Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Revealing mnemonic representations of the body in the brain

Current accounts in the memory field suggest that perceptual mechanisms underpin both perception and memory processes. The overlap between perceptual and mnemonic mechanisms has been mainly shown when processing arbitrary stimuli (e.g., shapes and colours). Nevertheless, it still unclear how more socially meaningful stimuli such as others’ bodies are perceived and later maintained in memory. This thesis investigates the encoding and memory maintenance of visually perceived body-related information. Chapter 1 reviews current accounts in the overall memory field. Secondly, it reviews evidence for the presence of a memory system to encode and maintain body-related information in working memory. Chapter 2 describes the EEG technique and proposes a novel method to isolate brain activity arising in sensorimotor cortex from concomitant visual activity that is elicited at the sight of visually perceived body stimuli. Chapter 2.5 outlines how the stimuli for the experiments of this thesis were created. Chapter 3 reports the first study looking into the transformation of visual bodily percepts into mnemonic body representations. This was done by adapting well-known working memory paradigms and the EEG method outlined in Chapter 2. The results showed that holding in memory body-related stimuli involves visual acquisition but quick recoding of the visual input onto somatosensory cortices. Chapter 4 includes another new EEG study that allowed exploration of more anterior brain areas (i.e., motor regions) during memory maintenance of body images in memory. To this end, visual-evoked potentials were combined with motor-cortical potentials. Chapter 5 followed up the two previous EEG studies with three different behavioural versions centred on interfering with the on going processing of body stimuli. Specifically, different forms of sensorimotor suppression were applied during encoding and maintenance of body-related information in memory. Altogether, the 20 methodology and experiments of this PhD work suggest that compared to mnemonic processing of non-body-related images, holding body-related stimuli in memory (beyond the perceptual stage) recruits brain areas such as somatosensory and motor cortices. Finally, Chapter 6 reflects on the results of these studies, offering an overview of this PhD work, as well as on the limitations, technicalities, and potential future studies.
Ant colony algorithm for web page classification

As the information contained in the Web is increasing, organizing this information is a necessary requirement. Classification is a way to organize the webpsilas information. While there is different ways to classify the web information, swarm intelligence is a new one in this field. This paper investigates usage of a swarm intelligence algorithm in the field of the web page classification; Focusing on Persian web pages. Ant Miner II is the used algorithm. It also propose a simple text preprocessing technique to reduce the large numbers of attributes associated with web content mining, without dealing linguistic complications. The result shows Ant Miner II and proposed preprocessing technique are efficiency in the field of the web page classification.
An improved elastic net method for the traveling salesman problem

An elastic net method is presented for finding traveling-salesman tours; the method improves on the convergence properties of a recent model proposed by R. Durbin and D. Willshaw (1987). It combines the notion of symmetric forces described by the author in an earlier paper (1981) with an annealing schedule derived directly from the input data. The author demonstrates that the method converges about 50 times faster than the Durbin-Willshaw model on patterns of up to 50 cities. It produces either optimum tours or tours within a few percent of optimum. Several search strategies for larger problems are suggested. <<ETX>>
IMMERSED BOUNDARY METHOD FOR SHARED-MEMORY ARCHITECTURES

In this report, we propose a novel, massively parallelizable algorithm for the immersed boundary method based on the fluid solver of Guermond and Minev [11]. This solver employs a directional-splitting technique that allows the incompressible Navier–Stokes equation to be efficiently parallelized on both shared and distributed memory architectures. An implementation of the numerical scheme was constructed in Python and C/C++, where the bottlenecks were parallelized using OpenMP. The parallelization techniques used in our implementation are discussed. Furthermore, results for a fluid-structure interaction problem are shown along with a corresponding performance study.
Perpetual Inferiority: Whites’ Racial Ideology toward Latinos

