Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Perspective Cues in RSVP

Riffling the pages of a book, perhaps in the search for a specific image, is an example of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). Even at a pace of 10 images per second, successful search is often possible. Interest in RSVP arises because a digital embodiment of RSVP has many applications.There are many possible 'modes' of RSVP. However, a mode can be especially helpful if, after the appearance of an image, and without delaying the arrival of other images, it can remain in view for a second or two to allow a user to confirm that a desired image has been found. Moreover, if a collection of images is presented in such a way as to be perceived as moving in 3D space, it is thought that the search for an individual image can thereby be enhanced by comparison with a 2D presentation.To test this conjecture we devise and use the "Deep-Flat" visual illusion whereby a column of moving images magnifying in size is perceived as approaching the viewer as in a 3D space. When the images are presented in an equivalent way horizontally as a row, the viewer tends to see this as images growing in size, but now on a flat (2D) plane. We tested comparable RSVP designs in these two illusions to ascertain the relative effects of 2D and 3D style presentation under precisely controlled conditions. Elicited data included both performance measures (e.g., recognition success), and user preferences and opinions.We established the effectiveness of RSVP using the illusion. When tested under directly comparable conditions, we concluded that performance is not significantly affected by the illusion of depth, but that the inclusion of certain background cues can have a significantly detrimental effect on performance.
Power System Stability Analysis Using Feedback Control System Modeling Including HVDC Transmission Links

A general platform is introduced to study the dynamics of power systems with high voltage dc (HVDC) transmission links. Small-signal stability, voltage stability, and interaction phenomena of power systems with both line-commutated-converter HVDC (LCC-HVDC) and voltage-source-converter HVDC (VSC-HVDC) are addressed using the proposed platform. In this platform, the entire power system is modeled as a multivariable feedback control system (FCS) which consists of three interconnected blocks. The contents as well as the inputs and outputs of the blocks are selected such that the conventional analysis tools for power system stability are applicable, both in the time and frequency domains. In the FCS model, the relationships between different instabilities are clear, and participant agents of each instability can be determined. The model is developed in a modular and hybrid style, to make it feasible for a large power system. The proposed model is validated against an electromagnetic transient simulation program (PSCAD) using time responses.
Pentoxifylline Ameliorates Cardiac Fibrosis, Pathological Hypertrophy, and Cardiac Dysfunction in Angiotensin II-induced Hypertensive Rats

Abstract: Inflammation induces cardiac fibrosis and hypertrophy in multiple cardiovascular diseases, contributing to cardiac dysfunction. We tested the hypothesis that pentoxifylline (PTX), a phosphodiesterase inhibitor with anti-inflammatory property, would attenuate cardiac fibrosis and hypertrophy, and prevent cardiac dysfunction in angiotensin (ANG) II-induced hypertensive rats. Sprague–Dawley rats were divided into control and ANG II-infused groups treated with or without PTX for 2 weeks. PTX had no effect on ANG II-induced hypertension, but significantly attenuated cardiac fibrosis and hypertrophy, and ameliorated cardiac dysfunction in ANG II-induced hypertensive rats. In addition, ANG II-induced increase in circulating and cardiac proinflammatory cytokines were attenuated by PTX, which reduced cardiac nuclear factor-kappa B activity. Furthermore, PTX decreased cardiac expression of genetic markers important for fibrosis, hypertrophy, and endothelial dysfunction, and reduced migration and infiltration of macrophages. In contrast, PTX had no effects on the above parameters in control rats. The findings suggest that PTX ameliorates cardiac fibrosis, pathological hypertrophy, and cardiac dysfunction by suppressing inflammatory responses in angiotensin II-induced hypertension, and that these benefits were independent of the blood pressure lowering effect. The PTX by its anti-inflammatory property may be a potential therapeutic option for the prevention of cardiac remodeling and dysfunction in ANG II-induced hypertension.
Toward Predictable Performance in Software Packet-Processing Platforms

To become a credible alternative to specialized hardware, general-purpose networking needs to offer not only flexibility, but also predictable performance. Recent projects have demonstrated that general-purpose multicore hard-ware is capable of high-performance packet processing, but under a crucial simplifying assumption of uniformity: all processing cores see the same type/amount of traffic and run identical code, while all packets incur the same type of conventional processing (e.g., IP forwarding). Instead, we present a general-purpose packet-processing system that combines ease of programmability with predictable performance, while running a diverse set of applications and serving multiple clients with different needs. Offering predictability in this context is considered a hard problem because software processes contend for shared hardware resources--caches, memory controllers, buses--in unpredictable ways. Still, we show that, in our system, (a) the way in which resource contention affects performance is predictable and (b) the overall performance depends little on how different processes are scheduled on different cores. To the best of our knowledge, our results constitute the first evidence that, when designing software network equipment, flexibility and predictability are not mutually exclusive goals.
Evaluating the efficacy of breastfeeding guidelines on long‐term outcomes for allergic disease

