Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of the BOLD Signal Characteristics in balanced SSFP fMRI : a Monte-Carlo Simulation

Introduction Recently, balanced SSFP (Steady State Free Precession) has been proposed as an alternative method to measure the BOLD contrast [1-3]. Two different contrast mechanisms have been explored experimentally: (1) transition-band SSFP fMRI (BOSS fMRI) that detects the BOLD induced frequency shift near the transition part of the SSFP profile [1,2], and (2) pass-band SSFP fMRI that is believed to utilize the T2 sensitivity (or spin diffusion effects) of balanced SSFP in a relatively wide and flat off-resonance frequency band in the SSFP profile [3]. Both of them provide a higher SNR efficiency with reduced imaging artefacts compared to conventional methods providing a great opportunity for high-resolution functional studies. Moreover, the pass-band method is believed to possess the spin-echo characteristic [4], potentially providing a reduced signal contribution from large veins [3]. The previous experimental results suggest that the level of the functional contrast and its characteristics are significantly influenced by the sequence parameters [5,6]. However, none of these pass-band contrast characteristics have been investigated systematically, and even the contrast mechanism has not fully understood. In this study, we utilized a Monte-Carlo simulation technique to demonstrate that the spin diffusion effects (T2 change) account for a large portion of the functional contrast in pass-band SSFP fMRI. We also investigated various parameters (TR, flip angle, off-resonance and field strength) to show the characteristics of the functional contrast and to find optimize scan parameters for the pass-band SSFP fMRI. The preliminary experiments were performed to validate the simulation results.
Black carbon fractal morphology and short-wave radiative impact: a modelling study

Abstract. We investigate the impact of the morphological properties of freshly emitted black carbon aerosols on optical properties and on radiative forcing. To this end, we model the optical properties of fractal black carbon aggregates by use of numerically exact solutions to Maxwell's equations within a spectral range from the UVC to the mid-IR. The results are coupled to radiative transfer computations, in which we consider six realistic case studies representing different atmospheric pollution conditions and surface albedos. The spectrally integrated radiative impacts of black carbon are compared for two different fractal morphologies, which brace the range of recently reported experimental observations of black carbon fractal structures. We also gauge our results by performing corresponding calculations based on the homogeneous sphere approximation, which is commonly employed in climate models. We find that at top of atmosphere the aggregate models yield radiative impacts that can be as much as 2 times higher than those based on the homogeneous sphere approximation. An aggregate model with a low fractal dimension can predict a radiative impact that is higher than that obtained with a high fractal dimension by a factor ranging between 1.1–1.6. Although the lower end of this scale seems like a rather small effect, a closer analysis reveals that the single scattering optical properties of more compact and more lacy aggregates differ considerably. In radiative flux computations there can be a partial cancellation due to the opposing effects of different error sources. However, this cancellation effect can strongly depend on atmospheric conditions and is therefore quite unpredictable. We conclude that the fractal morphology of black carbon aerosols and their fractal parameters can have a profound impact on their radiative forcing effect, and that the use of the homogeneous sphere model introduces unacceptably high biases in radiative impact studies. We emphasise that there are other potentially important morphological features that have not been addressed in the present study, such as sintering and coating of freshly emitted black carbon by films of organic material. Finally, we found that the spectral variation of the absorption cross section of black carbon significantly deviates from a simple 1/λ scaling law. We therefore discourage the use of single-wavelength absorption measurements in conjunction with a 1/λ scaling relation in broadband radiative forcing simulations of black carbon.
Nordic Student Teachers’ Views on the Importance of Species and Species Identification

ABSTRACT People’s knowledge about nature, their interest in nature, their nature experiences, and their values and emotions regarding nature are factors that promote people’s positive views on environmental issues and sustainability. Knowing the variation and patterns in teachers’ and student teachers’ views is an essential step in considering the ways in which sustainability might be interpreted and enacted in schools and in teacher education. The aim of this study is to analyze student teachers’ views on the importance of species and species identification in general and as a part of their professional development regarding their understanding of biodiversity and sustainability. A total of 426 student teachers in Finland, Norway, and Sweden answered a questionnaire consisting of fixed and open-ended questions. Mixed methods were used: t test and analysis of variance for quantitative data and inductive and deductive, model-based content analysis for qualitative data. According to the majority of student teachers (85%), both species identification and biodiversity are important for sustainability; species identification in general was important to 58% of them. Their statements about importance contained mostly ecological views (46%), followed by emotional (17%), educational (16%), and utilitarian (11%) views. The remainder of the student teachers’ statements (10%) contained negativistic or indifferent views. The reasons for the low percentage of educational views are discussed. The implications of the results for teacher education worldwide are emphasized, especially the importance of those teaching methods that have the potential to increase student teachers’ understanding of sustainability.
Restoration of upper limb movement via artificial corticospinal and musculospinal connections in a monkey with spinal cord injury

