Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preschoolers' Current Desires Warp Their Choices for the Future

We introduce a new paradigm to assess how children's choices for the future are influenced by their current desires. Forty-eight 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were assigned to one of four conditions. In two of these conditions (intervention), we manipulated children's current state of thirst by allowing them to eat pretzels. In the remaining two conditions (baseline), we did not give them pretzels. The children were then asked to choose between water and pretzels. In one intervention and one baseline condition, they chose what they would like “now,” whereas in the other intervention and baseline conditions, they chose what they would like “tomorrow. ” Results revealed that, despite children's overwhelming desire for pretzels in the baseline conditions, children in both intervention conditions chose water. The data support the notion that children's current state influences not only their choices for the present, but also their choices for the future. We discuss this finding in terms of both cognitive-developmental and adult social-cognitive theory.
Experimental study on double sand filtration system for artificial groundwater recharge

ABSTRACT A laboratory study was undertaken in a rectangular filtration chamber having length, width and height as 200 mm, 160 mm and 1200 mm, respectively. Each filter consists of 15 cm thick boulder layer of size 20–40 mm and 15 cm thick gravel layer of size 4.75–10 mm and 10 cm thick. The thicknesses lower course sand (CS) layer of size 0.600–1.18 mm and 10 cm thick upper CS layer each of size 0.425–0.600 mm, 0.300–0.425 mm and 0.150–0.300 mm is placed separately in filters T1, T2 and T3. The influent sediment load prepared by using 0.75–0.15 m soil in terms of concentration as 250, 500, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500 and 3000 mg/l was used for checking the performance of the filtration system. Various important parameters such as recharge rate, clogging time and removal efficiency of double sand layer filtration system were estimated. The performance of the filter T3 used in present study has also shown better results as compared to filters used in the past for the purpose of artificial recharge of ground water. The proposed filter with treatment T3 is found to be cost effective due to smaller size of the filter as compared to the past studies as well.
GPU‐friendly shape interpolation based on trajectory warping

In this paper, we propose a GPU‐friendly shape interpolation method. In contrast with state‐of‐the‐art interpolation algorithms, our method computes the trajectory of each vertex independently instead of solving large linear systems in every interpolation step. Given two poses being interpolated, we find trajectory parameters for each vertex by optimization with the consideration of the key pose reconstruction and as‐rigid‐as‐possible deformation in the pre‐computing stage. During run‐time, the vertices coordinates on the intermediate shape can be computed in parallel according to a close form formulation. In the results we demonstrate that our method achieves extremely high performance on modern GPU and can be extended easily to multi‐pose interpolation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Pointing at trivariate targets in 3D environments

We investigate pointing in true 3D environments where the target size varies in three spatial dimensions. We also study the effect of the user's physical movement angle on pointing performance. Results show that target size dimension along the primary axis of movement has a greater impact on performance than the other two dimensions. Movement angle also significantly affects performance, and changes the relative impact of the three target dimensions. Building upon recent results in the modeling of bivariate pointing, we propose and validate a new model that describes pointing at trivariate targets. This model also accounts for movement angle, and outperforms previously published models.
Who: a verifier for effectful higher-order programs

We present Who, a tool for verifying effectful higher-order functions. It features Effect polymorphism, higher-order logic and the possibility to reason about state in the logic, which enable highly modular specifications of generic code. Several small examples and a larger case study demonstrate its usefulness. The Who tool is intended to be used as an intermediate language for verification tools targeting ML-like programming languages.
Discriminative Feature Adaptation for cross-domain facial expression recognition