The author examines contemporary Latino racialization by focusing on whites’ attitudes toward Latinos. Drawing on 40 in-depth interviews with whites from Orange County, California, the findings show that this group of white Americans believes that Latino culture is deficient and inferior. Moreover, the respondents explicitly ascribe these problems to the group as a whole, regardless of national origin, citizenship status, or generation. The interviews reveal how whites construct Latinos as a racial group by explaining that Latinos pass down their “deficient” culture to the subsequent generation and thus are unable to change, adapt, and progress. In essence, whites perceive Latino cultural traits as fixed. By doing so, whites use cultural racism to function as biological racism. This reveals a racial ideology toward Latinos the author terms perpetual inferiority, which accounts for how whites construct Latinos as a nonwhite racial group that is unable to assimilate. This study demonstrates specifically how external ascription affects the racial formation process of Latinos and their position within the racial hierarchy.
Effect of prosody awareness training on the quality of consecutive interpreting between English and Farsi

Consecutive interpreting allows two persons who do not understand each other’s language, to communicate through a bilingual intermediary: the interpreter. Typically, interpreters are native speakers of one language but not the other. The extent to which student interpreters’ performance is improved by making them aware of prosodic differences (word and sentence stress) between native and foreign language, was investigated for Iranian participants with Farsi as the native language and English as the foreign language. Effects were tested both in recto (from foreign English into native Farsi) and in verso interpreting (from Farsi into English). Interpreting quality was judged by experts on ten rating scales, relating to accuracy of interpreting as well as to intelligibility and pleasantness of the delivery. Objective correlates of the subjective ratings (e.g. counts of errors and hesitations, acoustic fluency measures) were established. Prosody training yielded better interpreting quality on all rating scales in recto interpreting, especially on fluency. In verso interpreting the overall gain was smaller, and with a trade-off between interpreting accuracy and fluency. In follow-up experiments better word recognition and comprehension of the English input was found. Explicit prosody training had a greater benefit than implicit prosody training.
Modelling the relationship between brand experience dimensions and the antecedents of happiness within the context of dining services

ii Acknowledgement . iv Declaration . v List of Figures . xi List of Tables . xii 1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Research Background . 1 1.2 Need for Happiness . 2 1.3 Research Question . 8 1.4 Research Aim and Objectives . 9 1.5 Context of the Study (Dining Experience at Restaurants) . 10 1.5. 1 Product vs. Service Brand Experience . 10 1.5. 2 Dining Experience at Restaurants . 11 1.5. 3 Restaurants Industry . 14 1.6 Structure of the Thesis . 16 1.7 Summary of Chapter One . 19 2 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ON BRAND EXPERIENCE AND HAPPINESS . 20 2.
The Joint Roles of Career Decision Self-Efficacy and Personality Traits in the Prediction of Career Decidedness and Decisional Difficulty

We examined the differential roles that career decision-making self-efficacy and the Big Five traits of neuroticism, extroversion, and conscientiousness may play in relation to career decision status and decisional difficulty. Following assumptions of the social cognitive model of career self-management, we hypothesized that the relations of the personality traits to level of decidedness and choice/commitment anxiety (CCA), a key source of indecision, would be mediated by self-efficacy. We also examined the possibility that the traits could function to moderate the relation of self-efficacy to the dependent variables. Employing a sample of 182 undergraduates, we found support for a mediational model in which each of the personality traits relates to self-efficacy which, in turn, predicts CCA and decidedness. In addition, conscientiousness was found to moderate the relation of career decision-making self-efficacy to CCA, and extroversion moderated the relation of self-efficacy to decidedness. We consider the findings in relation to the social cognitive model and discuss their implications for future research and career decision-making interventions.
Natural transformation competence in Helicobacter pylori is mediated by the basic components of a type IV secretion system