Functional loss of limb control in individuals with spinal cord injury or stroke can be caused by interruption of corticospinal pathways, although the neural circuits located above and below the lesion remain functional. An artificial neural connection that bridges the lost pathway and connects cortical to spinal circuits has potential to ameliorate the functional loss. We investigated the effects of introducing novel artificial neural connections in a paretic monkey that had a unilateral spinal cord lesion at the C2 level. The first application bridged the impaired spinal lesion. This allowed the monkey to drive the spinal stimulation through volitionally controlled power of high-gamma activity in either the premotor or motor cortex, and thereby to acquire a force-matching target. The second application created an artificial recurrent connection from a paretic agonist muscle to a spinal site, allowing muscle-controlled spinal stimulation to boost on-going activity in the muscle. These results suggest that artificial neural connections can compensate for interrupted descending pathways and promote volitional control of upper limb movement after damage of descending pathways such as spinal cord injury or stroke.
Light Source Detection in Photographs

Common tasks related to image processing or augmented reality include rendering new objects into existing images, or matching objects with unknown illumination. To facilitate such algorithms, it is often necessary to infer from which directions a scene was illuminated, even if only a photograph is available. For this purpose, we present a novel light source detection algorithm that, contrary to the current state-of-the-art, is able to detect multiple light sources with sufficient accuracy. 3D measures are not required, only the input image and a very small amount of unskilled user interaction.
Alternative Splicing and Tumor Progression

Alternative splicing is a key molecular mechanism for increasing the functional diversity of the eukaryotic proteomes. A large body of experimental data implicates aberrant splicing in various human diseases, including cancer. Both mutations in cis-acting splicing elements and alterations in the expression and/or activity of splicing regulatory factors drastically affect the splicing profile of many cancer-associated genes. In addition, the splicing profile of several cancer-associated genes is altered in particular types of cancer arguing for a direct role of specific splicing isoforms in tumor progression. Deciphering the mechanisms underlying aberrant splicing in cancer may prove crucial to understand how splicing machinery is controlled and integrated with other cellular processes, in particular transcription and signaling pathways. Moreover, the characterization of splicing deregulation in cancer will lead to a better comprehension of malignant transformation. Cancer-associated alternative splicing variants may be new tools for the diagnosis and classification of cancers and could be the targets for innovative therapeutical interventions based on highly selective splicing correction approaches.
Title : A System for Desktop Conceptual 3 D Design

In the traditional design process for a 3D environment, people usually depict a rough prototype to verify their ideas, and iteratively modify its configuration until they are satisfied with the general layout. In this activity, one of the main operations is the rearrangement of single and composite parts of a scene. With current desktop Virtual Reality (VR) systems, selection and manipulation of arbitrary objects in 3D is still difficult. In this work, we present new and efficient techniques that allow even novice users to perform meaningful rearrangement tasks with traditional input devices. The results of our work show that the presented techniques can be mastered quickly and enable users to perform complex tasks on composite objects. Moreover, the system is easy to learn, supports creativity and fun to use.
Non-uniqueness in conformal formulations of the Einstein constraints

Standard methods in nonlinear analysis are used to indicate that there exists a parabolic branching of solutions of the Lichnerowicz–York equation with an unscaled source. We also apply these methods to the extended conformal thin sandwich formulation and, by assuming that the linearized system develops a kernel solution for sufficiently large initial data, we reproduce the parabolic solution curves for the conformal factor, lapse and shift found numerically by Pfeiffer and York.
Experimental Evaluation of Implant UWB-IR Transmission With Living Animal for Body Area Networks

