Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Throughput and delay scaling of general cognitive networks

There has been recent interest within the networking research community to understand how performance scales in cognitive networks with overlapping n primary nodes and m secondary nodes. Two important metrics, i.e., throughput and delay, are studied in this paper. We first propose a simple and extendable decision model, i.e., the hybrid protocol model, for the secondary nodes to exploit spatial gap among primary transmissions for frequency reuse. Then a framework for general cognitive networks is established based on the hybrid protocol model to analyze the occurrence of transmission opportunities for secondary nodes. We show that in the case that the transmission range of the secondary network is smaller than that of the primary network in order, as long as the primary network operates in a generalized round-robin TDMA fashion, the hybrid protocol model suffice to guide the secondary network to achieve the same throughput and delay scaling as a standalone network, without harming the transmissions of the primary network. Our approach is general in the sense that we only make a few weak assumptions on both networks, and therefore obtains a wide variety of results. We show secondary networks can obtain the same order of throughput and delay as standalone networks when primary networks are classic static networks, networks with random walk mobility, hybrid networks, multicast networks, hierarchically cooperative networks or clustered networks. Our work presents a relatively complete picture of the performance scaling of cognitive networks and provides fundamental insight on the design of them.
Environmental Enrichment: Aging and Memory

A decline in learning and memory is a feature of the normal aging process and associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Moreover, certain forms of dementia and memory loss are inevitable due to the normal aging process. The unavoidable effect of age on memory is an ongoing study, as the findings assist in identifying cortical functions of the brain. Histone acetylation is a mechanism in synaptic plasticity and a key function in learning and memory because changes within the process alter gene transcription and the quantity of synthesized proteins. Similar to histone acetylation, environmental enrichment has also been found to improve memory formation by stimulating synaptic plasticity. Through understanding the mechanisms by which environmental enrichment and histone acetylation interact in the brain and affect learning and memory, novel applications can be developed for therapeutic interventions to neurodegenerative diseases and aging.
Fas System Activation in Perihematomal Areas After Spontaneous Intracerebral Hemorrhage

Background and Purpose— Apoptosis has been implicated as the prominent form of cell death in the brain perihematomal region in animal models and in autopsy or postsurgical human studies. Both the Fas system and caspase activation play a central role in apoptotic pathways. The aims of this study were to investigate soluble Fas (s-Fas) plasma levels after acute intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), to determine its influence on clinical and radiologic features, and to assess Fas receptor and Fas ligand (Fas-L) protein expression in human ICH brain tissue. Methods— s-Fas plasma levels were determined on admission in 78 consecutive ICH patients and serially in a subgroup of 21 of them, at the time of neurologic assessment, by means of ELISA. ICH and perihematomal edema volumes were determined at baseline and on follow-up computed tomography scans, and ICH and perihematomal edema growth was calculated. The presence of Fas receptor and Fas-L was assessed in different brain tissue samples by immunoblotting from 6 deceased ICH patients and from 2 control subjects. Results— Mortality reached 20.5% of patients at the third month, and 48% of survivors had an unfavorable outcome (modified Rankin Scale score ≥3). The baseline s-Fas level in ICH patients was significantly lower than in healthy controls [160 (160–245) vs 269 (230–332) pg/mL, P<0.001], returning to normal values by 24 hours (P<0.05 for all determinations). Regarding radiologic features, the baseline s-Fas value was found to be inversely correlated to perihematomal edema growth at follow-up (r=−0.33, P=0.041). Finally, Fas-L content was highest in the perihematomal area compared with contralateral and remote ipsilateral areas in ICH patient and control samples. Conclusions— A decreased plasma s-Fas level together with an increased Fas-L amount in perihematomal brain tissue suggest Fas-mediated apoptosis involvement in this disease.
Arabidopsis Map-Based Cloning in the Post-Genome Era

Map-based cloning is an iterative approach that identifies the underlying genetic cause of a mutant phenotype. The major strength of this approach is the ability to tap into a nearly unlimited resource of natural and induced genetic variation without prior assumptions or knowledge of specific genes. One begins with an interesting mutant and allows plant biology to reveal what gene or genes are involved. Three major advances in the past 2 years have made map-based cloning in Arabidopsis fairly routine: sequencing of the Arabidopsis genome, the availability of more than 50,000 markers in the Cereon Arabidopsis Polymorphism Collection, and improvements in the methods used for detecting DNA polymorphisms. Here, we describe the Cereon Collection and show how it can be used in a generic approach to mutation mapping in Arabidopsis. We present the map-based cloning of theVTC2 gene as a specific example of this approach.
Query dependent pseudo-relevance feedback based on wikipedia

