Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural Mechanisms of Saccadic Suppression

In normal vision our gaze leaps from detail to detail, resulting in rapid image motion across the retina. Yet we are unaware of such motion, a phenomenon known as saccadic suppression. We recorded neural activity in the middle temporal and middle superior temporal cortical areas during saccades and identical image motion under passive viewing conditions. Some neurons were selectively silenced during saccadic image motion, but responded well to identical external image motion. In addition, a subpopulation of neurons reversed their preferred direction of motion during saccades. Consequently, oppositely directed motion signals annul one another, and motion percepts are suppressed.
Volume Ray Casting with Peak Finding and Differential Sampling

Direct volume rendering and isosurfacing are ubiquitous rendering techniques in scientific visualization, commonly employed in imaging 3D data from simulation and scan sources. Conventionally, these methods have been treated as separate modalities, necessitating different sampling strategies and rendering algorithms. In reality, an isosurface is a special case of a transfer function, namely a Dirac impulse at a given isovalue. However, artifact-free rendering of discrete isosurfaces in a volume rendering framework is an elusive goal, requiring either infinite sampling or smoothing of the transfer function. While preintegration approaches solve the most obvious deficiencies in handling sharp transfer functions, artifacts can still result, limiting classification. In this paper, we introduce a method for rendering such features by explicitly solving for isovalues within the volume rendering integral. In addition, we present a sampling strategy inspired by ray differentials that automatically matches the frequency of the image plane, resulting in fewer artifacts near the eye and better overall performance. These techniques exhibit clear advantages over standard uniform ray casting with and without preintegration, and allow for high-quality interactive volume rendering with sharp C0 transfer functions.
Groundwater-based agriculture in arid land : the case of Azraq Basin, Jordan

With limitations in the availability and accessibility of surface water, attention is increasingly directed towards groundwater resources as the most reliable source of fresh water for different sectors. Accordingly, groundwater is over abstracted in many countries of the world. The overexploitation of groundwater renewable and non-renewable aquifers for both urban use and irrigation results in a drop of the water table and, frequently, in a reduction in groundwater quality. This study focuses on the use of groundwater for irrigation purposes in desert areas of the MENA region. The thesis contributes to conserving and sustaining the use of limited groundwater resources in desert agriculture, by analyzing the current unsustainable use of groundwater, focusing on groundwater policy on the one hand, and on the specificities of desert agriculture on the other, with a focus on Azraq basin in Jordan.
Manipulation And Active Sensing By Pushing Using Tactile Feedback

We investigate manipulation and active sensing by a pushing control system using only tactile feedback. The equations of motion of a pushed object are derived using a model of the object's limit surface, and we design a control system to translate and orient objects. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is confirmed through simulation and experiments. Active sensing of the object's center of mass is described. I. INTRODUCTTON Pushing is a useful robotic capability for positioning and orienting parts. Several researchers have demonstrated the utility of pushing operations by planning open-loop pushing sequences to position and orient polygonal objects despite the presence of uncertainty in the initial state (l, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 71. These operations typically plan for a known object shape and center of mass (CM) and a flat pushing fence or specially designed pusher geomehy to exploit the mechanics of pushing. Others have proposed pushing control systems based on visual feedback (8,9). The pusher makes point contact with the object, and the position and orientation of the object is determined by a vision system. The goal is to push the object along a desired trajectory. Uncertainty in the frictional forces governing the object's motion is compensated for by the appropriate design of a feedback controller. The purpose of this work is to investigate the possibility of useful manipulation by a pushing control system using only tactile feedback. Try closing your eyes and controlling the motion of an object on a table by pushing it with a finger. This is the type of capability we would like to give a robot. In contrast to vision, tactile sensing requires very little data processing. The tactile sensor is mounted directly on the manipulator and the robot requires no peripheral sensors. The primary difficulty arises from the fact that tactile sensing can only give local contactinformation. Theconfigurationof theobjecthas three degrees-of-freedom: two position coordinates and an orientation. When the pusher is in contact with the object, these three degrees-of- freedom may be equivalently expressed by the location of the pushing contact, the contact point on the perimeter of the object, and the orientation of the object. The tactile sensor we use is capable of sensing the contact location and the object orientation at the contact, but not the contact point on the object. With vision, all three degrees- of-freedom are directly sensed. Despite this missing information, we demonstrate that simple manipulation is possible by pushing using only tactile feedback. Specifically, we implement a controller to translate the object and regulate its orientation.
Defining Testable Theories of Pre-task Appraisal Stress

