Frame Usage Research Articles

Parliamentary acceptability of EU military deployments in member states: beyond rubber-stamping?

ABSTRACT This article examines national parliamentary debates in 13 EU member states of eight CSDP military deployments underway between 2016 and 2021. It reviews discussions about whether, and why, to send troops on EU missions and operations, and the extent to which these debates differ from expectations in the literature derived from involvement in NATO operations. The survey includes small states, which have been previously excluded from such analysis. Drawing on a dataset of 411 statements by national parliamentarians from across Europe, the article employs eight discursive frames to understand how MPs articulate their acceptance (or not) of CSDP deployments. We supplement this with detailed data on national troop contributions. We find that CSDP debates in national parliaments resemble those of ‘high-salience’ deployments when considering frame usage and party position. We present limited evidence supporting the claim that small states frame deployment debates similarly to large states.

Phrase Frame Use in EFL Learners’ Argumentative Essays: A Corpus-Based Comparative Study

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the features and development of multi-word formulaic sequences for foreign language learners in the field of second language acquisition. While considerable amount of research has been conducted on continuous formulaic sequences both domestically and abroad, scant attention has been rendered to discontinuous phrase frames. Adopting a corpus linguistic perspective, the current study compares and analyses second language learners from different backgrounds with native speakers, focusing on the phrase frame features identified in the argumentative essays written by Chinese and German EFL learners. With a corpus-based approach, the four-word phrase frames are extracted from the English TOEFL essay texts of Chinese and German students using AntConc 4.1.4 corpus analysis software. The top 100 most frequently occurring phrase frames are manually filtered and then classified according to their structural and functional features to identify similarities and differences in terms of overall frequency, structure, and function features of phrase frames between two groups of learners and with those of native writers. The findings reveal that L2 learners significantly employ more fixed and predictable phrase frames than their native writers, with German L2 learners using more phrase frames than their Chinese L2 counterparts. In terms of functional features, German L2 learners use more stance and discourse organizing expressions than Chinese L2 learners. Awareness of the essay genre, English proficiency, and the time-limited writing environment are contributing factors to these features. Therefore, the study suggests that the accuracy and variety of phrase frame usage are more representative of L2 learners’ acquisition and writing quality than their quantity of use. This study facilitates an understanding of different EFL learners’ phraseological competence through the lens of their p-frame use and provides pedagogical insights accordingly into teaching and learning argumentative essays in EFL contexts.

How best to support parents in the management of standing frame usage in home settings: A mixed methods study.

An improved understanding of the current practice of standing frame use may have implications for supporting parents in managing standing frames. We aimed to investigate how parents of children with cerebral palsy perceive and manage standing frame use in home settings. We conducted a mixed methods study with an explanatory sequential design, first collecting and analysing quantitative questionnaire data and then using these results to inform a qualitative follow-up phase to explain them. The questionnaire was answered by 103 parents of children with cerebral palsy across five countries, Denmark, Norway, Great Britain, Canada and the United States, and 12 Danish families participated in the subsequent interviews. A descriptive analysis was conducted using the questionnaire data. The qualitative data were analysed using a directed content analysis, enabling integration of the quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative analysis showed that 89% of the parents felt confident with their child's standing frame, and 82% felt they had sufficient knowledge about how their child's standing frame could/should be used. However, the qualitative analysis showed that even when feeling confident, the parents experienced insecurity regarding whether their child was positioned correctly, and being responsible for positioning was challenging. Our study implies a need for providing educational materials to assist the parents in ensuring optimal positioning of their child in the standing frame to decrease insecurity. Additionally, our study suggests a need to provide more thorough information about the benefits of using a standing frame and ensure alignment of expectations in relation to the child's prognosis of functional independence.

