Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hopf bifurcations for Near-Hamiltonian Systems

In this paper, we consider bifurcation of limit cycles in near-Hamiltonian systems. A new method is developed to study the analytical property of the Melnikov function near the origin for such systems. Based on the new method, a computationally efficient algorithm is established to systematically compute the coefficients of Melnikov function. Moreover, we consider the case that the Hamiltonian function of the system depends on parameters, in addition to the coefficients involved in perturbations, which generates more limit cycles in the neighborhood of the origin. The results are applied to a quadratic system with cubic perturbations to show that the system can have five limit cycles in the vicinity of the origin.
Faster, Parametric Trajectory-based Macromodels Via Localized Linear Reductions

Trajectory-based methods offer an attractive methodology for automated, on-demand generation of macro-models for custom circuits. These models are generated by sampling the state trajectory of a circuit as it simulates in the time domain, and building macromodels by reducing and interpolating among the linearizations created at a suitably spaced subset of the time points visited during training simulations. However, a weak point in conventional trajectory models is the reliance on a single, global reduction matrix for the state space. We develop a new, faster method that generates and weaves together a larger set of smaller localized linearizations for the trajectory samples. The method not only improves speedups to 30times over SPICE, but as a side benefit also provides a platform for parametric small-signal simulation of circuits with variational device/process parameters, at a speedup of roughly 200times over SPICE
The Analysis and Comparison of Pre-Service Music Teachers' Attitudes towards the Piano Lesson and Their Sight-Reading Skills in Terms of Certain Variables.

This study seeks to analyze pre-service music teachers’ attitudes towards the piano lesson and their piano sight-reading skills in terms of academic achievement in the piano lesson, year of study, and gender and reveal the relationship between their attitudes towards the piano lesson and piano sight-reading skills. Descriptive model and correlational research model are employed. The study group consists of 50 randomly-selected students from the 2nd and 3rd years taking the piano lesson during the 2016-2017 academic year in Uludag University Faculty of Education Department of Fine Arts Music Education Program in Turkey. “Piano Lesson Attitude Scale” was used to collect data regarding the piano students’ attitudes towards piano lesson. In addition, the piano students were asked to play two sight-reading pieces selected by experts before and internationally accepted for sight-reading, to detect their sight-reading skills. The students were video-recorded, and their sight-reading levels were measured via an observation form prepared by the teaching staff specialized in their field. The collected attitude and sight-reading scores were analyzed via t-test based on the variables of gender and year of study. The correlations between the attitude, piano score, and sight-reading score variables were calculated by Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients. At the end of the study, a significant relationship was detected between the students’ attitudes towards the piano lesson and their sight-reading skills. The piano students’ attitudes towards the piano lesson have a medium level correlation with their piano lesson academic achievement and sight-reading skills. The female students have better attitudes towards the piano lesson compared to the male students. Also, the 2nd year students have better attitudes towards the piano lesson compared to the 3rd year students. The study results indicate a medium level correlation between the students’ sight-reading skills and their piano lesson academic achievement. The female students have better sight-reading skills than the male students. Lastly, the 2nd year students have sight-reading scores close to those of the 3rd year students. This study is significant as it shows the relationship between pre-service music teachers’ attitudes towards the piano lesson and their piano sight-reading skills. Keywords: Piano lesson, sight-reading skills, attitude
NALP3-Inflammasome-Related Gene Polymorphisms in Patients with Prehypertension and Coronary Atherosclerosis