We describe a range of theories of how cognition is influenced by stress. We use a cognitive architecture, ACT-R, to represent these theories formally. The theories make suggestions for developing cognitive architectures, in that they nearly all of them require that time-on-task influence performance, and at least one suggests that workload and strategies are monitored to access and cope with stress. By examining the theories as a whole, we can also see that they are incomplete in that individually and as a group they do not make predictions that are consistent with data. For example, many of them do not predict that repeated serial subtraction (part of the Trier Social Stressor Task) will be affected by stress. We also see how the stress theories and the mechanisms that give rise to them can be tested.
Phase II-I-II study of two different doses and schedules of pralatrexate, a high-affinity substrate for the reduced folate carrier, in patients with relapsed or refractory lymphoma reveals marked activity in T-cell malignancies.

PURPOSE To determine the maximum-tolerated dose (MTD) and efficacy of pralatrexate in patients with lymphoma. PATIENTS AND METHODS Pralatrexate, initially given at a dose of 135 mg/m(2) on an every-other-week basis, was associated with stomatitis. A redesigned, weekly phase I/II study established an MTD of 30 mg/m(2) weekly for six weeks every 7 weeks. Patients were required to have relapsed/refractory disease, an absolute neutrophil greater than 1,000/microL, and a platelet count greater than 50,000/microL for the first dose of any cycle. RESULTS The every-other-week, phase II experience was associated with an increased risk of stomatitis and hematologic toxicity. On a weekly schedule, the MTD was 30 mg/m(2) weekly for 6 weeks every 7 weeks. This schedule modification resulted in a 50% reduction in the major hematologic toxicities and abrogation of the grades 3 to 4 stomatitis. Stomatitis was associated with elevated homocysteine and methylmalonic acid, which were reduced by folate and vitamin B12 supplementation. Of 48 assessable patients, the overall response rate was 31% (26% by intention to treat), including 17% who experienced complete remission (CR). When analyzed by lineage, the overall response rates were 10% and 54% in patients with B- and T-cell lymphomas, respectively. All eight patients who experienced CR had T-cell lymphoma, and four of the six patients with a partial remission were positron emission tomography negative. The duration of responses ranged from 3 to 26 months. CONCLUSION Pralatrexate has significant single-agent activity in patients with relapsed/refractory T-cell lymphoma.
Differential dual-hop relaying over time-varying Rayleigh-fading channels

This paper studies dual-hop amplify-and-forward relaying over time-varying Rayleigh fading channels with differential M-PSK modulation and non-coherent detection. For the case of “two-symbol” detection, a first order time-series model is utilized to characterize the time-varying nature of the cascaded channel. Based on this model, an exact bit error rate (BER) expression is derived and confirmed with simulation results. The obtained expression shows that the BER is related to the auto-correlation of the cascaded channel and an irreducible error floor exists at high transmit power. To overcome the error floor experienced with fast-fading, a nearly optimal “multiple-symbol” differential sphere detection (MSDSD) is also developed. The error performance of MSDSD is illustrated with simulation results under different fading scenarios.
Effect of cooking methodes on omega-6/omega-3 and hypo/hypercholesterolemic ratios of Bebni-Guil lamb meat from eastern Morocco

