Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Single Neuron Computation: From Dynamical System to Feature Detector

White noise methods are a powerful tool for characterizing the computation performed by neural systems. These methods allow one to identify the feature or features that a neural system extracts from a complex input and to determine how these features are combined to drive the system's spiking response. These methods have also been applied to characterize the input-output relations of single neurons driven by synaptic inputs, simulated by direct current injection. To interpret the results of white noise analysis of single neurons, we would like to understand how the obtained feature space of a single neuron maps onto the biophysical properties of the membrane, in particular, the dynamics of ion channels. Here, through analysis of a simple dynamical model neuron, we draw explicit connections between the output of a white noise analysis and the underlying dynamical system. We find that under certain assumptions, the form of the relevant features is well defined by the parameters of the dynamical system. Further, we show that under some conditions, the feature space is spanned by the spike-triggered average and its successive order time derivatives.
The Dø Collaboration

We determine the strong coupling constant αs and its running from the pT dependence of the inclusive jet cross section in p¯ p collisions at √ s = 1.96 TeV. The running of the strong coupling constant is shown over the range 50 < pT < 145 GeV. Using perturbative QCD calculations to order O(α 3 s) combined with O(α 4 s) contributions from threshold corrections, we obtain a result of αs(MZ) = 0.1173 +0.0041 −0.0049. This is the most precise result from a hadron collider.
HIV disease progression among women following seroconversion during a tenofovir-based HIV prevention trial

Background Little is known regarding HIV disease outcomes among individuals who become infected with HIV while receiving antiretroviral medications for prevention. We compared HIV disease parameters among women who seroconverted while receiving tenofovir-containing oral or vaginal pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to placebo. Methods Participants with HIV seroconversion in a randomized placebo-controlled trial of oral tenofovir, oral tenofovir/emtricitabine, and vaginal tenofovir gel (MTN-003) were followed in a longitudinal cohort study (MTN-015). The effect of oral and vaginal tenofovir-containing PrEP on HIV disease progression was compared to placebo using linear mixed effects and Cox proportional hazard models, as appropriate. Additional analyses were performed to compare the outcomes among participants with detectable tenofovir or emtricitabine in plasma at the first quarterly visit in MTN-003. Results A total of 224 participants were included in the analysis; 93% from South Africa and 94% clade C virus. No differences in HIV RNA at steady state or the trajectory over 12 months were observed for each active arm compared to placebo; tenofovir gel recipients had higher CD4+ T cell counts (722 vs 596 cells/mm3; p = 0.02) at 90 days after estimated HIV seroconversion and higher average rates of change over 12 months compared to placebo (-181 vs -92 cells/mm3 per year; p = 0.08). With a median follow-up of 31 months, no significant differences were observed for time to CD4+ T cell count ≤350 cells/mm3, or the composite endpoint of CD4+ T cells ≤350 cells/mm3, initiation of antiretroviral therapy or death for each active arm compared to placebo. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the HIV RNA or CD4+ T cell counts at baseline, the change to month 12, or any disease progression outcomes among participants with oral drug detected and no oral drug detected compared to placebo. Conclusions No clinically significant differences in HIV seroconversion outcomes were observed among women randomized to tenofovir-containing oral or vaginal PrEP regimens, however low overall adherence limits the generalizability of these findings.
Variations in the Enzyme Activity of Carbohydrate Metabolic Disorder on Cardiac Function

It is estimated that 70% to 80% of diabetic patients die of cardiovascular complications, such as ischemic heart disease, atherosclerosis, hypertension, arrhythmias, and congestive heart failure. All these complications seem to arise from the occurrence of oxidative stress and the development of calcium-handling abnormalities. In particular, the genetic machinery in both cardiac and vascular cells is altered in chronic diabetes. Therefore, a novel therapy needs to be designed for the treatment of diabetes-induced cardiovascular abnormalities. The present clinical study has shown that the abnormalities in cardiac functions. The concentration of various enzymes like SGPT, CPK and LDH were slightly elevated in diabetic patients compared to normal level, which were mainly originated from the liver and heart.
The Electrophysiological Underpinnings of Processing Gender Stereotypes in Language