Helicobacter pylori (Hp), a Gram‐negative bacterial pathogen and aetiologic agent of gastroduodenal disease in humans, is naturally competent for genetic transformation. Natural competence in bacteria is usually correlated with the presence of type IV pili or type IV pilin‐like proteins, which are absent in Hp. Instead, we recently identified the comB operon in Hp, carrying four genes tentatively designated as orf2, comB1, comB2 and comB3. We show here that all ComB proteins and the 37‐amino‐acid Orf2 peptide display significant primary sequence and structural homology/identity to the basic components of a type IV secretion apparatus. ComB1, ComB2 and ComB3, now renamed ComB8, ComB9 and ComB10, correspond to the Agrobacterium tumefaciens VirB8, VirB9 and VirB10 proteins respectively. The peptide Orf2 carries a lipoprotein motif and a second cysteine residue homologous to VirB7, and was thus designated ComB7. The putative ATPase ComB4, encoded by the open reading frame hp0017 of strain 26695, corresponds to virB4 of the A. tumefaciens type IV secretion system. A Hp comB4 transposon insertion mutant was totally defective in natural transformation. By complementation of a HpΔcomB deletion mutant, we demonstrate that each of the proteins from ComB8 to ComB10 is absolutely essential for the development of natural transformation competence. The putative lipoprotein ComB7 is not essential, but apparently stabilizes the apparatus and modulates the transformation efficiency. Thus, pathogenic type I Hp strains contain two functional independent type IV transport systems, one for protein translocation encoded by the cag pathogenicity island and one for uptake of DNA by natural transformation. The latter system indicates a possible novel mechanism for natural DNA transformation in bacteria.
Derived deformations of Artin stacks

We generalise the techniques of [Pri3] to describe derived deformations in simplicial categories. This allows us to consider deformation problems with higher automorphisms, such as chain complexes (which have homotopies) and stacks (which have 2-automorphisms). We also give a general approach for studying deformations of diagrams.
PROSES BERPIKIR SISWA KELAS VIII DALAM MENYELESAIKAN SOAL MATEMATIKA TIMSS MATERI BESAR SUDUT DALAM BENTUK GEOMETRIS

This study aims to describe the students' thinking process in solving TIMSS math problem on measurement of angle in geometric shapes based on Polya’s problem solving step associated with Swartz’s thinking process theory. The subject of the research was a grade VIII student in SMP Negeri 4 Malang who was classified as intelligent but made many mistakes when completing the test. Data collection methods used were test and interview methods. The results show that students go through the step of generating ideas, clarifying ideas, assessing the reasonableness of ideas, and thinking complex on every step of problem solving, but at the look back step, students do not clarify the idea. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan proses berpikir siswa dalam menyelesaikan soal matematika TIMSS materi besar sudut dalam bentuk geometris berdasarkan langkah penyelesaian masalah Polya yang dikaitkan dengan teori proses berpikir Swartz. Subjek penelitian adalah seorang siswa kelas VIII di SMP Negeri 4 Malang yang tergolong pandai, tetapi banyak melakukan kesalahan saat menyelesaikan soal tes. Metode pengumpulan data yang digunakan adalah metode tes dan wawancara. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa siswa dalam menyelesaikan soal TIMSS melalui tahap menghasilkan ide, mengklarifikasi ide, menilai kelayakan ide, dan berpikir kompleks pada setiap langkah penyelesaian masalah. Namun, pada tahap memeriksa kembali, siswa tidak melakukan pengklarifikasian ide.
Survey of Virulence Determinants among Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium Isolated from Clinical Specimens of Hospitalized Patients of North west of Iran

Recent data indicates an increasing rate of vancomycin resistance in clinical enterococcal isolates worldwide. The nosocomial enterococci are likely to harbor virulence elements that increase their ability to colonize hospitalized patients. The aim of this study was to characterize virulence determinants in vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) obtained from various clinical sources. During the years 2008 to 2010, a total of 48 VRE isolates were obtained from three University teaching hospitals in Northwest, Iran. Initially, phenotypic speciation was done and minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of vancomycin were determined by agar dilution method and E-test. Then, species identification and resistance genotypes along with detection of virulence genes (asa1, esp, gelE, ace and cpd) of the isolates were performed by multiplex PCR. Thirty eight isolates were identified as vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREfm) and ten as E. faecalis (VREfs). Irrespective of the species, vanA gene (89.58%) was dominant and three phenotypically vancomycin susceptible E. faecium isolates carried the vanB gene. Among virulence genes investigated, the esp was found in 27(71%) VREfm strains, but did not in any VREfs. Other virulence determinants were highly detected in VREfs strains. Our data indicate a high prevalence of E. faecium harboring vancomycin resistance with vanA genotype and the two VRE species displayed different virulence genes.
Drafting Behind Akamai: Inferring Network Conditions Based on CDN Redirections

