Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparative Perceptual Study of Soft-Shadow Algorithms

We performed a perceptual user study of algorithms that approximate soft shadows in real time. Although a huge body of soft-shadow algorithms have been proposed, to our knowledge this is the first methodical study for comparing different real-time shadow algorithms with respect to their plausibility and visual appearance. We evaluated soft-shadow properties like penumbra overlap with respect to their relevance to shadow perception in a systematic way, and we believe that our results can be useful to guide future shadow approaches in their methods of evaluation. In this study, we also capture the predominant case of an inexperienced user observing shadows without comparing to a reference solution, such as when watching a movie or playing a game. One important result of this experiment is to scientifically verify that real-time soft-shadow algorithms, despite having become physically based and very realistic, can nevertheless be intuitively distinguished from a correct solution by untrained users.
Typical cMRI pattern as diagnostic clue for D‐bifunctional protein deficiency without apparent biochemical abnormalities in plasma

D‐bifunctional protein deficiency (DBPD) is an autosomal recessive disease caused by a defect in peroxisomal β‐oxidation. The majority of patients suffer from a severe neurological disease with neonatal hypotonia and seizures and die within the first 2 years of life. Few patients show milder clinical phenotypes with prolonged survival. The diagnosis relies on the clinical presentation, measurement of peroxisomal markers, including very long chain fatty acids (VLCFA) in plasma, followed by enzymatic studies in fibroblasts and genetic testing. Diagnosis can be difficult to establish in milder cases, especially if VLCFA concentration in plasma is not or only mildly elevated. We report on siblings in which initial measurement of plasma VLCFA did not indicate a peroxisomal disease. Nevertheless, cMRI showed a pattern typical for an inborn peroxisomal disease with cerebral and cerebellar leukencephalopathy, perisylvic polymicrogyria, and frontoparietal pachygyria. Repeated measurements of peroxisomal metabolites in plasma prompted by the cMRI findings showed values in the upper normal or mildly elevated range and led to further diagnostic steps. The diagnosis of a type III DBPD with a missense mutation (T15A) in the HSD17B4 gene, coding for D‐bifunctional protein (DBP), could be established. We conclude that a typical “peroxisomal pattern” in cMRI including cerebral and cerebellar leukencephalopathy, perisylvic polymicrogyria and pachygyria is a valuable clue to the diagnosis of DBPD, especially in cases with no or only very mild abnormalities in plasma. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Role of spatial frequencies and exposure duration in face processing : potential consequences on the memory format of facial representations

The aim of this research was to study the influence of exposure duration and the spatial-frequency composition of faces in a «same-different» judgment task. Subjects had to match two faces presented successively. The recognition rate depended on the spatial-frequency composition of the target face, and on exposure duration only for high-frequency stimuli. This effect was observed only for durations which were greater than Bloch's psychophysics threshold and only concerned the «same» face pairs. These results are quite consistent with the hypothesis that exposure duration has a differential effect on low and high frequency integration. They are discussed in relation to the single and dual-process models of the «same-different» judgment task (Farell, 1985). Potential consequences on the format of facial representations in memory are proposed
The Improvement of Severe Psychomotor and Neurological Dysfunctions Treated with the Tomatis Audio-Psycho-Phonology Method Measured with EEG Brain Map and Auditory Evoked Potentials

Background. Pioneering research of Tomatis led to the introduction of the Audio-Psycho-Phonology (APP), to treat, improve, or remediate severely neurologically impaired individual. Method. Here we present for the first time independent data on the APP method with auditive evoked potentials and electroencephalographically based brain mapping. Results. The improvement of these 4 patients by undergoing APP treatment is shown in their listening curves as well as in the results of the EEG based brain maps and the auditory evoked potentials. Conclusion. 1. APP method seems to be an effective and harmless treatment for patients with severe psychomotor and/or neurological dysfunctions. 2. Auditory evoked potentials and electroencephalographically based brain mapping seems to be an appropriate examination to demonstrate neurological changes after APP therapy. Besides the presentation of the four cases, a short overview of the method is presented.
Antecedents of extrinsic motivation to transfer training

