Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hind limb proportions and kinematics: are small primates different from other small mammals?

SUMMARY Similar in body size, locomotor behaviour and morphology to the last common ancestor of Primates, living small quadrupedal primates provide a convenient model for investigating the evolution of primate locomotion. In this study, the hind limb kinematics of quadrupedal walking in mouse lemurs, brown lemurs, cotton-top tamarins and squirrel monkeys are analysed using cineradiography. The scaling of hind limb length to body size and the intralimb proportions of the three-segmented hind limb are taken into consideration when kinematic similarities and differences are discussed. Hind limb kinematics of arboreal quadrupedal primates, ranging in size between 100 g and 3000 g, are size independent and resemble the hind limb kinematics of small non-cursorial mammals. A common feature seen in smaller mammals, in general, is the horizontal position of the thigh at touchdown and of the lower leg at lift-off. Thus, the maximum bone length is immediately transferred into the step length. The vertical position of the leg at the beginning of a step cycle and of the thigh at lift-off contributes the same distance to pivot height. Step length and pivot height increase proportionally with hind limb length, because intralimb proportions of the hind limb remain fairly constant. Therefore, the strong positive allometric scaling of the hind limb in arboreal quadrupedal primates affects neither the kinematics of hind limb segments nor the total angular excursion of the limb. The angular excursion of the hind limb in quadrupedal primates is equal to that of other non-cursorial mammals. Hence, hind limb excursion in larger cercopithecine primates differs from that of other large mammals due to the decreasing angular excursion as part of convergent cursorial adaptations in several phylogenetic lineages of mammals. Typical members of those phylogenetic groups are traditionally used in comparison with typical primates, and therefore the `uniqueness' of primate locomotor characteristics is often overrated.
Retrieving the availability of light in the ocean utilising spectral signatures of vibrational Raman scattering in hyper-spectral satellite measurements

Abstract. The availability of light in the ocean is an important parameter for the determination of phytoplankton photosynthesis processes and primary production from satellite data. It is also a useful parameter for other applications, e.g. the determination of heat fluxes. In this study, a method was developed utilising the vibrational Raman scattering (VRS) effect of water molecules to determine the number of photons available in the ocean water, which is expressed by the depth integrated scalar irradiance E 0. Radiative transfer simulations with the SCIATRAN fully coupled ocean–atmosphere radiative transfer model (RTM) show clearly the relationship of E 0 with the strength of the VRS signal measured at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). Taking advantage of VRS structures in hyper-spectral satellite measurements, a retrieval technique to derive E 0 in the wavelength region from 390 to 444.5 nm was developed. This approach uses the weighting function differential optical absorption spectroscopy (WF-DOAS) technique, applied to TOA radiances, measured by the Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY). Based on the approach of Vountas et al. (2007), where the DOAS method was used to fit modelled spectra of VRS, the method was improved by using the weighting function of VRS (VRS-WF) in the DOAS fit. This was combined with a look-up table (LUT) technique, where the E 0 value was obtained for each VRS satellite fit directly. The VRS-WF and the LUT were derived from calculations with the SCIATRAN RTM (Rozanov et al., 2014). RTM simulations for different chlorophyll a concentrations and illumination conditions clearly show that low fit factors of VRS retrieval results correspond to low amounts of light in the water column and vice versa. Exemplarily, 1 month of SCIAMACHY data were processed and a global map of the depth integrated scalar irradiance E 0 was retrieved. Spectral structures of VRS were clearly identified in the radiance measurements of SCIAMACHY. The fitting approach led to consistent results and the WF-DOAS algorithm results of VRS correlated clearly with the chlorophyll concentration in case-I water. Comparisons of the diffuse attenuation coefficient, extracted by VRS fit results, with the established GlobColour Kd(490) product show consistent results.
Mechanical Stimulation (Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields “PEMF” and Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy “ESWT”) and Tendon Regeneration: A Possible Alternative

