Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of cutaneous termic response to a standardised warm up in trained and untrained individuals.

AIM Warm up prior to exercise induces an increased production of metabolic heat, which triggers the thermoregulatory system to initiate heat loss mechanisms. Variations in cutaneous tissue temperature have been already reported in trained subjects, by means of high resolution thermal imaging. Purpose of this paper was to quantitatively evaluate, by means of infrared thermography, the differences in the cutaneous temperature among trained and untrained subjects. METHODS Forty male volunteers performed a standard warm up exercise on a stationary cycle, divided in three steps: 1) 0-5 minutes at 100 Watt; 2) 5-10 minutes at 130 Watt; and 3) 10-15 minutes at 160 Watt. Thermal images from thorax and upper limbs were collected during the exercise. Heart rate was also measured. RESULTS In comparison to baseline, trained subjects exhibited a significant temperature reduction in the third step (trunk, P<0.01; upper limbs, P<0.009), while no difference was observed in untrained subjects. In the comparison between groups, a statistically significant difference was observed in both regions of interest, in the second (trunk, P<0.01; upper limbs, P<0.02), and in the third step (trunk, P<0.0002; upper limbs, P<0.0008). During the whole exercise, heart rate increased progressively in all participants, but more markedly in untrained subjects. CONCLUSION Cutaneous thermoregulatory response differs among trained and untrained participants. Infrared thermal imaging is useful in detecting these differences, providing additional data to the physiological evaluation of subjects performing sport activities.
Buffer insertion for noise and delay optimization

Buffer insertion has successfully been applied to reduce delay in global interconnect paths: however, existing techniques only optimize delay and timing slack. With the increasing ratio of coupling to total capacitance and the use of aggressive dynamic logic circuit families, noise is becoming a major design bottleneck. We present comprehensive buffer insertion techniques for noise and delay optimisation. Our experiments on a microprocessor design show that our approach fixes all noise violations that were identified by a detailed, simulation-based noise analysis tool. Further, we show that the performance penalty induced by optimizing both delay and noise as opposed to only delay is 2%.
Separation of Gating Properties from Permeation and Block in mslo Large Conductance Ca-activated K+ Channels

In this and the following paper we have examined the kinetic and steady-state properties of macroscopic mslo Ca-activated K+ currents in order to interpret these currents in terms of the gating behavior of the mslo channel. To do so, however, it was necessary to first find conditions by which we could separate the effects that changes in Ca2+ concentration or membrane voltage have on channel permeation from the effects these stimuli have on channel gating. In this study we investigate three phenomena which are unrelated to gating but are manifest in macroscopic current records: a saturation of single channel current at high voltage, a rapid voltage-dependent Ca2+ block, and a slow voltage-dependent Ba2+ block. Where possible methods are described by which these phenomena can be separated from the effects that changes in Ca2+ concentration and membrane voltage have on channel gating. Where this is not possible, some assessment of the impact these effects have on gating parameters determined from macroscopic current measurements is provided. We have also found that without considering the effects of Ca2+ and voltage on channel permeation and block, macroscopic current measurements suggest that mslo channels do not reach the same maximum open probability at all Ca2+ concentrations. Taking into account permeation and blocking effects, however, we find that this is not the case. The maximum open probability of the mslo channel is the same or very similar over a Ca2+ concentration range spanning three orders of magnitude indicating that over this range the internal Ca2+ concentration does not limit the ability of the channel to be activated by voltage.
Biochemical Fingerprints of Prion Infection: Accumulations of Aberrant Full-Length and N-Terminally Truncated PrP Species Are Common Features in Mouse Prion Disease

ABSTRACT Infection with any one of three strains of mouse scrapie prion (PrPSc), 139A, ME7, or 22L, results in the accumulation of two underglycosylated, full-length PrP species and an N-terminally truncated PrP species that are not detectable in uninfected animals. The levels of the N-terminally truncated PrP species vary depending on PrPSc strain. Furthermore, 22L-infected brains consistently have the highest levels of proteinase K (PK)-resistant PrP species, followed by ME7- and 139A-infected brains. The three strains of PrPSc are equally susceptible to PK and proteases papain and chymotrypsin. Their protease resistance patterns are also similar. In sucrose gradient velocity sedimentation, the aberrant PrP species partition with PrPSc aggregates, indicating that they are physically associated with PrPSc. In ME7-infected animals, one of the underglycosylated, full-length PrP species is detected much earlier than the other, before both the onset of clinical disease and the detection of PK-resistant PrP species. In contrast, the appearance of the N-terminally truncated PrP species coincides with the presence of PK-resistant species and the manifestation of clinical symptoms. Therefore, accumulation of the underglycosylated, full-length PrP species is an early biochemical fingerprint of PrPSc infection. Accumulation of the underglycosylated, full-length PrP species and the aberrant N-terminally truncated PrP species may be important in the pathogenesis of prion disease.
Temporal segregation of surfactant secretion and lamellar body biogenesis in primary cultures of rat alveolar type II cells.