To enhance Web browsing experiences, content distribution networks (CDNs) move Web content ¿closer¿ to clients by caching copies of Web objects on thousands of servers worldwide. Additionally, to minimize client download times, such systems perform extensive network and server measurements and use them to redirect clients to different servers over short time scales. In this paper, we explore techniques for inferring and exploiting network measurements performed by the largest CDN, Akamai; our objective is to locate and utilize quality Internet paths without performing extensive path probing or monitoring. Our contributions are threefold. First, we conduct a broad measurement study of Akamai's CDN. We probe Akamai's network from 140 PlanetLab (PL) vantage points for two months. We find that Akamai redirection times, while slightly higher than advertised, are sufficiently low to be useful for network control. Second, we empirically show that Akamai redirections overwhelmingly correlate with network latencies on the paths between clients and the Akamai servers. Finally, we illustrate how large-scale overlay networks can exploit Akamai redirections to identify the best detouring nodes for one-hop source routing. Our research shows that in more than 50% of investigated scenarios, it is better to route through the nodes ¿recommended¿ by Akamai than to use the direct paths. Because this is not the case for the rest of the scenarios, we develop low-overhead pruning algorithms that avoid Akamai-driven paths when they are not beneficial. Because these Akamai nodes are part of a closed system, we provide a method for mapping Akamai-recommended paths to those in a generic overlay and demonstrate that these one-hop paths indeed outperform direct ones.
Yu Ping Feng San, an Ancient Chinese Herbal Decoction, Regulates the Expression of Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase and Cyclooxygenase-2 and the Activity of Intestinal Alkaline Phosphatase in Cultures

Yu Ping Feng San (YPFS), a Chinese herbal decoction comprising Astragali Radix (AR; Huangqi), Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma (AMR; Baizhu), and Saposhnikoviae Radix (SR; Fangfeng), has been used clinically to treat inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Previously, we demonstrated a dual role of YPFS in regulating cytokine release in cultured macrophages. In this study, we elucidated the anti-inflammatory effect of YPFS that is mediated through modulating the expression of three key enzymes involved in IBD: inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), and intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IALP). In a lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced chronic-inflammation model of cultured murine macrophages, YPFS treatment suppressed the activation of iNOS and COX-2 expression in a dose-dependent manner. Conversely, application of YPFS in cultured small intestinal enterocytes markedly induced the expression of IALP in a time-dependent manner, which might strengthen the intestinal detoxification system. A duality of YPFS in modulating the expression of iNOS and COX-2 was determined here. The expression of iNOS and COX-2 in macrophages was induced by YPFS, and this activation was partially blocked by the NF-κB-specific inhibitor BAY 11-7082, indicating a role of NF-κB signaling. These YPFS-induced changes in gene regulation strongly suggest that the anti-inflammatory effects of YPFS are mediated through the regulation of inflammatory enzymes.
Neural Dynamics during Anoxia and the “Wave of Death”

Recent experiments in rats have shown the occurrence of a high amplitude slow brain wave in the EEG approximately 1 minute after decapitation, with a duration of 5–15 s (van Rijn et al, PLoS One 6, e16514, 2011) that was presumed to signify the death of brain neurons. We present a computational model of a single neuron and its intra- and extracellular ion concentrations, which shows the physiological mechanism for this observation. The wave is caused by membrane potential oscillations, that occur after the cessation of activity of the sodium-potassium pumps has lead to an excess of extracellular potassium. These oscillations can be described by the Hodgkin-Huxley equations for the sodium and potassium channels, and result in a sudden change in mean membrane voltage. In combination with a high-pass filter, this sudden depolarization leads to a wave in the EEG. We discuss that this process is not necessarily irreversible.
Spatial Co-Registration of Ultra-High Resolution Visible, Multispectral and Thermal Images Acquired with a Micro-UAV over Antarctic Moss Beds

