Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Are Categorical Spatial Relations Encoded by Shifting Visual Attention between Objects?

Perceiving not just values, but relations between values, is critical to human cognition. We tested the predictions of a proposed mechanism for processing categorical spatial relations between two objects—the shift account of relation processing—which states that relations such as ‘above’ or ‘below’ are extracted by shifting visual attention upward or downward in space. If so, then shifts of attention should improve the representation of spatial relations, compared to a control condition of identity memory. Participants viewed a pair of briefly flashed objects and were then tested on either the relative spatial relation or identity of one of those objects. Using eye tracking to reveal participants’ voluntary shifts of attention over time, we found that when initial fixation was on neither object, relational memory showed an absolute advantage for the object following an attention shift, while identity memory showed no advantage for either object. This result is consistent with the shift account of relation processing. When initial fixation began on one of the objects, identity memory strongly benefited this fixated object, while relational memory only showed a relative benefit for objects following an attention shift. This result is also consistent, although not as uniquely, with the shift account of relation processing. Taken together, we suggest that the attention shift account provides a mechanistic explanation for the overall results. This account can potentially serve as the common mechanism underlying both linguistic and perceptual representations of spatial relations.
Interdependency of the Determinants of User Interaction and Usage: An Empirical Test

Information systems researchers have applied the theories of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975) and planned behavior (Ajzen 1985, 1988) to predict user intention and usage of information technology (IT). Most studies have assumed independent relationships among the determinants of user intention and usage. It is important to examine the interdependencies among these variables to avoid model misspecifications and misinterpretation of results. Using a longitudinal sample of 136 users, this study tests interdependencies among the determinants in the theory of planned behavior model of IT usage. The results generally support the predictive validity of the theory and its hypothesized paths with the exception of a nonsignificant link from subjective norms to behavioral intentions. Six hypotheses concerning the crossover effects between the antecedent variables were supported. The addition of these crossover paths significantly improved the overall model fit. These findings suggest that the structure underlying the theory of planned behavior is richer in content and more complex than is often presumed, particularly with regard to the normative components.
Gamma-ray continuum emission from the inner Galactic region as observed with INTEGRAL/SPI

The diffuse continuum emission from the Galactic plane in the energy range 18–1000 keV has been studied using 16 Ms of data from the SPI instrument on INTEGRAL. With such an exposure we can exploit the imaging properties of SPI to achieve a good separation of point sources from the various diffuse components. Using a candidate-source catalogue derived with IBIS on INTEGRAL and a number of sky distribution models we obtained spectra resolved in Galactic longitude. We can identify spectral components of a diffuse continuum of power law shape with index about 1.7, a positron annihilation component with a continuum from positronium and the line at 511 keV, and a second, roughly power-law component from detected point sources. Our analysis confirms the concentration of positron annihilation emission in the inner region (|l| < 10 ◦ ), the disk (10 ◦ < |l| < 30 ◦ ) being at least a factor 7 weaker in this emission. The power-law component in contrast drops by only a factor 2, showing a quite different longitude distribution and spatial origin. Detectable sources constitute about 90% of the total Galactic emission between 20 and 60 keV, but have a steeper spectrum than the diffuse emission, their contribution to the total emission dropping rapidly to a small fraction at higher energies. The spectrum of diffuse emission is compatible with RXTE and COMPTEL at lower and higher energies respectively. In the SPI energy range the flux is lower than found by OSSE, probably due to the more complete accounting for sources by SPI. The power-law emission is difficult to explain as of interstellar origin, inverse Compton giving at most 10%, and instead a population of unresolved point sources is proposed as a possible origin, AXPs with their spectral hardening above 100 keV being plausible candidates. We present a broadband spectrum of the Galactic emission from 10 keV to 100 GeV.
Probabilistic Models of Object Geometry for Grasp Planning

Robot manipulators generally rely on complete knowledge of object geometry in order to plan motions and compute successful grasps. However, manipulating real-world objects poses a substantial modelling challenge. New instances of known object classes may vary from learned models. Objects that are not perfectly rigid may appear in new configurations that do not match any of the known geometries. In this paper we describe an algorithm for learning generative probabilistic models of object geometry for the purposes of manipulation; these models capture both non-rigid deformations of known objects and variability of objects within a known class. Given a single image of partially occluded objects, the model can be used to recognize objects based on the visible portion of each object contour, and then estimate the complete geometry of the object to allow grasp planning. We provide two main contributions: a probabilistic model of shape geometry and a graphical model for performing correspondence between shape descriptions. We show examples of learned models from image data and demonstrate how the learned models can be used by a manipulation planner to grasp objects in cluttered visual scenes.
Non-Recessive Bt Toxin Resistance Conferred by an Intracellular Cadherin Mutation in Field-Selected Populations of Cotton Bollworm