A, BELHAJ K, MANSOURI F, SINDIC M, FAUCONNIER M-L, BOUKHARTA M, SERGHINI CAID H. , ELAMRANI A. Laboratoire de Biologie des plantes et des micro-organismes, Faculté des Sciences, Université Mohamed Ier, Oujda; Maroc. Laboratoire Qualité et Sécurité des Produits Alimentaires, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, Université de Liège; Belgique. Laboratoire de Chimie générale et Organique, Gembloux Agro Bio-Tech, Université de Liége; Belgique. Institut Supérieur Industriel agronomique, Huy, Belgique
PHYTOPLANKTON AND BACTERIA ALKALINE PHOSPHATASE ACTIVITY IN THE 1 NORTHERN ADRIATIC SEA 2 3

PHYTOPLANKTON AND BACTERIA ALKALINE PHOSPHATASE ACTIVITY IN THE 1 NORTHERN ADRIATIC SEA 2 3 Ingrid Ivančić a, Dragica Fuks, Tomislav Radić, Daniel M. Lyons, Tina Šilović, Romina 4 Kraus, Robert Precali 5 6 a Center for Marine Research, Ruđer Bošković Institute, G. Paliaga 5, 52210 Rovinj, 7 Croatia 8 b Institute for Adriatic Crops and Karst Reclamation, Put Duilova 11, 21000 Split, Croatia 9 10
Coding Variation in ANGPTL4, LPL, and SVEP1 and the Risk of Coronary Disease.

BACKGROUND The discovery of low-frequency coding variants affecting the risk of coronary artery disease has facilitated the identification of therapeutic targets. METHODS Through DNA genotyping, we tested 54,003 coding-sequence variants covering 13,715 human genes in up to 72,868 patients with coronary artery disease and 120,770 controls who did not have coronary artery disease. Through DNA sequencing, we studied the effects of loss-of-function mutations in selected genes. RESULTS We confirmed previously observed significant associations between coronary artery disease and low-frequency missense variants in the genes LPA and PCSK9. We also found significant associations between coronary artery disease and low-frequency missense variants in the genes SVEP1 (p.D2702G; minor-allele frequency, 3.60%; odds ratio for disease, 1.14; P=4.2×10(-10)) and ANGPTL4 (p.E40K; minor-allele frequency, 2.01%; odds ratio, 0.86; P=4.0×10(-8)), which encodes angiopoietin-like 4. Through sequencing of ANGPTL4, we identified 9 carriers of loss-of-function mutations among 6924 patients with myocardial infarction, as compared with 19 carriers among 6834 controls (odds ratio, 0.47; P=0.04); carriers of ANGPTL4 loss-of-function alleles had triglyceride levels that were 35% lower than the levels among persons who did not carry a loss-of-function allele (P=0.003). ANGPTL4 inhibits lipoprotein lipase; we therefore searched for mutations in LPL and identified a loss-of-function variant that was associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease (p.D36N; minor-allele frequency, 1.9%; odds ratio, 1.13; P=2.0×10(-4)) and a gain-of-function variant that was associated with protection from coronary artery disease (p.S447*; minor-allele frequency, 9.9%; odds ratio, 0.94; P=2.5×10(-7)). CONCLUSIONS We found that carriers of loss-of-function mutations in ANGPTL4 had triglyceride levels that were lower than those among noncarriers; these mutations were also associated with protection from coronary artery disease. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health and others.).
Adaptive Alert Throttling for Intrusion Detection Systems

Each time that an intrusion detection system raises an alert it must make some attempt to communicate the information to an operator. This communication channel can easily become the target of a denial of service attack because, like all communication channels, it has a fixed capacity. If this channel can become overwhelmed with bogus data, an attacker can quickly achieve complete neutralisation of intrusion detection capability. Although these types of attack are very hard to stop completely, our aim is to present techniques that improve alert throughput and capacity to such an extent that the resources required to successfully mount the attack become prohibitive.
Soil organic carbon mapping using remote sensing techniques and multivariate regression model

