Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression-Compensated 3D Face Recognition with Geodesically Aligned Bilinear Models

In this paper, we present a technique for addressing 3-dimensional face recognition in presence of facial expressions using a bilinear model. The bilinear model allows decoupling the impact of identity and expression on face appearance and encoding their contribution in separate control parameters. This is achieved by first representing faces as parametric surface models described by a fixed length parameter vector. A generic face model is fitted to each face based on a novel technique that relies on geodesic distances to find implicitly corresponding facial landmarks between the model and the face in hand. Model parameters are then used for bilinear decomposition. The experimental results on the publicly available BU-3DFE face database demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique.
The Differences in Semantic Processing of Pictures and Words between Dyslexic and Typical-Reading University Students

The present study compared the semantic processing of pictures and words by dyslexics to that of typical readers utilizing the electro-physiological (ERP) technique during a semantic categorization decision task. ERPs of 40 university students, 20 typical readers and 20 dyslexic readers were recorded while they participated in a categorization decision task. The subjects were presented with two kinds of stimuli—words and pictures. Results revealed longer reaction times in response to words as compared to pictures in both groups. Electrophysiological measures revealed differences in amplitudes and latencies of ERP components in addition to differences in the mean activity. The results illustrated that the differences between processing words and processing pictures were manifested in timing and in the brain areas involved in the tasks. It also illustrated that although dyslexic and typical readers displayed equal ability to read and understand familiar words, dyslexics could not perform as quickly as typical readers. The semantic domain may be one of the compensatory mechanisms which help compensated dyslexic readers reach and succeed in the higher education system.
PPARα Agonist Fenofibrate Reduced the Secreting Load of β-Cells in Hypertriglyceridemia Patients with Normal Glucose Tolerance

Hypertriglyceridemia is an important risk factor associated with insulin resistance and β-cell dysfunction. This study investigated the effects of hypertriglyceridemia and fenofibrate treatment on insulin sensitivity and β-cell function in subjects with normal glucose tolerance. A total of 1974 subjects with normal glucose tolerance were divided into the normal TG group (NTG group, n = 1302) and hypertriglyceridemia group (HTG group, n = 672). Next, 92 patients selected randomly from 672 patients with hypertriglyceridemia were assigned to a 24-week fenofibrate treatment. The HTG group had increased waist circumference (WC), body mass index (BMI), homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), and homeostasis model assessment of β-cell function (HOMA-β) and decreased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) compared with the NTG group (all P < 0.01). The 24-week fenofibrate treatment significantly decreased the WC, BMI, TG, HOMA-IR, and HOMA-β levels and increased the HDL-C levels in the patients with hypertriglyceridemia (WC, BMI, and HOMA-IR: P < 0.05; TG, HDL-C, and HOMA-β: P < 0.01). The fenofibrate treatment significantly alleviated insulin resistance and reduced the secreting load of β-cells in the hypertriglyceridemia patients with normal glucose tolerance.
First mover advantages in mobile telecommunications: Evidence from OECD countries

We explore the existence of first mover advantages in mobile telecommunications markets. Building on a data set comprising monthly penetration rates, market concentration, number of active operators, and market shares of 90 followers from 33 OECD countries, we estimate a dynamic growth model. Our analysis delivers five key results. Regarding a follower's longrun market share, we observe that (1) the penetration rate at the time of market entry exerts an inverted u-shaped effect, suggesting the existence of an optimal time for issuing additional licenses for mobile network operation; (2) the concentration rate at market entry exerts a positive effect, implying that it is easier for followers to enter a more concentrated market; (3) both the number of active operators at market entry and the number of currently active operators have a negative impact. Furthermore, we find that a follower's rate of convergence to the long-run market share is (4) negatively influenced by the current market concentration and number of active operators; (5) negatively affected by changes in the penetration rate since market entry, which strongly indicates the presence of substantial first mover advantages for pioneering network operators.
Lin & Segel's Standing Gradient Problem Revisited: A Lesson in Mathematical Modeling and Asymptotics

We revisit a physiological standing gradient problem of Lin and Segel from their landmark text on mathematical modeling [C. C. Lin and L. A. Segel, Mathematics Applied to Deterministic Problems in the Natural Sciences, SIAM, Philadelphia, 1988] with a view to giving it an up-to-date perspective. In particular, via an alternative nondimensionalization, we show that the problem can be analyzed using the tools of singular perturbation theory and matched asymptotic expansions. In the spirit of the aforementioned authors, the development is didactic in style. Solving the problem requires many of the necessary skills of continuous modern mathematical modeling: formulation from a physical description of the process, scaling and asymptotic simplification, and solution using advanced perturbation (boundary layer) techniques.
Tests for cycling in a signalling pathway