The pathogenesis of tendon degeneration and tendinopathy is still partially unclear. However, an active role of metalloproteinases (MMP), growth factors, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and a crucial role of inflammatory elements and cytokines was demonstrated. Mechanical stimulation may play a role in regulation of inflammation. In vitro studies demonstrated that both pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF) and extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) increased the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokine such as interleukin (IL-6 and IL-10). Moreover, ESWT increases the expression of growth factors, such as transforming growth factor β(TGF-β), (VEGF), and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), as well as the synthesis of collagen I fibers. These pre-clinical results, in association with several clinical studies, suggest a potential effectiveness of ESWT for tendinopathy treatment. Recently PEMF gained popularity as adjuvant for fracture healing and bone regeneration. Similarly to ESWT, the mechanical stimulation obtained using PEMFs may play a role for treatment of tendinopathy and for tendon regeneration, increasing in vitro TGF-β production, as well as scleraxis and collagen I gene expression. In this manuscript the rational of mechanical stimulations and the clinical studies on the efficacy of extracorporeal shock wave (ESW) and PEMF will be discussed. However, no clear evidence of a clinical value of ESW and PEMF has been found in literature with regards to the treatment of tendinopathy in human, so further clinical trials are needed to confirm the promising hypotheses concerning the effectiveness of ESWT and PEMF mechanical stimulation.
Architecting on-chip interconnects for stacked 3D STT-RAM caches in CMPs

Emerging memory technologies such as STT-RAM, PCRAM, and resistive RAM are being explored as potential replacements to existing on-chip caches or main memories for future multi-core architectures. This is due to the many attractive features these memory technologies posses: high density, low leakage, and non-volatility. However, the latency and energy overhead associated with the write operations of these emerging memories has become a major obstacle in their adoption. Previous works have proposed various circuit and architectural level solutions to mitigate the write overhead. In this paper, we study the integration of STT-RAM in a 3D multi-core environment and propose solutions at the on-chip network level to circumvent the write overhead problem in the cache architecture with STT-RAM technology. Our scheme is based on the observation that instead of staggering requests to a write-busy STT-RAM bank, the network should schedule requests to other idle cache banks for effectively hiding the latency. Thus, we prioritize cache accesses to the idle banks by delaying accesses to the STTRAM cache banks that are currently serving long latency write requests. Through a detailed characterization of the cache access patterns of 42 applications, we propose an efficient mechanism to facilitate such delayed writes to cache banks by (a) accurately estimating the busy time of each cache bank through logical partitioning of the cache layer and (b) prioritizing packets in a router requesting accesses to idle banks. Evaluations on a 3D architecture, consisting of 64 cores and 64 STT-RAM cache banks, show that our proposed approach provides 14% average IPC improvement for multi-threaded benchmarks, 19% instruction throughput benefits for multi-programmed workloads, and 6% latency reduction compared to a recently proposed write buffering mechanism.
Incorporating changes in albedo in estimating the climate mitigation benefits of land use change projects

Abstract. Some climate scientists are questioning whether the practice of converting of non-forest lands to forest land (afforestation or reforestation) is an effective climate change mitigation option. The discussion focuses particularly on areas where the new forest is primarily coniferous and there is significant amount of snow since the increased climate forcing due to the change in albedo may counteract the decreased climate forcing due to carbon dioxide removal. In this paper, we develop a stand-based model that combines changes in surface albedo, solar radiation, latitude, cloud cover and carbon sequestration. As well, we develop a procedure to convert carbon stock changes to equivalent climatic forcing or climatic forcing to equivalent carbon stock changes. Using the model, we investigate the sensitivity of combined affects of changes in surface albedo and carbon stock changes to model parameters. The model is sensitive to amount of cloud, atmospheric absorption, timing of canopy closure, carbon sequestration rate among other factors. The sensitivity of the model is investigated at one Canadian site, and then the model is tested at numerous sites across Canada. In general, we find that the change in albedo reduces the carbon sequestration benefits by approximately 30% over 100 years, but this is not drastic enough to suggest that one should not use afforestation or reforestation as a climate change mitigation option. This occurs because the forests grow in places where there is significant amount of cloud in winter. As well, variations in sequestration rate seem to be counterbalanced by the amount and timing of canopy closure. We close by speculating that the effects of albedo may also be significant in locations at lower latitudes, where there are less clouds, and where there are extended dry seasons. These conditions make grasses light coloured and when irrigated crops, dark forests or other vegetation such as biofuels replace the grasses, the change in carbon stocks may not compensate for the darkening of the surface.
INFLUENCE OF EXPOSURE ON PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE TOWARDS PHYSICAL ACTIVITY INVOLVEMENT OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES (PWD): EXPLORING THE MEDIATING ROLE OF ATTITUDE USING SEM APPROACH