In recent times, the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as tools for environmental remote sensing has become more commonplace. Compared to traditional airborne remote sensing, UAVs can provide finer spatial resolution data (up to 1 cm/pixel) and higher temporal resolution data. For the purposes of vegetation monitoring, the use of multiple sensors such as near infrared and thermal infrared cameras are of benefit. Collecting data with multiple sensors, however, requires an accurate spatial co-registration of the various UAV image datasets. In this study, we used an Oktokopter UAV to investigate the physiological state of Antarctic moss ecosystems using three sensors: (i) a visible camera (1 cm/pixel), (ii) a 6 band multispectral camera (3 cm/pixel), and (iii) a thermal infrared camera (10 cm/pixel). Imagery from each sensor was geo-referenced and mosaicked with a combination of commercially available software and our own algorithms based on the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT). The validation of the mosaic’s spatial co-registration revealed a mean root mean squared error (RMSE) of 1.78 pixels. A thematic map of moss health, derived from the multispectral mosaic using a Modified Triangular Vegetation Index (MTVI2), and an indicative map of moss surface temperature were then combined to demonstrate sufficient accuracy of our co-registration methodology for UAV-based monitoring of Antarctic moss beds.
Christian Moral Enforcement : From Confession of Sins to Self-Service

Adam Smith argued that the Catholic ‘superstition’ of confessing sins to priests was exploitative. For Max Weber, it was also inferior to Calvinist predestination, which, by indirectly motivating self-examination, encouraged self-control and economic growth, a thesis extensively discussed at the macroeconomic level. This article looks at the microanalytics of these arguments, developing first a theory of oral confession as third-party enforcement. It proposes an adaptation argument, according to which Christian confession of sins evolved from public into auricular confession and, later, into selfexamination to efficiently provide selfand social-control. This efficient-adaptation hypothesis fits better with the empirical evidence, also explaining the modern decline of oral confession in favor of self-examination. This substitution between thirdand firstparty enforcement is driven by the productivity gap of professional services, a serious case of Baumol’s disease that grows with lay education and cannot be cured with innovation, given the interpersonal nature of the service. * Professor of Business Organization. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Trias Fargas, 25. 08005-Barcelona (Spain). E-mail: benito.arrunada@econ.upf.es. Http://www.econ.upf.es/~ arrunada. ** The author acknowledges the comments received from Albert Carreras, Nuno Garoupa, Celestino Pardo, Armando García, Raúl Viedma, David S. Wilson and participants at the Values and Beliefs seminar at FAES, as well as the research assistance of Petar Balachev and Andrés Jariod. The usual disclaimers apply. This study received financial support from the MCYT, a research agency of the Spanish Government, through grant SEC2002-04471-C02-02.
Novel power efficient bit-wise sequence detector (Non-overlapping)

Due to the obvious shortcomings in many aspects of technologies based on classic irreversible electronics, researches are trying to find alternatives that are better suited to support the increasing modern computational requirements. One such alternative is in the form of reversible logic. Reversibility has found extensive use in various forms of technological developments such as quantum computing. By means of this concepts, researchers are constantly attempting to create digital designs based on reversibility. The authors here have designed the implementation of a sequential circuit, namely the sequence detector by use of reversible logic technology.
Short-Run Effects of Money When Some Prices are Sticky

The effects of monetary disturbances differ across sectors when some prices can adjust more rapidly than others. In a model economy with two sectors possessing different speeds of price adjustment, monetary shocks generate inverse movements of real interest rates, alter relative prices, and generate sectoral reallocations of labor. Factors such as the willingness of households to substitute goods across sectors and over time affect the economy's response.