Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Guiding and Motivating Students through Open Social Student Modeling: Lessons Learned

Background/Context A large number of educational resources are now made available on the web to support both regular classroom learning and online learning. The abundance of available content has produced at least two problems: how to help students find the most appropriate resources and how to engage them in using and benefiting from these resources. Personalized and social learning have been suggested as potential ways to address these problems. Our work attempts to integrate these directions of research by combining the ideas of adaptive navigation support and open student modeling with the ideas of social comparison and social visualization. We call our approach Open Social Student Modeling (OSSM). Objective/Research Questions First, we review a sequence of our earlier projects focused on Open Social Student Modeling for one kind of learning content and formulate several key design principles that contribute to the success of OSSM. Second, we present our exploration of OSSM in a more challenging context of modeling student progress for two kinds of learning content in parallel. We aim to answer the following research questions: How do we design OSSM interfaces to support many kinds of learning content in parallel? Will current identified design principles (key features) confirm the power of the learning community through OSSM with multiple learning-resource collections? Will the OSSM visualization provide successful personalized guidance within a richer collection of educational resources? Research Design We designed four classroom studies to assess the value of different options for OSSM visualization of one and multiple kinds of learning content in the context of programming-language learning. We examined the comparative success of different design options to distill successful design patterns and other important lessons for the future developers of OSSM for personalized and social e-learning. Findings/Results The results confirmed the motivational impact of personalized social guidance provided by the OSSM system in the target context. The interface encouraged students to explore more topics and motivated them to work ahead of the course schedule. Both strong and weak students worked with the appropriate levels of questions for their readiness, which yielded consistent performance across different levels of complex problems. Additionally, providing more realistic content collection on the navigation-supported OSSM visualizations resulted in uniform performance for the group. Conclusions/Recommendation A sequence of studies of several OSSM interfaces confirmed that a combination of adaptive navigational support, open student modeling, and social visualization in the form of the OSSM interface can reinforce the navigational and motivational values of these approaches. In several contexts, the OSSM interface demonstrated its ability to offer effective guidance in helping students to locate the most relevant content at the right time while increasing student motivation to work with diverse learning content.
Internet of Things for Elderly and Fragile People

This paper discusses the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm in the context of assisted living for elderly and fragile people, in the light of the peculiar requirements of such users, both from a functional and a technological perspective. We stress some aspects that are often disregarded by the technical community, such as technology acceptability and usability, and we describe the framework and the phases of the current co-design approaches that imply the active involvement of the final users in the system design process. Thereby, we identify a series of design practices to merge technical and fragile people's requirements. The discussion is backed up by the description of DOMHO, a prototypal IoT-based AAL system that embodies most of the concepts described in the paper, and that is being deployed and tested in a shelter house for elders, and in an apartment for the co-housing of individuals with disabilities. Finally, we discuss the potential and limits of the current approaches and present some open challenges and future research directions.
Search-based User Interest Modeling with Lifelong Sequential Behavior Data for Click-Through Rate Prediction

Rich user behavior data has been proven to be of great value for click-through rate prediction tasks, especially in industrial applications such as recommender systems and online advertising. Both industry and academy have paid much attention to this topic and propose different approaches to modeling with long sequential user behavior data. Among them, memory network based model MIMN proposed by Alibaba, achieves SOTA with the co-design of both learning algorithm and serving system. MIMN is the first industrial solution that can model sequential user behavior data with length scaling up to 1000. However, MIMN fails to precisely capture user interests given a specific candidate item when the length of user behavior sequence increases further, say, by 10 times or more. This challenge exists widely in previously proposed approaches. In this paper, we tackle this problem by designing a new modeling paradigm, which we name as Search-based Interest Model (SIM). SIM extracts user interests with two cascaded search units: (i) General Search Unit (GSU) acts as a general search from the raw and arbitrary long sequential behavior data, with query information from candidate item, and gets a Sub user Behavior Sequence (SBS) which is relevant to candidate item; (ii) Exact Search Unit (ESU) models the precise relationship between candidate item and SBS. This cascaded search paradigm enables SIM with a better ability to model lifelong sequential behavior data in both scalability and accuracy. Apart from the learning algorithm, we also introduce our hands-on experience on how to implement SIM in large scale industrial systems. Since 2019, SIM has been deployed in the display advertising system in Alibaba, bringing 7.1% CTR and 4.4% RPM lift, which is significant to the business. Serving the main traffic in our real system now, SIM models sequential user behavior data with maximum length reaching up to 54000, pushing SOTA to 54x.
Viral determinants of the variable sensitivity of herpes simplex virus strains to gD-mediated interference