Facial expression recognition is an important problem in many face-related tasks, such as face recognition, face animation, affective computing and human-computer interface. Existing methods mostly assume that testing and training face images are captured under the same condition and from the same population. Such assumption is, however, not valid in real-world applications, where face images could be taken from varying domains due to different cameras, illuminations, or populations. Motivated by recent progresses in domain adaptation, this paper proposes an unsupervised domain adaptation method, called discriminative feature adaptation (DFA), which requires for training a set of labelled face images in the source domain and some additional unlabelled face images in the target domain. It seeks for a feature space to represent face images from different domains such that two objectives are fulfilled: (i) mismatches between the feature distributions of these face images are minimized, and (ii) features are discriminative among these face images with respect to their facial expressions. Compared with existing methods, the proposed method can more effectively adapt discriminative features for recognizing facial expressions in various domains. Evaluation experiments have been done on four public facial expression databases: CK+, JAFFE, PICS, and FEED. The results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method over competing methods.
Pollution Potential of Heavy Metals in The Current Sea Sediments Between Bandirma (Balikesir) and Lapseki (Çanakkale) in the Marmara Sea

The aim of this study was to investigate the concentration of heavy metals on Holocene sediments in the Southwest Marmara Sea. Accordingly, ten core samples were collected in the investigate area. Heavy metal analyzes were performed using ICP-OS device. In the samples, 28 heavy metal (Fe, Zn, Al, Mn, As, B, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Sb, Na, Mg, K, Ca, P, Pb, Hg, Cd, Mo, Pb, Pt, Sn, Se, Hg) concentrations were determined. Comparing the results of the analysis are with World Average Shale Values, max values for Ni, Mn, Cr, Zn and Co were above the World average values. Maximum and minimum Pb, Cu and Fe values are below the mean shale values. The Co concentration was determined above the mean values for both values. Also, the concentrations of heavy metals in the samples taken from the Kor-9 site were at the lowest values compared to other locations. It was seen that there are no settlements, industrial establishments or maritime structures like such as a port in this locality. In places where values are high, wastewaters were originated from settlements, harbor and industrial wastes. These findings indicate that the most important cause of heavy metal contamination is anthropogenic causes.
Turkish Treebank as a Gold Standard for Morphological Disambiguation and Its Influence on Parsing

So far predicted scenarios for Turkish dependency parsing have used a morphological disambiguator that is trained on the data distributed with the tool(Sak et al., 2008). Although models trained on this data have high accuracy scores on the test and development data of the same set, the accuracy drastically drops when the model is used in the preprocessing of Turkish Treebank parsing experiments. We propose to use the Turkish Treebank(Oflazer et al., 2003) as a morphological resource to overcome this problem and convert the treebank to the morphological disambiguators format. The experimental results show that we achieve improvements in disambiguating the Turkish Treebank and the results also carry over to parsing. With the help of better morphological analysis, we present the best labelled dependency parsing scores to date on Turkish.
Central schwannoma of mandible

Intraoral schwannomas are uncommon and intraosseous ones are even rarer. The intrabony lesions account for less than 1% of the central neoplasms.According to the literature, there have been reports of 44 cases of intrabony neurilemmomas that occurred in either of the jaws. In theis case report. we report a case of central schwannoma of the mandible in a 23-year-old female, who presented with a swelling involving the right body of the mandible. Radiographs revealed a well defined, unilocular radiolucency with bicortical expansion. Histopathology and immunohistochemistry confirmed the diagnosis of schwannoma arising from right inferior alveolar nerve. The lesion was treated by segmental resection and reconstructed with autogenous iliac bone graft.
Virtual channels for a dynamically reconfigurable network of flowing magnetic beads

In this paper, we demonstrate virtual channels defined by “walls” of magnetic fields, which can be used to construct a dynamically reconfigurable network of flowing magnetic beads. Magnetized by an external magnet, nickel structures generate magnetic fields that can `hold' and, therefore, guide/trap magnetic particles. In this study, we exhibit S- and Y-shaped virtual channels which steer magnetic beads smoothly. Comparison on the relation of the bead's speed versus magnetic flux density between channels with different radii of bending curvature or with different widths is also shown. Lastly, a switchable channel implemented with a bistable mechanism is used to demonstrate the passing and blocking of a bead, proving the feasibility of a dynamically reconfigurable network.
A class of blind source extraction method using second-order statistics