Transgenic crops producing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins have been planted widely to control insect pests, yet evolution of resistance by the pests can reduce the benefits of this approach. Recessive mutations in the extracellular domain of toxin-binding cadherin proteins that confer resistance to Bt toxin Cry1Ac by disrupting toxin binding have been reported previously in three major lepidopteran pests, including the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera. Here we report a novel allele from cotton bollworm with a deletion in the intracellular domain of cadherin that is genetically linked with non-recessive resistance to Cry1Ac. We discovered this allele in each of three field-selected populations we screened from northern China where Bt cotton producing Cry1Ac has been grown intensively. We expressed four types of cadherin alleles in heterologous cell cultures: susceptible, resistant with the intracellular domain mutation, and two complementary chimeric alleles with and without the mutation. Cells transfected with each of the four cadherin alleles bound Cry1Ac and were killed by Cry1Ac. However, relative to cells transfected with either the susceptible allele or the chimeric allele lacking the intracellular domain mutation, cells transfected with the resistant allele or the chimeric allele containing the intracellular domain mutation were less susceptible to Cry1Ac. These results suggest that the intracellular domain of cadherin is involved in post-binding events that affect toxicity of Cry1Ac. This evidence is consistent with the vital role of the intracellular region of cadherin proposed by the cell signaling model of the mode of action of Bt toxins. Considered together with previously reported data, the results suggest that both pore formation and cell signaling pathways contribute to the efficacy of Bt toxins.
Model Checking Timed and Stochastic Properties with CSL^{TA}

Markov chains are a well-known stochastic process that provide a balance between being able to adequately model the system's behavior and being able to afford the cost of the model solution. The definition of stochastic temporal logics like continuous stochastic logic (CSL) and its variant asCSL, and of their model-checking algorithms, allows a unified approach to the verification of systems, allowing the mix of performance evaluation and probabilistic verification. In this paper we present the stochastic logic CSLTA, which is more expressive than CSL and asCSL, and in which properties can be specified using automata (more precisely, timed automata with a single clock). The extension with respect to expressiveness allows the specification of properties referring to the probability of a finite sequence of timed events. A typical example is the responsiveness property "with probability at least 0.75, a message sent at time 0 by a system A will be received before time 5 by system B and the acknowledgment will be back at A before time 7", a property that cannot be expressed in either CSL or asCSL. We also present a model-checking algorithm for CSLTA.
Drought induces lagged tree mortality in a subalpine forest in the Rocky Mountains

Extreme climatic events are key factors in initiating gradual or sudden changes in forest ecosystems through the promotion of severe, tree-killing disturbances such as fire, blowdown, and widespread insect outbreaks. In contrast to these climatically-incited disturbances, little is known about the more direct effect of drought on tree mortality, especially in high-elevation forests. Therefore projections of drought-induced mortality under future climatic conditions remain uncertain. For a subalpine forest landscape in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado (USA), we quantified lag effects of drought on mortality of Engelmann spruce Picea engelmannii, subalpine fir Abies lasiocarpa, and lodgepole pine Pinus contorta. For the period 1910� 2004, we related death dates of 164 crossdated dead trees to early-season and late-season droughts. Following early-season droughts, spruce mortality increased over five years and fir mortality increased sharply over 11 years. Following late-season droughts, spruce showed a small increase in mortality within one year, whereas fir showed a consistent period of increased mortality over two years. Pine mortality was not affected by drought. Low pre-drought radial growth rates predisposed spruce and fir to drought-related mortality. Spruce and fir trees that died during a recent drought (2000� 2004) had significantly lower pre-drought growth rates than live neighbour trees. Overall, we found large interspecific differences in drought-related mortality with fir showing the strongest effect followed by spruce and pine. This direct influence of climatic variability on differential tree mortality has the potential for driving large-scale changes in subalpine forests of the Rocky Mountains.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Among Adolescent Ten-Pin Bowlers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract Motivation has long been associated with sports engagement. However, to date no research has been performed to understand the domain of motivation among ten-pin bowlers. The purpose of this study was to investigate different types of motivation (i.e., intrinsic vs. extrinsic) based on self-determination theory from the perspective of gender and the bowler type (competitive vs. casual). A total of 240 bowlers (104 male, 136 female; 152 competitive, 88 casual) with a mean age of 16.61 ± 0.78 years were recruited in Kuala Lumpur. The Sport Motivation Scale, a 28-item self-report questionnaire measuring seven subscales (i.e., intrinsic motivation to know, intrinsic motivation to accomplish, intrinsic motivation to experience stimulation, extrinsic motivation to identify regulation, extrinsic motivation for introjection regulation, extrinsic motivation to external regulation, and amotivation) was administered. Results showed significant differences (t=10.43, df=239, p=0.01) between total scores of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation among tenpin bowlers. There were significant gender differences with respect to intrinsic motivation to know, intrinsic motivation to accomplish, intrinsic motivation to experience stimulation, and extrinsic motivation to identify regulation. However, no significant bowler type differences were found for either the intrinsic (t=-1.15, df=238, p=0.25) or extrinsic (t=-0.51, df=238, p=0.61) motivation dimensions. In conclusion, our study demonstrated substantial intrinsic motivation for gender effects, but no bowler type effects among adolescent ten-pin bowlers.
A Novel Antiandrogen, Compound 30, Suppresses Castration-Resistant and MDV3100-Resistant Prostate Cancer Growth In Vitro and In Vivo