Objectives. Prehypertension is an early stage of hypertension that is characterized by inflammatory factors. Inflammation also plays an essential role in the development of coronary atherosclerosis (CAS). The present study evaluated the NALP3-inflammasome and its related genes, NLRP3, NOD2, and CARD8, using SNP linkage and gene haplotypes in prehypertensive patients. Methods. A total of 576 patients with prehypertension and suspected coronary heart disease (CHD) were enrolled. According to coronary angiography, patients were divided into two groups: arterial stenosis <50% of the diameter (control) and arterial stenosis >50% of the diameter (case). Fifteen polymorphisms in the NOD2, NLRP3, and CARD8 genes were analyzed, and serum levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) were measured. Results. When comparing allele frequencies, none of these 15 SNPs in NOD2, CARD8, and NLPR3 genes showed a significant difference using multiple logistic regression. However, the CTACATAA (p = 0.0064) and CCACATAG (p = 0.0126) haplotypes of the NOD2 gene SNPs were significantly different between cases and controls. Conclusions. Although our study excludes a significant association of selected SNPs in these genes with CHD in prehypertension patients, this work suggests that the CTACATAA and CCACATAG haplotypes were associated with CHD in the NOD2 locus. This work suggests that the CTACATAA and CCACATAG haplotypes were associated with CHD in prehypertension patients in the NOD2 locus.
Sources of variability in time-motion data; measurement error and within player variability in work-rate

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the intra- and interobserver reliability of work-rate in soccer as well as looking at match to match as well as within match variability in work-rate in soccer. A 60 subject intra-observer reliability study revealed 95% ratio limits of agreement of 1.025×/÷1.155 while a 60 subject inter-observer reliability study revealed 95% ratio limits of agreement of 1.050×/÷1.337 for workrate. The main study used PlayerCam data from 113 FA Premier league matches that were covered by the interactive Sky Sports Extra channel. The PlayerCam facility normally covers 6 different players per match, 3 from each team, for 15 minutes each. This provided a total of 678 fifteen minute observations from 277 individual players. Some players were covered on more than one occasion with one player being covered on 11 occasions. The 61 players who were observed twice, had a mean absolute difference between their first and second observed performances of 2.76±1.94% which was greater than the difference between positional group means. The one player who was observed on 11 occasions had a greater variability in work rate (12.48±2.71%) than the variability between the 115 different midfielders analysed during the current investigation (11.01±2.63%). On one occasion, the PlayerCam facility covered a single subject for the entire duration of the match, showing considerable variation between successive 15 minute periods of the match (12.27%, 9.49%, 8.35%, 9.11%, 7.43%, 6.55%). The current investigation has revealed that the reliability of timemotion analysis is limited. Furthermore, individual match data for subjects may be unrepresentative as the level of within subject variability is comparable with the level of between subject variability.
Yarrowia lipolytica Mutants Devoid of Pyruvate Carboxylase Activity Show an Unusual Growth Phenotype

ABSTRACT We have cloned and characterized the gene PYC1, encoding the unique pyruvate carboxylase in the dimorphic yeast Yarrowia lipolytica. The protein putatively encoded by the cDNA has a length of 1,192 amino acids and shows around 70% identity with pyruvate carboxylases from other organisms. The corresponding genomic DNA possesses an intron of 269 bp located 133 bp downstream of the starting ATG. In the branch motif of the intron, the sequence CCCTAAC, not previously found at this place in spliceosomal introns of Y. lipolytica, was uncovered. Disruption of the PYC1 gene from Y. lipolytica did not abolish growth in glucose-ammonium medium, as is the case in other eukaryotic microorganisms. This unusual growth phenotype was due to an incomplete glucose repression of the function of the glyoxylate cycle, as shown by the lack of growth in that medium of double pyc1 icl1 mutants lacking both pyruvate carboxylase and isocitrate lyase activity. These mutants grew when glutamate, aspartate, or Casamino Acids were added to the glucose-ammonium medium. The cDNA from the Y. lipolytica PYC1 gene complemented the growth defect of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae pyc1 pyc2 mutant, but introduction of either the S. cerevisiae PYC1 or PYC2 gene into Y. lipolytica did not result in detectable pyruvate carboxylase activity or in growth on glucose-ammonium of a Y. lipolytica pyc1 icl1 double mutant.
The Anterior Chamber Depth and Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer Thickness in Children