A class of second-order statistics-based algorithms consisting of the offline BSE, online BSE algorithms, and they are proposed for extracting stationary and nonstationary signals. Within our algorithm, the new cost functions were given by exploiting the prosperities of signals, and a steepest descent update method of parameter-free adaptive steps-size was proposed to obtain optimal extracted weighted vector. Simulation results for stationary and nonstationary show that the proposed algorithms have the ability to restore original signals one by one, and its superior performances to the higher-order statistics-based BSE algorithm. Moreover, the steepest descent update method of parameter-free adaptive steps-size has the following merits: no parameters to be adjusted manually, low computational cost and no additional preprocessing requirements.
DIAT: A Scalable Distributed Architecture for IoT

The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) has boosted the growth in number of devices around us and kindled the possibility of umpteen number of applications. One of the major challenges in the realization of IoT applications is interoperability among various IoT devices and deployments. Thus, the need for a new architecture-comprising smart control and actuation-has been identified by many researchers. In this paper, we propose a Distributed Internet-like Architecture for Things (DIAT), which will overcome most of the obstacles in the process of large-scale expansion of IoT. It specifically addresses heterogeneity of IoT devices, and enables seamless addition of new devices across applications. In addition, we propose an usage control policy model to support security and privacy in a distributed environment. We propose a layered architecture that provides various levels of abstraction to tackle the issues such as scalability, heterogeneity, security, and interoperability. The proposed architecture is coupled with cognitive capabilities that helps in intelligent decision-making and enables automated service creation. Using a comprehensive use-case, comprising elements from multiple-application domains, we illustrate the usability of the proposed architecture.
Shared control for assistive mobile robots based on vector fields

Technologies such as Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) and Electromyography (EMG) allow people with limited mobility to interact with devices such as computers, home appliances and mobile robots. However, low cost BCI and EMG have not matured yet. Moreover, these technologies present relative low signal-to-noise ratio and classification accuracy. In case of employing BCI or EMG to manually control a mobile robot, a shared control must be inserted in the loop control to compensate misinterpreted commands. This paper presents a novel shared control approach based on vector fields for the manual navigation of assistive mobile robots. Unlike other approaches which take full control of the robot in certain situations, this technique allows full control to the user. Also, this approach reduces interventions to correct the navigation route caused by wrong classification of commands issued by the user. Results show that it is a simple, fast and effective technique.
Genome-wide analyses of LINE–LINE-mediated nonallelic homologous recombination

Nonallelic homologous recombination (NAHR), occurring between low-copy repeats (LCRs) >10 kb in size and sharing >97% DNA sequence identity, is responsible for the majority of recurrent genomic rearrangements in the human genome. Recent studies have shown that transposable elements (TEs) can also mediate recurrent deletions and translocations, indicating the features of substrates that mediate NAHR may be significantly less stringent than previously believed. Using >4 kb length and >95% sequence identity criteria, we analyzed of the genome-wide distribution of long interspersed element (LINE) retrotransposon and their potential to mediate NAHR. We identified 17 005 directly oriented LINE pairs located <10 Mbp from each other as potential NAHR substrates, placing 82.8% of the human genome at risk of LINE–LINE-mediated instability. Cross-referencing these regions with CNVs in the Baylor College of Medicine clinical chromosomal microarray database of 36 285 patients, we identified 516 CNVs potentially mediated by LINEs. Using long-range PCR of five different genomic regions in a total of 44 patients, we confirmed that the CNV breakpoints in each patient map within the LINE elements. To additionally assess the scale of LINE–LINE/NAHR phenomenon in the human genome, we tested DNA samples from six healthy individuals on a custom aCGH microarray targeting LINE elements predicted to mediate CNVs and identified 25 LINE–LINE rearrangements. Our data indicate that LINE–LINE-mediated NAHR is widespread and under-recognized, and is an important mechanism of structural rearrangement contributing to human genomic variability.
Template Shape Estimation: Correcting an Asymptotic Bias