Exploring Challenges in Walking Frame Use Among the Elderly: A Study in Klang Valley, Malaysia

The elderly utilize a walking frame to address deficiencies in balance, coordination, strength, and the risk of falling during walking. Despite previous research highlighting the advantages and benefits of walking frame use for this demographic, some individuals have encountered various issues concerning its use. Thus, this study aims to explore issues of walking frame use among the elderly in Klang Valley, Malaysia. A total of 30 participants of community-dwelling elderly aged 60 and above in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur who are current and former walking frame users and were selected via purposive sampling, were involved in this study. This study utilized the qualitative approach using semi-structured questions. Interview data in the form of verbatim transcripts were analyzed thematically. The majority of respondents were female with a mean age of 71.7 years old, (SD=8.06), Malay, married, primary education level, retirees, living with a spouse and children and staying in Selangor. On the health aspect, the majority of them had hypertension and Body Mass Index (BMI) was pre-obese (25.0 – 29.9 kg/m2). In terms of walking frame usage, most respondents used a standard walking frame (without wheels), used a walking frame for 1 year or less, purchased it by themselves or through family members, indoor usage and reason for use because of leg weakness due to injury. Thematic analysis results show that there were several issues identified such as the respondents’ physical and psychological condition, as well as walking frame issues on quality, design, use and cost. Furthermore, issues concerning the physical environment of the home were reported. It is hoped that these findings can serve as a reference for relevant parties to further explore aspects related to the use, product development, and management of physical environments concerning walking frames.

A Flexible Algorithm Design of Spatial Scalability for Real-time Surveillance Applications

The Surveillance Video and Audio Coding )SVAC( working group is currently developing the third-generation video compression standard, SVAC 3.0. To extend this standard, this paper proposes a spatial scalable coding Scalable Surveillance Video Coding )SSVC( framework, so that the SVAC3.0 video stream can gracefully adapt to different transmission bandwidth limitations and the requirements of decoding hardware, while keep the quality of the reconstructed image without degradation. In order to achieve the scalability of hardware implementation, SSVC designs a flexible reference frame marking and usage scheme, so that the enhanced layer coding does not directly depend on the basic layer, and effectively reduces the coding coupling between layers. SSVC improves the motion vector prediction method, effectively utilizes the encoding information of the base layer, and is mainly compatible with SVAC3.0 syntax structures. In addition, SSVC provides several different operational modes to adapt to various application scenarios and achieve an optimal trade-off between coding efficiency and complexity. The performance comparisons among simulcast stream and SSVC, single-layer stream and SSVC enhancement layer, as well as experimental data for different operational modes are provided. The coding efficiency and computational complexity are also analyzed.

The Effects of Framing on Oil Pollution as Covered by Print Media: A Case Study of Nigerian Newspapers

Incidents of oil pollution has become a reoccurring decimal over the last twenty decades in most countries of the world. The controversy over who is responsible for the massive oil pollution witnessed in some oil-producing countries globally has amplified tensions between significant stakeholders in those countries. The issue of oil pollution in Nigeria and Ghana, for instance, has caused ecosystem degradation, the devastation of means of livelihood of local communities, and the death of aquatic organisms such as fish. Our study investigated the effects of the five news frames identified by Semetko & Valkenburg (2000); responsibility, economic consequences, conflict, human interest, and morality. Through content analysis, our study analyzed 531 newspaper stories on oil pollution in Nigeria’s Niger-Delta region from 2014-2018. The results indicated that overall, the effects of the human interest frame usage were more prevalent in The Daily Sun newspaper than the other two papers, The Guardian and The Punch, within the study period. This was followed by economic consequences, responsibility, conflict, and morality frames. Also, the study revealed that the effects of the differences in the frequency of using the frames in the coverage of oil pollution in the three selected papers varied significantly.

A Dynamic Frame Selection Framework for Fast Video Recognition.

We introduce AdaFrame, a conditional computation framework that adaptively selects relevant frames on a per-input basis for fast video recognition. AdaFrame, which contains a Long Short-Term Memory augmented with a global memory to provide context information, operates as an agent to interact with video sequences aiming to search over time which frames to use. Trained with policy search methods, at each time step, AdaFrame computes a prediction, decides where to observe next, and estimates a utility, i.e., expected future rewards, of viewing more frames in the future. Exploring predicted utilities at testing time, AdaFrame is able to achieve adaptive lookahead inference so as to minimize the overall computational cost without incurring a degradation in accuracy. We conduct extensive experiments on two large-scale video benchmarks, FCVID and ActivityNet. With a vanilla ResNet-101 model, AdaFrame achieves similar performance of using all frames while only requiring, on average, 8.21 and 8.65 frames on FCVID and ActivityNet, respectively. We also demonstrate AdaFrame is compatible with modern 2D and 3D networks for video recognition. Furthermore, we show, among other things, learned frame usage can reflect the difficulty of making prediction decisions both at instance-level within the same class and at class-level among different categories.