Cells that express glycoprotein D (gD) of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) resist infection by HSV-1 and HSV-2 because of interference with viral penetration. The results presented here show that both HSV-1 and HSV-2 gD can mediate interference and that various HSV-1 and HSV-2 strains differ in sensitivity to this interference. The relative degree of sensitivity was not necessarily dependent on whether the cell expressed the heterologous or homologous form of gD but rather on the properties of the virus. Marker transfer experiments revealed that the allele of gD expressed by the virus was a major determinant of sensitivity to interference. Amino acid substitutions in the most distal part of the gD ectodomain had a major effect, but substitutions solely in the cytoplasmic domain also influenced sensitivity to interference. In addition, evidence was obtained that another viral gene(s) in addition to the one encoding gD can influence sensitivity to interference. The results indicate that HSV-1 and HSV-2 gD share determinants required to mediate interference with infection by HSV of either serotype and that the pathway of HSV entry that is blocked by expression of cell-associated gD can be cleared or bypassed through subtle alterations in virion-associated proteins, particularly gD.
Fibronectin-Degrading Activity of Trypanosoma cruzi Cysteine Proteinase Plays a Role in Host Cell Invasion

ABSTRACT Trypanosoma cruzi, the agent of Chagas disease, binds to diverse extracellular matrix proteins. Such an ability prevails in the parasite forms that circulate in the bloodstream and contributes to host cell invasion. Whether this also applies to the insect-stage metacyclic trypomastigotes, the developmental forms that initiate infection in the mammalian host, is not clear. Using T. cruzi CL strain metacyclic forms, we investigated whether fibronectin bound to the parasites and affected target cell invasion. Fibronectin present in cell culture medium bound to metacyclic forms and was digested by cruzipain, the major T. cruzi cysteine proteinase. G strain, with negligible cruzipain activity, displayed a minimal fibronectin-degrading effect. Binding to fibronectin was mediated by gp82, the metacyclic stage-specific surface molecule implicated in parasite internalization. When exogenous fibronectin was present at concentrations higher than cruzipain can properly digest, or fibronectin expression was stimulated by treatment of epithelial HeLa cells with transforming growth factor beta, the parasite invasion was reduced. Treatment of HeLa cells with purified recombinant cruzipain increased parasite internalization, whereas the treatment of parasites with cysteine proteinase inhibitor had the opposite effect. Metacyclic trypomastigote entry into HeLa cells was not affected by anti-β1 integrin antibody but was inhibited by anti-fibronectin antibody. Overall, our results have indicated that the cysteine proteinase of T. cruzi metacyclic forms, through its fibronectin-degrading activity, is implicated in host cell invasion.
Appariement Robuste de Formes Visuelles Complexes, Application à la Détection d'Objets. (Robust matching of complex visual forms, Application to object detection)