Pseudo-relevance feedback (PRF) via query-expansion has been proven to be e®ective in many information retrieval (IR) tasks. In most existing work, the top-ranked documents from an initial search are assumed to be relevant and used for PRF. One problem with this approach is that one or more of the top retrieved documents may be non-relevant, which can introduce noise into the feedback process. Besides, existing methods generally do not take into account the significantly different types of queries that are often entered into an IR system. Intuitively, Wikipedia can be seen as a large, manually edited document collection which could be exploited to improve document retrieval effectiveness within PRF. It is not obvious how we might best utilize information from Wikipedia in PRF, and to date, the potential of Wikipedia for this task has been largely unexplored. In our work, we present a systematic exploration of the utilization of Wikipedia in PRF for query dependent expansion. Specifically, we classify TREC topics into three categories based on Wikipedia: 1) entity queries, 2) ambiguous queries, and 3) broader queries. We propose and study the effectiveness of three methods for expansion term selection, each modeling the Wikipedia based pseudo-relevance information from a different perspective. We incorporate the expansion terms into the original query and use language modeling IR to evaluate these methods. Experiments on four TREC test collections, including the large web collection GOV2, show that retrieval performance of each type of query can be improved. In addition, we demonstrate that the proposed method out-performs the baseline relevance model in terms of precision and robustness.
Collection of survey data on contraception: an evaluation of an experiment in Peru.

The objective of this analysis is to compare two different approaches to the collection of information on contraceptive use. The data for this comparison are derived from the 1986 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in Peru. Approximately 7,500 women were interviewed with the standard DHS questionnaire, whereas about 5,000 women received an "experimental questionnaire. " The major difference between the questionnaires is the inclusion of a six-year monthly calendar in the experimental questionnaire that records pregnancies, contraceptive use, and postpartum information, in contrast to the more common tabular format of the standard questionnaire. The analysis demonstrates that although reports of contraceptive knowledge, ever-use, and current use are relatively robust to the variations in questionnaire design, estimates of past use are dependent on the survey instrument. Several different comparisons indicate that reporting of information on contraceptive histories in the experimental questionnaire is superior to that in the standard one.
MEG Correlates of Learning Novel Objects Properties in Children

Learning the functional properties of objects is a core mechanism in the development of conceptual, cognitive and linguistic knowledge in children. The cerebral processes underlying these learning mechanisms remain unclear in adults and unexplored in children. Here, we investigated the neurophysiological patterns underpinning the learning of functions for novel objects in 10-year-old healthy children. Event-related fields (ERFs) were recorded using magnetoencephalography (MEG) during a picture-definition task. Two MEG sessions were administered, separated by a behavioral verbal learning session during which children learned short definitions about the “magical” function of 50 unknown non-objects. Additionally, 50 familiar real objects and 50 other unknown non-objects for which no functions were taught were presented at both MEG sessions. Children learned at least 75% of the 50 proposed definitions in less than one hour, illustrating children's powerful ability to rapidly map new functional meanings to novel objects. Pre- and post-learning ERFs differences were analyzed first in sensor then in source space. Results in sensor space disclosed a learning-dependent modulation of ERFs for newly learned non-objects, developing 500–800 msec after stimulus onset. Analyses in the source space windowed over this late temporal component of interest disclosed underlying activity in right parietal, bilateral orbito-frontal and right temporal regions. Altogether, our results suggest that learning-related evolution in late ERF components over those regions may support the challenging task of rapidly creating new semantic representations supporting the processing of the meaning and functions of novel objects in children.
Variation in habitat preference and population structure among three species of the Lake Malawi cichlid genus Protomelas

Several studies have demonstrated strong population structuring over small distances in the rocky‐shore mbuna cichlid fishes from Lake Malawi, suggesting the potential for allopatric speciation. However, many endemic Lake Malawi cichlids are neither mbuna, nor confined to rocky shores. Using microsatellites, we investigated the population structure in three species of the non‐mbuna genus Protomelas. The rocky‐shore P. taeniolatus showed high levels of population structure even over distances of less than 1 km, while the sandy‐shore species P. similis showed no significant structure over distances up to 21 km. Protomelas fenestratus, which is generally found at the interface between rocks and sand, also showed low levels of population structure. Our results suggest that the model of allopatric speciation based on habitat fragmentation within the current lake basin may be equally applicable to rocky‐shore non‐mbuna as to mbuna, but that an alternative model is required to explain speciation among sandy‐shore species as well as the deep‐water and pelagic species.
The word-gesture keyboard: reimagining keyboard interaction