Trigeminal activation patterns evoked by chemical stimulation of the dura mater in rats

BackgroundAlthough migraine is one of the most common primary headaches, its therapy is still limited in many cases. The use of animal models is crucial in the development of novel therapeutic strategies, but unfortunately, none of them show all aspects of the disease, therefore, there is a constant need for further improvement in this field. The application of inflammatory agents on the dura mater is a widely accepted method to mimic neurogenic inflammation in rodents, which plays a key role in the pathomechanism of migraine. Complete Freund’s Adjuvant (CFA), and a mixture of inflammatory mediators, called inflammatory soup (IS) are often used for this purpose.MethodsTo examine the activation pattern that is caused by chemical stimulation of dura mater, we applied CFA or IS over the right parietal lobe. After 2 h and 4 h (CFA groups), or 2.5 h and 4 h (IS groups), animals were perfused, and c-Fos immunoreactive cells were counted in the caudal trigeminal nucleus. To explore every pitfall, we examined whether our surgical procedure (anesthetic drug, stereotaxic apparatus, local lidocaine) can alter the results under the same experimental settings. c-Fos labeled cells were counted in the second-order neuron area based on the somatotopic organization of the trigeminal nerve branches.ResultsWe could not find any difference between the CFA and physiological saline group neither 2 h, nor 4 h after dural stimulation. IS caused significant difference after both time points between IS treated and control group, and between treated (right) and control (left) side. Stereotaxic frame usage had a substantial effect on the obtained results.ConclusionsCounting c-Fos immunoreactive cells based on somatotopic organization of the trigeminal nerve helped to examine the effect of chemical stimulation of dura in a more specific way. As a result, the use of IS over the parietal lobe caused activation in the area of the ophthalmic nerve. To see this effect, the use of lidocaine anesthesia is indispensable.In conclusion, application of IS on the dura mater induces short-term, more robust c-Fos activation than CFA, therefore it might offer a better approach to model acute migraine headache in rodents.

A scale-free analysis of the HIV-1 genome demonstrates multiple conserved regions of structural and functional importance.

HIV-1 replicates via a low-fidelity polymerase with a high mutation rate; strong conservation of individual nucleotides is highly indicative of the presence of critical structural or functional properties. Identifying such conservation can reveal novel insights into viral behaviour. We analysed 3651 publicly available sequences for the presence of nucleic acid conservation beyond that required by amino acid constraints, using a novel scale-free method that identifies regions of outlying score together with a codon scoring algorithm. Sequences with outlying score were further analysed using an algorithm for producing local RNA folds whilst accounting for alignment properties. 11 different conserved regions were identified, some corresponding to well-known cis-acting functions of the HIV-1 genome but also others whose conservation has not previously been noted. We identify rational causes for many of these, including cis functions, possible additional reading frame usage, a plausible mechanism by which the central polypurine tract primes second-strand DNA synthesis and a conformational stabilising function of a region at the 5′ end of env.

De Novo, Divergence, and Mixed Origin Contribute to the Emergence of Orphan Genes in Pristionchus Nematodes.

Homology is a fundamental concept in comparative biology. It is extensively used at the sequence level to make phylogenetic hypotheses and functional inferences. Nonetheless, the majority of eukaryotic genomes contain large numbers of orphan genes lacking homologs in other taxa. Generally, the fraction of orphan genes is higher in genomically undersampled clades, and in the absence of closely related genomes any hypothesis about their origin and evolution remains untestable. Previously, we sequenced ten genomes with an underlying ladder-like phylogeny to establish a phylogenomic framework for studying genome evolution in diplogastrid nematodes. Here, we use this deeply sampled data set to understand the processes that generate orphan genes in our focal species Pristionchus pacificus. Based on phylostratigraphic analysis and additional bioinformatic filters, we obtained 29 high-confidence candidate genes for which mechanisms of orphan origin were proposed based on manual inspection. This revealed diverse mechanisms including annotation artifacts, chimeric origin, alternative reading frame usage, and gene splitting with subsequent gain of de novo exons. In addition, we present two cases of complete de novo origination from non-coding regions, which represents one of the first reports of de novo genes in nematodes. Thus, we conclude that de novo emergence, divergence, and mixed mechanisms contribute to novel gene formation in Pristionchus nematodes.