Purpose. To investigate the correlation of anterior chamber depth (ACD) with the peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness, age, axial length (AL), and spherical equivalent in children. Subjects. Consecutive subjects aged 4 to 18 were recruited. Visually disabling eye conditions were excluded. Only the right eye was included for analysis. The ACD was correlated with RNFL thickness, age, spherical equivalent, and AL for all subjects. Subjects were then divided into 3 groups based on their postcycloplegic spherical equivalent: myopes (<−1.0 D), emmetropes (≥−1.0 to ≤+1.0 D), and hyperopes (>+1.0 D). The ACD was compared among the 3 groups before and after age adjustment. Results. In 200 subjects (mean age 7.6 ± 3.3 years), a deeper ACD was correlated with thinner global RNFL (r = −0.2, r 2 = 0.06, P = 0.0007), older age (r = 0.4, r 2 = 0.1, P < 0.0001), myopic spherical equivalent (r = −0.3, r 2 = 0.09, P < 0.0001), and longer AL (r = 0.5, r 2 = 0.2, P < 0.0001). The ACD was deepest in myopes (3.5 ± 0.4 mm, n = 67), followed by emmetropes (3.4 ± 0.3, n = 60) and then hyperopes (3.3 ± 0.2, n = 73) (all P < 0.0001). After age adjustment, myopes had a deeper ACD than the other 2 groups (all P < 0.0001). Conclusions. In children, a deeper ACD was associated with thinner RNFL thickness, older age, more myopic spherical equivalent, and longer AL. Myopes had a deeper ACD than emmetropes and hyperopes.
The primate subthalamic nucleus. II. Neuronal activity in the MPTP model of parkinsonism.

1. The neuronal mechanisms underlying the major motor signs of Parkinson's disease were studied in the basal ganglia of parkinsonian monkeys. Three African green monkeys were systemically treated with 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) until parkinsonian signs, including akinesia, rigidity, and a prominent 4- to 8-Hz tremor, appeared. The activity of neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and in the internal segment of the globus pallidus (GPi) was recorded before (STN, n = 220 cells; GPi, n = 175 cells) and after MPTP treatment (STN, n = 326 cells; GPi, n = 154 cells). 2. In STN the spontaneous firing rate was significantly increased from 19 +/- 10 (SD) spikes/s before to 26 +/- 15 spikes/s after MPTP treatment. Division of STN neurons recorded after MPTP treatment into cells with rhythmic bursts of discharge occurring at 4-8 Hz (as defined by autocorrelation analysis) and neurons without 4- to 8-Hz periodic activity revealed an even more prominent increase in the firing rate of the 4- to 8-Hz oscillatory neurons. 3. In GPi overall changes in the average firing rate of cells were inconsistent between different animals and behavioral states. However, the average firing rate of the subpopulation of neurons with 4- to 8-Hz periodic oscillatory activity after treatment with MPTP was significantly increased over that of all neurons before MPTP treatment (from 53 to 76 spikes/s, averaged across monkeys). 4. In the normal state the percentage of neurons with burst discharges (as defined by autocorrelation analysis) was 69% and 78% in STN and GPi, respectively. After MPTP treatment the percentage of cells that discharged in bursts was increased to 79% and 89%, respectively. At the same time the average burst duration decreased (from 121 +/- 98 to 81 +/- 99 ms in STN and from 213 +/- 120 to 146 +/- 134 ms in GPi) with no significant change in the average number of spikes per burst. 5. Periodic oscillatory neuronal activity at low frequency, highly correlated with tremor, was detected in a large number of cells in STN and GPi after MPTP treatment (average oscillation frequency 6.0 and 5.1 Hz, respectively). The autocorrelograms of spike trains of these neurons confirm that the periodic oscillatory activity was very stable. The percentage of cells with 4- to 8-Hz periodic activity significantly increased from 2% to 16% in STN and from 0.6% to 25% in GPi with the MPTP treatment. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Large Residual Volume, Not Low Packing Density, Is the Most Influential Risk Factor for Recanalization after Coil Embolization of Cerebral Aneurysms