One of promising transmission technologies in wireless body area networks (BANs) is ultra-wideband (UWB) communication, which can provide high data rate for real-time transmission, and extremely low power consumption for increasing device longevity. However, UWB signals suffer from large attenuation in a wireless communication link, especially in implant BANs. Although several investigations on channel characterization have been far thus conducted for evaluating the UWB transmission performance, they have been limited to either computer simulations or experiments with biological-equivalent phantoms. Experimental evaluation with a living body has rarely been conducted, i.e., the performance in real implant BANs has been scarcely discussed. In this paper, therefore, we focus on a living animal experimental evaluation on the UWB transmission performance. To begin with, we develop an ultra-wideband impulse radio (UWB-IR) communication system with a multipulse pulse position modulation scheme, and then analyze the fundamental characteristics of the developed UWB-IR communication system by a liquid phantom experiment. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the developed UWB-IR communication system via the living animal experiment. From the experimental results, although we have observed that the path loss is more than 80 dB, the developed system can achieve a bit error rate of 10-2 within the communication distance of 120 mm with ensuring a high data rate of 1 Mb/s. This result first time gives a quantitative communication performance evaluation for the implant UWB transmission in a living body.
Characterization of HIV Transmission in South-East Austria

To gain deeper insight into the epidemiology of HIV-1 transmission in South-East Austria we performed a retrospective analysis of 259 HIV-1 partial pol sequences obtained from unique individuals newly diagnosed with HIV infection in South-East Austria from 2008 through 2014. After quality filtering, putative transmission linkages were inferred when two sequences were ≤1.5% genetically different. Multiple linkages were resolved into putative transmission clusters. Further phylogenetic analyses were performed using BEAST v1.8. 1. Finally, we investigated putative links between the 259 sequences from South-East Austria and all publicly available HIV polymerase sequences in the Los Alamos National Laboratory HIV sequence database. We found that 45.6% (118/259) of the sampled sequences were genetically linked with at least one other sequence from South-East Austria forming putative transmission clusters. Clustering individuals were more likely to be men who have sex with men (MSM; p<0.001), infected with subtype B (p<0.001) or subtype F (p = 0.02). Among clustered males who reported only heterosexual (HSX) sex as an HIV risk, 47% clustered closely with MSM (either as pairs or within larger MSM clusters). One hundred and seven of the 259 sequences (41.3%) from South-East Austria had at least one putative inferred linkage with sequences from a total of 69 other countries. In conclusion, analysis of HIV-1 sequences from newly diagnosed individuals residing in South-East Austria revealed a high degree of national and international clustering mainly within MSM. Interestingly, we found that a high number of heterosexual males clustered within MSM networks, suggesting either linkage between risk groups or misrepresentation of sexual risk behaviors by subjects.
The Inhibitory Effects of Curcuma longa L. Essential Oil and Curcumin on Aspergillus flavus Link Growth and Morphology

The essential oil from Curcuma longa L. was analysed by GC/MS. The major components of the oil were ar-turmerone (33.2%), α-turmerone (23.5%) and β-turmerone (22.7%). The antifungal activities of the oil were studied with regard to Aspergillus flavus growth inhibition and altered morphology, as preliminary studies indicated that the essential oil from C. longa inhibited Aspergillus flavus Link aflatoxin production. The concentration of essential oil in the culture media ranged from 0.01% to 5.0% v/v, and the concentration of curcumin was 0.01–0.5% v/v. The effects on sporulation, spore viability, and fungal morphology were determined. The essential oil exhibited stronger antifungal activity than curcumin on A. flavus. The essential oil reduced the fungal growth in a concentration-dependent manner. A. flavus growth rate was reduced by C. longa essential oil at 0.10%, and this inhibition effect was more efficient in concentrations above 0.50%. Germination and sporulation were 100% inhibited in 0.5% oil. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of A. flavus exposed to oil showed damage to hyphae membranes and conidiophores. Because the fungus is a plant pathogen and aflatoxin producer, C. longa essential oil may be used in the management of host plants.
Performance bounds for phase offset estimation in IEEE 1588 synchronization

There has been recent interest in the use of packet-based synchronization techniques based on the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol, in order to meet challenges arising in mobile telecommunication networks. An important problem in this area is to design estimators that determine the phase offset of slave clocks, while being resilient to the degrading effects of random network traversal times. While a number of simple non-parametric estimation techniques for this problem have been described in literature, little is known about the best theoretically achievable accuracy. In this paper, we address this issue by describing two novel lower bounds on the error variance of estimators for such problems. These bounds are obtained by adapting two classical Bayesian estimation bounds, namely the Weiss-Weinstien bound and the Ziv-Zakai bound, to a non-Bayesian estimation scenario. The results provide new insights into scenarios where existing phase offset estimation techniques perform well, and where significant scope for performance improvements exists.
User oriented trajectory similarity search

