Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FSM re-engineering and its application in low power state encoding

We propose finite state machine (FSM) re-engineering, a performance enhancement framework for FSM synthesis and optimization procedure. We start with any traditional FSM synthesis and optimization procedure; then reconstruct a functionally equivalent but topologically different FSM based on the optimization objective; and conclude with another round of FSM synthesis and optimization (can be the same procedure) on the newly constructed FSM. This allows us to explore a larger solution space that includes synthesis solutions to the functionally equivalent FSMs instead of only the original FSM, making it possible to obtain solutions better than the optimal ones for the original FSM. Guided by the result of the first round FSM synthesis, the solution space exploration process can be rapid and cost-efficient. To demonstrate this framework, we develop a genetic algorithm and a fast heuristic to reengineer a low power state encoding procedure POW3 (Benini and Micheli, 1995). On average, POW3 can reduce the switching activity by 12% over nonpower-driven state encoding schemes on the MCNC FSM benchmarks. We then reengineer these benchmarks by the proposed genetic algorithm and heuristic respectively. When we apply POW3 to the reengineered FSMs, we observe an additional 8.9% and 6.0% switching activity reduction. This translates to an average of 7.9% energy reduction with little area increase. Finally, we obtain the optimal low power coding for benchmarks of small size from an integer linear programming formulation. We find that the POW3-encoded original FSMs are 27.0% worse than the optimal, but this number drops to 6.7% when we apply POW3 to the reengineered FSMs.
Theory of Mind and Empathic Explanations of Machiavellianism

We study theory of mind (ToM) and empathic underpinnings of Machiavellianism by use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, where account managers are used as participants in 3 studies. Study 1 finds evidence for activation of the medial prefrontal cortex, left and right temporo-parietal junction, and left and right precuneus regions; all five regions are negatively correlated with Machiavellianism, suggesting that Machiavellians are less facile than non-Machiavellians with ToM skills. Study 2 presents evidence for activation of the left and right pars opercularis, left and right insula, and left precuneus regions; the former four regions of the motor neuron system were positively associated, and the latter negatively associated, with Machiavellianism, implying that Machiavellians resonate more readily with the emotions of others than non-Machiavellians. This is the first study to our knowledge to show a negative correlation between perspective taking and emotional sharing in empathic processes in general and Machiavellianism in particular. Study 3 tests implications of managerial control on both performance and organizational citizenship behaviors, as moderated by Machiavellianism in the field. Our study grounds the functioning of Machiavellianism in organizations in basic neuroscience processes, resolves some long-standing ambiguities with self-report investigations, and points to conditions under which Machiavellianism both inhibits and promotes performance and citizenship behavior.
TIDAL DISRUPTION AND IGNITION OF WHITE DWARFS BY MODERATELY MASSIVE BLACK HOLES

We present a numerical investigation of the tidal disruption of white dwarfs by moderately massive black holes, with particular reference to the centers of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. Special attention is given to the fate of white dwarfs of all masses that approach the black hole close enough to be disrupted and severely compressed to such an extent that explosive nuclear burning can be triggered. Consistent modeling of the gas dynamics together with the nuclear reactions allows for a realistic determination of the explosive energy release. In the most favorable cases, the nuclear energy release may be comparable to that of typical Type Ia supernovae. Although the explosion will increase the mass fraction escaping on hyperbolic orbits, a good fraction of the debris remains to be swallowed by the hole, causing a bright soft X-ray flare lasting for about a year. Such transient signatures, if detected, would be a compelling testimony for the presence of a moderately massive black hole (below 105 M☉).
REAL-TIME ONSET DETECTION WITH RECURRENT NEURAL NETWORKS

We present a new onset detection algorithm which operates online in real time without delay. Our method incorporates a recurrent neural network to model the sequence of onsets based solely on causal audio signal information. Comparative performance against existing state-of-the-art online and offline algorithms was evaluated using a very large database. The new method – despite being an online algorithm – shows performance only slightly short of the best existing offline methods while outperforming standard approaches.
Learning Causally Linked Markov Random Fields

We describe a learning procedure for a generative model that contains a hidden Markov Random Field (MRF) which has directed connections to the observable variables. The learning procedure uses a variational approximation for the posterior distribution over the hidden variables. Despite the intractable partition function of the MRF, the weights on the directed connections and the variational approximation itself can be learned by maximizing a lower bound on the log probability of the observed data. The parameters of the MRF are learned by using the mean field version of contrastive divergence [1]. We show that this hybrid model simultaneously learns parts of objects and their inter-relationships from intensity images. We discuss the extension to multiple MRF’s linked into in a chain graph by directed connections.
A New Method to Visualize Deep Neural Networks

We present a method for visualising the response of a deep neural network to a specific input. For image data for instance our method will highlight areas that provide evidence in favor of, and against choosing a certain class. The method overcomes several shortcomings of previous methods and provides great additional insight into the decision making process of convolutional networks, which is important both to improve models and to accelerate the adoption of such methods in e.g. medicine. In experiments on ImageNet data, we illustrate how the method works and can be applied in different ways to understand deep neural nets.
Spironolactone Plus Full-Dose ACE Inhibition in Patients with Idiopathic Membranous Nephropathy and Nephrotic Syndrome: Does It Really Work?