Resistance to antiandrogen drugs, like MDV3100, occurs in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Thus, preventing or treating antiandrogen resistance is a major clinical challenge. We identified a novel antiandrogen, Compound 30, and compared its efficacy with MDV3100. We found that Compound 30 inhibits androgen receptor (AR) activity in LNCaP cells, C4-2 cells, as well as MDV3100-resistant cell lines. Compared with MDV3100, Compound 30 treatment induces greater reduction in AR, prostate-specific antigen (PSA), and AR transcriptional activity, and prevents AR nuclear translocation in AR-sensitive LNCaP cells. Compound 30 has antiproliferative effects in LNCaP cells, in castrate-resistant C4-2 cells, and those resistant to MDV3100. Compound 30 was equally as effective as MDV3100 in reducing tumor volume and PSA in vivo. More importantly, Compound 30 is effective at inhibiting AR activity in MDV3100-resistant cell lines and significantly prevented tumor growth and PSA increases in mice bearing MDV3100-resistant xenografts. Together, our data show that Compound 30 strongly inhibited AR activity and suppressed castration-resistant LNCaP growth as well as MDV3100-resistant cell growth in vitro and in vivo. These data provide a preclinical proof-of-principle that Compound 30 could be a promising next generation anti-AR agent, especially in the context of antiandrogen-resistant tumors. Mol Cancer Ther; 12(5); 567–76. ©2013 AACR.
Weakly Supervised Joint Sentiment-Topic Detection from Text

Sentiment analysis or opinion mining aims to use automated tools to detect subjective information such as opinions, attitudes, and feelings expressed in text. This paper proposes a novel probabilistic modeling framework called joint sentiment-topic (JST) model based on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), which detects sentiment and topic simultaneously from text. A reparameterized version of the JST model called Reverse-JST, obtained by reversing the sequence of sentiment and topic generation in the modeling process, is also studied. Although JST is equivalent to Reverse-JST without a hierarchical prior, extensive experiments show that when sentiment priors are added, JST performs consistently better than Reverse-JST. Besides, unlike supervised approaches to sentiment classification which often fail to produce satisfactory performance when shifting to other domains, the weakly supervised nature of JST makes it highly portable to other domains. This is verified by the experimental results on data sets from five different domains where the JST model even outperforms existing semi-supervised approaches in some of the data sets despite using no labeled documents. Moreover, the topics and topic sentiment detected by JST are indeed coherent and informative. We hypothesize that the JST model can readily meet the demand of large-scale sentiment analysis from the web in an open-ended fashion.
Image Origin Classification Based on Social Network Provenance

Recognizing information about the origin of a digital image has been individuated as a crucial task to be tackled by the image forensic scientific community. Understanding something on the previous history of an image could be strategic to address any successive assessment to be made on it: knowing the kind of device used for acquisition or, better, the model of the camera could focus investigations in a specific direction. Sometimes just revealing that a determined post-processing, such as an interpolation or a filtering, has been performed on an image could be of fundamental importance to go back to its provenance. This paper locates in such a context and proposes an innovative method to inquire if an image derives from a social network and, in particular, try to distinguish from, which one has been downloaded. The technique is based on the assumption that each social network applies a peculiar and mostly unknown manipulation that, however, leaves some distinctive traces on the image; such traces can be extracted to feature every platform. By resorting at trained classifiers, the presented methodology is satisfactorily able to discern different social network origins. Experimental results carried out on diverse image datasets and in various operative conditions witness that such a distinction is possible. In addition, the proposed method is also able to go back to the original JPEG quality factor the image had before being uploaded on a social network.
Subseafloor sedimentary life in the South Pacific Gyre