L'augmentation des moyens informatiques associee a l'avenement de methodes de classification performantes tels que l'AdaBoost ou les reseaux de neurones ont permis d'obtenir des systemes de detection d'objets efficaces, mais necessitant l'annotation manuelle de plusieurs milliers d'images exemples. Ce document presente une methode permettant d'obtenir un systeme de detection d'objets capable de fonctionner avec une base d'images exemples de dimension reduite, tout en obtenant les taux de detection de l'etat de l'art en detection de visages. Nous commencons par presenter les diverses methodes utilisees en detection d'objets, et en particulier, les methodes d'apprentissages associees. Puis, nous expliquons un systeme de detection base sur la correlation et fonctionnant avec une base d'exemples de moins d'une centaine d'images. Ce systeme nous a permis de mettre au point une methode d'association de mesures de similarite utilisant des filtres de contours orientes orthogonaux. Les filtres sont obtenus par une methode derivee de la PCA qui permet de calculer des filtres orthogonaux adaptes a la classe d'objets a detecter. Nous montrons alors qu'il est possible de mettre au point un systeme de detection de visages fonctionnel avec tres peu d'exemples. La correlation s'averant le facteur limitant le plus les resultats, nous avons ensuite remplace cette derniere par un Perceptron Multicouche. Nous avons applique les methodes d'associations d'images de contours orientes et montre une nette amelioration des taux de detection en utilisant des bases d'apprentissages de dimension reduite. Finalement, nous mettons en evidence les perspectives et solutions possibles qui nous permettraient de minimiser encore le nombre d'exemples d'apprentissage.
Water-shortage tolerance and recovery after rehydration in the Chihuahuan Desert plant Yucca filifera (Asparagaceae)1

Abstract. We evaluated several mechanisms that enable saplings of Yucca filifera (Chabaud) to endure water shortage. Saplings were exposed to water shortage and subsequent rewatering inside a greenhouse. The response variables were maximum quantum efficiency (Fv/Fm), effective quantum yield of photosystem II (ΦPSII), nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ), electron transport rate (ETR), leaf relative water content, titratable acid (ΔH+), pigment content (chlorophylls a and b, total carotenoids, chlorophyll a+b/carotenoids ratio, and chlorophyll a/ b ratio), antioxidant activity, and proline accumulation. We hypothesized that Y. filifera saplings tolerate water shortage, and that rewatering favors the sapling development. We found that Fv/Fm and ΦPSII values as well as ΔH+ and chlorophyll a/b ratio were strongly affected by water shortage, and their values reverted after rewatering. We also found higher NPQ, antioxidant activity, and proline content during the water-shortage treatment, which might represent mechanisms for preventing photodamage. The high ability of Y. filifera saplings to withstand stress caused by water shortage indicates that it could be a key species for conservation and restoration of degraded arid ecosystems.
Cost-Optimal Energy Management of Hybrid Electric Vehicles Using Fuel Cell/Battery Health-Aware Predictive Control

Energy management is an enabling technology for increasing the economy of fuel cell/battery hybrid electric vehicles. Existing efforts mostly focus on optimization of a certain control objective (e.g., hydrogen consumption), without sufficiently considering the implications for on-board power sources degradation. To address this deficiency, this article proposes a cost-optimal, predictive energy management strategy, with an explicit consciousness of degradation of both fuel cell and battery systems. Specifically, we contribute two main points to the relevant literature, with the purpose of distinguishing our study from existing ones. First, a model predictive control framework, for the first time, is established to minimize the total running cost of a fuel cell/battery hybrid electric bus, inclusive of hydrogen cost and costs caused by fuel cell and battery degradation. The efficacy of this framework is evaluated, accounting for various sizes of prediction horizon and prediction uncertainties. Second, the effects of driving and pricing scenarios on the optimized vehicular economy are explored.
DETERMINATION OF CODA WAVE ATTENUATION CHARACTERISTIC OF THE ARMUTLU PENINSULA AND ITS SURROUNDINGS (MIDDLE MARMARA REGION, TURKEY).

