Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Personalized Visual Simulation and Objective Validation of Low-Order Aberrations of the Human Eye

We present a practical approach for personalized simulation and objective validation of the effects of low-order aberrations (i.e., myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism) on optical systems, such as the human eye. We characterize the optical aberrations using a wavefront aberration function derived from one's eyeglasses or contact lenses prescription data, expressed in terms of Zernike polynomials. Given the prescription data, a target image at known distance from the subject, and a specified pupil size, the simulation efficiently computes the corresponding aberrated view. We validate the quality of our simulations using ground truth data captured by a camera with the same kind of aberrations. For validation, we use three objective metrics: structural similarity (SSIM), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and absolute pixelwise differences (AD) between the simulated images and the ones captured by the camera with induced aberrations. Our results achieved a SSIM mean value of 0.93 (minimum of 0.91) and a PSNR mean value of 35.50 dB (minimum of 29.50 dB), showing that they are structurally similar and virtually indistinguishable from the ground truth images captured by the camera.
Large Scale Distributed Simulation of p2p Networks

P2P systems have witnessed phenomenal development in recent years, evaluating and analysing new and existing new algorithms and techniques is a key issue for developers of p2p systems. In this context Simulation is an important tool for p2p developers. However, such systems are often very large and few existing simulators offer the ability to execute systems of real world size. In this paper we present a tool for executing large scale simulation of p2p systems which scale effectively, only limited by the amount of computational resource available (memory and CPU). This is achieved through the application of parallel discrete event simulation techniques to an existing, already scalable simulator, peersim. We show results from a case study using the chord p2p protocol, indicating good scalability both in terms of size (memory) and execution time (CPU).
Optimal transportation with capacity constraints

The classical problem of optimal transportation can be formulated as a linear optimization problem on a convex domain: among all joint measures with fixed marginals find the optimal one, where optimality is measured against a cost function. Here we consider a natural but largely unexplored variant of this problem by imposing a pointwise constraint on the joint (absolutely continuous) measures: among all joint densities with fixed marginals and which are dominated by a given density, find the optimal one. For this variant, we show local non-degeneracy of the cost function implies every minimizer is extremal in the convex set of competitors, hence unique. An appendix develops rudiments of a duality theory for this problem, which allows us to compute several suggestive examples.
Direct observations of responses of mesenteric microcirculation of the rat to circulating noradrenaline.

The responses of mesenteric microcirculation of the rat to circulating noradrenaline were studied by in vivo microscopy, using a photo‐electric device placed on a television monitor to measure changes in diameter of individual vessels. Blood flow was measured in the anterior mesenteric artery with an electromagnetic flow transducer, mesenteric vascular conductance was computed on‐line from mesenteric artery flow and arterial pressure. I.V. injection of noradrenaline induced a decrease in diameter of arterioles (less than 30 microns) which began simultaneously with the rise in arterial pressure and averaged 15% at 15‐20 s. By contrast small and principal arteries (30‐40 microns and 80‐350 microns respectively) generally showed a diameter increase which averaged 10% and began at the peak of the pressor response. Venules and veins (12‐560 microns) showed a diameter decrease which averaged 12‐15% at 25‐30 s. Meanwhile mesenteric vascular conductance fell by 65‐75% in 10 s and rose to 30‐50% above control in 25‐30 s. The diameter increases of small and principal arteries were not reflex dilator responses initiated by the rise in systemic arterial pressure, nor due to beta‐adrenoreceptor stimulation. However, local application of phentolamine abolished responses of all sections of the vascular tree indicating that they all depended on activation of alpha‐adrenoreceptors. During I.V. infusion of noradrenaline small arteries showed a maintained increase in diameter which began at the peak of the pressor response, while arterioles initially decreased in diameter but then relaxed, often attaining resting diameter before infusion ceased. Meanwhile mesenteric flow and conductance decreased transiently, but then returned to near control levels, i.e. 'autoregulatory escape' occurred. It is argued that noradrenaline induced alpha‐mediated contraction of all sections of the vascular tree; the tendency of arteries to constrict was counteracted by the rise in intravascular pressure caused by arteriolar constriction, active constriction of venous vessels may have been augmented by passive collapse secondary to arteriolar constriction. The secondary relaxation of arterial vessels reflects an inherent property of their smooth muscle to relax from the constrictor influence of noradrenaline and is more marked in proximal than distal vessels. It is proposed that the initial decrease in mesenteric vascular conductance in response to circulating noradrenaline may be attributed to active constriction of distal arterioles and the secondary increase in conductance ('escape') to secondary relaxation of more proximal arterial vessels.
Intertextuality and interdiscursivity in the discourse of Muslim televangelists:the case study of Hamza Yusuf

