eccentricity vector) of the orbit is damped to be replaced by a component pointing toward the cross-product of the initial angular momentum and the force. The final eccentricity may be of the order of unity and if the kick is sufficiently large, the system may be disrupted. These results may have important ramifications for the evolution of binary stars and planetary systems.
Joint resource allocation and power control for uplink multi-cell networks

In current wireless cellular networks, interference has become the major obstacle to high spectral efficiency because of universal frequency reuse. Base station cooperation, also referred to as coordinated multi-point processing or transmission(CoMP), has emerged to mitigate it by estimating and avoiding interference from adjacent base stations(BSs). Through analyzing the scenario of CoMP, we formulate the scheduling problem as maximizing the weighted sum-rate considering both throughput and fairness. An iterative algorithm jointly handles resource allocation and power control is proposed to solve the problem. To reduce the complexity and accelerate convergence, three concepts, namely neighboring BS set, user filter and BS filter are introduced. Moreover, the performance gain and computational efficiency of our proposed algorithm are validated by system-level simulation.
Computational intelligence as an emerging paradigm of software engineering

Software Engineering is inherently knowledge intensive. Software processes and products are human centered. The technology of Computational Intelligence (CI) intensively exploits various mechanisms of interaction with humans and processes domain knowledge with intent of building intelligent systems. As commonly perceived, CI dwells on three highly synergistic technologies of neural networks, fuzzy sets (or granular computing, in general) and evolutionary optimization. As the software complexity grows and the diversity of software systems skyrocket, it becomes apparent that there is a genuine need for a solid, efficient, designer-oriented vehicle to support software analysis, design, and implementation at various levels. The research agenda makes CI a highly compatible and appealing vehicle to address the needs of knowledge rich environment of Software Engineering. The objective of this study is to identify and discuss synergistic links emerging between Software Engineering and Computational Intelligence. We show how CI --- based models contribute to the methodology of constructing models of software processes and products. Several selected examples (including software cost estimation, quality, and software measures) are included.
Will the swine strain crowd out the seasonal influenza strain

We use spatial and non spatial models to argue that competition alone may explain why two influenza strains do not usually coexist. The more virulent strain is likely to crowd out the less virulent one. This can be seen as a consequence of the Exclusion Principle of Ecology. We exhibit, however, a spatial model for which coexistence is possible.
2 Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction

Aaron Sloman provided useful suggestions. Emotion is a fundamental component of being human. Joy, hate, anger, and pride, among the plethora of other emotions, motivate action and add meaning and richness to virtually all human experience. Traditionally, human-computer interaction has been viewed as the " ultimate " exception: Users must discard their emotional selves to work efficiently and rationality with computers, the quintessentially unemotional artifact. Emotion seemed at best marginally relevant to human-computer interaction―and at worst oxymoronic. Recent research in psychology and technology suggests a very different view of the relationship between humans, computers, and emotion. After a long period of dormancy and confusion, there has been an explosion of research on the psychology of emotion (Gross, 1999). Emotion is no longer seen as limited to the occasional outburst of fury when a computer crashes inexplicably, excitement when a videogame character leaps past an obstacle, or frustration at an incomprehensible error message. It is now understood that a wide range of emotions plays a critical role in every computer-related, goal-directed activity, from developing a 3-D CAD model and running calculations on a spreadsheet, to searching the Web and sending an email, to making an online purchase and playing solitaire. Indeed, many psychologists now argue that it is impossible for a person to have a thought or perform an action without engaging, at least unconsciously, his or her emotional systems (Picard, 1997b). The literature on emotions and computers has also grown dramatically in the past few years, driven primarily by advances in technology. Inexpensive and effective technologies that enable computers to assess the physiological correlates of emotion, combined with dramatic improvements in the speed and quality of signal processing, now allow even personal computers to make judgments about the user's emotional state in real time (Picard, 1997a). Multi-modal interfaces that include voices, faces, and bodies can now manifest a much wider and more nuanced range of emotions than was possible in purely textual interfaces Churchill, 2000). Indeed, any interface that ignores a user's emotional state or fails to manifest the appropriate emotion can dramatically impede performance and risks being perceived as cold, socially inept, untrustworthy, and incompetent. This chapter reviews the psychology and technology of emotion, with an eye toward identifying those discoveries and concepts that are most relevant to the design and assessment of interactive systems. The goal is to provide the reader with a more critical understanding of the …
Advancing numerical methods for viscosity solutions and applications (11w5086)