We use tools from geometric statistics to analyze the usual estimation procedure of a template shape. This applies to shapes from landmarks, curves, surfaces, images, etc. We demonstrate the asymptotic bias of template shape estimation using the stratified geometry of the shape space. We give a Taylor expansion of the bias with respect to a parameter $\sigma$ describing the measurement error on the data. We propose two bootstrap procedures that quantify the bias and correct it if needed; they are applicable for any type of shape data. We give a rule of thumb to provide intuition on whether the bias has to be corrected, which reveals the parameters that control the bias' magnitude. We illustrate our results on simulated and real shape data.
Polymorphism of the NADH/NADPH oxidase p22 phox gene in patients with coronary artery disease.

BACKGROUND Oxidative stress in the vasculature has been implicated in the pathogenesis of coronary artery disease (CAD). NADH/NADPH oxidase is a key enzyme of superoxide production in the vasculature. p22 phox, an essential component of NADH/NADPH oxidase, has four types of polymorphism. The C242T polymorphism changes histidine-72 to tyrosine, located in the potential heme-binding sites, whereas A640G polymorphism is located in the 3' untranslated region. METHODS AND RESULTS We investigated whether these polymorphisms were associated with risk of CAD by use of restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). The prevalence of the TC + TT genotype of the C242T polymorphism was significantly more frequent in control subjects (n=201) than in the patients with CAD (n=201). The odds ratio of the TC + TT versus CC genotype of the C242T polymorphism between control subjects and case patients was 0.49 (95% CI, 0.28 to 0.87) (P=.015). The prevalence of the genotypes of the A640G polymorphism was not different between groups. The association of C242T polymorphism of the p22 phox gene with CAD was statistically significant and independent of other risk factors. CONCLUSIONS The mutation of the potential heme-binding site of the p22 phox gene may reduce susceptibility to CAD. Our observations suggest that the C242T polymorphism of the p22 phox gene is a novel genetic marker that has a protective effect on coronary risk.
Finite time tracking control of a nonholonomic mobile robot with external disturbances

This paper investigates finite time tracking control problem of a nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot in dynamic model with external disturbances, where a kind of finite time disturbance observer is introduced to estimate the external disturbances. First of all, the resulting tracking error dynamic is transformed into two subsystems, i.e., a third-order subsystem and a second-order subsystem for the mobile robot. Then, the two subsystem are discussed respectively, continuous finite time disturbance observers and finite time tracking control laws are designed for the mobile robot. Rigorous proof shows that the mobile robot can track the desired trajectory in finite time. Simulation example illustrates the effectiveness of our method.
Initial study for creating linearly moving vibrotactile sensation on mobile device

This paper investigates the feasibility of creating spatially moving vibrotactile sensations using two vibrotactile actuators in a mobile device. The idea is based on well-known tactile illusions of apparent tactile motion and “phantom” sensation. The phantom sensation refers to a perceptual phenomenon where spatially separated vibrotactile actuators that stimulate different skin zones induce a single tactile sensation midway between the two stimulation points. We tested whether such sensation can also be elicited in a mobile device via a psychophysical experiment that employed an open response paradigm. Experimental conditions differed in vibration rendering method, signal duration, and sensation movement direction. The subjects answered the perceived positions and intensities of vibrotactile sensations by drawing graphs with respect to time. The results demonstrated that such “vibrotactile flow” can be reliably produced in a mobile device and that a performance trade-off exists depending on the method and signal duration used for rendering. The findings of this paper can be applied to the user interface design of a mobile device with enriched vibrotactile sensations and an improved information transfer bandwidth.
Involvement of Protein Kinase Cε in the Stimulation of Anionic Amino Acid Transport in Cultured Human Fibroblasts*