In this paper, I apply the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) (e.g. Wodak and Meyer 2009) to discourse on religion. Discourse on religion has been taken for granted (e.g. Chilton 2004: xi) and little is known about its characteristic discourse features. A few studies (e.g. Neuman et al 2001; Muchnik 2005) have explored discourse on religion, focusing on particular features (e.g. irony, and narratives). These studies, however, have overlooked the broader socio-political and historical contexts that intertwine with discourse. The present study aims to fill that gap by exploring processes of persuasion in one speech by the Muslim televangelist Hamza Yusuf. Two main processes will be explored: interdiscursivity and intertextuality. Interdiscursivity indicates that discourses can be linked to discourses on other topics or sub-topics; intertextuality refers to the link to other texts through invoking a topic, an event or a main actor (e.g. Richardson and Wodak 2009b:46). As I will show in the data analysis, the speaker invokes some discourses and dismisses others to serve his specific persuasive intentions. In addition, religious terms are recontextualised in contemporary contexts to link the speech to the religious realm and to present religion as a force of change.
Physical Activity for Everyone: What Every Physical Educator Should Know about Promoting Lifelong Physical Activity

In recent years evidence has accumulated to document the importance of physical activity to lifelong health and fitness. This paper is based on the assumption that a primary goal of physical education is to promote lifetime physical activity. Common misconceptions are described and alternatives for change are proposed: (a) recognizing the unique physical activity needs of youth; (b) promoting opportunities for girls; (c) changing our focus from fitness to physical activity; (d) promoting self-esteem and feelings of competence among youth; (e) narrowing the scope of our objectives; and (f) emphasizing self-management skills in high school to help youth adopt active living as adults. The suggestions are based on scientific evidence and the author’s own experience.
High Confidence Visual Recognition of Persons by a Test of Statistical Independence

A method for rapid visual recognition of personal identity is described, based on the failure of a statistical test of independence. The most unique phenotypic feature visible in a person's face is the detailed texture of each eye's iris. The visible texture of a person's iris in a real-time video image is encoded into a compact sequence of multi-scale quadrature 2-D Gabor wavelet coefficients, whose most-significant bits comprise a 256-byte "iris code". Statistical decision theory generates identification decisions from Exclusive-OR comparisons of complete iris codes at the rate of 4000 per second, including calculation of decision confidence levels. The distributions observed empirically in such comparisons imply a theoretical "cross-over" error rate of one in 131000 when a decision criterion is adopted that would equalize the false accept and false reject error rates. In the typical recognition case, given the mean observed degree of iris code agreement, the decision confidence levels correspond formally to a conditional false accept probability of one in about 10/sup 31/. >
Metabolic and neuroendocrine effects on diurnal urea excretion in the mangrove killifish Rivulus marmoratus