Despite the widely documented influence of gender stereotypes on social behaviour, little is known about the electrophysiological substrates engaged in the processing of such information when conveyed by language. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we examined the brain response to third-person pronouns (lei “she” and lui “he”) that were implicitly primed by definitional (passeggera FEM “passenger”, pensionato MASC “pensioner”), or stereotypical antecedents (insegnante “teacher”, conducente “driver”). An N400-like effect on the pronoun emerged when it was preceded by a definitionally incongruent prime (passeggera FEM – lui; pensionato MASC – lei), and a stereotypically incongruent prime for masculine pronouns only (insegnante – lui). In addition, a P300-like effect was found when the pronoun was preceded by definitionally incongruent primes. However, this effect was observed for female, but not male participants. Overall, these results provide further evidence for on-line effects of stereotypical gender in language comprehension. Importantly, our results also suggest a gender stereotype asymmetry in that male and female stereotypes affected the processing of pronouns differently.
Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Guidance during Inefficient Visual Search

Spotting a prey or a predator is crucial in the natural environment and relies on the ability to extract quickly pertinent visual information. The experimental counterpart of this behavior is visual search (VS) where subjects have to identify a target amongst several distractors. In difficult VS tasks, it has been found that the reaction time (RT) is influenced by salience factors, such as the target-distractor similarity, and this finding is usually regarded as evidence for a guidance of attention by preattentive mechanisms. However, the use of RT measurements, a parameter which depends on multiple factors, allows only very indirect inferences about the underlying attentional mechanisms. The purpose of the present study was to determine the influence of salience factors on attentional guidance during VS, by measuring directly attentional allocation. We studied attention allocation by using a dual covert VS task in subjects who had 1) to detect a target amongst different items and 2) to report letters briefly flashed inside those items at different delays. As predicted, we showed that parallel processes guide attention towards the most relevant item by virtue of both goal-directed and stimulus-driven factors, and we demonstrated that this attentional selection is a prerequisite for target detection. In addition, we show that when the target is characterized by two features (conjunction VS), the goal-directed effects of both features are initially combined into a unique salience value, but at a later stage, grouping phenomena interact with the salience computation, and lead to the selection of a whole group of items. These results, in line with Guided Search Theory, show that efficient and rapid preattentive processes guide attention towards the most salient item, allowing to reduce the number of attentional shifts needed to find the target.
ASSESSING THE ERROR FROM FAILURE TO ACCOUNT FOR URBAN MICROCLIMATE IN COMPUTER SIMULATION OF BUILDING ENERGY PERFORMANCE

The paper examines the importance of using sitespecific data in computer simulation of building energy performance. The CAT (Canyon Air Temperature) computer model, which is designed to predict site-specific air temperature in an urban street canyon for extended periods on the basis of data from a reference station exposed to the same meso-scale weather, was used to provide modified input to a series of Ener-Win simulations of the energy performance of a hypothetical office building. The simulations show that, depending on the urban configuration represented by the aspect ratio of the street canyon, the modification to air temperature in many locations may be too large to neglect if the simulation is to be used for realistic design decision making.
Radiative Squeezing Flow of Second Grade Fluid with Convective Boundary Conditions

Influence of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow between two parallel disks is considered. Heat transfer analysis is disclosed due to thermal radiation and convective boundary condition. Appropriate transformations are invoked to obtain the ordinary differential system. This system is solved using homotopic approach. Convergence of the obtained solution is discussed. Variations of embedded parameters into the governing problems are graphically discussed. Skin friction coefficient and Nusselt number are numerically computed and analyzed. It is noticed that temperature profile is increasing function of radiation parameter.
Risk, Returns, and Multinational Production

This paper starts by unveiling a new empirical regularity: multinational corporations systematically tend to exhibit higher stock market returns and earnings yields than non-multinational firms. Within non-multinationals, exporters tend to exhibit higher earnings yields and returns than firms selling only in their domestic market. To explain this pattern, we develop a real option value model where firms are heterogeneous in productivity, and have to decide whether and how to sell in a foreign market where demand is risky. Firms can serve the foreign market through trade or foreign direct investment, thus becoming multinationals. Multinational firms are more exposed to risk: following a negative shock, they are reluctant to exit the foreign market because they would forgo the sunk cost that they paid to start investing abroad. We calibrate the model to match U.S. export and FDI dynamics, and use it to explain cross-sectional differences in earnings yields and returns.
Minimal Actuator Placement With Bounds on Control Effort

We address the problem of minimal actuator placement in a linear system subject to an average control energy bound. First, following the recent work of Olshevsky, we prove that this is NP-hard. Then, we provide an efficient algorithm which, for a given range of problem parameters, approximates up to a multiplicative factor of O(log n), with n being the network size, any optimal actuator set that meets the same energy criteria; this is the best approximation factor one can achieve in polynomial time in the worst case. Moreover, the algorithm uses a perturbed version of the involved control energy metric, which we prove to be supermodular. Next, we focus on the related problem of cardinality-constrained actuator placement for minimum control effort, where the optimal actuator set is selected so that an average input energy metric is minimized. While this is also an NP-hard problem, we use our proposed algorithm to efficiently approximate its solutions as well. Finally, we run our algorithms over large random networks to illustrate their efficiency.
Effects of surface treatment on the bonding quality of wafer-level Cu-to-Cu thermo-compression bonding for 3D integration