WHO guidelines advocate breastfeeding for 6 months, and EAACI guideline recommends exclusive breastfeeding for 4–6 months. However, evidence for breastfeeding to prevent asthma and allergic disease is conflicting. We examined whether following recommended breastfeeding guidelines alters the long‐term risks of asthma, eczema, rhinitis or atopy.
Exponential growth, random transitions and progress through the G1 phase: computer simulation of experimental data

Abstract. At a time of increasing knowledge of gene and molecular regulation of cell cycle progression, a re‐evaluation is presented concerning a phenomenon discussed before the present expanding era of cell cycle research. ‘Random transition’and exponential slopes of α‐ and β‐curves were conceived in the 1970s and early 1980s to explain cell cycle progression. An exponential behaviour of the β‐curve was claimed as being necessary and sufficient for a ‘random transition’in the cell cycle. In our present work, similar slopes of those curves were shown to materialize when the increase in mass of single cells was set as exponential in a structured cell cycle model where DNA replication and increase in cell mass were postulated to be two loosely coupled subcycles of the cell cycle, without introducing any ‘random transition’. Findings published in the 1980s demonstrating the effect of serum depletion of 3T3 Balb‐c cells were simulated and the shallower slope of the α‐ and β‐curves found experimentally could be attributed to the reduced rate of exponential growth in cell mass, rather than to a reduced ‘transition probability’.
Monoamine oxidase inhibitors in Parkinson’s disease

As mentioned before, PD is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, with incidence sharply increasing with age (Prediger et al., 2012). The motor symptoms associated with PD are considered to be the result of the progressive loss of neuromelanin-containing dopaminergic neurons from the SNpc (Nagatsu & Sawada, 2006; Prediger et al., 2012). MAO-B preferentially metabolizes dopamine in the human brain (Yamada & Yasuhara, 2004; Nagatsu & Sawada, 2006; Youdim et al., 2006). Thus, it is not surprising that selective inhibitors of MAO-B enhance the levels of dopamine by reducing the metabolic degradation of central dopamine and, as a result improve the motor symptoms associated with PD (Fernandez & Chen, 2007; Youdim et al., 2006). MAO-B inhibitors are frequently employed as adjunct therapy with LDOPA (Binda et al., 2007). Non-motor symptoms of depression (Youdim & Bakhle, 2006) and anxiety (Prediger et al., 2012) are also underlying problems in PD. Since MAO-A inhibitors possess an antidepressant action, MAO-A inhibitors are a favourable treatment for PD associated depression (Youdim & Bakhle, 2006).
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury with Social Defeat Stress Alters Anxiety, Contextual Fear Extinction, and Limbic Monoamines in Adult Rats

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) produces symptoms similar to those typifying posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in humans. We sought to determine whether a rodent model of stress concurrent with mTBI produces characteristics of PTSD such as impaired contextual fear extinction, while also examining concurrent alterations to limbic monoamine activity in brain regions relevant to fear and anxiety states. Male rats were exposed to social stress or control conditions immediately prior to mTBI induction, and 6 days later were tested either for anxiety-like behavior using the elevated plus maze (EPM), or for contextual fear conditioning and extinction. Brains were collected 24 h after EPM testing, and tissue from various limbic regions analyzed for content of monoamines, their precursors and metabolites using HPLC with electrochemical detection. Either social defeat or mTBI alone decreased time spent in open arms of the EPM, indicating greater anxiety-like behavior. However, this effect was enhanced by the combination of treatments. Further, rats exposed to both social defeat and mTBI exhibited greater freezing within extinction sessions compared to all other groups, suggesting impaired contextual fear extinction. Social defeat combined with mTBI also had greater effects on limbic monoamines than either insult alone, particularly with respect to serotonergic effects associated with anxiety and fear learning. The results suggest social stress concurrent with mTBI produces provides a relevant animal model for studying the prevention and treatment of post-concussive psychobiological outcomes.
Measurement Invariance of Cognitive Abilities Across Ethnicity, Gender, and Time Among Older Americans.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this research was to test the invariance of the cognitive variables in the Health and Retirement Study/Asset Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old studies (HRS/AHEAD) across ethnicity, gender, and time. METHOD Analyses were conducted using a selected subsample of the HRS/AHEAD data set. The cognitive performance tests measuring episodic memory and mental status were used, and invariance of a two-factor structure was tested using confirmatory factor analyses and multilevel modeling for longitudinal data. RESULTS Results provided some support for "strict" factorial invariance of the episodic memory and mental status measures across ethnicity and gender. Further support of weak ("metric") measurement invariance was found across time. DISCUSSION Results of the research further our understanding of invariance of the HRS/AHEAD cognitive ability measures. Further implications are discussed.
User Browsing Graph: Structure, Evolution and Application