Pulmonary alveolar type II cells synthesize and secrete the phospholipids of surfactant. However, type II cells isolated from adult rat lungs rapidly lose their characteristic morphology and differentiated functions (such as surfactant-specific phospholipid and protein biosynthesis) when maintained on tissue culture plastic. In this study, phospholipid secretion and its regulation by type II cells grown on tissue culture plastic were examined up to 8 days after isolation. Type II cells were preincubated with [3H]choline for varying 24-h periods during culture prior to examining phosphatidylcholine ([3H]PtdCho) secretion. Type II cells cultured for 4 days and incubated with [3H]choline 24 h before the secretion experiment failed to show significant basal and tetradecanoyl phorbol acetate (TPA, 100 nM)-stimulated [3H]PtdCho secretion (basal, 0.29 +/- 0.01%; TPA, 0.48 +/- 0.04%). In contrast, type II cells incubated with [3H]choline for the first 24 h during culture and then cultured for 3 more days showed significant [3H]PtdCho secretion (basal, 1.27 +/- 0.19%; TPA, 6.24 +/- 0.82%). Subcellular fractionation of type II cells revealed that [3H]choline was incorporated into phosphatidylcholines in a lamellar body-enriched fraction during the first 24 h of culture but that the assimilation of phosphatidylcholine into the lamellar body fraction progressively declined with increasing time in culture. Radiolabel incorporated into the lamellar body fraction labeled during the first 24 h of culture was detectable for up to 8 days in culture. The [3H]PtdCho incorporated into the lamellar body during the first 24 h of culture was lost gradually over 8 days, suggesting the continuous secretion or turnover of the lamellar bodies during culture. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Theoretical Basis of in Vivo Tomographic Tracer Kinetics

In vivo tracer kinetics, as probed by current tomographic techniques, is revisited from the point of view of fluid kinematics. Proofs of the standard intravascular advective perfusion model from first premises reveal underlying assumptions and demonstrate that all single input models apply at best to undefined tube-like systems, not to the ones defined by tomography, \textit{i.e.} the voxels. In particular, they do not and cannot account for the circulation across them. More generally, it is simply not possible to define a single non-zero steady volumetric flow rate per voxel. Restarting from the fact that kinematics requires the definition of six volumetric flow rates per voxel, one for each face, minimalist, 4D spatiotemporal analytic models of the advective transport of intravascular tracers in the whole organ of interest are obtained. Their many parameters, plasmatic volumetric flow rates and volumes, can be readily estimated at least in some specific cases. Estimates should be quasi-absolute in homogeneous tissue regions, regardless of the tomographic technique. Potential applications such as dynamic angio-tractography are presented. By contrast, the transport of mixed intra/extravascular tracers cannot be described by conservation of the mass alone and requires further investigation. Should this theory eventually supersede the current one(s), it shall have a deep impact on our understanding of the circulatory system, hemodynamics, perfusion, permeation and metabolic processes and on the clinical applications of tracer tracking tomography to numerous pathologies.
Increasing the throughput of multihop packet radio networks with power adjustment

The packet radio network (PRN) is an attractive architecture to support mobile and wireless communication. Although the code assignment problem has been studied extensively on PRN, we observe that the power control problem has been ignored by most works, but may have significant impact on performance. By power control, we mean that the transmission ranges of stations are tunable. We show, given a PRN in which each host already received a code, how to adjust the powers of stations to control/improve the topology of the PRN without violating the original code assignment. Several schemes are proposed. Through simulations, we demonstrate that although the code assignment problem is NP-complete and thus computationally very expensive, using our power adjustment schemes can easily improve the network performance by about 20% with polynomial costs.
Dual clustering for categorization of action sequences

This paper proposes a novel algorithm for categorization of action video sequences using unsupervised dual clustering. Given a video database, we extract motion information of actions and perform nonlinear dimensionality reduction for addressing both the high dimensionality of silhouette features and non-linearity of articulated human actions. A k-means clustering is first performed on frame-wise features in the embedding space to convert each video in the database to a sequence of labels, each of which corresponds to one of k ¿key¿ feature frames. The dissimilarity between any two label sequences is then measured using edit distance. The resulting pairwise dissimilarity matrix is finally input to a spectral clustering algorithm to obtain the category labels of each action video. Experimental results on two recent data sets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
Hawaii longline fishermen's experiences with the Observer Program