Viscosity solutions are a well established analytical tool to treat highly nonlinear Partial Differential Equations. Following the emergence of an analytical theory, a number of numerical strategies have been studied, the interest in this field being both the development of efficient schemes and their use in real-world applications of the theory. The purpose of this workshop was precisely to collect together viscosity solution experts from applied mathematics, analysis and numerical methods as well as scientists and engineers researching related applications, so as to exchange and integrate ideas from these various fields. The workshop has been co-sponsored by the research project and training network SADCO (see the homepage at http://itn-sadco.inria.fr/), which has provided travel funds for some participants, mainly doctoral and postdoc students. A further co-sponsorship has been provided by IMACS, who has agreed to publish a selection of papers from the workshop as a special issue of the journal Applied Numerical Mathematics. The workshop has tried to give a reasonably complete and self-contained panorama of the current lines of research, also by means of some tutorial sessions, devoted to relevant recent advances in the field and especially directed to the younger portion of the audience.
A Computational Expression of Initial Binary Feet and Surface Ternary Feet in Metrical Theory

Under the strict binary foot parsing (Kager 1993), stray elements may occur between bimoraic feet. The stray element may be associated to the preceding foot or following foot at surface level. Stray element adjunction is the mechanism for achieving surface exhaustivity. Each language has its own unique mecbanism of stray element adjunction in order to achieve surface exhaustivity. In Japanese loanwords, the strict binary initial foot parsing creates stray moras. Inaba's (1996) phonetic experiment shows that the word-medial stray moras associate to preceding feet, and provides evidence for the initial unaccented mora as extrametrical. Since the theoretical points I advance are deeply embedded in other languages, I present a set of possible parameters. Based on the set of parameters, I create a computer program which derives the surface foot structures of input loanwords in Japanese, Fijian, and Ponapean.
Heteromeric Canonical Transient Receptor Potential 1 and 4 Channels Play a Critical Role in Epileptiform Burst Firing and Seizure-Induced Neurodegeneration

Canonical transient receptor potential channels (TRPCs) are receptor-operated cation channels that are activated in response to phospholipase C signaling. Although TRPC1 is ubiquitously expressed in the brain, TRPC4 expression is the most restrictive, with the highest expression level limited to the lateral septum. The subunit composition of neuronal TRPC channels remains uncertain because of conflicting data from recombinant expression systems. Here we report that the large depolarizing plateau potential that underlies the epileptiform burst firing induced by metabotropic glutamate receptor agonists in lateral septal neurons was completely abolished in TRPC1/4 double-knockout mice, and was abolished in 74% of lateral septal neurons in TRPC1 knockout mice. Furthermore, neuronal cell death in the lateral septum and the cornu ammonis 1 region of hippocampus after pilocarpine-induced severe seizures was significantly ameliorated in TRPC1/4 double-knockout mice. Our data suggest that both TRPC1 and TRPC4 are essential for an intrinsic membrane conductance mediating the plateau potential in lateral septal neurons, possibly as heteromeric channels. Moreover, excitotoxic neuronal cell death, an underlying process for many neurological diseases, is not mediated merely by ionotropic glutamate receptors but also by heteromeric TRPC channels activated by metabotropic glutamate receptors. TRPC channels could be an unsuspected but critical molecular target for clinical intervention for excitotoxicity.
Towards Improving Top-N Recommendation by Generalization of SLIM

Sparse Linear Methods (SLIM) are state-of-the-art recommendation approaches based on matrix factorization, which rely on a regularized ! 1-norm and ! 2-norm optimization –an alternative optimization problem to the traditional Frobenious norm. Although they have shown outstanding performance in Top-N recommendation, existent works have not yet analyzed some inherent assumptions that can have an important effect on the performance of these algorithms. In this paper, we attempt to improve the performance of SLIM by proposing a generalized formulation of the aforementioned assumptions. Instead of directly learning a sparse representation of the user-item matrix, we (i) learn the latent factors’ matrix of the users and the items via a traditional matrix factorization approach, and then (ii) reconstruct the latent user or item matrix via prototypes which are learned using sparse coding, an alternative SLIM commonly used in the image processing domain. The results show that by tuning the parameters of our generalized model we are able to outperform SLIM in several Top-N recommendation experiments conducted on two different datasets, using both nDCG and nDCG@10 as evaluation metrics. These preliminary results, although not conclusive, indicate a promising line of research to improve the performance of SLIM recommendation.