Training aimed at raising employees’ skills and enhancing employability is an important tool for human resource development practitioners. The transfer of trained contents to the workplace is not trivial, however. Trainees’ motivation to apply newly acquired skills and competencies on the job plays a central role in the transfer of training process. This paper presents a study aimed at assessing antecedents of extrinsic motivation to transfer immediately at the end of the training. Based on organismic integration theory and expectancy theory, two types of extrinsic motivation to transfer training were distinguished: integrated regulation of transfer motivation and external regulation of transfer motivation. To investigate the research question “What predicts the two types of extrinsic motivation to transfer? ”, relations were examined with attitudes toward training content, relatedness and instructional satisfaction. 445 subjects were trained in 23 occupational health and safety training sessions. Immediately before and after the training session, the subjects completed multi-item questionnaires. The non-normal missing data set was analysed using factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that external regulation was predicted by attitudes toward training content, and that integrated regulation was affected by attitudes, relatedness, instructional satisfaction and external regulation. The initially hypothesised structural equation model was post-hoc specified according to Lagrange Multiplier test results. The final model showed considerably good fit, matching the proposed cutoff values (χ2 = 3678.76, df = 253, CFI = .96, RMSEA = .04 with CI = .03, .04) and was further validated by comparing it to two equivalent alternative models. In concluding, the paper discusses the findings with reference to methodological considerations, draws implications for HRD practices in organisations and elaborates challenges for future research on motivation to transfer training.
Calibrating soil respiration measures with a dynamic flux apparatus using artificial soil media of varying porosity

Measurement of soil respiration to quantify ecosystem carbon cycling requires absolute, not relative, estimates of soil CO2 efflux. We describe a novel, automated efflux apparatus that can be used to test the accuracy of chamber‐based soil respiration measurements by generating known CO2 fluxes. Artificial soil is supported above an air‐filled footspace wherein the CO2 concentration is manipulated by mass flow controllers. The footspace is not pressurized so that the diffusion gradient between it and the air at the soil surface drives CO2 efflux. Chamber designs or measurement techniques can be affected by soil air volume, hence properties of the soil medium are critical. We characterized and utilized three artificial soils with diffusion coefficients ranging from 2.7 × 10−7 to 11.9 × 10−7 m2 s−1 and porosities of 0.26 to 0.46. Soil CO2 efflux rates were measured using a commercial dynamic closed‐chamber system (Li‐Cor 6400 photosynthesis system equipped with a 6400‐09 soil CO2 flux chamber). On the least porous soil, small underestimates (< 5%) of CO2 effluxes were observed, which increased as soil diffusivity and soil porosity increased, leading to underestimates as high as 25%. Differential measurement bias across media types illustrates the need for testing systems on several types of soil media.
Ethnic identity on display: West Indian youth and the creation of ethnic boundaries in high school

Abstract The black immigrant population in New York City has grown exponentially since 1990, such that West Indians now compose the majority of the black population in several neighbourhoods. This article examines how this ethnic density manifests among youth in high school, and how it has influenced ethnic identity formation among second-generation West Indians. My findings are based on twenty-four interviews and eight months of participant observation in two Brooklyn high schools from 2003 to 2004. The results show that in both schools, Caribbean island identities have become a ‘cool’ commodity within peer groups. Further, although it was important to express pride in one's island identity, these young people often blurred their national origin boundaries by drawing on Jamaican popular culture as way of projecting a unified ‘West Indian identity’. The research also uncovers evidence of a de-stigmatization of Haitianness as a way to incorporate them as cultural insiders into the larger Caribbean collective.
Consolidation Patterns of Human Motor Memory

Can memories be unlearned, or is unlearning a form of acquiring a new memory that competes with the old, effectively masking it? We considered motor memories that were acquired when people learned to use a novel tool. We trained people to reach with tool A and quantified recall in error-clamp trials, i.e., trials in which the memory was reactivated but error-dependent learning was minimized. We measured both the magnitude of the memory and its resistance to change. With passage of time between acquisition and reactivation (up to 24 h), memory of A slowly declined, but with reactivation remained resistant to change. After learning of tool A, brief exposure to tool B brought performance back to baseline, i.e., apparent extinction. Yet, for up to a few minutes after A+B training, output in error-clamp trials increased from baseline to match those who had trained only in A. This spontaneous recovery and convergence demonstrated that B did not produce any unlearning of A. Rather, it masked A with a new memory that was very fragile. We tracked the memory of B as a function of time and found that within minutes it was transformed from a fragile to a more stable state. Therefore, a sudden performance error in a well-learned motor task does not produce unlearning, but rather installs a competing but fragile memory that with passage of time acquires stability. Learning not only engages processes that adapt at multiple timescales, but once practice ends, the fast states are partially transformed into slower states.
Using Tickets to Enforce the Serializability of Multidatabase Transactions

To enforce global serializability in a multidatabase environment the multidatabase transaction manager must take into account the indirect (transitive) conflicts between multidatabase transactions caused by local transactions. Such conflicts are difficult to resolve because the behavior or even the existence of local transactions is not known to the multidatabase system. To overcome these difficulties, we propose to incorporate additional data manipulation operations in the subtransactions of each multidatabase transaction. We show that if these operations create direct conflicts between subtransactions at each participating local database system, indirect conflicts can be resolved even if the multidatabase system is not aware of their existence. Based on this approach, we introduce optimistic and conservative multidatabase transaction management methods that require the local database systems to ensure only local serializability. The proposed methods do not violate the autonomy of the local database systems and guarantee global serializability by preventing multidatabase transactions from being serialized in different ways at the participating database systems. Refinements of these methods are also proposed for multidatabase environments where the participating database systems allow schedules that are cascadeless or transactions have analogous execution and serialization orders. In particular, we show that forced local conflicts can be eliminated in rigorous local systems, local cascadelessness simplifies the design of a global scheduler, and that local strictness offers no significant advantages over cascadelessness. >
Effects of Magnetic Field Exposure on DNA : Research Needs