The Armutlu Peninsula, is located in a geologically complex system on the North Anatolian Fault Zone and inside the high populated Mar- mara Region. Due to its location and importance, the Marmara Region has been subject to various studies in the past; now, this study is aimed to determine the local attenuation characteristic of the Armutlu Peninsula. In this study, 75 earthquake data that were recorded between 2013- 2014, were analyzed by 9 seismic stations. The magnitudes (Ml) and the focal depths of the earthquakes vary from 1.5 to 3.3 and 0.9 to 16.9 km, respectively. A single back-scattering model was used for calculation of the coda wave quality factor. The lapse times were determined between 20 and 40 s at intervals of 5 s and they were filtered at central frequencies of 1.5, 3, 6, 9 and 12 Hz band-pass designed filter. Min- imum 5 signal/noise ratio and 0.7 correlation coefficient data used to obtain reliable results. The CODAQ subroutine integrated in the SEISAN software was used for data processing. For each station, low values of the quality factor at 1 Hz (Q o ) and high values of the frequency de- pendent parameter (n) were determined. In the Armutlu Peninsula and its surroundings, Q c =51f 0.91 for 20 s and Q c =112f 0.72 for 40 s window lengths were calculated by using 9 stations. There is a tendency between increasing Q o and decreasing n parameters. Otherwise, for station TRML, located near the geothermal hotspot, these parameters are in direct proportion with each other, as Q c =46f 0.97 for 20 s and Q c =74f 1.06 for 40 s window lengths. These parameter changes are directly connected with the geothermal activity.
Pools of ribosomal proteins in Escherichia coli. Studies on the exchange of proteins between pools and ribosomes.

A labelling technique in vivo has been introduced which allows the tritiation of cell components with high specific activity during growth in rich medium. By this technique the pool size of each protein can be measured directly in the supernatant from centrifugation at 150000 times g. A measurable pool was found for the proteins S1, S2, S10, L1, L4, L7, L8/9, L10, L12, L21, and L25. Experiments on migration of ribosomal proteins from the supernatant to ribosomes (i.e. association) and vice versa (dissociation) demonstrate a remarkable constancy in the composition of the ribosome. There is no significant difference between ribosomes engaged or not engaged in poly-(Phe) synthesis.
A GPU Register File using Static Data Compression

GPUs rely on large register files to unlock thread-level parallelism for high throughput. Unfortunately, large register files are power hungry, making it important to seek for new approaches to improve their utilization. This paper introduces a new register file organization for efficient register-packing of narrow integer and floating-point operands designed to leverage on advances in static analysis. We show that the hardware/software co-designed register file organization yields a performance improvement of up to 79%, and 18.6%, on average, at a modest output-quality degradation.
Comparing transient-fault effects on synchronous and on asynchronous circuits

A methodology to evaluate transient-fault effects on synchronous and asynchronous is presented in this work. It is developed by means of fault-injection simulation campaigns on gate-level circuit implementations. The methodology is able to deal with the particularities of asynchronous circuits. Unlike previous works, it permits to compare the sensitivity of circuits designed by synchronous and asynchronous logics. The resultant metrics allow identifying at high-level abstraction what is the logic that makes the circuit more transient-fault sensitive. As a case study, a crypto-processor in versions synchronous and asynchronous was evaluated.
A modified pitch detection algorithm

Sinusoidal speech coders have been widely studied for low bit rate coding due to their capability of producing high quality speech. However, the estimation error of the sinusoidal model parameters, pitch in particular, would seriously degrade the speech quality. We provide a modified pitch detection algorithm (MPDA). The experimental results show that the proposed method can provide a more accurate and smoother pitch tracking that that of IMBE, and the reconstructed speech sounds more continuous.
Non‐random chromosomal aberrations associated with multiple myeloma

Myelomatous tissue from 30 patients was assessed for cytogenetic abnormalities and one‐third showed chromosomal deletions, additions, and/or rearrangements. Evidence is presented that those cases with only normal cytogenetics represent metaphase cells of nonmyelomatous tissue. The findings of our abnormal cases when added to the 18 reported in two series by others show unique cytogenetic patterns are present in this disease. From analysis of these 27 banded cases of myeloma, we conclude: (1) cytogenetic abnormalities of myeloma are not random; (2) clonal evolution may be associated with disease progression, however the abnormalities identified late in the disease are similar to those found in early myeloma; (3) cytogenetic aberrations of multiple myeloma differ considerably from those of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, non‐Hodgkin's lymphoma, and acute lymphocytic and nonlymphocytic leukemia; and (4) the myeloma karyotype often exhibits one or more of the following: rearrangements involving chromosome 1 and 14, trisomy 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11, and monosomy 8 and 13. These findings have great importance for molecular biologic studies of multiple myeloma.
Effect of fabrication imperfections for ground-plane-backed dielectric resonator antennas with coaxial excitation