SUMMARY In mangrove killifish Rivulus marmoratus, urea excretion (Jurea) follows a distinct diurnal pattern with the highest rates between 12:00 h and 18:00 h. We investigated the regulating mechanisms that underlie temporal rhythms in Jurea in R. marmoratus. We hypothesized that the daily pattern of Jurea in R. marmoratus is (1) due to diurnal changes in urea synthesis rates and ultimately metabolic rate and/or (2) controlled by neuroendocrine messengers. Oxygen consumption and whole body urea content in R. marmoratus demonstrated a clear diurnal pattern with maximum rates for both parameters occurring at 12:00 h. A strong synchrony between diurnal patterns of oxygen consumption, whole body urea content and Jurea implicated metabolic regulation of the diurnal Jurea pattern. Ketanserin, a 5-HT2 receptor antagonist, and RU-486, a cortisol receptor antagonist, were used to test the second hypothesis. Increasing antagonist concentrations of either ketanserin or RU-486 resulted in dose-dependent decreases in Jurea. Application of a single dose of either antagonist significantly decreases Jurea for up to 12 and 6 h for ketanserin and RU-48, respectively. Repeated exposure to doses of either ketanserin or RU-486 did not abolish the diurnal pattern in Jurea; however, there was a significant decrease in the amplitude of the rates. Taken together, these findings indicate that the diurnal pattern of Jurea in R. marmoratus are regulated by both metabolic and neuroendocrine factors. We propose that cortisol and 5-HT influence the absolute rate of urea excretion by altering the permeability of the gill membrane to urea and/or the rate of urea synthesis.
An adoption model for mobile banking in Ghana

The impact of social and cultural factors on the adoption of technology still requires much research. To investigate it more fully, we examine the reasons for the adoption and non-adoption of mobile banking in Ghana. Through a survey of 271 people in Ghana, it has been found that social and cultural factors in the form of perceived credibility, facilitating conditions, perceived elitisation and demographic factors do play a significant role in adoption decisions. It has been found that elitisation of technology and services can be a positive influence for adopters whilst being a negative influence for non-adopters. In addition, perceived credibility and facilitating conditions also influence attitudes towards the technology. When these factors are added to a range of demographic factors, the impact of the social and cultural features of the context of studies can be seen as significant.
Human brown adipose tissue assessed by simple, noninvasive near‐Infrared time‐resolved spectroscopy

Human brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity has been typically evaluated by 18F‐fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)‐positron emission tomography (PET) combined with computed tomography (CT). However, FDG‐PET/CT has serious limitations (e.g., radiation and cold exposure). This study evaluated BAT density using near‐infrared time‐resolved spectroscopy (NIRTRS), a simple and noninvasive method of measuring the indices of tissue hemoglobin concentration [total‐Hb] and mitochondrial density (µs′).
Enhancing cross-cultural participation through creative visual exploration

Designers, like artists, fuse learned skills with intuition formed over their past experiences to unfold their creativity. Continuous interactions between the designers, their creations, and their informing and receiving environment lead to alignment and harmonisation. However, we observe that displaced designers in an unfamiliar context can no longer blindly rely on their insights only to create acceptable artefacts. In this paper we depict the journey of a young western designer, who accepted the challenge to co-design a 3D graphics visualisation of a small village in Southern Africa. We have observed that the 3D graphics visualisation has significantly increased participation and facilitated co-creation of meaning at the interface of different cultures rather than just being an end product. Not only do we he have to learn to 'see' what the village elders see but also experience a paradigm shift in design and evaluation methods. Based on personal interrelations and immanent differing principles the interactions among the participants are renegotiated continuously during the design process.
Fertility depression among cheese‐making Penicillium roqueforti strains suggests degeneration during domestication

Genetic differentiation occurs when gene flow is prevented, due to reproductive barriers or asexuality. Investigating the early barriers to gene flow is important for understanding the process of speciation. Here, we therefore investigated reproductive isolation between different genetic clusters of the fungus Penicillium roqueforti, used for maturing blue cheeses, and also occurring as food spoiler or in silage. We investigated premating and postmating fertility between and within three genetic clusters (two from cheese and one from other substrates), and we observed sexual structures under scanning electron microscopy. All intercluster types of crosses showed some fertility, suggesting that no intersterility has evolved between domesticated and wild populations despite adaptation to different environments and lack of gene flow. However, much lower fertility was found in crosses within the cheese clusters than within the noncheese cluster, suggesting reduced fertility of cheese strains, which may constitute a barrier to gene flow. Such degeneration may be due to bottlenecks during domestication and/or to the exclusive clonal replication of the strains in industry. This study shows that degeneration has occurred rapidly and independently in two lineages of a domesticated species. Altogether, these results inform on the processes and tempo of degeneration and speciation.
Guaranteed Sparse Recovery under Linear Transformation