Various surface treatments are applied for surface oxide removal prior to wafer-level Cu-to-Cu thermo-compression bonding and the bonding quality is systematically analyzed in this work. Three methods are investigated: self-assembled monolayer (SAM) passivation, forming gas annealing and acetic acid wet cleaning. The surface conditions are carefully examined including roughness, contact angle and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) scan. The wafer pairs are bonded at 250 °C under a bonding force of 5500 N for a duration of 1 h in a vacuum environment. The bonding medium consists of a Cu (300 nm) bonding layer and a Ti (50 nm) barrier layer. The bonding quality investigation consists of two parts: hermeticity based on helium leak test and mechanical strength using four-point bending method. Although all samples under test with different surface treatment methods present an excellent hermetic seal and a robust mechanical support, the measurement results show that samples bonded after SAM passivation exhibit the best hermeticity and bonding strength for 3D integration application.
Use of benzo analogs to enhance antimycotic activity of kresoxim methyl for control of aflatoxigenic fungal pathogens

The aim of this study was to examine two benzo analogs, octylgallate (OG) and veratraldehyde (VT), as antifungal agents against strains of Aspergillus parasiticus and A.flavus (toxigenic or atoxigenic). Both toxigenic and atoxigenic strains used were capable of producing kojic acid, another cellular secondary product. A. fumigatus was used as a genetic model for this study. When applied independently, OG exhibits considerably higher antifungal activity compared to VT. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of OG were 0.3–0.5 mM, while that of VT were 3.0–5.0 mM in agar plate-bioassays. OG or VT in concert with the fungicide kresoxim methyl (Kre-Me; strobilurin) greatly enhanced sensitivity of Aspergillus strains to Kre-Me. The combination with OG also overcame the tolerance of A. fumigatus mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) mutants to Kre-Me. The degree of compound interaction resulting from chemosensitization of the fungi by OG was determined using checkerboard bioassays, where synergistic activity greatly lowered MICs or minimum fungicidal concentrations. However, the control chemosensitizer benzohydroxamic acid, an alternative oxidase inhibitor conventionally applied in concert with strobilurin, did not achieve synergism. The level of antifungal or chemosensitizing activity was also “compound—strain” specific, indicating differential susceptibility of tested strains to OG or VT, and/or heat stress. Besides targeting the antioxidant system, OG also negatively affected the cell wall-integrity pathway, as determined by the inhibition of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell wall-integrity MAPK pathway mutants. We concluded that certain benzo analogs effectively inhibit fungal growth. They possess chemosensitizing capability to increase efficacy of Kre-Me and thus, could reduce effective dosages of strobilurins and alleviate negative side effects associated with current antifungal practices. OG also exhibits moderate antiaflatoxigenic activity.
New approaches to covering and packing problems

Covering and packing integer programs model a large family of combinatorial optimization problems. The current-best approximation algorithms for these are an instance of the basic probabilistic method: showing that a certain randomized approach produces a good approximation with positive probability. This approach seems inherently sequential; by employing the method of alteration we present the first RNC and NC approximation algorithms that match the best sequential guarantees. Extending our approach, we get the first RNC and NC approximation algorithms for certain multi-criteria versions of these problems. We also present the first NC algorithms for two packing and covering problems that are not subsumed by the above result: finding large independent sets in graphs, and rounding fractional Group Steiner solutions on trees.
Bayesian Bandwidth Selection for a Nonparametric Regression Model with Mixed Types of Regressors

This paper develops a sampling algorithm for bandwidth estimation in a nonparametric regression model with continuous and discrete regressors under an unknown error density. The error density is approximated by the kernel density estimator of the unobserved errors, while the regression function is estimated using the Nadaraya-Watson estimator admitting continuous and discrete regressors. We derive an approximate likelihood and posterior for bandwidth parameters, followed by a sampling algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed approach typically leads to better accuracy of the resulting estimates than cross-validation, particularly for smaller sample sizes. This bandwidth estimation approach is applied to nonparametric regression model of the Australian All Ordinaries returns and the kernel density estimation of gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates among the organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) and non-OECD countries.
Using Semantic and Context Features for Answer Summary Extraction