There is presently an intense discussion whether exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) causes any health effects. A large variety of experimental and epidemiological studies have been performed and conclusions drawn tend to be highly controversial. Since health effects cannot be excluded, extremely low frequency EMF has been considered as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. The high variability observed in experimental results may reflect complex interactions between several factors that have not been accounted for in previous studies. For example, it has been suggested that exposure to EMF, while not directly inducing DNA damage, may affect the cellular response to DNA damage generated by other processes. One of the recent fields of investigation aims the study of the cellular response to and repairs of a very deleterious type of DNA damage, the DNA double‐strand break (DSB), under conditions of exposure to magnetic fields. In conclusion, additional research is needed to better understand the effects of EMF on human health. M IN IR EV IE W
Convergence Analysis of Distributed Inference with Vector-Valued Gaussian Belief Propagation

This paper considers inference over distributed linear Gaussian models using factor graphs and Gaussian belief propagation (BP). The distributed inference algorithm involves only local computation of the information matrix and of the mean vector, and message passing between neighbors. Under broad conditions, it is shown that the message information matrix converges to a unique positive definite limit matrix for arbitrary positive semidefinite initialization, and it approaches an arbitrarily small neighborhood of this limit matrix at a doubly exponential rate. A necessary and sufficient convergence condition for the belief mean vector to converge to the optimal centralized estimator is provided under the assumption that the message information matrix is initialized as a positive semidefinite matrix. Further, it is shown that Gaussian BP always converges when the underlying factor graph is given by the union of a forest and a single loop. The proposed convergence condition in the setup of distributed linear Gaussian models is shown to be strictly weaker than other existing convergence conditions and requirements, including the Gaussian Markov random field based walk-summability condition, and applicable to a large class of scenarios.
On Researching Music in Everyday Life, Assessing the Musician as Producer of Commercialised Music

Adorno & Horkheimer (1998) argue that the Culture Industry generates cultural artefacts that fail to develop human consciousness and hence support the domination of the capitalist system. Steinert (2003) states that the pressures facing musicians to negotiate between the demands of the culture industry and the traditional role of the artist generates a fundamental contradiction within art which is symbolically enacted through artistic production. This study, which draws on on-going postgraduate research aims to develop a research framework that investigates how musicians negotiate this contradiction. The study considers if a more reflexive approach to art exists, typified by the Pop Art movement, which paradoxically lends itself to commercial appropriation whilst still remaining a legitimate art form in its own right. This study questions if the interaction of music with marketing represents a commodification or “sell-out” of music or if it can constitute a more reflexive approach towards musical production and the negotiation of Culture Industry pressures.
Depth perception with gaze-contingent depth of field

Blur in images can create the sensation of depth because it emulates an optical property of the eye; namely, the limited depth of field created by the eye's lens. When the human eye looks at an object, this object appears sharp on the retina, but objects at different distances appear blurred. Advances in gaze-tracking technologies enable us to reproduce dynamic depth of field in regular displays, providing an alternative way of conveying depth. In this paper we investigate gaze-contingent depth of field as a method to produce realistic 3D images, and analyze how effectively people can use it to perceive depth. We found that GC DOF increases subjective perceived realism and depth and can contribute to the perception of ordinal depth and distance between objects, but it is limited in its accuracy.
Is Productivity Growth in Electricity Distribution Negative? An Empirical Analysis Using Ontario Data

Abstract Electricity industries are experiencing upward cost pressures in many parts of the world. This paper focuses on productivity trends in electricity distribution. We apply two methodologies for estimating productivity growth—an index based approach, and an econometric cost based approach—to data on 73 Ontario distributors for the period 2002 to 2012. The resulting productivity growth estimates are approximately -1% per year, suggesting a reversal of the positive estimates that have generally been reported in previous periods. We implement flexible semi-parametric specifications to assess the robustness of these conclusions and discuss the use of such statistical analyses for calibrating productivity and relative efficiency within a price-cap framework.
Effect of Paralysis at the Time of ProSeal Laryngeal Mask Airway Insertion on Pharyngolaryngeal Morbidities. A Randomized Trial