The Evolving Landscape of Autoantigen Discovery and Characterization in Type 1 Diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease that is caused, in part, by T cell–mediated destruction of insulin-producing β-cells. High risk for disease, in those with genetic susceptibility, is predicted by the presence of two or more autoantibodies against insulin, the 65-kDa form of glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD65), insulinoma-associated protein 2 (IA-2), and zinc transporter 8 (ZnT8). Despite this knowledge, we still do not know what leads to the breakdown of tolerance to these autoantigens, and we have an incomplete understanding of T1D etiology and pathophysiology. Several new autoantibodies have recently been discovered using innovative technologies, but neither their potential utility in monitoring disease development and treatment nor their role in the pathophysiology and etiology of T1D has been explored. Moreover, neoantigen generation (through posttranslational modification, the formation of hybrid peptides containing two distinct regions of an antigen or antigens, alternative open reading frame usage, and translation of RNA splicing variants) has been reported, and autoreactive T cells that target these neoantigens have been identified. Collectively, these new studies provide a conceptual framework to understand the breakdown of self-tolerance, if such modifications occur in a tissue- or disease-specific context. A recent workshop sponsored by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases brought together investigators who are using new methods and technologies to identify autoantigens and characterize immune responses toward these proteins. Researchers with diverse expertise shared ideas and identified resources to accelerate antigen discovery and the detection of autoimmune responses in T1D. The application of this knowledge will direct strategies for the identification of improved biomarkers for disease progression and treatment response monitoring and, ultimately, will form the foundation for novel antigen-specific therapeutics. This Perspective highlights the key issues that were addressed at the workshop and identifies areas for future investigation.

Framing the mass media: Exploring ‘fake news’ as a frame embedded in political discourse

Abstract The recent growth of alternative media sites and sources has also seen the rise of an aggressive rhetoric decrying mass media or parts thereof as being untrustworthy and politically biased. While it is unclear whether the ‘fake news’ debate is directly connected with this, it is surely a framing of mass media. In this article, we use techniques of quantitative text analysis in order to analyse how the ‘fake news’ frame is structured and to understand its central determinants in terms of social context and political orientation. Using quantitative text analysis, we analyse the frame usage and semantic embeddedness in eight blogs. We find evidence for a generalised frame that tends to be independent of political orientation of the blog.

软件综合实验室教学云平台的研究与应用

在分析高校传统的软件综合实验室教学平台环境和教学模式的基础上，采用了云计算技术对云实验室教学云平台的框架结构、功能及搭建和应用等进行了全面的研究，从硬件布局、网络构建和系统资源整合及云平台的集成等方面做了详细的设计，采用系统集成的方法设计出了一种适合高校计算机应用相关专业的课程教学和实验教学的基于云计算的软件综合实验室教学云平台的应用系统，并对云平台实现实验教学的方式和过程进行了探讨，为利用云平台实现实验教学提供了解决方案，该教学云平台在高校实验教学中已经得到了应用，并取得了应有的教学效果。 Through analyzing the traditional environment of software integrated laboratory teaching plat-form and teaching mode, it explores in research areas such as the frame structure, function, teaching model and usage of the teaching cloud platform. It designs detail of the hardware layout, network construction, system of resources integration and the cloud platform integrated, and using the method of system integration designs system software integrated laboratory teaching cloud platform based on cloud computing for college computer application related professional courses teaching and experiment teaching, and discusses the realization of experiment teaching mode and process of cloud platform, and provides a solution scheme for setting and using the teaching cloud platform of the comprehensive software lab. It has been applied in the experimental teaching in colleges and universities, and has achieved the desired teaching effects.

