Building trainable taggers in a web-based, UIMA-supported NLP workbench

Argo is a web-based NLP and text mining workbench with a convenient graphical user interface for designing and executing processing workflows of various complexity. The workbench is intended for specialists and nontechnical audiences alike, and provides the ever expanding library of analytics compliant with the Unstructured Information Management Architecture, a widely adopted interoperability framework. We explore the flexibility of this framework by demonstrating workflows involving three processing components capable of performing self-contained machine learning-based tagging. The three components are responsible for the three distinct tasks of 1) generating observations or features, 2) training a statistical model based on the generated features, and 3) tagging unlabelled data with the model. The learning and tagging components are based on an implementation of conditional random fields (CRF); whereas the feature generation component is an analytic capable of extending basic token information to a comprehensive set of features. Users define the features of their choice directly from Argo’s graphical interface, without resorting to programming (a commonly used approach to feature engineering). The experimental results performed on two tagging tasks, chunking and named entity recognition, showed that a tagger with a generic set of features built in Argo is capable of competing with taskspecific solutions.

Purification of Anginex: An Inhibitor of Tumor Metastasis using RdRd tag

Anginex is a cytokine-like β-sheet forming peptide of 33 amino acids with potent anti-angiogenic activity.Anginex is essential in inhibiting abnormal processes caused by angiogenesis, such as tumor growth and blood vessel formation. However, Anginex has limitations, including poor stability, short half-life, complicated synthesis, and low purity. Rubredoxin dimer (RdRd) is used as a protein tag to improve stability and detection of Anginex during purification for the first time. A plasmid was designed to contain the RdRd-Anginex fusion protein. RdRd-Anginex plasmid was transformed and expressed in E. coli BL21star cells. The results show RdRd-Anginex has been purified using a Nickel Sepharose column. Enterokinase, a proteolytic enzyme, was then used to cleave between the RdRd from Anginex. The cleaved sample was placed on a Nickel Sepharose column where the Anginex sample was eluted

Purification of Anginex: An Inhibitor of Tumor Metastasis using RdRd tag

Anginex is a cytokine-like β-sheet forming peptide of 33 amino acids with potent anti-angiogenic activity.Anginex is essential in inhibiting abnormal processes caused by angiogenesis, such as tumor growth and blood vessel formation. However, Anginex has limitations, including poor stability, short half-life, complicated synthesis, and low purity. Rubredoxin dimer (RdRd) is used as a protein tag to improve stability and detection of Anginex during purification for the first time. A plasmid was designed to contain the RdRd-Anginex fusion protein. RdRd-Anginex plasmid was transformed and expressed in E. coli BL21star cells. The results show RdRd-Anginex has been purified using a Nickel Sepharose column. Enterokinase, a proteolytic enzyme, was then used to cleave between the RdRd from Anginex. The cleaved sample was placed on a Nickel Sepharose column where the Anginex sample was eluted

Unsteady Low Reynolds Number Aerodynamics of a Rotating Wing

Micro air vehicles (MAVs) are small, unmanned aircraft useful for reconnaissance. The small size of MAVs presents unique challenges as they operate at low Reynolds numbers O(10^4), and they share a flight regime with insects rather than conventional aircraft. The low Reynolds number regime is dominated by poor aerodynamic characteristics such as low lift-to-drag ratios. To overcome this, birds and insects utilize unsteady high lift mechanisms to generate sufficient lift. A leading edge vortex (LEV), one of these unsteady lift mechanism, is thought to be responsible for the high lift generated by these natural fliers, but the factors which contribute to the formation, stability, and persistence of LEVs are still unclear. The objectives of this study are to: 1) qualitatively understand the formation of the LEV by evaluating the effect of wing acceleration profiles, wing root geometry, Reynolds number, and unsteady variations of pitch, 2) quantify whether high lift can be sustained at low Reynolds numbers on a rotary wing in continuous revolution, and 3) determine the effect of wing flexibility on the unsteady lift coefficient. Experiments were performed on a rotating wing setup designed to model the translational phase of the insect wing stroke during hover. Experiments were performed in a water tank at Reynolds numbers between 5,000 and 25,000, and the flow was investigated using dye flow visualization, as well as lift and drag force measurements. A rigid wing and a simple one degree-of-freedom flexible wing were tested. Dye flow visualization on a rotating wing showed the formation of a coherent LEV near the wing root. The LEV became less coherent further outboard, and eventually burst. As the wing continued to rotate, the location where the LEV burst moved inboard. Dye injection within the burst vortex showed the formation of multiple small scale shedding vortices that traveled downstream and formed a region of recirculating flow (i.e., a burst vortex). Parameter variations in this experiment included velocity profiles, acceleration profiles, and Reynolds numbers. High lift and drag coefficient peaks were measured during the acceleration phase of the wing stroke at Reynolds numbers of 15,000 and 25,000. After the initial peak, the coefficients dropped, increased, and eventually attained a ``steady-state" intermediate value after 5 chord-lengths of travel, which they maintained for the remainder of the first revolution. When the wing began the second revolution, both the lift and drag coefficients decreased, and leveled out at a second intermediate value. Force measurements on a chordwise flexible wing revealed lower lift coefficients. For all of the cases tested, high lift was achieved during the acceleration phase and first revolution of the wing stroke, though values dropped during the second revolution

Sex can be dangerous: Acoustically-orienting parasitoids on field crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae)

The Orthopterists\u27 Society generously awarded me grants in 1995 and 1997 to conduct research on Teleogryllus oceanicus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) on the Big Island of Hawaii. Here I report results to date from fieldwork conducted in the past few years

DETERMINATION OF HIGHER ORDER COEFFICIENTS FOR A CRACK PARALLEL TO AN INTERFACE

A general method based on the singular integral equations is developed to computationally determine the higher order coefficients in mixed mode fracture mechanics. These \u27k\u27 and \u27T\u27 coefficients are defined with respect to a polar coordinate system centered at a crack tip, and give asymptotic expressions for stresses and displacements according to the William\u27s eigenfunction expansions, (r, ) (2r) k f (n, ) k f (n, ) IIk ij II n Ik ij I n n 0 2 1 n ij 1 (0, ) (2 ) ( , ) ( , ) , , ; , , I IT n I IT II IIT ij n ij n ij n T f r T f n T f n i r j r In the above expression the n = 0 terms correspond to the modes I and II stress intensity factors and the so called, T-stress. From a method point of view, the higher order k-coefficients are easily obtained, while the T-coefficients require significant postprocessing of the singular integral equation solution. A planar crack parallel to an interface between two elastic materials and subjected to far-field tension is considered as an example and extensive results are presented. This example is chosen due to the anomalous behavior of a closing crack tip as the crack approaches the interface for certain material combinations. Such \u27Comninou contact zones\u27 occur even in a tensile field when the crack is within a critical distance from the interface. Numerous results are provided that compare the asymptotic solutions with that of the full-field. It is shown that up to four k-coefficients and many T-coefficients can be determined for h/a = 0.001, where h is the distance of the crack from the interface and a is the half-crack length. While the application of the method to the case of a crack parallel and very close to an interface focuses on the anomaly of a closing crack tip, in general the ability to determine iii higher order coefficients can be used to quantify the size of the zone in which linear fracture mechanics is valid