Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: The Physics Behind the Genesis Flood

The wealth of new data, mostly from the ocean bottom, that precipitated the acceptance of plate tectonics during the 1960’s simultaneously also opened the door for the first time in more than 200 years to a technically credible defense of the Genesis Flood. From the mid-1700’s through the days of Hutton, Lyell, and Darwin to the 1960’s, it overwhelmed the human mind to imagine a mechanism that could possibly deliver, in a single brief event, the magnitude and complexity of geological change evident in the continental rock record above the point where fossils first appear. However, with the new awareness that the Earth’s interior could participate in the process and that the stiff layer of rock some 50 miles thick beneath the oceans could be recycled into the Earth, the stage was set for a breakthrough in regard to the mechanism for the Flood cataclysm. The crucial final piece of the puzzle has come from laboratory experiments that have carefully measured the way in which silicate minerals deform under conditions of high temperature and high stress. These experiments reveal silicate material can weaken dramatically, by factors of a billion or more, at mantle temperatures and for stress conditions that can exist in the mantles of planets the size of the Earth. The scenario in which all the Earth’s ocean lithosphere is rapidly recycled into the mantle via a runaway process, enabled by this stress-weakening behavior, is now known as catastrophic plate tectonics [4]. Evidence in the geological record is compelling that such a cataclysmic episode indeed has occurred in the Earth’s recent past. A reasonable inference is that this event corresponds to the Flood described in the Bible and other ancient sources. I report new computational results from 2D and 3D simulations of this catastrophic plate tectonics process. In particular, I describe how fundamental advances in computational techniques now make it possible to advance the numerical solution successfully through the most extreme phase of the runaway regime.
The Formation of Polar Disk Galaxies

Polar ring galaxies, such as NGC 4650A, are a class of galaxies that have two kinematically distinct components that are inclined by almost 90° to each other. These striking galaxies challenge our understanding of how galaxies form; the origin of their distinct components has remained uncertain and is the subject of much debate. We use high-resolution cosmological simulations of galaxy formation to show that polar ring galaxies are simply an extreme example of the misalignment of angular momentum that occurs during the hierarchical structure formation characteristic of a cold dark matter cosmology. In our model, polar ring galaxies form through the continuous accretion of gas whose angular momentum is misaligned with the central galaxy.
Real-time simultaneous localisation and mapping with a single camera

Ego-motion estimation for an agile single camera moving through general, unknown scenes becomes a much more challenging problem when real-time performance is required rather than under the off-line processing conditions under which most successful structure from motion work has been achieved. This task of estimating camera motion from measurements of a continuously expanding set of self-mapped visual features is one of a class of problems known as Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) in the robotics community, and we argue that such real-time mapping research, despite rarely being camera-based, is more relevant here than off-line structure from motion methods due to the more fundamental emphasis placed on propagation of uncertainty. We present a top-down Bayesian framework for single-camera localisation via mapping of a sparse set of natural features using motion modelling and an information-guided active measurement strategy, in particular addressing the difficult issue of real-time feature initialisation via a factored sampling approach. Real-time handling of uncertainty permits robust localisation via the creating and active measurement of a sparse map of landmarks such that regions can be re-visited after periods of neglect and localisation can continue through periods when few features are visible. Results are presented of real-time localisation for a hand-waved camera with very sparse prior scene knowledge and all processing carried out on a desktop PC.
Cortical Excitation and Inhibition following Focal Traumatic Brain Injury