We consider the following signal recovery problem: given a measurement matrix Φ ∈ Rn×p and a noisy observation vector c ∈ Rn constructed from c = Φθ* + e where e ∈ Rn is the noise vector whose entries follow i.i. d. centered sub-Gaussian distribution, how to recover the signal θ* if Dθ* is sparse under a linear transformation D ∈ Rm×p? One natural method using convex optimization is to solve the following problem: min θ 1/2||Φθ - c||2 + λ||Dθ||1. This paper provides an upper bound of the estimate error and shows the consistency property of this method by assuming that the design matrix Φ is a Gaussian random matrix. Specifically, we show 1) in the noiseless case, if the condition number of D is bounded and the measurement number n ≥ Ω(s log(p)) where s is the sparsity number, then the true solution can be recovered with high probability; and 2) in the noisy case, if the condition number of D is bounded and the measurement increases faster than s log(p), that is, s log(p) = o(n), the estimate error converges to zero with probability 1 when p and s go to infinity. Our results are consistent with those for the special case D = Ip×p (equivalently LASSO) and improve the existing analysis. The condition number of D plays a critical role in our analysis. We consider the condition numbers in two cases including the fused LASSO and the random graph: the condition number in the fused LASSO case is bounded by a constant, while the condition number in the random graph case is bounded with high probability if m/p (i.e., #edge/#vertex) is larger than a certain constant. Numerical simulations are consistent with our theoretical results.
DYNAMICS OF THE RAS / ERK MAP KINASE CASCADE AS MONITORED BY FLUORESCENCE PROBES *

DYNAMICS OF THE RAS/ERK MAP KINASE CASCADE AS MONITORED BY FLUORESCENCE PROBES* Aki Fujioka‡, Kenta Terai‡, Reina E. Itoh‡, Kazuhiro Aoki‡, Takeshi Nakamura‡, Shinya Kuroda†, Eisuke Nishida ¶, and Michiyuki Matsuda‡§ From the ‡Department of Signal Transduction, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Yamadaoka, Suita-shi, Osaka 565-0871, Japan; †the Undergraduate Program for Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033; and the ¶ Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan. Running Title: Dynamics of ERK Activation §To whom correspondence should be addressed: Department of Signal Transduction, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Yamadaoka, Suita-shi, Osaka 565-0871, Japan. Phone: +81-66879-8316; Fax: +81-6-6879-8314; E-mail: matsudam@biken.osaka-u.ac. jp
Are Spatiotemporal Gait Characteristics Reliable Outcome Measures in Children With Developmental Coordination Disorder?

Purpose: To evaluate the reliability of spatiotemporal gait parameters used in the clinical evaluation of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Methods: Participants recruited were asked to ambulate across a 4.5-meter GAITRite walkway (CIR Systems, Inc, Havertown, Pennsylvania) at a self-selected walking speed. The spatiotemporal parameters recorded for both limbs were: velocity (cm/sec), stance phase duration (%), swing phase duration (%), stride length (cm), double support duration (%), and single support duration (%). Results: Intraclass correlation coefficient values attained in this study ranged from 0.24 to 0.73, with good reliability achieved for one parameter (cadence = 0.73), and moderate reliability for step length (0.55–0.58), stride length (0.57–0.61), and double support duration (0.56–0.59). Conclusion: The findings from this study indicate that the clinical evaluation of spatiotemporal gait parameters in children with DCD can yield reliable data for some parameters but further work on this is warranted.
Counseling and Psychotherapy: A Christian Perspective