The mission of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is to understand and predict changes in the Earth=s environment and to conserve and manage coastal and oceanic marine resources and habitats to help meet our Nation=s economic, social, and environmental needs. As a branch of NOAA, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) conducts or sponsors research and monitoring programs to improve the scientific basis for conservation and management decisions. NMFS strives to make information about the purpose, methods, and results of its scientific studies widely available. NMFS= Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) uses the NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS series to achieve timely dissemination of scientific and technical information that is of high quality but inappropriate for publication in the formal peer-reviewed literature. The contents are of broad scope, including technical workshop proceedings, large data compilations, status reports and reviews, lengthy scientific or statistical monographs, and more. NOAA Technical Memoranda published by the PIFSC, although informal, are subjected to extensive review and editing and reflect sound professional work. Accordingly, they may be referenced in the formal scientific and technical literature.
Homoclinic Branch Switching: a Numerical Implementation of Lin's Method

We present a numerical method for branch switching between homoclinic orbits to equilibria of ODEs computed via numerical continuation. Starting from a 1-homoclinic orbit our method allows us to find and follow an N-homoclinic orbit, for any N>1 (if it exists nearby). This scheme is based on Lin's method and it is robust and reliable. The method is implemented in AUTO/HOMCONT. A system of ordinary differential equations introduced by Sandstede featuring inclination and orbit flip bifurcations and homoclinic-doubling cascades, is used as a test bed for the algorithm. It is also successfully applied to reliably find multihump traveling wave solutions in the FitzHugh–Nagumo nerve-axon equations and in a fourth-order Hamiltonian system arising as a model for water waves.
Building Knowledge through Families of Experiments

Experimentation in software engineering is necessary but difficult. One reason is that there are a large number of context variables and, so, creating a cohesive understanding of experimental results requires a mechanism for motivating studies and integrating results. It requires a community of researchers that can replicate studies, vary context variables, and build models that represent the common observations about the discipline. The paper discusses the experience of the authors, based upon a collection of experiments, in terms of a framework for organizing sets of related studies. With such a framework, experiments can be viewed as part of common families of studies, rather than being isolated events. Common families of studies can contribute to important and relevant hypotheses that may not be suggested by individual experiments. A framework also facilitates building knowledge in an incremental manner through the replication of experiments within families of studies. To support the framework, the paper discusses the experiences of the authors in carrying out empirical studies, with specific emphasis on persistent problems encountered in experimental design, threats to validity, criteria for evaluation, and execution of experiments in the domain of software engineering.
The Geometry of Constrained Structured Prediction: Applications to Inference and Learning of Natural Language Syntax

This thesis proposes new models and algorithms for structured output prediction, with an emphasis on natural language processing applications. We advance in two fronts: in the inference problem, whose aim is to make a prediction given a model, and in the learning problem, where the model is trained from data. For inference, we make a paradigm shift, by considering rich models with global features and constraints, representable as constrained graphical models. We introduce a new approximate decoder that ignores global effects caused by the cycles of the graph. This methodology is then applied to syntactic analysis of text, yielding a new framework which we call “turbo parsing,” with state-of-the-art results. For learning, we consider a family of loss functions encompassing conditional random fields, support vector machines and the structured perceptron, for which we provide new online algorithms that dispense with learning rate hyperparameters. We then focus on the regularizer, which we use for promoting structured sparsity and for learning structured predictors with multiple kernels. We introduce online proximal-gradient algorithms that can explore large feature spaces efficiently, with minimal memory consumption. The result is a new framework for feature template selection yielding compact and accurate models.
Jerk derivative feedforward control for motion systems

This work discusses reference trajectory relevant model based feedforward design. For motion systems which contain at least one rigid body mode and which are subject to reference trajectories with mostly low frequency energy, the proposed feedforward controller improves tracking performance significantly. The feedforward controller may be of much lower order than the plant. The proposed feedforward controller is introduced using a model of an industrial XY-table as an application example.
Dealing with fog of war in a Real Time Strategy game environment

Bots for real time strategy (RTS) games provide a rich challenge to implement. A bot controls a number of units that may have to navigate in a partially unknown environment, while at the same time search for enemies and coordinate attacks to fight them down. It is often the case that RTS AIs cheat in the sense that they get perfect information about the game world to improve the performance of the tactics and planning behavior. We show how a multi-agent potential field based bot can be modified to play an RTS game without cheating, i.e. with incomplete information, and still be able to perform well without spending more resources than its cheating version in a tournament.
A high-performance double precision accumulator