Background Tight coil packing with density of at least 20%–25% is known to be important for preventing recanalization after embolization of cerebral aneurysms. However, large aneurysms sometimes recanalize regardless of the packing density, suggesting that the absolute residual volume which is determined by aneurysm volume and packing density may be more important risk factor for recanalization. To validate this hypothesis, we analyzed the factors affecting the outcomes of treated aneurysms at our institute. Methods and Findings We included 355 small and large aneurysms. The following six factors were obtained from every case: aneurysm volume (mL), neck size (mm), packing density (%), residual volume (mL), rupture status at presentation, and stent assistance (with or without stent). The data were then subjected to multivariate logistic regression analysis to identify significant risk factors for recanalization. Recanalization occurred in 61 aneurysms (17.2%). Significant predictors for recanalization were aneurysm volume (odds ratio, 15.3; P < 0.001) and residual volume (odds ratio, 30.9; P < 0.001), but not packing density (odds ratio, 0.98; P = 0.341). These results showed that for each 0.1-mL increase in aneurysm volume and residual volume, the risk of recanalization increased by 1.3 times and 1.4 times, respectively. Conclusions The most influential risk factor for recanalization after coil embolization was residual volume, not packing density. The larger the aneurysm volume, the greater the packing density has to be to minimize the residual volume and risk of recanalization. Since tight coil packing has already been aimed, further innovation of coil property or embolization technique may be needed. Otherwise, different treatment modality such as flow diverter or parent artery occlusion may have to be considered.
Marginalised youth, criminal justice and performing arts: young people's experiences of music-making

ABSTRACT In recent years a plethora of arts-based projects and interventions targeting marginalised children and young people have emerged a number of which have focussed specifically on music-making. Resulting research has often highlighted the social, psychological and emotional benefits involved although few studies have explored the connections between music-making and mentoring with young people in educational contexts. This paper comprises a small-scale, qualitative study of one such intervention in a secondary school in the South of England. Analysis of transcripts from one-to-one interviews with participants (pupils) aged 11–17 years reveals various ways in which music-making facilitated positive change such as increased confidence, improved attitudes towards teachers and peers, feelings of calm, and better communication skills. The paper concludes by suggesting that music-making activity may confer significant psycho-social benefits for young people, particularly when combined with mentoring support.
Energy efficiency analysis with circuit power consumption in massive MIMO systems

It was shown that the required transmit power to support a target achievable rate is inversely proportional to the number of antennas in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems [1]. However, the consumed power of the massive MIMO systems should include not only transmit power but also the fundamental power for operating the circuit at the transmitter, because the effect of circuit power consumption is more serious when the transmitter is equipped with massive number of antennas. Hence, to analyze the exact power consumption of massive MIMO systems, we investigate the energy efficiency for multiple cellular systems with large-scale antenna arrays under a consideration of circuit power consumption of each antenna. In particular, we propose a new power consumption model that considers not only transmit power on the power amplifier but also circuit power dissipated by analog devices and residually lossy factors in base stations (BSs). Through new energy efficiency formulation based on the proposed power consumption model, we analyze the tendency of the energy efficiency as the number of antennas increases and can see that the energy efficiency becomes a quasi-concave function with respect to the number of antennas. Finally, from the derived function of the energy efficiency, we determine the number of antennas to provide the maximum energy efficiency.
AckSeer: a repository and search engine for automatically extracted acknowledgments from digital libraries

Acknowledgments are widely used in scientific articles to express gratitude and credit collaborators. Despite suggestions that indexing acknowledgments automatically will give interesting insights, there is currently, to the best of our knowledge, no such system to track acknowledgments and index them. In this paper we introduce AckSeer, a search engine and a repository for automatically extracted acknowledgments in digital libraries. AckSeer is a fully automated system that scans items in digital libraries including conference papers, journals, and books extracting acknowledgment sections and identifying acknowledged entities mentioned within. We describe the architecture of AckSeer and discuss the extraction algorithms that achieve a F1 measure above 83%. We use multiple Named Entity Recognition (NER) tools and propose a method for merging the outcome from different recognizers. The resulting entities are stored in a database then made searchable by adding them to the AckSeer index along with the metadata of the containing paper/book. We build AckSeer on top of the documents in CiteSeerx digital library yielding more than 500,000 acknowledgments and more than 4 million mentioned entities.
Foundations of Coupled Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction

In this paper we introduce and analyze the learning scenario of \emph{coupled nonlinear dimensionality reduction}, which combines two major steps of machine learning pipeline: projection onto a manifold and subsequent supervised learning. First, we present new generalization bounds for this scenario and, second, we introduce an algorithm that follows from these bounds. The generalization error bound is based on a careful analysis of the empirical Rademacher complexity of the relevant hypothesis set. In particular, we show an upper bound on the Rademacher complexity that is in $\widetilde O(\sqrt{\Lambda_{(r)}/m})$, where $m$ is the sample size and $\Lambda_{(r)}$ the upper bound on the Ky-Fan $r$-norm of the associated kernel matrix. We give both upper and lower bound guarantees in terms of that Ky-Fan $r$-norm, which strongly justifies the definition of our hypothesis set. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first learning guarantees for the problem of coupled dimensionality reduction. Our analysis and learning guarantees further apply to several special cases, such as that of using a fixed kernel with supervised dimensionality reduction or that of unsupervised learning of a kernel for dimensionality reduction followed by a supervised learning algorithm. Based on theoretical analysis, we suggest a structural risk minimization algorithm consisting of the coupled fitting of a low dimensional manifold and a separation function on that manifold.
Neural Quadratic Discriminant Analysis: Nonlinear Decoding with V1-Like Computation

Abstract Linear-nonlinear (LN) models and their extensions have proven successful in describing transformations from stimuli to spiking responses of neurons in early stages of sensory hierarchies. Neural responses at later stages are highly nonlinear and have generally been better characterized in terms of their decoding performance on prespecified tasks. Here we develop a biologically plausible decoding model for classification tasks, that we refer to as neural quadratic discriminant analysis (nQDA). Specifically, we reformulate an optimal quadratic classifier as an LN-LN computation, analogous to “subunit” encoding models that have been used to describe responses in retina and primary visual cortex. We propose a physiological mechanism by which the parameters of the nQDA classifier could be optimized, using a supervised variant of a Hebbian learning rule. As an example of its applicability, we show that nQDA provides a better account than many comparable alternatives for the transformation between neural representations in two high-level brain areas recorded as monkeys performed a visual delayed-match-to-sample task
The fluvial history of Mars

River channels and valleys have been observed on several planetary bodies in addition to the Earth. Long sinuous valleys on Venus, our Moon and Jupiter's moon Io are clearly formed by lava, and branching valleys on Saturn's moon Titan may be forming today by rivers of methane. But by far the most dissected body in our Solar System apart from the Earth is Mars. Branching valleys that in plan resemble terrestrial river valleys are common throughout the most ancient landscapes preserved on the planet. Accompanying the valleys are the remains of other indicators of erosion and deposition, such as deltas, alluvial fans and lake beds. There is little reason to doubt that water was the erosive agent and that early in Mars' history, climatic conditions were very different from the present cold conditions and such that, at least episodically, water could flow across the surface. In addition to the branching valley networks, there are large flood features, termed outflow channels. These are similar to, but dwarf, the largest terrestrial flood channels. The consensus is that these channels were also cut by water although there are other possibilities. The outflow channels mostly postdate the valley networks, although most are still very ancient. They appear to have formed at a time when surface conditions were similar to those that prevail today. There is evidence that glacial activity has modified some of the water-worn valleys, particularly in the 30–50° latitude belts, and ice may also be implicated in the formation of geologically recent, seemingly water-worn gullies on steep slopes. Mars also has had a long volcanic history, and long, sinuous lava channels similar to those on the Moon and Venus are common on and around the large volcanoes. These will not, however, be discussed further; the emphasis here is on the effects of running water on the evolution of the surface.