Extracting Word Sequence Correspondences with Support Vector Machines

method of word sequence correspondences from non-aligned parallel corpora with Support Vector Machines, which have high ability of the generalization, rarely cause over-fit for training samples and can learn dependencies of features by using a kernel function. Our method uses features for the translation model which use the translation dictionary, the number of words, part-of-speech, constituent words and neighbor words. Experiment results in which Japanese and English parallel corpora are used archived 81.1 % precision rate and 69.0 % recall rate of the extracted word sequence correspondences. This demonstrates that our method could reduce the cost for making translation dictionaries

Study on a welfare robotic-type exoskeleton system for aged people's transportation.

International audienceIn recent years, the rate of aged people is continuously increasing in Japan: in ten years, around 30% of the Japanese population will be aged more than 65 years old. These people often need some help from caretakers, and this causes a problem for the caretakers: it takes a very big burden for caretakers, for example, to lift people from their bed, when they need to go to toilets. So, a system to help caretakers would be needed: This is a master-slave unit exoskeleton, which helps the caretaker while loading the patient. It is moved by a Hydraulic Bilateral Servo system, whose master cylinders are moved by servo-motors. Presently, the conceptions of the body and hardware are finished. We are developing the servo-loop system and the driving software for the system, and more specially the pulse generation software for the motor of the master part of the exoskeleton. We will be able to discuss about the driving of the entire robotic-type exoskeleton system with a computer, through a PCMCIA interface system

Improved Measurements of RNA Structure Conservation with Generalized Centroid Estimators

Identification of non-protein-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in genomes is a crucial task for not only molecular cell biology but also bioinformatics. Secondary structures of ncRNAs are employed as a key feature of ncRNA analysis since biological functions of ncRNAs are deeply related to their secondary structures. Although the minimum free energy (MFE) structure of an RNA sequence is regarded as the most stable structure, MFE alone could not be an appropriate measure for identifying ncRNAs since the free energy is heavily biased by the nucleotide composition. Therefore, instead of MFE itself, several alternative measures for identifying ncRNAs have been proposed such as the structure conservation index (SCI) and the base pair distance (BPD), both of which employ MFE structures. However, these measurements are unfortunately not suitable for identifying ncRNAs in some cases including the genome-wide search and incur high false discovery rate. In this study, we propose improved measurements based on SCI and BPD, applying generalized centroid estimators to incorporate the robustness against low quality multiple alignments. Our experiments show that our proposed methods achieve higher accuracy than the original SCI and BPD for not only human-curated structural alignments but also low quality alignments produced by CLUSTAL W. Furthermore, the centroid-based SCI on CLUSTAL W alignments is more accurate than or comparable with that of the original SCI on structural alignments generated with RAF, a high quality structural aligner, for which twofold expensive computational time is required on average. We conclude that our methods are more suitable for genome-wide alignments which are of low quality from the point of view on secondary structures than the original SCI and BPD

c-jun is differentially expressed in embryonic and adult neural precursor cells

c-jun, a major component of AP-1 transcription factor, has a wide variety of functions. In the embryonic brain, c-jun mRNA is abundantly expressed in germinal layers around the ventricles. Although the subventricular zone (SVZ) of the adult brain is a derivative of embryonic germinal layers and contains neural precursor cells (NPCs), the c-jun expression pattern is not clear. To study the function of c-jun in adult neurogenesis, we analyzed c-jun expression in the adult SVZ by immunohistochemistry and compared it with that of the embryonic brain. We found that almost all proliferating embryonic NPCs expressed c-jun, but the number of c-jun immunopositive cells among proliferating adult NPCs was about half. In addition, c-jun was hardly expressed in post-mitotic migrating neurons in the embryonic brain, but the majority of c-jun immunopositive cells were tangentially migrating neuroblasts heading toward the olfactory bulb in the adult brain. In addition, status epilepticus is known to enhance the transient proliferation of adult NPCs, but the c-jun expression pattern was not significantly affected. These expression patterns suggest that c-jun has a pivotal role in the proliferation of embryonic NPCs, but it has also other roles in adult neurogenesis

Poly[bis(phenethyl­ammonium) [di­bromido­plumbate(II)]-di-μ-bromido]]

Crystals of the title compound, {(C6H5C2H4NH3)2[PbBr4]}n, were grown at room temperature from a solution in N,N-dimethyl­formamide (DMF) using nitro­methane as the poor solvent. This perovskite-type organic–inorganic hybrid compound consists of well ordered sheets of corner-sharing disordered PbBr6 octa­hedra separated by bilayers of phenethyl­ammonium cations. The octa­hedra are rotated and tilted due to N—H⋯Br hydrogen bonds with the ammonium groups, generating a superstructure in the unit cell similar to that of the tetra­chloridoplumbate (C6H5C2H4NH3)2[PbCl4]