We have studied the effects of add-on spironolactone treatment (100 mg/day) in 11 patients with idiopathic membranous nephropathy (IMN) and >3 gm proteinuria/day despite angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor therapy titrated to a systolic/diastolic blood pressure <120/80 mmHg. Blood pressure, 24-hour urinary protein excretion, and creatinine clearance were measured prior to, after two months of combined therapy, and after a 2-month withdrawal period of spironolactone. While systolic and diastolic blood pressure decreased significantly after spironolactone therapy, proteinuria did not improve. Serum potassium increased significantly as well, with three patients requiring resin-binding therapy. Thus, spironolactone seems to have no additional antiproteinuric effects over ACE inhibitor therapy in patients with IMN and nephrotic syndrome and carries the risk of significant hyperkalemia.
ARE SPIRAL GALAXIES OPTICALLY THIN OR THICK

The opacity of spiral galaxies is examined by mod- elling the dust and stellar content of individual galaxies. The three dimensional model that we use assumes exponential dis- tributions for the dust and the stars in the disk, while the R 1=4 law is used to describe the bulge. In this model, both absorption and scattering by the dust are taken into account. The model is applied to five late-type spiral galaxies (NGC 4013, IC 2531, UGC 1082, NGC 5529 and NGC 5907) using their optical (and near infrared for IC 2531) surface photometry. For these galax- ies we have determined the scalelengths and scaleheights of the stars and the dust in the disk, the bulge characteristics, the in- clination angle and the face-on optical depth. Computation of the dust masses, as well as the extinction as a function of the wavelength, are also reported. Having analyzed a total of seven galaxies thus far, the five galaxies mentioned above plus UGC 2048 and NGC 891 pre- sented in (Xilouris et al. 1997, 1998), we are able to draw some general conclusions, the most significant of which are: 1) The face-on central optical depth is less than one in all optical bands, indicating that typical spiral galaxies like the ones that we have modelled would be completely transparent if they were to be seen face-on. 2) The dust scaleheight is about half that of the stars, which means that the dust is more concentrated near the plane of the disk. 3) The dust scalelength is about 1.4 times larger than that of the stars and the dust is more radially extended than the stars. 4) The dust mass is found to be about an order of a magnitude more than previously measured using the IRAS fluxes, indicat- ing the existence of a cold dust component. The gas-to-dust mass ratio calculated is close to the value derived for our Galaxy. 5) The derived extinction law matches quite well the Galactic extinction law, indicating a universal dust behaviour.
Diversity and Abundance of Soil Animals as Influenced by Long-Term Fertilization in Grey Desert Soil, China

The relationship between soil fauna and different fertilizer management practices is of growing concern. The aim of this research was to investigate the response of soil fauna to fertilization regimes, to explore the relationships among the community of soil animals, soil moisture and crop yields. The application of organic fertilizers ( i.e ., sheep manure or crop residues) increased crop yields and promoted the number of individuals and species of soil fauna owing to the exogenous organic matter that fertilizers provided for the survival and development of soil fauna. Furthermore, the treatments that applied sheep manure ( i.e. , sheep manure only or nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and sheep manure plus) were significantly beneficial for increasing crop yields and diversity of soil fauna compared to treatments with crop residues returned ( i.e. , crop residues returned only or nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and crop residues returned to the field) ( p < 0.05) due to the response of soil fauna to diverse exogenous nutrients and the effect of soil fertility. Therefore, the finding that soil fauna abundance is significantly positively correlated with soil moisture and crop yield may mean the effects of fertilizer applications on soil animals were partly masked by the soil moisture and crop yield.
Proteomic Profiling of Fast-To-Slow Muscle Transitions during Aging