We investigate the effectiveness of using semantic and context features for extracting document summaries that are designed to contain answers for non-factoid queries. The summarization methods are compared against state-of-the-art factoid question answering and query-biased summarization techniques. The accuracy of generated answer summaries are evaluated using ROUGE as well as sentence ranking measures, and the relationship between these measures are further analyzed. The results show that semantic and context features give significant improvement to the state-of-the-art techniques.
Human opsonins to meningococci after vaccination

Two groups of volunteers were immunized with either a serogroup A plus C meningococcal polysaccharide vaccine or a combined serogroup B polysaccharide-serotype 2 protein vaccine. Serum opsonin responses were measured by chemiluminescence of polymorphonuclear leukocytes exposed to opsonized live meningococci. Two of the six volunteers immunized with the A plus C vaccine had an increase in serum opsonins to group A meningococci, four responded to group C meningococci, and none to group B meningococci. Five other volunteers who were immunized with the combined group B polysaccharide-serotype 2 protein vaccine responded with an increase in serum opsonins to group B meningococci of two different protein serotypes, as well as to a group C-serotype 2 meningococcal strain. Although no booster effect was observed after a second dose of the combined vaccine, both the polysaccharide and the protein components appear to be able to stimulate an opsonin response.
Hyperbolic Julia Sets Are Poly-time Computable

In this paper we prove that hyperbolic Julia sets are locally computable in polynomial time. Namely, for each complex hyperbolic polynomial p(z), there is a Turing machine M p(z) that can " draw " the set with the precision 2 −n , such that it takes time polynomial in n to decide whether to draw each pixel. In formal terms, it takes time polynomial in n to decide for a point x whether d(x, J p(z)) < 2 −n (in which case we draw a pixel with center x), or d(x, J p(z)) > 2 · 2 −n (in which case we don't draw this pixel). In the case 2 −n ≤ d(x, J p(x)) ≤ 2 · 2 −n either answer will be acceptable. This definition of complexity for sets is equivalent to the definition introduced in Weihrauch's book [16] and used by Rettinger and Weihrauch in [13]. Although the hyperbolic Julia sets were shown to be recursive, complexity bounds were proven only for a restricted case in [13]. Our paper is a significant generalization of [13], in which polynomial time computability was shown for a special kind of hyperbolic polynomials, namely, polynomials of the form p(z) = z 2 + c with |c| < 1/4. We show that the machine drawing the Julia set can be made independent of the hyperbolic polynomial p, and provide some evidence suggesting that one cannot expect a much better computability result for Julia sets. We also introduce an alternative real set computability definition due to Ko, and show an interesting connection between this definition and the main definition.
A new benchmark for vision-based cyclist detection

Significant progress has been achieved over the past decade on vision-based pedestrian detection; this has led to active pedestrian safety systems being deployed in most mid- to high-range cars on the market. Comparatively little effort has been spent on vision-based cyclist detection, especially when it concerns quantitative performance analysis on large datasets. We present a large-scale experimental study on cyclist detection where we examine the currently most promising object detection methods; we consider Aggregated Channel Features, Deformable Part Models and Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks. We also introduce a new method called Stereo-Proposal based Fast R-CNN (SP-FRCN) to detect cyclists based on stereo proposals and Fast R-CNN (FRCN) framework. Experiments are performed on a dataset containing 22161 annotated cyclist instances in over 30000 images, recorded from a moving vehicle in the urban traffic of Beijing. Results indicate that all the three solution families can reach top performance around 0.89 average precision on the easy case, but the performance drops gradually with the difficulty increasing. The dataset including rich annotations, stereo images and evaluation scripts (termed “Tsinghua-Daimler Cyclist Benchmark”) is made public to the scientific community, to serve as a common point of reference for future research.
The Motion of a Thin Liquid Film Driven by Surfactant and Gravity

We investigate wave solutions of a lubrication model for surfactant-driven flow of a thin liquid film down an inclined plane. We model the flow in one space dimension with a system of nonlinear PDEs of mixed hyperbolic-parabolic type in which the effects of capillarity and surface diffusion are neglected. Numerical solutions reveal distinct patterns of waves that are described analytically by combinations of traveling waves, some with jumps in height and surfactant concentration gradient. The various waves and combinations are strikingly different from what is observed in the case of flow on a horizontal plane. Jump conditions admit new shock waves sustained by a linear surfactant wave traveling upstream. The stability of these waves is investigated analytically and numerically. For initial value problems, a critical ratio of upstream to downstream height separates two distinct long-time wave patterns. Below the critical ratio, there is also an exact solution in which the height is piecewise constant and .