The accumulation operation Anew = Aold + X is required for many numerical methods. However, when using a floating-point adder with pipeline latency α, the data hazard that exists between Anew and Aold creates design challenges for situations where inputs must be delivered to the accumulator at a rate exceeding 1/α. Each of the techniques proposed to address this problem requires either static data scheduling or overly complex micro-architectures having multiple adders, a large amount of memory, or control overheads that force the accumulator to operate at a diminished speed relative to the adder on which it is based. In this paper we present a design for a double precision accumulator that achieves high performance without the need for data scheduling or an overly complex implementation. We achieve this by integrating a coalescing reduction circuit within the low-level design of a base-converting floating-point adder. When implemented on our Virtex-2 Pro 100 FPGA, our design achieves a speed of 170 MHz.
Cluster formation through improved weighted clustering algorithm (IWCA) for mobile ad-hoc networks

A clustering architecture increases network lifetime, fault tolerance and results in more efficient use of network resources. Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are extremely vulnerable to a variety of misbehaviors because of their basic features like: lack of communication infrastructure, dynamic network topology and short transmission range. To detect and reduce those misbehaviors, numerous trust management schemes have been proposed for MANETs. To effectively set up MANET, security is one of the main challenges that must be undertaken. The weight based clustering approach is based on combined weight metric that takes into account of several system parameters like the mobility, degree difference, transmission range and battery power of the node. One way to support efficient communication between nodes is to partition ad hoc networks into clusters. Various clustering schemes have been proposed to form clusters. Proposed IWCA algorithm can enhance the trust of cluster formation followed by malicious node removal from cluster head or member selection.
Quantification of a Privacy Preserving Data Mining Transformation

Data mining, with its promise to extract valuable, previously unknown and potentially useful patterns or knowledge from large data sets that contain private information is vulnerable to misuse. To protect the private or sensitive information, many privacypreserving data mining (PPDM) techniques have emerged. A large fraction of these techniques use randomized data distortion by adding noise from a known distribution function (e.g., uniform, normal) to the sensitive data. However, non-careful noise addition may introduce biases to the statistical parameters of these data. To preserve the statistical properties and meet privacy requirements of the sensitive data, we use a data transformation technique called Rotation–Based Transformation (RBT). This method distorts only private numerical attributes and preserves the statistical properties of the data. KeywordsData mining, Privacy, Data transformation.
Open String—BMN Operator Correspondence in the Weak Coupling Regime

We reproduce the correspondence between open string states ‖n> and BMN operators On in N = 2 supersymmetric gauge theory using a worldsheet computation with the relation = On, where and obtain a chiral operator and BMN operators, respectively, in correspondence to them. Because we take the coupling constant to be weak and the background spacetime to be flat Minkowski, not AdS, the string states ‖n> are circular waves around the D3-branes, instead of KK modes on S 5 . We also discuss the 1/J correction to the correspondence.
Changes in livestock footprint and tree layer coverage in Mediterranean dehesas: a six-decade study based on remote sensing

ABSTRACT The decade of the fifties of the twentieth century triggered huge changes in land use and management in ecosystems worldwide, including the iconic Mediterranean ecosystems known as dehesas. In this study, we have quantified the changes in dehesa landscape status within a geographic area of 200,000 km2 covering mainly the Spanish dehesa range over the last 60 years. We focused on changes of two important dehesa elements: tree density and live stocking rates. Tree density and tree cover change were measured via remote sensing in 29 sample plots (16 km2 each) and selected from the plot-monitoring network of Spanish Rural Landscapes (SISPARES). Live stocking (cattle, sheep, and pig) rates data were obtained from the National Statistical Institute of Spain and were used to assess the entire study area. During the 1950–80s, tree density and cover declined significantly (by 18% and 13%, respectively). By the 1960s, sheep was predominant over cattle in all provinces; pigs had higher stocking rates than in the following decades. However, during the 1970–80s, sheep and pig stocking rate declined drastically (by 90% and 70%, respectively) in just 20 years. In contrast, cattle stocking rate increased progressively since the 1960s, reaching a 60% increment by the 2000s. At the municipality level, we observed similar trends. Our multi-scaled analysis explains the impact of social, political, and economic factors on the conservation status of the main dehesa territory within Spain. We conclude that it is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of these systems through sustainable activities to avoid negative consequences of poor management practices which threaten dehesa perpetuation.