Cortical compression can be a significant problem in many types of brain injuries, such as brain trauma, localized brain edema, hematoma, focal cerebral ischemia, or brain tumors. Mechanical and cellular alterations can result in global changes in excitation and inhibition on the neuronal network level even in the absence of histologically significant cell injury, often manifesting clinically as seizures. Despite the importance and prevalence of this problem, however, the precise electrophysiological effects of brain injury have not been well characterized. In this study, the changes in electrophysiology were characterized following sustained cortical compression using large-scale, multielectrode measurement of multiunit activity in primary somatosensory cortex in a sensory-evoked, in vivo animal model. Immediately following the initiation of injury at a distal site, there was a period of suppression of the evoked response in the rat somatosensory cortex, followed by hyper-excitability that was accompanied by an increase in the spatial extent of cortical activation. Paired-pulse tactile stimulation revealed a dramatic shift in the excitatory/inhibitory dynamics, suggesting a longer term hyperexcitability of the cortical circuit following the initial suppression that could be linked to the disruption of one or more inhibitory mechanisms of the thalamocortical circuit. Together, our results showed that the use of a sensory-evoked response provided a robust and repeatable functional marker of the evolution of the consequences of mild injury, serving as an important step toward in vivo quantification of alterations in excitation and inhibition in the cortex in the setting of traumatic brain injury.
A Dialogue Grammar for the Cars Database

We describe an empirically based approach to the computational management of dialogues. It is based on an explicit theoretically motivated position regarding the status of computational models, where it is claimed that computational models of discourse can onlybe about computers’ processing of language. The dialogue model is based on an extensive analysis of collected dialogues from various application domains. Issues concerning computational tractability has also been decisive for its development. It is concluded that a simple dialogue grammar based model is sufficient for the management of dialogues with natural language interfaces. We also describe the grammar used by the dialogue manager for a Natural Language interface for a database system.
Relativistic viscous hydrodynamics, conformal invariance, and holography

We consider second-order viscous hydrodynamics in conformal field theories at finite temperature. We show that conformal invariance imposes powerful constraints on the form of the second-order corrections. By matching to the AdS/CFT calculations of correlators, and to recent results for Bjorken flow obtained by Heller and Janik, we find three (out of five) second-order transport coefficients in the strongly coupled = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. We also discuss how these new coefficents can arise within the kinetic theory of weakly coupled conformal plasmas. We point out that the Muller-Israel-Stewart theory, often used in numerical simulations, does not contain all allowed second-order terms and, frequently, terms required by conformal invariance.
Allelotype of Gastric Adenocarcinoma Updated

Gastric adenocarcinoma is a leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Yet, the underlying molecular events important in the development of this cancer are largely undefined. Thus, we performed a comprehensive survey for allelic loss on our panel of xenografted human gastric carcinomas. Contaminating normal stromal cells of primary cancers often limit mutational analyses. Xenografted samples of our gastric carcinomas provided optimally enriched tumors for neoplasia that clearly and sensitively demonstrated genetic alterations. Additionally, total absence of allelic signals in these xenografted samples confirmed true loss of alleles rather than just allelic imbalance. Analysis of at least two highly polymorphic microsatellite markers per nonacrocentric chromosomal arm in our xenografted human gastric carcinomas demonstrated significant loss of heterozygosity well above background levels at 3p, 4p, 5q, 8p, 9p, 13q, 17p, and 18q. Several of these loci represent novel findings of significant loss in gastric cancers. On chromosome 17p, p53 is known to be inactivated either by mutation or deletion in a majority of gastric carcinomas. The critical target(s) of inactivation in gastric cancers at these other loci remain to be characterized.
Carbon-enhanced Hyper-Metal-poor Stars and the Stellar IMF at Low Metallicity