The basic concepts and initial prototype of a word-gesture keyboard are discussed. In early 1980's, Montgomery conceived the idea of using sliding gestures on a touch keyboard to enter characters. He designed a wipe activated keyboard with a flat touch sensitive surface. The positions of the letter keys were carefully arranged to make consecutive letters commonly appear in words connected on the keyboard. Since a gesture keyboard enhances, rather than replaces, a conventional touchscreen keyboard, out of vocabulary (OOV) letter sequences can always be entered by typing the individual letter keys. In using a word-gesture keyboard, the production of movements increasingly changes from focusing on individual letters to connecting multiple letters into a word gesture. Conceptually, gesture recognition is done by identifying the word which has the highest probability given the user's gesture. Exact or statistical modeling of gesture keyboard's speed-accuracy trade-off incorporating human control behavior is under research.
Multi-robot localization via GPS and relative measurements in the presence of asynchronous and lossy communication

This work addresses the problem of distributed multi-agent localization in presence of heterogeneous measurements and wireless communication. The proposed algorithm integrates low precision global sensors, like GPS and compasses, with more precise relative position (i.e., range plus bearing) sensors. Global sensors are used to reconstruct the absolute position and orientation, while relative sensors are used to retrieve the shape of the formation. A fast distributed and asynchronous linear least-squares algorithm is proposed to solve an approximated version of the non-linear Maximum Likelihood problem. The algorithm is provably shown to be robust to communication losses and random delays. The use of ACK-less broadcast-based communication protocols ensures an efficient and easy implementation in real world scenarios. If the relative measurement errors are sufficiently small, we show that the algorithm attains a solution which is very close to the maximum likelihood solution. The theoretical findings and the algorithm performances are extensively tested by means of Monte-Carlo simulations.
AUGEM: Automatically generate high performance Dense Linear Algebra kernels on x86 CPUs

Basic Liner algebra subprograms (BLAS) is a fundamental library in scientific computing. In this paper, we present a template-based optimization framework, AUGEM, which can automatically generate fully optimized assembly code for several dense linear algebra (DLA) kernels, such as GEMM, GEMV, AXPY and DOT, on varying multi-core CPUs without requiring any manual interference from developers. In particular, based on domain-specific knowledge about algorithms of the DLA kernels, we use a collection of parameterized code templates to formulate a number of commonly occurring instruction sequences within the optimized low-level C code of these DLA kernels. Then, our framework uses a specialized low-level C optimizer to identify instruction sequences that match the pre-defined code templates and thereby translates them into extremely efficient SSE/AVX instructions. The DLA kernels generated by our templatebased approach surpass the implementations of Intel MKL and AMD ACML BLAS libraries, on both Intel Sandy Bridge and AMD Piledriver processors.
Regulatory Mechanism for Exfoliative Toxin Production in Staphylococcus aureus

ABSTRACT The exfoliative toxin (ET) is a major virulence factor of Staphylococcus aureus that causes bullous impetigo and its disseminated form, staphylococcal scalded-skin syndrome (SSSS). ET selectively digests one of the intracellular adhesion molecules, desmoglein 1, of epidermal keratinocytes and causes blisters due to intraepidermal cell-cell dissociation. Most S. aureus strains that cause blistering disease produce either ETA or ETB. They are serologically distinct molecules, where ETA is encoded on a phage genome and ETB is enocded on a large plasmid. ETA-producing S. aureus strains are frequently isolated from impetigo patients, and ETB-producing S. aureus strains are isolated from SSSS. ET-induced blister formation can be reproduced with the neonatal mouse. To determine the regulatory mechanism of ET production, we investigated the role of the two-component systems and global regulators for eta or etb expression in vitro and in vivo with the mouse model. Western blot and transcription analyses using a series of mutants demonstrate ETA production was downregulated by sigB, sarS, and sarA, while ETB production was downregulated by sigB and sarA but not by sarS. Production of both toxins is upregulated by saeRS, arlRS, and agrCA. Furthermore, by the in vivo neonatal mouse model, sigB and sarS but not sarA negatively regulate the exfoliation activity of the ETA-producing strain, while sarA negatively regulates the ETB-producing strain. In both strains, saeRS, arlRS, and agrCA positively regulate the exfoliation activity in vivo. The data illustrate similar but distinct regulatory mechanisms for ETA and ETB production in S. aureus in vitro as well as in vivo.
Contributions of the paraventricular thalamic nucleus in the regulation of stress, motivation, and mood

The purpose of this review is to describe how the function and connections of the paraventricular thalamic nucleus (Pa) may play a role in the regulation of stress and negative emotional behavior. Located in the dorsal midline thalamus, the Pa is heavily innervated by serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine (DA), corticotropin-releasing hormone, and orexins (ORX), and is the only thalamic nucleus connected to the group of structures comprising the amygdala, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and infralimbic/subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC). These neurotransmitter systems and structures are involved in regulating motivation and mood, and display abnormal functioning in several psychiatric disorders including anxiety, substance use, and major depressive disorders (MDD). Furthermore, rodent studies show that the Pa is consistently and potently activated following a variety of stressors and has a unique role in regulating responses to chronic stressors. These observations provide a compelling rationale for investigating the Pa in the link between stress and negative emotional behavior, and for including the Pa in the neural pathways of stress-related psychiatric disorders.
An efficient compensation algorithm for current transformer saturation effects