This paper focuses on ‘user browsing graph’ which is constructed with users’ click-through behavior modeled with Web access logs. User browsing graph has recently been adopted to improve Web search performance and the initial study shows it is more reliable than hyperlink graph for inferring page importance. However, structure and evolution of the user browsing graph haven’t been fully studied and many questions remain to be answered. In this paper, we look into the structure of the user browsing graph and its evolution over time. We try to give a quantitative analysis on the difference in graph structure between hyperlink graph and user browsing graph, and then find out why link analysis algorithms perform better on the browsing graph. We also propose a method for combining user behavior information into hyper link graph. Experimental results show that user browsing graph and hyperlink graph share few links in common and a combination of these two graphs can gain good performance in quality estimation of pages.
Mast Cells in Lung Homeostasis: Beyond Type I Hypersensitivity

Lungs are indispensable organs for the respiratory process, and maintaining their homeostasis is essential for human health and survival. However, during the lifetime of an individual, the lungs suffer countless insults that put at risk their delicate organization and function. Many cells of the immune system participate to maintain this equilibrium and to keep functional lungs. Among these cells, mast cells have recently attracted attention because of their ability to rapidly secrete many chemical and biological mediators that modulate different processes like inflammation, angiogenesis, cell proliferation, etc. In this review, we focus on recent advances in the understanding of the role that mast cells play in lung protection during infections, and of the relation of mast cell responses to type I hypersensitivity-associated pathologies. Furthermore, we discuss the potential role of mast cells during wound healing in the lung and its association with lung cancer, and how mast cells could be exploited as therapeutic targets in some diseases
Fuzzy controllers: synthesis and equivalences

It has been proved that fuzzy controllers are capable of approximating any real continuous control function on a compact set to arbitrary accuracy. In particular, any given linear control can be achieved with a fuzzy controller for a given accuracy. The aim of this paper is to show how to automatically build this fuzzy controller. The proposed design methodology is detailed for the synthesis of a Sugeno or Mamdani type fuzzy controller precisely equivalent to a given PI controller. The main idea is to equate the output of the fuzzy controller with the output of the PI controller at some particular input values, called modal values. The rule base and the distribution of the membership functions can thus be deduced. The analytic expression of the output of the generated fuzzy controller is then established. For Sugeno-type fuzzy controllers, precise equivalence is directly obtained. For Mamdani-type fuzzy controllers, the defuzzification strategy and the inference operators have to be correctly chosen to provide linear interpolation between modal values. The usual inference operators satisfying the linearity requirement when using the center of gravity defuzzification method are proposed. >
In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies

We can summarize our results as follows. First, the canonical model is not supported in any society studied. Second, there is considerably more behavioral variability across groups than had been found in previous cross-cultural research, and the canonical model fails in a wider variety of ways than in previous experiments. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the degree of market integration explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation, the greater the level of cooperation in experimental games. Fourth, individual-level economic and demographic variables do not explain behavior either within or across groups. Fifth, behavior in the experiments is generally consistent with economic patterns of everyday life in these societies.
Are within-person Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) ratings of breathlessness ‘on average’ valid in advanced disease for patients and for patients’ informal carers?