Abstract Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an important aspect of soil quality and plays an imperative role in soil productivity in the agriculture ecosystems. The present study was applied to estimate the SOC stock using space-borne satellite data (Landsat 4–5 Thematic Mapper [TM]) and ground verification in the Medinipur Block, Paschim Medinipur District and West Bengal in India. In total, 50 soil samples were collected randomly from the region according to field surveys using a hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) unit to estimate the surface SOC concentrations in the laboratory. Bare soil index (BSI) and normalized difference vegetation ndex (NDVI) were explored from TM data. The satellite data-derived indices were used to estimate spatial distribution of SOC using multivariate regression model. The regression analysis was performed to determine the relationship between SOC and spectral indices (NDVI and BSI) and compared the observed SOC (field measure) to predict SOC (estimated from satellite images). Goodness fit test was performed to determine the significance of the relationship between observed and predicted SOC at p ≤ 0.05 level. The results of regression analysis between observed SOC and NDVI values showed significant relationship (R2 = 0.54; p < 0.0075). A significant statistical relationship (r = −0.72) was also observed between SOC and BSI. Finally, our model showed nearly 71% of the variance of SOC distribution could be explained by SOC and NDVI values. The information from this study has advanced our understanding of the ongoing ecological development that affects SOC dissemination and might be valuable for effective soil management.
The roles of RRP15 in nucleolar formation, ribosome biogenesis and checkpoint control in human cells

The nucleolus controls ribosome biogenesis and its perturbation induces nucleolar stress that inhibits cell cycle progression and activates checkpoint responses. Here, we investigate the roles of ribosomal RNA processing protein, RRP15, in nucleolar formation, ribosome biogenesis, cell cycle progression and checkpoint control in human cells. RRP15 is localized in the nucleolus and required for nucleolar formation. In contrast to the budding yeast Rrp15p that was reported as a component of pre-60S subunits, RRP15 is found in both pre-40S and pre-60S subunits and involved in regulating rRNA transcription and ribosome biogenesis. Perturbation of RRP15 induces nucleolar stress that activates RPL5/RPL11/5S rRNA (RP)-Mdm2-p53 axis checkpoint response and arrests cells at G1-G1/S in p53-proficient non-transformed RPE1 cells but not in p53-deficient HeLa and MCF7 tumor cells. Instead, p53-deficient HeLa and MCF7 cells with RRP15-dependent nucleolar stress enter S-phase with S-phase perturbation that activates ATR-Chk1- γH2AX axis DNA replication/damage checkpoint response, delaying S-G2/M progression and, ultimately, causing cell death. The selective checkpoint response, cell cycle inhibition and/or cytotoxicity induced by RRP15-dependent nucleolar stress in p53-proficient non-transformed cells and p53-deficient tumor cells suggest that RRP15 might be a potential target for cancer therapy.
Optimal Power and Resource Allocation For Half-Duplex Cooperative Multiple Access

Multiple access schemes in which the transmitting nodes are allowed to cooperate have the potential to provide higher quality of service than conventional schemes. In the class of half-duplex pairwise cooperative multiple access schemes in which channel state information is available at the transmitters, the allocation of transmission power and communication resources plays a key role in the realization of these quality of service gains. In this paper we propose a half-duplex cooperative multiple access scheme and develop an efficient algorithm for the joint allocation of power and the communication resources. We demonstrate that the new scheme can attain a significantly larger fraction of the achievable rate region for the full duplex case than an existing scheme that does not employ resource allocation.
Eye Based Authentication : Iris and Retina Recognition

Biometric authentication comes in play to release the users from the difficulties of remembering and protecting passwords as required by traditional authentication systems. Among all the biometrics in use today, eye biometrics (iris and retina) offers the highest level of uniqueness, universality, permanence, and accuracy. Despite these convincing properties of iris and retina biometrics, they have not been in widespread use. Moreover, humans have more or less a natural ability to recognize individuals staring at the person’s eye. So, it is interesting to investigate to what extent the eye based biometrics (iris and retina recognition) are capable of distinguishing individuals, and what factors are there, which hinder the adoption of these technologies. This report presents a comparative study on iris and retina biometrics based on literature review. The study aims to investigate the two biometrics, conduct a comparative analysis in a fair level of technical detail, and identify the challenges and future possibilities towards their ubiquitous use. In presenting the findings, the study contributes in three ways: (1) This report may serve as a tutorial of eye biometric for those who are new in the area, (2) The comparison between iris and retina biometrics will be helpful for individuals and organizations in choosing the appropriate eye biometric for use in their context. (3) The technical, security, and usability issues identified by the study reveal avenue for further research in order to improve eye biometrics.
Coordinated exploration with marsupial teams of robots using temporal symbolic planning