Protein kinase C (PKC) activation stimulates transport system X−AG for anionic amino acids in cultured human fibroblasts (Franchi-Gazzola, R., Visigalli, R., Bussolati, O., and Gazzola, G. C. (1994) FEBS Lett. 352, 109-112). To identify which PKC isoform is responsible for this effect, aspartate transport through system X−AG, PKC activity, and the subcellular distribution of PKC isoforms have been studied before and after treatment with phorbol 12,13-dibutyrate (PDBu) in fibroblasts maintained at low serum for 1 (control cells) or 7 days (quiescent cells). In control cells aspartate transport and PKC activity in the particulate fraction were stimulated by short term PDBu treatment; both stimulatory effects were down-regulated by a prolonged exposure to the phorbol. In contrast, in quiescent cells aspartate transport and particulate PKC activity were higher than control under basal conditions, unaffected by a short term PDBu treatment, and lowered by a prolonged incubation with the phorbol. In both control and quiescent cells a short term PDBu treatment modified PKCα distribution, increasing its membrane-associated fraction. PKCδ was mostly in the soluble fraction and scarcely sensitive to PDBu. A brief exposure to PDBu increased membrane-associated PKCε in control but not in quiescent cells. In these cells ε isoform was found exclusively in the particulate fraction even in PDBu-untreated cells. A prolonged PDBu treatment caused a partial down-regulation of membrane-associated PKCε in control cells and its marked decrease in quiescent cells. It is concluded that PKC-dependent changes in system X−AG activity parallel the behavior of PKCε, thus suggesting a specific role for this isoform in system X−AG regulation.
Computer-assisted assume/guarantee reasoning with VeriSoft

We show how the state space exploration tool VeriSoft can be used to analyze parallel C/C++ programs compositionally. VeriSoft is used to check assume/guarantee specifications of parallel processes automatically. The analysis is meant to complement standard assume/guarantee reasoning which is usually carried out solely with "pencil and paper". While a successful analysis does not always imply the general correctness of the specification, it increases the confidence in the verification effort. An unsuccessful analysis always produces a counterexample which can be used to correct the specification or the program. VeriSoft's optimization and visualization techniques make the analysis relatively efficient and effective.
Word sense disambiguation: A survey

Word sense disambiguation (WSD) is the ability to identify the meaning of words in context in a computational manner. WSD is considered an AI-complete problem, that is, a task whose solution is at least as hard as the most difficult problems in artificial intelligence. We introduce the reader to the motivations for solving the ambiguity of words and provide a description of the task. We overview supervised, unsupervised, and knowledge-based approaches. The assessment of WSD systems is discussed in the context of the Senseval/Semeval campaigns, aiming at the objective evaluation of systems participating in several different disambiguation tasks. Finally, applications, open problems, and future directions are discussed.
Breeding racehorses: what price good genes?

Horse racing is a multi-million pound industry, in which genetic information is increasingly used to optimize breeding programmes. To maximize the probability of producing a successful offspring, the owner of a mare should mate her with a high-quality stallion. However, stallions with big reputations command higher stud fees and paying these is only a sensible strategy if, (i) there is a genetic variation for success on the racecourse and (ii) stud fees are an honest signal of a stallion's genetic quality. Using data on thoroughbred racehorses, and lifetime earnings from prize money (LE) as a measure of success, we performed quantitative genetic analyses within an animal model framework to test these two conditions. Although LE is heritable (VA=0.299±0.108, Pr=0.002), there is no genetic variance for stud fee and the genetic correlation between traits is therefore zero. This result is supported by an absence of any relationship between stud fees for currently active stallions and the predicted LE for their (hypothetical) offspring. Thus, while there are good genes to be bought, a stallion's fees are not an honest signal of his genetic quality and are a poor predictor of a foal's prize winning potential.