Trajectory similarity search studies the problem of finding a trajectory from the database such the found trajectory most similar to the query trajectory. Past research mainly focused on two aspects: shape similarity search and semantic similarity search, leaving personalized similarity search untouched. In this paper, we propose a new query which takes user's preference into consideration to provide personalized searching. We define a new data model for this query and identify the efficiency issue as the key challenge: given a user specified trajectory, how to efficiently retrieve the most similar trajectory from the database. By taking advantage of the spatial localities, we develop a two-phase algorithm to tame this challenge. Two optimized strategies are also developed to speed up the query process. Both the theoretical analysis and the experiments demonstrate the high efficiency of the proposed method.
Personality Predictors of Successful Development: Toddler Temperament and Adolescent Personality Traits Predict Well-Being and Career Stability in Middle Adulthood

The aim of the study was to predict both adaptive psychological functioning (well-being) and adaptive social functioning (career stability) in middle adulthood based on behaviors observed in toddlerhood and personality traits measured in adolescence. 83 people participated in an ongoing longitudinal study started in 1961 (58% women). Based on children’s behavior in toddlerhood, three temperamental dimensions were identified – positive affectivity, negative affectivity and disinhibition. In adolescence, extraversion and neuroticism were measured at the age of 16 years. Various aspects of well-being were used as indicators of adaptive psychological functioning in adulthood: life satisfaction, self-esteem and self-efficacy. Career stability was used as an indicator of adaptive social functioning. Job careers of respondents were characterized as stable, unstable or changeable. Extraversion measured at the age of 16 proved to be the best predictor of well-being indicators; in case of self-efficacy it was also childhood disinhibition. Extraversion in adolescence, childhood disinhibition and negative affectivity predicted career stability. Findings are discussed in the context of a theoretical framework of higher order factors of the Big Five personality constructs, stability and plasticity.
Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection and Hodgkin's Lymphoma in South Africa: An Emerging Problem

Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) occurs with increasing frequency in human-immunodeficiency-virus-(HIV-) infected individuals. The natural history and behaviour of HIV-HL is different, being more atypical and aggressive. The association between HIV and HL appears to be primarily EBV driven. HAART use does not significantly impact on the incidence of HL. Indeed, the risk of HL has increased in the post-HAART era. However, the advent of HAART has brought renewed hope, allowing standard therapeutic options to be used more optimally, with better treatment outcomes. Despite the renewed optimism, the overall survival of HIV-HL patients remains less favourable than that in HIV-seronegative patients. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is a significant burden of HIV/AIDS and where more than half the patients are HAART naive at diagnosis of HL. The similarities and differences of a South African cohort of HIV-HL are presented in this paper.
Towards Short-Lived Certificates

The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is as good as dead. It imposes a massive performance penalty on web traffic and has failed to mitigate the recent high-profile certificate security breaches of certificate authorities. Citing these fundamental protocol flaws, Google Chrome, one of the world’s most popular browsers, is permanently disabling OCSP and taking direct ownership over certificate revocation. We will soon be living in a post-OCSP world where Google has become a single point of failure for certificate validation. We argue that certificate authorities should reassert control over the certificate revocation process by issuing certificates with a very short lifetime. These certificates complement browser-based revocation by allowing certificate authorities to revoke certificates without the cooperation of browser vendors, and without imposing a performance penalty on web traffic. We have implemented a prototype certificate authority and certificate update plugin for Apache that demonstrates feasibility of short-lived certificates. We have also implemented client-side pinning to short-lived certificates in the Chromium browser. Finally, we show that short-lived certificates complement browserbased revocation and address its major limitations; the two mechanisms can be combined to achieve secure, performant, and backwards-compatible browsing experience on the web.
Measuring online affects in a white supremacy forum

Since the inception of the World Wide Web, security agencies, researchers, and analysts have focused much of their attention on the sentiment found on hate-inspired web-forums. Here, one of their goals has been to detect and measure users' affects that are expressed in the forums as well as identify how users' affects change over time. Manual inspection has been one way to do this; however, as the number of discussion posts and sub-forums increase, there has been a growing need for an automated system that can assist humans in their analysis. The aim of this paper, then, is to detect and measure a number of affects expressed in written text on Stormfront.org, the most visited hate forum on the Web. To do this, we used a machine learning approach where we trained a model to recognize affects on three sub-forums: Ideology and Philosophy, For Stormfront Ladies Only, and Stormfront Ireland. The training data consisted of manual annotated data and the affects we focused on were racism, aggression, and worries. Results indicate that even though measuring affects is a subjective process, machine learning is a promising way forward to analyze and measure the presence of different affects on hate forums.