Old age is associated with a large spectrum of physical ailments, including muscle wasting. Skeletal muscle degeneration drastically increases the risk of poor balance, frequent falling and impaired mobility in the elderly. In order to identify new therapeutic targets to halt or even reverse age-dependent muscle weakness and improve diagnostic methods to properly evaluate sarcopenia as a common geriatric syndrome, there is an urgent need to establish a reliable biomarker signature of muscle aging. In this respect, mass spectrometry-based proteomics has been successfully applied for studying crude extracts and subcellular fractions from aged animal and human muscle tissues to identify novel aging marker proteins. This review focuses on key physiological and metabolic aspects of sarcopenia, i.e., age-related muscle fiber transitions and metabolic shifts in aging muscle as revealed by proteomics. Over the last decade, proteomic profiling studies have clearly confirmed the idea that sarcopenia is based on a multi-factorial pathophysiology and that a glycolytic-to-oxidative shift occurs in slower-twitching senescent muscles. Both, newly identified protein factors and confirmed alterations in crucial metabolic and contractile elements can now be employed to establish a sarcopenia-specific biomarker signature.
A Comparison of Statistical and Rule-Based Models for Style-Specific Harmonization

The process of generating chords for harmonizing a melody with the goal of mimicking an artist’s style is investigated in this paper. We compared and tested three different approaches, including a rule-based model, a statistical model, and a hybrid system of the two, for such tasks. Experiments were conducted using songs from seven stylistically identifiable pop/rock bands, and the chords generated by the systems were compared to the ones in the artists’ original work. Evaluations were performed on multiple aspects, including calculating the average percentage of chords that were the same and those that were related, studying the manner in which the size of the training set affects the output harmonization, and examining a system’s behaviors in terms of the ability of generating unseen chords and the number of unique chords produced per song. We observed that the rule-based system performs comparably well while the result of the system with learning capability varies as the training set grows.
Changes in Membrane Receptors and Ion Channels as Potential Biomarkers for Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA), a degenerative joint condition, is currently difficult to detect early enough for any of the current treatment options to be completely successful. Early diagnosis of this disease could increase the numbers of patients who are able to slow its progression. There are now several diseases where membrane protein biomarkers are used for early diagnosis. The numbers of proteins in the membrane is vast and so it is a rich source of potential biomarkers for OA but we need more knowledge of these before they can be considered practical biomarkers. How are they best measured and are they selective to OA or even certain types of OA? The first step in this process is to identify membrane proteins that change in OA. Here, we summarize several ion channels and receptors that change in OA models and/or OA patients, and may thus be considered candidates as novel membrane biomarkers of OA.
Boosting Object Retrieval With Group Queries

Given a query image of an object, object retrieval aims to return all images from a corpus that depict the same object. Inevitably, the accuracy of the result depends strongly on the quality of the query image. Several measures have been taken to improve retrieval result quality, including the addition of a bounding box to the query, the mining of highly ranked results for more views of the object, and spatial consistency re-ranking. In this letter, we propose a discriminative criterion for improving result quality. This criterion lends itself to the addition of extra query data, and we show that multiple query images can be combined to produce enhanced results. Experiments compare the performance of the method to state-of-the-art in object retrieval, and show how performance is lifted by the inclusion of further query images.
Towards elimination: measles susceptibility in Australia and 17 European countries.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate age-specific measles susceptibility in Australia and 17 European countries. METHODS As part of the European Sero-Epidemiology Network 2 (ESEN2), 18 countries collected large national serum banks between 1996 and 2004. These banks were tested for measles IgG and the results converted to a common unitage to enable valid intercountry comparisons. Historical vaccination and disease incidence data were also collected. Age-stratified population susceptibility levels were compared to WHO European Region targets for measles elimination of < 15% in those aged 2-4 years, < 10% in 5-9-year-olds and < 5% in older age groups. FINDINGS Seven countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Luxembourg, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden) met or came very close to the elimination targets. Four countries (Australia, Israel, Lithuania and Malta) had susceptibility levels above WHO targets in some older age groups indicating possible gaps in protection. Seven countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, England and Wales, Ireland, Latvia and Romania) were deemed to be at risk of epidemics as a result of high susceptibility in children and also, in some cases, adults. CONCLUSION Although all countries now implement a two-dose measles vaccination schedule, if the WHO European Region target of measles elimination by 2010 is to be achieved higher routine coverage as well as vaccination campaigns in some older age cohorts are needed in some countries. Without these improvements, continued measles transmission and outbreaks are expected in Europe.
Two-body relaxation in modified Newtonian dynamics