The low-productivity South Pacific Gyre (SPG) is Earth's largest oceanic province. Its sediment accumulates extraordinarily slowly (0.1–1 m per million years). This sediment contains a living community that is characterized by very low biomass and very low metabolic activity. At every depth in cored SPG sediment, mean cell abundances are 3 to 4 orders of magnitude lower than at the same depths in all previously explored subseafloor communities. The net rate of respiration by the subseafloor sedimentary community at each SPG site is 1 to 3 orders of magnitude lower than the rates at previously explored sites. Because of the low respiration rates and the thinness of the sediment, interstitial waters are oxic throughout the sediment column in most of this region. Consequently, the sedimentary community of the SPG is predominantly aerobic, unlike previously explored subseafloor communities. Generation of H2 by radiolysis of water is a significant electron-donor source for this community. The per-cell respiration rates of this community are about 2 orders of magnitude higher (in oxidation/reduction equivalents) than in previously explored anaerobic subseafloor communities. Respiration rates and cell concentrations in subseafloor sediment throughout almost half of the world ocean may approach those in SPG sediment.
Premotor Gray Matter Volume is Associated with Clinical Findings in Idiopathic and Genetically Determined Parkinson’s Disease

In the present voxel-based morphometric study, we investigated whether the severity and duration of disease are associated with alterations in gray matter volume (GMV) in symptomatic Parkin mutation carriers (sPARKIN-MC) and patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (iPD). Regression analyses revealed different negative correlations between GMV in cortical motor areas and the severity as well as the disease duration in sPARKIN-MC and iPD patients. SPARKIN-MC showed a less involvement of cortical motor areas, in particular in the supplementary motor area (SMA) than iPD patients. Specifically, in iPD patients, but not in sPARKIN-MC, there was a negative correlation between the SMA degeneration and the UPDRS-II item freezing. The different degeneration patterns may mirror diverse kinetics of the disease progress in these two groups of PD patients with different underlying etiologies.
TLR Agonists Abrogate Costimulation Blockade-Induced Prolongation of Skin Allografts1

Costimulation blockade protocols are effective in prolonging allograft survival in animal models and are entering clinical trials, but how environmental perturbants affect graft survival remains largely unstudied. We used a costimulation blockade protocol consisting of a donor-specific transfusion and anti-CD154 mAb to address this question. We observed that lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection at the time of donor-specific transfusion and anti-CD154 mAb shortens allograft survival. Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus 1) activates innate immunity, 2) induces allo-cross-reactive T cells, and 3) generates virus-specific responses, all of which may adversely affect allograft survival. To investigate the role of innate immunity, mice given costimulation blockade and skin allografts were coinjected with TLR2 (Pam3Cys), TLR3 (polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid), TLR4 (LPS), or TLR9 (CpG) agonists. Costimulation blockade prolonged skin allograft survival that was shortened after coinjection by TLR agonists. To investigate underlying mechanisms, we used “synchimeric” mice which circulate trace populations of anti-H2b transgenic alloreactive CD8+ T cells. In synchimeric mice treated with costimulation blockade, coadministration of all four TLR agonists prevented deletion of alloreactive CD8+ T cells and shortened skin allograft survival. These alloreactive CD8+ T cells 1) expressed the proliferation marker Ki-67, 2) up-regulated CD44, and 3) failed to undergo apoptosis. B6.TNFR2−/− and B6.IL-12R−/− mice treated with costimulation blockade plus LPS also exhibited short skin allograft survival whereas similarly treated B6. CD8α−/− and TLR4−/− mice exhibited prolonged allograft survival. We conclude that TLR signaling abrogates the effects of costimulation blockade by preventing alloreactive CD8+ T cell apoptosis through a mechanism not dependent on TNFR2 or IL-12R signaling.
Nucleons at finite temperature.

The nucleon mass shift is calculated using chiral counting arguments and a virial expansion, without and with the {Delta}. At all temperatures, the mass shift and damping rate are dominated by the {Delta}. Our results are compared with the empirical analysis of Leutwyler and Smilga, as well as results from heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory in the large {ital N}{sub {ital c}} (number of color) limit. We show that unitarity implies that the concepts of thermal shifts are process dependent. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society. }
OF-FL: QoS-aware fuzzy logic objective function for the RPL routing protocol

Low power and lossy networks (LLNs) require efficient routing protocols that should meet the requirements of the critical applications, such as real-time, reliability and high availability. RPL has been recently proposed by the ROLL working group as a tree routing protocol specifically designed for LLNs. It relies on objective functions to construct routes that optimize or constrain a routing metric on the paths. However, the working group did not specify the set of metrics and/or constraints to be used to specify the preferred path, and left it open to implementations. In this paper, we design OF-FL, a novel objective function that combines a set of metrics in order to provide a configurable routing decision based on the fuzzy parameters. OF-FL has the advantage to consider the application requirements in order to select the best paths to the destination. Our evaluation with a large-scale testbed in ContikiOS reveals that OF-FL can achieve remarkable performance of the RPL-based LLNs in comparison with the existing objective functions, and appropriately satisfy the quality of service contract of the different applications.