COUNSELING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY: A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE. Siang-Yang Tan. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011. Pp. 636. Reviewed by Geoffrey W Sutton (Evangel University, Springfield, MO). Tan offers an evaluative review of leading theories and techniques from a Christian perspective. In addition, he describes key features of a Christian approach to counseling and psychotherapy. Having accomplished these two purposes, his book serves as a unique and helpful companion to other recent efforts (e.g., McMinn & Campbell, 2007) to integrate faith and science with the practice of counseling and psychotherapy. Tan organized 17 chapters into three distinct parts. Part one includes a brief discussion of the lack of consistent distinctions between counseling and psychotherapy (thus I will use psychotherapy to encompass both concepts henceforth), an overview of ten major theoretical approaches to psychotherapy, and an outline of features common to a theory of psychotherapy. Next, Tan describes important characteristics of counselors, including a helpful list of suggestions for self-care. The ten chapters of Part two cover Tan's selection of major theories. His selection fits within the coverage expected compared to other textbooks (e.g., Corey, 2009)? The chapters include interesting biographical sketches, key concepts and principles, a hypothetical transcript of counselor-client interaction, an analysis of strengths and weaknesses, a critique from a Christian perspective, a review of research, and comments about the future of the approach. There are helpful textboxes of key features (e.g., four key ideas from Adler). For the benefit of the reader, I will simply list the ten approaches to therapy: Psychoanalytic, Adlerian, Jungian, Existential, Person-Centered, Gestalt, Reality, Behavior, Cognitive Behavior and Rational Emotive Behavior, and Marital and Family. Tan outlines his approach to Christian psychotherapy in the four chapters of the final section. Be begins with a trinity of concepts qua criterial attributes of a Christian approach: Christ centered, biblically based, and Spirit filled. He reviews approaches to integrating Christianity and psychotherapy and explains his approach as consistent with a view that Christianity is the dominant framework (my term) for integrating psychology as well as the notion of going beyond integration to developing a Christian psychology. Tan emphasizes the importance of understanding scripture and basic Christian theology (the usual categories of Christology, pneumatology, etc). Tan details five components of human nature and 13 principles of effective psychotherapy from a biblical perspective. A chapter on Christian faith and clinical practice reviews aspects of implicit and explicit integration, which includes a section on Christian resources with a notable discussion of prayer. He also adds an important section of key religious and spiritual issues that might occur within the course of treatment (e. …
Basal Forebrain and Hippocampus as Predictors of Conversion to Alzheimer's Disease in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment - A Multicenter DTI and Volumetry Study.

BACKGROUND Hippocampal grey matter (GM) atrophy predicts conversion from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Pilot data suggests that mean diffusivity (MD) in the hippocampus, as measured with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), may be a more accurate predictor of conversion than hippocampus volume. In addition, previous studies suggest that volume of the cholinergic basal forebrain may reach a diagnostic accuracy superior to hippocampal volume in MCI. OBJECTIVE The present study investigated whether increased MD and decreased volume of the hippocampus, the basal forebrain and other AD-typical regions predicted time to conversion from MCI to AD dementia. METHODS 79 MCI patients with DTI and T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were retrospectively included from the European DTI Study in Dementia (EDSD) dataset. Of these participants, 35 converted to AD dementia after 6-46 months (mean: 21 months). We used Cox regression to estimate the relative conversion risk predicted by MD values and GM volumes, controlling for age, gender, education and center. RESULTS Decreased GM volume in all investigated regions predicted an increased risk for conversion. Additionally, increased MD in the right basal forebrain predicted increased conversion risk. Reduced volume of the right hippocampus was the only significant predictor in a stepwise model combining all predictor variables. CONCLUSION Volume reduction of the hippocampus, the basal forebrain and other AD-related regions was predictive of increased risk for conversion from MCI to AD. In this study, volume was superior to MD in predicting conversion.