Summary. Cellular signalling pathways, mediating receptor activity to nuclear gene activation, are generally regarded as feed forward cascades. We analyse measured data of a partially observed signalling pathway and address the question of possible feed‐back cycling of involved biochemical components between the nucleus and cytoplasm. First we address the question of cycling in general, starting from basic assumptions about the system. We reformulate the problem as a statistical test leading to likelihood ratio tests under non‐standard conditions. We find that the modelling approach without cycling is rejected. Afterwards, to differentiate two different transport mechanisms within the nucleus, we derive the appropriate dynamical models which lead to two systems of ordinary differential equations. To compare both models we apply a statistical testing procedure that is based on bootstrap distributions. We find that one of both transport mechanisms leads to a dynamical model which is rejected whereas the other model is satisfactory.
PXR Ablation Alleviates Diet-Induced and Genetic Obesity and Insulin Resistance in Mice

The pregnane X receptor (PXR), along with its sister receptor constitutive androstane receptor (CAR), was initially characterized as a xenobiotic receptor that regulates drug metabolism. In this study, we have uncovered an unexpected endobiotic role of PXR in obesity and type 2 diabetes. PXR ablation inhibited high-fat diet (HFD)–induced obesity, hepatic steatosis, and insulin resistance, which were accounted for by increased oxygen consumption, increased mitochondrial β-oxidation, inhibition of hepatic lipogenesis and inflammation, and sensitization of insulin signaling. In an independent model, introducing the PXR−/− allele into the ob/ob background also improved body composition and relieved the diabetic phenotype. The ob/ob mice deficient of PXR showed increased oxygen consumption and energy expenditure, as well as inhibition of gluconeogenesis and increased rate of glucose disposal during euglycemic clamp. Mechanistically, the metabolic benefits of PXR ablation were associated with the inhibition of c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase activation and downregulation of lipin-1, a novel PXR target gene. The metabolic benefit of PXR ablation was opposite to the reported prodiabetic effect of CAR ablation. Our results may help to establish PXR as a novel therapeutic target, and PXR antagonists may be used for the prevention and treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The stratification of professional sports following: social position and the consumption of major professional sports leagues in Canada

ABSTRACT The existence, nature, and social make-up of the cultural omnivore has been a topic of consistent scholarly inquiry in recent decades. Studies exist examining these dynamics both across cultural fields (inter-domain) and fully within them (intra-domain). However, even as one of the most culturally salient domains of leisure, sport is often relegated to the side-lines of these debates. This study sets out to analyse the leisure ‘following’ of professional sports. Using large-scale survey data from Canada, and employing a variety of statistical methods, this paper finds numerous distinct omnivorous categories, as well as a univorous group of professional sports consumers. The results reveal that the omnivorous groups have elevated levels of cultural and economic capital. However, it is two more selective omnivorous profiles, rather than the most omnivorous group, that show the highest concentration of cultural and economic capital. These results shed doubt on the status of intra-domain omnivores by volume as the consumption profile of high status groups. This paper also presents gendered results from these consumption groups in the first large scale investigation of female professional sports following in Canada or elsewhere.
Evaluating the Leuven Research Skills Test for 11th and 12th Grade

According to (inter)national policy and curriculum documents, the acquisition of research skills is an important objective of secondary education. However, the conceptualization and hence the operationalization of this concept seems ambiguous. Furthermore, no test exists to assess students’ proficiency in (a broad range of) research skills in a 11th- and 12th-grade behavioral sciences classroom context. This article first elaborates on what constitutes research skills in this educational context. Second, the development and testing process of the Leuven Research Skills Test (LRST) is described. Third, the psychometric properties and the dimensional structure of the LRST are presented, based on a large-scale sample (n = 405) of Belgian students in 11th and 12th grade. The results revealed that (a) the LRST is an internal consistent instrument and that (b) a hierarchical model with eight subordinate factors and one single uniting upper level factor appears to be the best fit to the data (in comparison with a unidimensional model and an eight-factor multidimensional model). It is argued that the LRST can be used to assess (individual differences in) overall research skills proficiency and to investigate the effect of particular interventions to foster research skills in future studies.
Viral Tracing Identifies Parallel Disynaptic Pathways to the Hippocampus