A naive extension to modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) of the standard computation of the two-body relaxation time t 2b implies that t 2b is comparable to the crossing time regardless of the number N of stars in the system. This computation is questionable in view of the non-linearity of MOND's field equation. A non-standard approach to the calculation of t 2b is developed that can be extended to MOND whenever discreteness noise generates force fluctuations that are small compared to the mean-field force. It is shown that this approach yields standard Newtonian results for systems in which the mean density profile is either plane-parallel or spherical. In the plane-parallel case, we find that in the deep-MOND regime t 2b scales with N as in the Newtonian case, but is shorter by the square of the factor by which MOND enhances the gravitational force over its Newtonian value for the same system. Near the centre of a spherical system that is in the deep-MOND regime, we show that the fluctuating component of the gravitational force is never small compared to the mean-field force; this conclusion surprisingly even applies to systems with a density cusp that keeps the mean-field force constant to arbitrarily small radius, and suggests that a cuspy centre can never be in the deep-MOND regime. Application of these results to dwarf galaxies and groups and clusters of galaxies reveals that in MOND luminosity segregation should be far advanced in groups and clusters of galaxies, two-body relaxation should have substantially modified the density profiles of galaxy groups, while objects with masses in excess of ∼10 M ○. should have spiralled to the centres of dwarf galaxies.
Behavior of a Spontaneously Arising Human Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cell Line Cultivated on Thin Alginate Film

Purpose: A cell line spontaneously derived from human retinal pigment epithelium (hRPE) was cultured on alginate film gelatinized with different concentrations of neurobasal cell culture medium (NCCM) to assess its growth and morphological behavior on this naturally occurring polysaccharide. Methods: Neonatal human globes were used to isolate hRPE cells. They were cultured in Dulbecco's modified Eagle’s-medium-and-Ham’s-F12-medium-(DMEM/F12) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS). Cultures were continuously studied using phase contrast microscopy. After the nineth passage, cells were characterized through immunocytochemical analysis for Oct4, Chx10, and Pax6 and Ki67 markers. In each well of a 6-well microplate, 1 and 2% weight/volume (w/v) alginate in deionized water was added and gelatinized using 1× and 10× NCCM. hRPE cells were cultured at a density of 2 × 105 cells/well in alginate-coated microplates. After 5 days, hRPE colonies were harvested and re-plated on polystyrene substrates. Morphology and growth of hRPE cultures were determined during the next 2 weeks. Results: The first few passages of the cultures were purely hRPE cells that revealed typical morphological features of the pigmented epithelium. They made spaces, devoid of cells, between hRPE cell monolayer and fill in the unoccupied spaces. They grew faster than native RPE cells and rapidly overgrew. Immunocytochemical test revealed that the founded cells expressed Chx10, Pax6, Ki67 and Oct4. The hRPE cells survived unlimitedly on alginate film and formed giant adjoining colonies. After re-plating, hRPE colonies adhered quickly on polystyrene and displayed native hRPE morphological features. Conclusion: Alginate film can support the survival and growth of hRPE cells and induce the cells to re-organize in tissue-like structures.
The neural circuitry of expertise: perceptual learning and social cognition

Amongst the most significant questions we are confronted with today include the integration of the brain's micro-circuitry, our ability to build the complex social networks that underpin society and how our society impacts on our ecological environment. In trying to unravel these issues one place to begin is at the level of the individual: to consider how we accumulate information about our environment, how this information leads to decisions and how our individual decisions in turn create our social environment. While this is an enormous task, we may already have at hand many of the tools we need. This article is intended to review some of the recent results in neuro-cognitive research and show how they can be extended to two very specific and interrelated types of expertise: perceptual expertise and social cognition. These two cognitive skills span a vast range of our genetic heritage. Perceptual expertise developed very early in our evolutionary history and is a highly developed part of all mammals' cognitive ability. On the other hand social cognition is most highly developed in humans in that we are able to maintain larger and more stable long term social connections with more behaviorally diverse individuals than any other species. To illustrate these ideas I will discuss board games as a toy model of social interactions as they include many of the relevant concepts: perceptual learning, decision-making, long term planning and understanding the mental states of other people. Using techniques that have been developed in mathematical psychology, I show that we can represent some of the key features of expertise using stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Such models demonstrate how an expert's long exposure to a particular context influences the information they accumulate in order to make a decision.These processes are not confined to board games, we are all experts in our daily lives through long exposure to the many regularities of daily tasks and social contexts.
Does schooling reduce juvenile delinquency? Evidence from a natural experiment in Japan

Individual returns to schooling have been examined intensively but social returns to schooling have received less attention. If schooling yields not only individual returns but also social returns ‐ such as a reduction in crime ‐ then the rationale for policies which encourage individual investments in schooling is strengthened. In this paper, we explore the effect of schooling on juvenile delinquency. To address endogeneity of schooling, we use exogenous variation in schooling caused by a policy intervention in specific municipalities after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, which occurred in the Midwestern part of Japan in 1995. Using the Instrumental Variable estimator, our results indicate that higher school attainment significantly reduces both violent and property crimes comitted by youth. The negative impact of schooling supports a theoretical prediction that more education reduces crimes through a higher opportunity cost of committing crimes.