Framing Cancer for Online News: Implications for Popular Perceptions of Cancer

News frames can influence how people think about disease. In a pair of studies, we demonstrate how contemporary news outlets frame cancer and how exposure to common frames can affect news audiences' perceptions of those who suffer from cancer. First, we examine the current landscape of frame usage in online cancer news, employing frames ideally suited to the depiction of health and disease. We compare our results with previously published research in this news domain. Second, we employ these frames in a multimessage experiment to assess the influence of cancer news framing on individuals' perceptions about cancer, cancer interventions, and those with cancer. We conclude with a discussion of implications for framing research and health news production.

A Novel Subchannel and Power Allocation in IEEE 802.16 OFDMA Systems

ABSTRACTLots of burst mapping algorithms have been proposed to optimize the two dimensional frame utilization in IEEE 802.16 OFDMA systems. However, almost all of the proposed algorithms only consider the frame usage optimization and do not consider the users' channel conditions. Some of the other researches have been focused on the power control and frequency allocation in the OFDMA-based systems. This paper aims to develop a novel resource allocation approach in IEEE 802.16 OFDMA systems with consideration of the two dimensional frame and the users' channel conditions. In order to further reduce the complexity of resource allocation, a new adaptive step size is proposed to speed up the convergence of the iterative optimal Lagrange multiplier computation. The expression for this step size is mathematically derived. The frequency and power allocation have been conducted in the subchannel and user level. The simulation results show that the throughput in terms of maximum sum rate (MSR) has been improved compared to static power control (the same power allocation to subchannels). Increasing the number of users increases the MSR improvement. This is due to the fact that the user diversity increases.

DH reading frame usage influences HIV-1 epitope recognition (MPF2P.804)

Abstract Background: Some HIV-1-specific neutralizing antibodies, such as 2F5 and 4E10, contain a long H chain complementarity determining region 3 (CDR-H3) includes patches of hydrophobic and charged amino acids, but B cells bearing Igs with charged or hydrophobic CDR-H3s are normally culled from mature B cell subsets. Thus, DH influence on neutralizing antibody generation is very worth to explore. Methods: Mice-BALB/c mice cohort limited to the use of single DH gene segments were generated. ΔD-DFL is a human-like repertoire control. ΔD-DµFS promotes the use of hydrophobic amino acid repertoire. The ΔD-iD is charged amino acid enriched repertoire. Immunization-each strain of 10 mice was immunized with HIV-1 JR-FL gp140 protein. Epitope Identification, serum Assay were conducted. Results: As a general rule, the heterogeneity of the anti-JR-FL gp140 response varied by DH genotype with ΔD-DFL>Wild Type (WT)>>ΔD-DμFS, ΔD-iD. Conversely, the intensity of the response was greatest in the ΔD-iD. However, linear response was not identified with the response to natural HIV-1 epitope. Anti-JR-FL gp140 antibodies present in the sera of the DH altered did not block HIV-1 envelope CD4, 2F5, 2G12 binding site. Conclusion: The pattern of epitope recognition and antigen binding in the response to T dependent antigen, in part, on DH gene segment sequence. Restrictions imposed by natural selection of DH sequence may underlie some of the difficulty that patients generate neutralizing antibody.

The Restricted DH Gene Reading Frame Usage in the Expressed Human Antibody Repertoire Is Selected Based upon its Amino Acid Content

The Ab repertoire is not uniform. Some variable, diversity, and joining genes are used more frequently than others. Nonuniform usage can result from the rearrangement process, or from selection. To study how the Ab repertoire is selected, we analyzed one part of diversity generation that cannot be driven by the rearrangement mechanism: the reading frame usage of DH genes. We have used two high-throughput sequencing methodologies, multiple subjects and advanced algorithms to measure the DH reading frame usage in the human Ab repertoire. In most DH genes, a single reading frame is used predominantly, and inverted reading frames are practically never observed. The choice of a single DH reading frame is not limited to a single position of the DH gene. Rather, each DH gene participates in rearrangements of differing CDR3 lengths, restricted to multiples of three. In nonproductive rearrangements, there is practically no reading frame bias, but there is still a striking absence of inversions. Biases in DH reading frame usage are more pronounced, but also exhibit greater interindividual variation, in IgG(+) and IgA(+) than in IgM(+) B cells. These results suggest that there are two developmental checkpoints of DH reading frame selection. The first occurs during VDJ recombination, when inverted DH genes are usually avoided. The second checkpoint occurs after rearrangement, once the BCR is expressed. The second checkpoint implies that DH reading frames are subjected to differential selection. Following these checkpoints, clonal selection induces a host-specific DH reading frame usage bias.