Electrophysiological and lesion studies in rodents have shown that the dorsal (septal) and ventral (temporal) segments of the hippocampus have functional specializations that can be understood in terms of their anatomical connections with distinct brain areas. Here we explore the circuitry associated with the hippocampus using the pseudorabies virus-Bartha strain (PRV-Bartha) tracer in the rat to examine both direct (first-order) and indirect (second-order) projections to the hippocampus. Based on analysis of PRV-Bartha infection density, we demonstrate two parallel pathways from the limbic cortex to the hippocampus. A dorsal “spatial cognition” pathway provides disynaptic input from the retrosplenial, anterior cingulate, and orbital cortex to the dorsal hippocampus, with potential synaptic relays in the anterior thalamic nuclei and dorsolateral entorhinal cortex. A ventral “executive control” pathway provides disynaptic input from the prelimbic, infralimbic, and orbital cortex to the ventral hippocampus, with potential synaptic relays in the midline thalamic nuclei and the rostral caudomedial entorhinal cortex. These data suggest a new anatomical framework for understanding the functional interactions between the cortex and hippocampus, especially in cognitive disorders that involve both structures, such as frontotemporal dementia.
THIRD-PARTY LOGISTICS USAGE: AN ASSESSMENT OF PROPOSITIONS BASED ON PREVIOUS RESEARCH

To address apparent literature gaps, this article examines third-party logistics usage among a group of manufacturers and non-manufacturers ranging in size from $30 million to over $40 billion in annual revenues. In addition to descriptive information about these companies, this article investigates a series of propositions concerning third-party logistics usage. Although these propositions might appear to be rather fundamental, they are derived from the existing third-party literature, which, as pointed out, tends to be generalizable only to very large manufacturing firms. As a result, this article adds value by examining the robustness of the propositions across a more diverse group of third-party users than has previously been investigated.
Updating Users About Time Critical News Events

During unexpected events and natural disasters, such as earthquakes and violent weather incidents, experts and interested citizens rely on the information generated by news outlets to form their understanding of these events. This information, while often voluminous, is frequently degraded by the inclusion of unimportant, duplicate, or wrong information. It is important to be able to present users with only the novel, important information about these events as they develop. In this paper, we present the problem of updating users about time critical news events, and focus on the task of deciding which information to select for updating users as an event develops. We propose a solution to this problem which incorporates techniques from information retrieval and multi-document summarization and evaluate this approach on a set of historic events using a large stream of news documents from which to extract novel information. We also introduce an evaluation method which is significantly less expensive than traditional approaches to temporal summarization. Our results indicate that no individual prior work in information retrieval or multi-document summarization is sufficient alone and that our comprehensive approach is effective.
The Yahoo! Music Dataset and KDD-Cup '11

KDD-Cup 2011 challenged the community to identify user tastes in music by leveraging Yahoo! Music user ratings. The competition hosted two tracks, which were based on two datasets sampled from the raw data, including hundreds of millions of ratings. The underlying ratings were given to four types of musical items: tracks, albums, artists, and genres, forming a four level hierarchical taxonomy. The challenge started on March 15, 2011 and ended on June 30, 2011 attracting 2389 participants, 2100 of which were active by the end of the competition. The popularity of the challenge is related to the fact that learning a large scale recommender systems is a generic problem, highly relevant to the industry. In addition, the contest drew interest by introducing a number of scientific and technical challenges including dataset size, hierarchical structure of items, high resolution timestamps of ratings, and a non-conventional ranking-based task. This paper provides the organizers' account of the contest, including: a detailed analysis of the datasets, discussion of the contest goals and actual conduct, and lessons learned throughout the contest.
Invariant approximations of robustly positively invariant sets for constrained linear discrete-time systems subject to bounded disturbances

This paper provides results on invariant approximations of robustly positively invariant sets for a discrete-time, linear, time-invariant system subject to state constraints. Two important sets, the minimal and the maximal robustly positively invariant sets and their approximations are investigated. Novel procedures for the computation of invariant approximations to these sets are presented. It is assumed that the disturbance is bounded, persistent and acts additively on the state and that the constraints on the state and disturbance are polyhedral.
Continuous interior penalty hp-finite element methods for advection and advection-diffusion equations

A continuous interior penalty hp-finite element method that penalizes the jump of the discrete solution across mesh interfaces is introduced. Error estimates are obtained for first-order and advection-dominated transport operators. The analysis relies on three technical results that are of independent interest: an hp- inverse trace inequality, a local discontinuous to continuous hp-interpolation result, and hp-error estimates for continuous L2-orthogonal projections.
What Causal Forces Shape Internet Connectivity at the AS-level?

Abstract : Two ASs are connected in the Internet AS graph only if they have a business "peering relationship. " By focusing on the AS subgraph ASpc whose links represent provider-customer relationships, we present an empirical study that identifies three crucial causal forces at work in the design of AS connectivity: (i) AS-geography, i.e., locality and number of PoPs (Points-of-Presence) within individual ASs; (ii) AS-specific business models, abstract toy models that describe how individual ASs choose their best provider; and (iii) AS evolution, a historic account of the lives of individual ASs in a dynamic ISP market. Based on these findings that directly relate to how provider-customer relationships may be determined in the actual Internet, we develop a new optimization-driven model for Internet growth at the ASpc level. Its defining feature is an explicit construction of a novel class of intuitive, multi-objective, local optimizations by which the different ASs determine in a fully distributed and decentralized fashion their "best" upstream provider. We show that our model is broadly robust, perforce yields graphs that match inferred AS connectivity with respect to many different metrics, and is ideal for exploring the impact of new peering incentives or policies on AS-level connectivity.
Foreign direct investment, investment incentives, and firing costs: A disadvantage for "inflexible Europe"?