The two known "hyper-metal-poor" (HMP) stars, HE 0107-5240 and HE 1327-2326, have extremely high enhancements of the light elements C, N, and O relative to Fe and appear to represent a statistically significant excess population relative to the halo metallicity distribution extrapolated from [Fe/H] > -3. This study weighs the available evidence for and against three hypothetical origins for these stars: (1) that they formed from gas enriched by a primordial "faint supernova," (2) that they formed from gas enriched by core-collapse supernovae and C-rich gas ejected in rotation-driven winds from massive stars, and (3) that they formed as the low-mass secondaries in binary systems at Z ~ 10-5.5 Z☉ and acquired their light-element enhancements from an intermediate-mass companion as it passed through an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase. The observations interpreted here, especially the depletion of lithium seen in HE 1327-2326, favor the binary mass-transfer hypothesis. If HE 0107-5240 and HE 1327-2326 formed in binary systems, the statistically significant absence of isolated and/or C-normal stars at similar [Fe/H] implies that low-mass stars could form at this metallicity, but that masses M ≲ 1.4 M☉ were disfavored in the IMF. This result is also explained if the abundance-derived top-heavy IMF for primordial stars persists to [Fe/H] ~ -5.5. This finding indicates that low-mass star formation was possible at extremely low metallicity and that the typical stellar mass may have had a complex dependence on metallicity rather than a sharp transition driven solely by gas cooling.
Components of recognition memory: Dissociable cognitive processes or just differences in representational complexity?

Many current theoretical views within the literature on recognition memory—a representative sample of which is provided by the present special issue—advocate the dissociation of recognition memory into two cognitive processes: familiarity‐based recognition, and recollection/recall. Furthermore, these processes are proposed to be mediated by distinct and dissociable anatomical regions, usually the perirhinal cortex and hippocampus, respectively. In this article, we describe a representational‐hierarchical view that provides an account of cognition, including mnemonic and perceptual processing, within a brain pathway we term the ventral visual‐perirhinal‐hippocampal stream. According to this view cognition, perception, memory, and indeed amnesia may be understood by considering the content and organization of stimulus representations in the brain. Taking this view leads us to question the idea of cognitive modules for introspectively derived notions such as familiarity and recollection. We begin by reviewing the representational‐hierarchical framework, explain how it has been used to account for object recognition memory in perirhinal cortex, and review the rationale for extending this framework to the hippocampus. We then discuss whether the principles of the representational‐hierarchical framework can be used to understand recollection and familiarity in terms of stimulus complexity, and use these principles to reconsider some of the evidence for neuroanatomical, dual‐process models of recognition memory. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Socio-Cognitive Conflict and Cognitive Growth in Young Children.

Pairs of 5to 7-year-old children who worked collaboratively on spatial perspec tive problems were compared to control subjects who worked individually on the same problems. Among experimental subjects, particular interaction strate gies were analyzed to determine what kinds of peer interaction provoke devel opment and why cognitive gains are sustained by some partners more than oth ers. Although children who worked in dyads generally did not do significantly better than children who worked alone, there were several critical features in the frequency and quality of their social interaction that were found to promote cognitive growth, including a curvilinear relationship between the expression of socio-cognitive conflict and cognitive change.
Political talk on mobile instant messaging services: a comparative analysis of Germany, Italy, and the UK

ABSTRACT Mobile instant messaging services (MIMS) are emerging as important digital environments in citizens’ everyday lives. We explore the use of MIMS for talking about politics with unique survey data on samples representative of Internet users in Germany, Italy, and the UK. First, we show that robust percentages of our respondents who use MIMS employ them for posting political messages and discussing politics. Second, we demonstrate that political talk on MIMS is positively associated with users’ tendency to censor themselves politically on social networking sites (SNS) and, to a lesser extent, with ideological extremism. Third, we find that the association between self-censorship on SNS and the likelihood of publishing political contents on MIMS is stronger for individuals living in former East Germany where, due to historical reasons, large segments of the population are reluctant to talk about politics in public. Our findings suggest that MIMS make a distinctive contribution to contemporary repertoires of political talk, with important implications for the quality and inclusiveness of interpersonal political discussion.
Genetics of chloroquine-resistant malaria: a haplotypic view