Societal acceptance towards disability can have a distressing impact upon the self-confidence and self-image of people with disabilities (PWD), which can discourage the involvement of person with disabilities in physical activity. This study aims to examine the causal relationships of exposure and attitude components on public acceptance towards PWD involvement in physical activity. A convenience sampling technique was utilized to collect data from the public (n=444), at four urban Public Recreation Park in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Structural equation modeling analysis was utilized to assess the hypothesized conceptual model, and examines the relationship among the constructs. Attitude (β=.473, p<.01) displays stronger influence on public acceptance compared to exposure (β=.204, p<.01). The findings revealed the partial mediating role of attitude in the relationship between exposure and public acceptance towards PWD involvement in physical activity. The findings suggest the need for public to have more exposure (experience, knowledge, contact) with the disabled community, which will cultivate positive attitude and hence improve the acceptance towards PWD involvement in physical activity. Future study can include meaningful assessment of other different factors, including their moderating effects. Implications of the result for future practice and directions of research were discussed.
On Hausdorff Dimension of Random Fractals

We study random recursive constructions with finite "memory" in complete metric spaces and the Hausdorff dimension of the generated random fractals. With each such construction and any positive number β we associate a linear operator V (β) in a finite dimensional space. We prove that under some conditions on the random construction the Hausdorff dimension of the fractal coincides with the value of the parameter β for which the spectral radius of V (β) equals 1.
Optimal Two-Choice Stopping on an Exponential Sequence

Abstract Let X 1, X 2,…, X n be independent and identically distributed with distribution function F. A statistician may choose two X values from the sequence by means of two stopping rules t 1, t 2, with the goal of maximizing E(X t 1 ∨ X t 2 ). We describe the optimal stopping rules and the asymptotic behavior of the optimal expected stopping values, , as n → ∞, when F is the exponential distribution. Specifically, we show that , and conjecture that this same limit obtains for any F in the (Type I) domain of attraction of exp(−e −x ).
High‐resolution sea surface reconstructions off Cape Hatteras over the last 10 ka

[1] This study presents high-resolution foraminiferal-based sea surface temperature, sea surface salinity and upper water column stratification reconstructions off Cape Hatteras, a region sensitive to atmospheric and thermohaline circulation changes associated with the Gulf Stream. We focus on the last 10,000 years (10 ka) to study the surface hydrology changes under our current climate conditions and discuss the centennial to millennial time scale variability. We observed opposite evolutions between the conditions off Cape Hatteras and those south of Iceland, known today for the North Atlantic Oscillation pattern. We interpret the temperature and salinity changes in both regions as co-variation of activities of the subtropical and subpolar gyres. Around 8.3 ka and 5.2–3.5 ka, positive salinity anomalies are reconstructed off Cape Hatteras. We demonstrate, for the 5.2–3.5 ka period, that the salinity increase was caused by the cessation of the low salinity surface flow coming from the north. A northward displacement of the Gulf Stream, blocking the southbound low-salinity flow, concomitant to a reduced Meridional Overturning Circulation is the most likely scenario. Finally, wavelet transform analysis revealed a 1000-year period pacing the δ18O signal over the early Holocene. This 1000-year frequency band is significantly coherent with the 1000-year frequency band of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) between 9.5 ka and 7 ka and both signals are in phase over the rest of the studied period.
Max-Min Fair Input-Queued Switching

Fairness in traffic management can improve the isolation between traffic streams, offer a more predictable performance, eliminate transient bottlenecks, mitigate the effect of certain kinds of denial-ofservice attacks, and serve as a critical component of a quality-ofservice strategy to achieve certain guaranteed services such as delay bounds and minimum bandwidths. While fairness in bandwidth allocation over a shared output link has been studied extensively, the desired eventual goal is overall fairness in the use of all the resources in a switch or a router. Several research efforts have attempted to achieve fairness in input-queued switches by one measure or another. However, there has been no uniform framework for evaluating these different strategies. In this report, we formalize the notion of fairness in input-queued switches through a rigorous framework that permits a quantitative evaluation of various strategies for fairness. Based on an extension of the max-min notion of fairness, our framework permits the algorithmic determination of the fair rates to be allocated to the flows through the switch. In addition to proving the correctness of the algorithm, we show that it can be implemented in a distributed fashion to dynamically determine flow rates. We further propose a practical scheduling strategy based on our algorithm. We present simulation results, using both real traffic traces as well synthetic traffic, to evaluate the fairness of a variety of popular scheduling algorithms for input-queued switches. The results show that our scheduling strategy achieves better fairness than other known algorithms for input-queued switches.
Multiple Mechanisms of Consciousness: The Neural Correlates of Emotional Awareness