Loss of CD19 expression alters the CDR-H3 content of marginal zone and follicular B cells, changing the composition of the immunoglobulin antigen receptor repertoire (P3022)

Abstract Expression of CD19 on B cells modulates B cell receptor signaling threshold. Reduced CD19 expression has been observed in some human patients with common variable immune deficiency (CVID), a disease which is characterized by low production of mature B cells with a paradoxical increase in auto-reactivity. Development of the B cell repertoire in the absence of CD19 expression has not been well characterized. We previously showed that the B cell repertoire is controlled by the sequence characteristics of the complementary determining region heavy chain (CDR-H3). We sought to examine the CDR-H3 repertoire in mice lacking CD19 expression, using our novel bioinformatics system, to test whether its absence can affect the control of B cell repertoire content, yielding altered development and auto reactive antibody production. We analyzed the CDR-H3 based on its length, reading frame usage and average hydrophobicity of its amino acid contents. Follicular B cells lacking CD19 expression were found to express an increase in the use of both highly charged and highly hydrophobic CDR-H3 sequences, sequences that are normally excluded from the follicles. Conversely, when compared to C57BL/6 controls, hydrophobic CDR-H3s were suppressed among marginal zone B cells. These findings indicate a loss of normal repertoire control in the absence of CD19, which may help explain why CD19 deficient patients have altered responses to self and non-self antigens.

Frames as visual links between paintings and the museum environment: an analysis of statistical image properties

Frames provide a visual link between artworks and their surround. We asked how image properties change as an observer zooms out from viewing a painting alone, to viewing the painting with its frame and, finally, the framed painting in its museum environment (museum scene). To address this question, we determined three higher-order image properties that are based on histograms of oriented luminance gradients. First, complexity was measured as the sum of the strengths of all gradients in the image. Second, we determined the self-similarity of histograms of the orientated gradients at different levels of spatial analysis. Third, we analyzed how much gradient strength varied across orientations (anisotropy). Results were obtained for three art museums that exhibited paintings from three major periods of Western art. In all three museums, the mean complexity of the frames was higher than that of the paintings or the museum scenes. Frames thus provide a barrier of complexity between the paintings and their exterior. By contrast, self-similarity and anisotropy values of images of framed paintings were intermediate between the images of the paintings and the museum scenes, i.e., the frames provided a transition between the paintings and their surround. We also observed differences between the three museums that may reflect modified frame usage in different art periods. For example, frames in the museum for 20th century art tended to be smaller and less complex than in the two other two museums that exhibit paintings from earlier art periods (13th–18th century and 19th century, respectively). Finally, we found that the three properties did not depend on the type of reproduction of the paintings (photographs in museums, scans from books or images from the Google Art Project). To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the relation between frames and paintings by measuring physically defined, higher-order image properties.

Real-Time Precise Point Positioning in NAD83: Global and Regional Broadcast Corrections Compared

Real-time precise point positioning (PPP) is possible through the availability of the real-time satellite orbit and clock corrections to broadcast ephemeris, the real-time broadcast corrections (BCs). The real-time BCs are currently available in global as well as in regional reference frames. In this contribution, PPP usage and the performance of these global and regional BCs are analyzed for the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). The limitations of the current regional BC approach for NAD83 are identified and the coordinate differences it leads to compared with the traditional global BC approach are shown. Although the biases as a result of the different reference frame usage are shown to be subcentimeter, it is also shown how they can be reduced or eliminated by modifying either the PPP algorithm or the regional BC approach. Analyses were performed for three different PPP variants, a single-frequency ionosphere-free variant, a dual-frequency ionosphere-free variant, and a single-frequency ionosphere-corrected variant.