The development and rapid spread of chloroquine resistance (CQR) in Plasmodium falciparum have triggered the identification of several genetic target(s) in the P. falciparum genome. In particular, mutations in the Pfcrt gene, specifically, K76T and mutations in three other amino acids in the region adjoining K76 (residues 72, 74, 75 and 76), are considered to be highly related to CQR. These various mutations form several different haplotypes and Pfcrt gene polymorphisms and the global distribution of the different CQR- Pfcrt haplotypes in endemic and non-endemic regions of P. falciparum malaria have been the subject of extensive study. Despite the fact that the Pfcrt gene is considered to be the primary CQR gene in P. falciparum , several studies have suggested that this may not be the case. Furthermore, there is a poor correlation between the evolutionary implications of the Pfcrt haplotypes and the inferred migration of CQR P. falciparum based on CQR epidemiological surveillance data. The present paper aims to clarify the existing knowledge on the genetic basis of the different CQR- Pfcrt haplotypes that are prevalent in worldwide populations based on the published literature and to analyse the data to generate hypotheses on the genetics and evolution of CQR malaria.
Computational Analysis of Intra-Ventricular Flow Pattern Under Partial and Full Support of BJUT-II VAD

Background Partial support, as a novel support mode, has been widely applied in clinical practice and widely studied. However, the precise mechanism of partial support of LVAD in the intra-ventricular flow pattern is unclear. Material/Methods In this study, a patient-specific left ventricular geometric model was reconstructed based on CT data. The intra-ventricular flow pattern under 3 simulated conditions – “heart failure”, “partial support”, and “full support” – were simulated by using fluid-structure interaction (FSI). The blood flow pattern, wall shear stress (WSS), time-average wall shear stress (TAWSS), oscillatory shear index (OSI), and relative residence time (RRT) were calculated to evaluate the hemodynamic effects. Results The results demonstrate that the intra-ventricular flow pattern is significantly changed by the support level of BJUT-II VAD. The intra-ventricular vortex was enhanced under partial support and was eliminated under full support, and the high OSI and RRT regions changed from the septum wall to the cardiac apex. Conclusions In brief, the support level of the BJUT-II VAD has significant effects on the intra-ventricular flow pattern. The partial support mode of BJUT-II VAD can enhance the intra-ventricular vortex, while the distribution of high OSI and RRT moved from the septum wall to the cardiac apex. Hence, the partial support mode of BJUT-II VAD can provide more benefit for intra-ventricular flow pattern.
Chapter 5 Musical Virtuosity and Creativity

Virtuosos are human beings who exhibit exceptional performance in their field of activity. In particular, virtuosos are interesting for creativity studies because they are exceptional problem solvers. However, virtuosity is an under-studied field of human behaviour. Little is known about the processes involved to become a virtuoso, and in how they distinguish themselves from normal performers. Virtuosos exist in virtually all domains of human activities, and we focus in this chapter on the specific case of virtuosity in jazz improvisation. We first introduce some facts about virtuosos coming from physiology, and then focus on the case of jazz. Automatic generation of improvisation has long been a subject of study for computer science, and many techniques have been proposed to generate music improvisation in various genres. The jazz style in particular abounds with programs that create improvisations of a reasonable level. However, no approach so far exhibits virtuosolevel performance. We describe an architecture for the generation of virtuoso bebop phrases which integrates novel music generation mechanisms in a principled way. We argue that modelling such outstanding phenomena can contribute substantially to the understanding of creativity in humans and machines. 5.1 Virtuosos as Exceptional Humans 5.1. 1 Virtuosity in Art There is no precise definition of virtuosity, but only a commonly accepted view that virtuosos are human beings that excel in their practice to the point of exhibiting exceptional performance. Virtuosity exists in virtually all forms of human activity. In painting, several artists use virtuosity as a means to attract the attention of their audience. Felice Varini paints on urban spaces in such a way that there is a unique viewpoint from which a spectator sees the painting as a perfect geometrical figure. The F. Pachet ( ) Sony CSL-Paris, 6, rue Amyot, 75005 Paris, France e-mail: pachet@csl.sony. fr J. McCormack, M. d’Inverno (eds.), Computers and Creativity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-31727-9_5, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 115
A Variational Bayesian Framework for Graphical Models