The problem of autonomously exploring an environment with a team of robots received considerable attention in the past. However, there are relatively few approaches to coordinate teams of robots that are able to deploy and retrieve other robots. Efficiently coordinating the exploration with such marsupial robots requires advanced planning mechanisms that are able to consider symbolic deployment and retrieval actions. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for coordinating the exploration with marsupial robot teams. Our method integrates a temporal symbolic planner that explicitly considers deployment and retrieval actions with a traditional cost-based assignment procedure. Our approach has been implemented and evaluated in several simulated environments and with varying team sizes. The results demonstrate that our proposed method is able to coordinate marsupial teams of robots to efficiently explore unknown environments.
A Novel DTN Routing Algorithm in the GEO-Relaying Satellite Network

Disruption-Tolerant Networks provides store-and-forward enabled routing strategies for the satellite networks with frequently intermittent links. However, current dynamic route selection algorithm (DRSA), including Contact Graph Routing (CGR) algorithm, could not find an end-to-end route over a serial of link segments with time-disjointed contacts. In this paper, we proposed a novel routing algorithm as expanding range route selection (ERRS), which could find the EDT-optimal route by searching at each snapshot of time-varying topology. The proposed algorithm is compared with DRSA on the Linux-based experimental platform with built-in ION (Interplanetary Overlay Networks) software. The results show our algorithm has less delivery time and the obviously improved throughput of the network.
Cryptographically-Sound Protocol-Model Abstractions

We present a formal theory for cryptographically-sound theorem proving. Our starting point is the Backes-Pfitzmann-Waidner (BPW) model, which is a symbolic protocol model that is cryptographically sound in the sense of blackbox reactive simulatability. To achieve cryptographic soundness, this model is substantially more complex than standard symbolic models and the main challenge in formalizing and using this model is overcoming this complexity. We present a series of cryptographically-sound abstractions of the original BPW model that bring it much closer to standard Dolev-Yao style models. We present a case study showing that our abstractions enable proofs of complexity comparable to those based on more standard models. Our entire development has been formalized in Isabelle/HOL.
Low Vitamin D Levels Do Not Predict Hyperglycemia in Elderly Endurance Athletes (but in Controls)

Background and Aim Recent studies revealed a link between hypovitaminosis D3 and the risk for hyperglycemia. Further mechanistic and interventional investigations suggested a common reason for both conditions rather than a causal relationship. Exposure to sunlight is the most relevant source of vitamin D3 (25(OH)D), whereas adipose tissue is able to store relevant amounts of the lipophilic vitamin. Since running/bicycling leads to increased out-door time and alters physiological response mechanisms, it can be hypothesized that the correlation between hypovitaminosis D3 and hyperglycemia might be disturbed in outdoor athletes. Methods 47 elderly marathoners/bicyclists and 47 age/sex matched controls were studied in a longitudinal setting at baseline and after three years. HbA1c as a surrogate for (pre-)diabetic states was quantified via HPLC, 25(OH)D levels were measured by means of chemiluminescent assays. Physical performance was assessed by ergometry. Results When adjusted for seasonal variations, 25(OH)D was significantly higher in athletes than in controls. 25(OH)D levels inversely correlated with triglycerides in both groups, whereas only in controls an association between high BMI or low physical performance with hypovitaminosis D3 had been found. Likewise, the presence of hypovitaminosis D3 at baseline successfully predicted hyperglycemia at the follow up examinations within the control group (AUC = 0.85, 95% CI [0.74, 0.96], p < .001, statistically independent from BMI), but not in athletes. Conclusion Our data suggest that mechanisms of HbA1c elevation might differ between athletes and controls. Thus, intense physical activity must be taken into account as a potential pre-analytic confounder when it is aimed to predict metabolic risk by vitamin D3 levels.