Investment incentives targeted at attracting multinational firms have been extensively documented and researched, and empirical evidence has shown them to be influential. The same is not true of exit costs. Yet, as recent theory suggests, there may be a trade-off between entry incentives and costs of exit, for example, due to employment protection. This paper focuses on just that trade-off in the case of US multinationals in 33 host countries. Our results suggest that both entry incentives and firing costs are important and ignoring the latter neglects an important dimension in firms’ location decision. This has implications for Europe as a location for FDI, as European labor markets are generally considered relatively inflexible compared to, for example, the US.
Conference Report: NIST SPECIATION WORKSHOP Gaithersburg, MD June 13–15, 1995

program has been successful in making available to the community natural matrix materials that are very useful for the evaluation of radiochemical-measurement techniques. Traditionally, measurements of environmental radi ological contamination have focused on the determination of total concentrations, a very useful tool for initial site characterization of impacted areas. It is clear, however, that total concentration does not describe the environmental behavior or bioavailability of contaminating radionuclides. Rather, the time-dependent spread of radi ological contaminants is a function of ‘‘partitioning’’ or ‘‘speciation’’ of radionuclides within soils and sediments. In the United States and many other parts of the world, there remains an enormous task ahead for remediating radi ologically contaminated environments and monitoring the impact of man-made radioactivity on the natural environment. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) faces contamination plumes of greater than 2.3 10 m of contaminated groundwater and greater than 150 310 m of contaminated soil (Wyrick, SAIC, workshop presenter). Furthermore, current technologies for cl eaning up and preventing further migration of radioactive contaminants are costly and often ineffective. The development of strategies for remediation, restoration, and mitigation of radi ologically contaminated areas is necessarily constrained by budgetary concerns. Therefore, for long-term risk assessment analyses, regulatory bodies need information which takes the mobility and bioavailability of radi ological contaminants into consideration. Although the need exists for the continued development of more accurate, efficient, and sensitive radioanalytical techniques, there is also a need for more information concerning what fraction of the contamination in a given environmental sample is ‘‘environmentally available. ’’ Presently, there is no acceptable measure of the bioavailability of radioactive elements in contaminated soils and sediments [1].
Simultaneous Analysis of Anthocyanin and Non-Anthocyanin Flavonoid in Various Tissues of Different Lotus (Nelumbo) Cultivars by HPLC-DAD-ESI-MSn

A validated HPLC-DAD-ESI-MSn method for the analysis of non-anthocyanin flavonoids was applied to nine different tissues of twelve lotus genotypes of Nelumbo nucifera and N. lutea, together with an optimized anthocyanin extraction and separation protocol for lotus petals. A total of five anthocyanins and twenty non-anthocyanin flavonoids was identified and quantified. Flavonoid contents and compositions varied with cultivar and tissue and were used as a basis to divide tissues into three groups characterized by kaempferol and quercetin derivatives. Influences on flower petal coloration were investigated by principal components analyses. High contents of kaempferol glycosides were detected in the petals of N. nucifera while high quercetin glycoside concentrations occurred in N. lutea. Based on these results, biosynthetic pathways leading to specific compounds in lotus tissues are deduced through metabolomic analysis of different genotypes and tissues and correlations among flavonoid compounds.
Restriction of Foamy Viruses by APOBEC Cytidine Deaminases

ABSTRACT Foamy viruses (FVs) are nonpathogenic retroviruses infecting many species of mammals, notably primates, cattle, and cats. We have examined whether members of the apolipoprotein B-editing catalytic polypeptide-like subunit (APOBEC) family of antiviral cytidine deaminases restrict replication of simian FV. We show that human APOBEC3G is a potent inhibitor of FV infectivity in cell culture experiments. This antiviral activity is associated with cytidine editing of the viral genome. Both molecular FV clones and primary uncloned viruses were susceptible to APOBEC3G, and viral infectivity was also inhibited by murine and simian APOBEC3G homologues, as well as by human APOBEC3F. Wild-type and bet-deleted viruses were similarly sensitive to this antiviral activity, suggesting that Bet does not significantly counteract APOBEC proteins. Moreover, we did not detect FV sequences that may have been targeted by APOBEC in naturally infected macaques, but we observed a few G-to-A substitutions in humans that have been accidentally contaminated by simian FV. In infected hosts, the persistence strategy employed by FV might be based on low levels of replication, as well as avoidance of cells expressing large amounts of active cytidine deaminases.