Emotional stimuli, including facial expressions, are thought to gain rapid and privileged access to processing resources in the brain. Despite this access, we are conscious of only a fraction of the myriad of emotion-related cues we face everyday. It remains unclear, therefore, what the relationship is between activity in neural regions associated with emotional representation and the phenomenological experience of emotional awareness. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and binocular rivalry to delineate the neural correlates of awareness of conflicting emotional expressions in humans. Behaviorally, fearful faces were significantly more likely to be perceived than disgusted or neutral faces. Functionally, increased activity was observed in regions associated with facial expression processing, including the amygdala and fusiform gyrus during emotional awareness. In contrast, awareness of neutral faces and suppression of fearful faces were associated with increased activity in dorsolateral prefrontal and inferior parietal cortices. The amygdala showed increased functional connectivity with ventral visual system regions during fear awareness and increased connectivity with perigenual prefrontal cortex (pgPFC; Brodmann's area 32/10) when fear was suppressed. Despite being prioritized for awareness, emotional items were associated with reduced activity in areas considered critical for consciousness. Contributions to consciousness from bottom-up and top-down neural regions may be additive, such that increased activity in specialized regions within the extended ventral visual system may reduce demands on a frontoparietal system important for awareness. The possibility is raised that interactions between pgPFC and the amygdala, previously implicated in extinction, may also influence whether or not an emotional stimulus is accessible to consciousness.
Harnessing smoothness to accelerate distributed optimization

There has been a growing effort in studying the distributed optimization problem over a network. The objective is to optimize a global function formed by a sum of local functions, using only local computation and communication. Literature has developed consensus-based distributed (sub)gradient descent (DGD) methods and has shown that they have the same convergence rate O(log t/√t) as the centralized (sub)gradient methods (CGD) when the function is convex but possibly nonsmooth. However, when the function is convex and smooth, under the framework of DGD, it is unclear how to harness the smoothness to obtain a faster convergence rate comparable to CGD's convergence rate. In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm that, despite using the same amount of communication per iteration as DGD, can effectively harnesses the function smoothness and converge to the optimum with a rate of O(1/t). If the objective function is further strongly convex, our algorithm has a linear convergence rate. Both rates match the convergence rate of CGD. The key step in our algorithm is a novel gradient estimation scheme that uses history information to achieve fast and accurate estimation of the average gradient. To motivate the necessity of history information, we also show that it is impossible for a class of distributed algorithms like DGD to achieve a linear convergence rate without using history information even if the objective function is strongly convex and smooth.
Fusion Strategy for Single Image Dehazing

Recovering the image captured in bad weather remains a challenging task due to the inherent ambiguity. In this paper, we propose a fusion strategy that derives the inputs and weight maps only from the original degraded image. The two inputs represent color corrected and contrast enhanced versions of the original hazy image, and the three weight maps aims to increase the visibility of the scene. Our strategy is a single image method that does not require physical model or scene structure. Besides, a novel indicator for dehazing effect assessment is also proposed from the perspective of human visual perception. We experimentally evaluate our algorithm on a wide variety of hazy images, the qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective and robust, yielding high-contrast and vivid haze-free images.
Computation of the Jordan canonical form of a square matrix (using the Axiom programming language)

This paper presents an algorithm for computing the Jordan form of a square matrix with coeificieuts in a field IK using the computer algebra system Axiom [FLJ+85] [BBD+91], This system presents the advantage of allowing generic programming. That is to say, we can first implement our algorithm for matrices with rational coefficients ancl then generalize it to matrices with coefficients in any field. Therefore we shall present the general method which is essentially band on the use of the Frobenius form of a matrix in order to compute its Jordan form; and then restrict our attention to matrices with rational coefficients. On the one hand we streamline the algorithm frohen which computes the Frobenius form of a matrix, and on the other we examine in some de~ail the transformation from the Frobeuius form to (he Jordan form, and give the so called algorithm Jordform. We study in particular, the complexity of this algorithm and prove that it is polynomial when the coefficients of the matrix are rational. Finally we give some experiments ancl a conclusion.
Citrine : A Methodology for Application-Specific Network-on-Chips Design

This paper presents a novel and efficient mapping algorithm, called Citrine. It generates a set of mappings which have nearly minimum possible distance between related cores results in reduction of communication cost in Network-on-Chip (NoC), while improving other performance metrics. Comparison of the communication cost results makes it obvious that final solutions found by our proposed approach outperform the results of other methods which proposed in literature. Vulnerability index is introduced and defined as a criterion for evaluating routing fault tolerance. Reducing the vulnerability index optimizes fault tolerant properties of NoC. Then by using the Citrine solutions, a total cost function is used to customize and prioritize the impact of metrics, i.e. communication cost and vulnerability index. The experimental results reveal the power of Citrine in generating different solutions with low bandwidth requirements that spread through the explored design space.