The effect of imperfections in terms of surface roughness which could lead to the introduction of air gaps between the dielectric resonator (DR) and the contacting conducting surfaces is investigated. Results of studies which illustrate the effect of air gaps upon the input impedance and resonant frequency of cylindrical dielectric resonator antennas (CDRAs) operating in the TM01 and HEM11 modes are presented.
First full-length sequences of the S gene of European isolates reveal further diversity among turkey coronaviruses

An increasing incidence of enteric disorders clinically suggestive of the poult enteritis complex has been observed in turkeys in France since 2003. Using a newly designed real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction assay specific for the nucleocapsid (N) gene of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) and turkey coronaviruses (TCoV), coronaviruses were identified in 37% of the intestinal samples collected from diseased turkey flocks. The full-length spike (S) gene of these viruses was amplified, cloned and sequenced from three samples. The French S sequences shared 98% identity at both the nucleotide and amino acid levels, whereas they were at most 65% and 60% identical with North American (NA) TCoV and at most 50% and 37% identical with IBV at the nucleotide and amino acid levels, respectively. Higher divergence with NA TCoV was observed in the S1-encoding domain. Phylogenetic analysis based on the S gene revealed that the newly detected viruses form a sublineage genetically related with, but significantly different from, NA TCoV. Additionally, the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase gene and the N gene, located on the 5′ and 3′ sides of the S gene in the coronavirus genome, were partially sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that both the NA TCoV and French TCoV (Fr TCoV) lineages included some IBV relatives, which were however different in the two lineages. This suggested that different recombination events could have played a role in the evolution of the NA and Fr TCoV. The present results provide the first S sequence for a European TCoV. They reveal extensive genetic variation in TCoV and suggest different evolutionary pathways in North America and Europe.
Influence of pH and ionic strength on electrostatic properties of ferredoxin, FNR, and hydrogenase and the rate constants of their interaction

Ferredoxin (Fd) protein transfers electrons from photosystem I (PSI) to ferredoxin:NADP+-reductase (FNR) in the photosynthetic electron transport chain, as well as other metabolic pathways. In some photosynthetic organisms including cyanobacteria and green unicellular algae under anaerobic conditions Fd transfers electrons not only to FNR but also to hydrogenase—an enzyme which catalyzes reduction of atomic hydrogen to H2. One of the questions posed by this competitive relationship between proteins is which characteristics of thylakoid stroma media allow switching of the electron flow between the linear path PSI-Fd-FNR-NADP+ and the path PSI-Fd-hydrogenase-H2. The study was conducted using direct multiparticle simulation approach. In this method protein molecules are considered as individual objects that experience Brownian motion and electrostatic interaction with the surrounding media and each other. Using the model we studied the effects of pH and ionic strength (I) upon complex formation between ferredoxin and FNR and ferredoxin and hydrogenase. We showed that the rate constant of Fd-FNR complex formation is constant in a wide range of physiologically significant pH values. Therefore it can be argued that regulation of FNR activity doesn’t involve pH changes in stroma. On the other hand, in the model rate constant of Fd-hydrogenase interaction dramatically depends upon pH: in the range 7–9 it increases threefold. It may seem that because hydrogenase reduces protons it should be more active when pH is acidic. Apparently, regulation of hydrogenase’s affinity to both her reaction partners (H+ and Fd) is carried out by changes in its electrostatic properties. In the dark, the protein is inactive and in the light it is activated and starts to interact with both Fd and H+. Therefore, we can conclude that in chloroplasts the rate of hydrogen production is regulated by pH through the changes in the affinity between hydrogenase and ferredoxin.