Current transformer (CT) saturation leads to inaccurate current measurement and, therefore, may cause malfunction of protective relays and control devices that use currents as input signals. This paper introduces an efficient compensation algorithm capable of converting from a sampled current waveform that is distorted by CT saturation to a compensated current waveform. Attractive features include quick response time, no cumulative estimation errors, desired sample-by-sample output, independent of CT parameters/characteristics and secondary burdens, and simplicity for online implementation. The accuracy and robustness of the introduced compensation algorithm are demonstrated through extensive test cases reflecting a wide range of variations in fault conditions and CT parameters.
Implementing Arithmetic and Other Analytic Operations By Transcriptional Regulation

The transcriptional regulatory machinery of a gene can be viewed as a computational device, with transcription factor concentrations as inputs and expression level as the output. This view begs the question: what kinds of computations are possible? We show that different parameterizations of a simple chemical kinetic model of transcriptional regulation are able to approximate all four standard arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as well as various equality and inequality operations. This contrasts with other studies that emphasize logical or digital notions of computation in biological networks. We analyze the accuracy and precision of these approximations, showing that they depend on different sets of parameters, and are thus independently tunable. We demonstrate that networks of these “arithmetic” genes can be combined to accomplish yet more complicated computations by designing and simulating a network that detects statistically significant elevations in a time-varying signal. We also consider the much more general problem of approximating analytic functions, showing that this can be achieved by allowing multiple transcription factor binding sites on the promoter. These observations are important for the interpretation of naturally occurring networks and imply new possibilities for the design of synthetic networks.
Psychotropic drugs.

The interaction between the cognitive component (the perception of nociceptive, or painful stimuli) and the affective component of pain is reflected in the overlap between the actions of anti-nociceptive agents (analgesics) and mood-altering drugs (psychotropics) when treating pain patients. Anxiety, depression, fear and sleeplessness may all respond to psychotropic drugs, and this may result in a reduction in pain or a greater ability to cope with it. This may enable a patient's pain to be controlled with a smaller dose of analgesic. In this sense psychotropic drugs have an 'analgesic' effect but it is a misleading use of the word, and has been the source of much misunderstanding. In the day-to-day management of pain problems the two groups of drugs do have well-defined indications. Acute pain is invariably associated with nociception, and responds to analgesics or other antinociceptive treatments. Chronic pain (except that due to cancer or arthritis) is rarely associated with an identifiable nociceptive stimulus and frequently does not respond to simple antinociceptive measures. Psychotropic drugs (Table 1) play an important part in the management of chronic pain. Cancer pain is a special case. Loeser (1980) and others have proposed that chronic cancer pain should be characterized as long-standing acute pain because it is associated with a continuous nociceptive input and responds better to antinociceptive measures. Psychotropic drugs have a lesser part to ptay in cancer pain than in other types of chronic pain (Hanks, 1984).
Evidence for angiotensin II type 2 receptor-mediated cardiac myocyte enlargement during in vivo pressure overload.

The pathophysiological roles of the angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT(2)) in cardiac hypertrophy remain unclear. By the targeted deletion of mouse AT(2) we were able to prevent the left ventricular hypertrophy resulting from pressure overload, while cardiac contractile functions remained normal. This implies that AT(2) is a mediator of cardiac hypertrophy in response to increased blood pressure. The effects of AT(2) deletion were independent of activation of embryonic genes for cardiac hypertrophy. However, p70(S6k), one of the key factors in cardiac hypertrophy, was markedly and specifically reduced in the ventricles of Agtr2(-)/Y mice. We propose that p70(S6k) plays a major role in AT(2)-mediated ventricular hypertrophy. This article may have been published online in advance of the print edition. The date of publication is available from the JCI website, http://www.jci. org.
Effect of fertility levels and weeds management practices on weeds dynamics, yield and economics of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

A field experiment was conducted during winter season of 2010-11 and 2011-12 at Research farm College of Agriculture, Gwalior. The result revealed that unchecked weed growth caused 40.16% reduction in grain yield of wheat. Amongst herbicides, application of pinoxaden + carfentrzone-ethyl recorded lowest population of weeds and weeds dry weight and gave highest grain (4889 kg/ha) and straw yield with maximum net return and B: C ratio. Maximum grain yield was obtained with weed free (4927 kg/ha).