Introduction The Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) is frequently used to assess patient-reported breathlessness in both a research and clinical context. A subgroup of patients report average breathlessness as worse than their worst breathlessness in the last 24 hours (paradoxical average). The Peak/End rule describes how the most extreme and current breathlessness influence reported average. This study seeks to highlight the existence of a subpopulation who give ‘paradoxical averages using the NRS, to characterise this group and to investigate the explanatory relevance of the ‘Peak/End’ rule. Methods Data were collected within mixed method face-to-face interviews for three studies: the Living with Breathlessness Study and the two subprotocols of the Breathlessness Intervention Service phase III randomised controlled trial. Key variables from the three datasets were pooled (n=561), and cases where participants reported a paradoxical average (n=45) were identified. These were compared with non-cases and interview transcripts interrogated. NRS ratings of average breathlessness were assessed for fit to Peak/End rule. Results Patients in the paradoxical average group had higher Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire physical domain scores on average p=0.042). Peak/End rule analysis showed high positive correlation (Spearman’s rho=0.756, p<0.001). Conclusions The NRS requires further standardisation with reporting of question order and construction of scale used to enable informed interpretation. The application of the Peak/End rule demonstrates fallibility of NRS-Average as a construct as it is affected by current breathlessness. Measurement of breathlessness is important for both clinical management and research, but standardisation and transparency are required for meaningful results.
Student attitudes toward the Internet in their learning experience: A case study in East Kalimantan

Internet has been increasingly used in learning and teaching activities in higher education, not only in developed but also in developing countries, such as in Asia and Africa. This research was conducted in a higher education institution in Balikpapan, Indonesia. In this university, most of the teaching activities take place in a traditional face-to-face lecture in the classroom, although some lecturers have used the Internet as an additional tool for their teaching. The purpose of this study is to examine how the students in this university perceive the use of Internet in their learning experience, to what extent students prefer doing online courses instead of traditional face-to-face teaching, and the correlation between the availability of internet access at students' homes with students' preference to use Internet in their learning activities.
Multivariate multiscale entropy for brain consciousness analysis

The recently introduced multiscale entropy (MSE) method accounts for long range correlations over multiple time scales and can therefore reveal the complexity of biological signals. The existing MSE algorithm deals with scalar time series whereas multivariate time series are common in experimental and biological systems. To that cause, in this paper the MSE method is extended to the multivariate case. This allows us to gain a greater insight into the complexity of the underlying signal generating system, producing multifaceted and more robust estimates than standard single channel MSE. Simulations on both synthetic data and brain consciousness analysis support the approach.
Future Population and Education Trends in the Countries of North Africa

The report provides a concise and comprehensive review of available data on past demographic trends in the region and combines this analysis with expert opinion on alternative future demographic trends (as described in Lutz, 1996) to calculate likely ranges of future population growth. A very important and innovative feature of this study is that it explicitly includes the educational status of the population in its projections. This is done by multistate population projections, a method that largely originated at IIASA. Educational projections are an important task in themselves because education, as the major component of human capital, is a key factor in national development and in society's ability to cope with arising problems. But the projection of education is also particularly suitable for the demographic cohort-component method because it is the past and the present school enrollment of the young cohorts that largely determines the future educational composition of the population. It turns out that, due to the large educational fertility differentials and the inter-cohort differences in education in the countries of North Africa, an explicit inclusion of education in projections makes the population projections more accurate. The study is not only relevant for the North African region and its neighbors; it also demonstrates that generally it is feasible and very useful to explicitly include education in population projections.
A quantum analog of Huffman coding

We construct a Huffman-coding inspired scheme for quantum data compression. The number of computational steps in the encoding and decoding processes of N quantum signals can be made to be polynomial in log N by a massively parallel implementation of a quantum gate array. This is to be compared with the O(N/sup 3/) computational steps required in the sequential implementation by Cleve and Di-Vincenzo (see Phys. Rev. A54, p.2636, 1996) of the Schumacher (see Phys. Rev. A51, p.2738, 1995) quantum noiseless block coding scheme.
An unpleasant emotional state reduces working memory capacity: electrophysiological evidence

Abstract Emotional states can guide the actions and decisions we make in our everyday life through their influence on cognitive processes such as working memory (WM). We investigated the long-lasting interference that an unpleasant emotional state had on goal-relevant WM representations from an electrophysiological perspective. Participants performed a change detection task that was preceded by the presentation of unpleasant or neutral task-irrelevant pictures in a blocked fashion. We focused on the contralateral delay activity (CDA), an event-related potential that is sensitive to the number of task-relevant items stored in WM. We found that the asymptotic limit for the CDA amplitude was lower during the unpleasant emotional state than during the neutral one; that is, an emotional state was capable of reducing how many task-relevant items the participants could hold in WM. Furthermore, both the individuals who experienced more intrusive thoughts and those who were dispositionally anxious were more susceptible to the influence of the emotional state. We provide evidence that an unpleasant emotional state diminished visual WM for task-relevant items, particularly in susceptible individuals. These results open new avenues to uncover the emotional-cognitive processing that underlies maladaptive WM representations and the role of such processing in the development of mental illness.