Neuromuscular block results in the loss of muscular tone in the upper airway, which might contribute to the increased postoperative airway morbidity followed by ProSeal laryngeal mask airway (PLMA) insertion. We compared the pharyngolaryngeal discomfort exerted by the PLMA according to the neuromuscular block. One hundred sixty patients undergoing surgery for breast disease or inguinal hernia were anesthetized with propofol and remifentanil by target controlled infusion. Rocuronium 0.6 mg/kg (NMBA group, n = 80) or normal saline (No-NMBA group, n = 80) was administered after the loss of consciousness, and one anesthesiologist inserted the PLMA. Postoperative pharyngolaryngeal discomfort was evaluated at postoperative 1 h. Traumatic event was recorded based on the blood trace on the surface of the PLMA cuff. Insertion time, insertion attempt number, sealing pressure, and fiberoptic brochoscopic grades were evaluated. Patients’ characteristics and the PLMA insertion condition (insertion time, successful insertion attempt number, fiberoptic bronchoscopic grade, and sealing pressure) were similar between the two groups. The PLMA can be successfully inserted in non-paralyzed patients with less postoperative pharyngolaryngeal discomfort than when a neuromuscular blocking agent is used (13.8% vs. 30.0%, P = 0.021). The incidence of traumatic events is also reduced when no neuromuscular blocking agent is used (16.3% vs. 32.5%, P = 0.026). Regardless of whether or not a surgical procedure requires muscular relaxation, there is no need to administer neuromuscular blocking agents solely for the purpose of PLMA insertion. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01035021
Characterization of Specific Immune Responses of Mice Inoculated with Recombinant Vaccinia Virus Expressing an 18-Kilodalton Outer Membrane Protein of Brucella abortus

ABSTRACT Using the shuttle vector pMCO2 and the vaccinia virus wild-type WR strain, we constructed a recombinant virus expressing an 18-kDa outer membrane protein of Brucella abortus. BALB/c mice inoculated with this virus produced 18-kDa protein-specific antibodies, mostly of immunoglobulin G2a isotype, and in vitro stimulation of splenocytes from these mice with purified maltose binding protein–18-kDa protein fusion resulted in lymphocyte proliferation and gamma interferon production. However, these mice were not protected against a challenge with the virulent strain B. abortus2308. Disruption of the 18-kDa protein's gene in vaccine strainB. abortus RB51 did not affect either the strain's protective capabilities or its in vivo attenuation characteristics. These observations suggest that the 18-kDa protein plays no role in protective immunity.
Insulin resistance associated to obesity: the link TNF-alpha

Abstract Adipose tissue secretes proteins which may influence insulin sensitivity. Among them, tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha has been proposed as a link between obesity and insulin resistance because TNF-alpha is overexpressed in adipose tissue from obese animals and humans, and obese mice lacking either TNF-alpha or its receptor show protection against developing insulin resistance. The activation of proinflammatory pathways after exposure to TNF-alpha induces a state of insulin resistance in terms of glucose uptake in myocytes and adipocytes that impair insulin signalling at the level of the insulin receptor substrate (IRS) proteins. The mechanism found in brown adipocytes involves Ser phosphorylation of IRS-2 mediated by TNF-alpha activation of MAPKs. The Ser307 residue in IRS-1 has been identified as a site for the inhibitory effects of TNF-alpha in myotubes, with p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and inhibitor kB kinase being involved in the phosphorylation of this residue. Moreover, up-regulation of protein-tyrosine phosphatase (PTP)1B expression was recently found in cells and animals treated with TNF-alpha. PTP1B acts as a physiological negative regulator of insulin signalling by dephosphorylating the phosphotyrosine residues of the insulin receptor and IRS-1, and PTP1B expression is increased in peripheral tissues from obese and diabetic humans and rodents. Accordingly, down-regulation of PTP1B activity by treatment with pharmacological agonists of nuclear receptors restores insulin sensitivity in the presence of TNF-alpha. Furthermore, mice and cells deficient in PTP1B are protected against insulin resistance induced by this cytokine. In conclusion, the absence or inhibition of PTP1B in insulin-target tissues could confer protection against insulin resistance induced by cytokines.
Busy Voters, Agenda Control, and the Power of Information

The correspondence between individual preferences and electoral outcomes is often affected by the existence of information asymmetries among electoral participants and the presence of individuals or groups who exercise some form of agenda control. While the effects of agenda control in political decision making are widely recognized, the effects of information asymmetries are not as well understood. Since information asymmetries are fundamental characteristics of most elections, a deep understanding of the correspondence between individual preferences and electoral outcomes requires a serious consideration of the “effects” of information. I develop a generalizable agenda control model that takes as given the observation that most voters are not naturally inclined to invest in political information. The model allows me to provide a dynamic description of how voters and political elites can adapt to the information problems that characterize political decision making. It also allows me to demonstrate the effect of these adaptations on electoral outcomes.