This paper presents a novel practical framework for Bayesian model averaging and model selection in probabilistic graphical models. Our approach approximates full posterior distributions over model parameters and structures, as well as latent variables, in an analytical manner. These posteriors fall out of a free-form optimization procedure, which naturally incorporates conjugate priors. Unlike in large sample approximations, the posteriors are generally nonGaussian and no Hessian needs to be computed. Predictive quantities are obtained analytically. The resulting algorithm generalizes the standard Expectation Maximization algorithm, and its convergence is guaranteed. We demonstrate that this approach can be applied to a large class of models in several domains, including mixture models and source separation.
Outpatient Long-term Intensive Therapy for Alcoholics (OLITA): a successful biopsychosocial approach to the treatment of alcoholism

Alcohol dependence is a frequent, chronic, relapsing, and incurable disease with enormous societal costs. Thus, alcoholism therapy and research into its outcome are of major importance for public health. The present article will: (i) give a brief overview of the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and treatment outcomes of alcohol dependence; (ii) introduce the basic principles of outpatient long-term therapy of alcohol-dependent patients; and (iii) discuss in detail process-outcome research on Outpatient Long-term intensive Therapy for Alcoholics (OLITA). This successful biopsychosocial approach to the treatment of alcoholisms shows a 9-year abstinence rate of over 50%, a re-employment rate of 60%, and a dramatic recovery from comorbid depression, anxiety disorders, and physical sequelae. The outcome data are empirically based on treatment processes that have proven high predictive validity and give concrete information about where to focus the therapeutic efforts. Thus, process-outcome research on OLITA can serve for the development of new therapeutic guidelines on adapting individual relapse prevention strategies.
Beta-block the septic heart

Objectives:Cardiac depression is a well-described manifestation of the sepsis syndrome. An important underlying mechanism is the attenuation of the adrenergic response at the cardiomyocyte level. By reducing their cell-specific function (contractility), the cardiomyocytes reduce their energy expenditure. Consequently, the cardiac myocytes survive in a hibernation-like state as long as intracellular energy generation is limited. The objective of this study was to review &bgr;-blocker therapy for the treatment of septic patients. Data Source:MEDLINE database. Data Synthesis:During established sepsis with organ failure, external adrenergic stimulation of the heart must be kept at a minimum. To blunt the adrenergic response, &bgr;-blockers have been used in several preclinical and clinical studies. In septic animals, &bgr;-blockers reduced heart rate, whereas stroke volume was maintained. Esmolol in vivo prevented the downregulation of adrenergic pathways, preserving full cardiac function ex vivo. In addition, &bgr;-blockers reduced the inflammatory response and the degree of lung injury. Some animal studies documented survival benefits, particularly when &bgr;-blockers were administered before the septic insult. In patients with septic shock, blood pressure increased and cardiac indices remained stable with metoprolol administration. Conclusions:Preclinical and clinical studies with &bgr;-1 receptor blockers during sepsis show promising results. Future studies are needed to establish the optimal dose and timing of its administration.
MODELING SHORTEST PATH GAMES WITH PETRI NETS: A LYAPUNOV BASED THEORY

In this paper we introduce a new modeling paradigm for shortest path games representation with Petri nets. Whereas previous works have restricted attention to tracking the net using Bellman’s equation as a utility function, this work uses a Lyapunov-like function. In this sense, we change the traditional cost function by a trajectory-tracking function which is also an optimal cost-to-target function. This makes a significant difference in the conceptualization of the problem domain, allowing the replacement of the Nash equilibrium point by the Lyapunov equilibrium point in game theory. We show that the Lyapunov equilibrium point coincides with the Nash equilibrium point. As a consequence, all properties of equilibrium and stability are preserved in game theory. This is the most important contribution of this work. The potential of this approach remains in its formal proof simplicity for the existence of an equilibrium point.