Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of spinal cord motor function in Alzheimer's disease using electrophysiological techniques indicates association of acetylcholine receptors with the disease.

AIMS This study is to evaluate the spinal cord motor function in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHODS In this study, 40 patients were diagnosed to have AD. The stages of dementia were evaluated using Mini Mental State Examination and Activity of Daily Living scale. According to the levels of movement disturbances, the patient group was further divided into dyskinesia subgroup (14 cases) and non-dyskinesia subgroup (26 cases). In addition, 45 age-matched healthy volunteers were included into the control group. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to evaluate motor function in the whole motor conduction pathway from motor cortex to target muscles. Electrophysiological studies were used to analyze the pyramidal tract and anterior horn neurons of the spinal cord. RESULTS The mean duration of F waves was prolonged, while no significant differences were found between AD patients and control subjects in parameters such as spinal cord motor conduction velocity, amplitude of motor-evoked potential, F-wave persistence, minimal latency of F-waves and maximal amplitude of F-waves. These data indicated that the excitability of the spinal cord was increased, and the number and function of pyramidal tract and anterior horn cells were integral. CONCLUSIONS The primary mechanism of AD is probably associated with acetylcholine receptors that may participate in the formation of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. These findings may provide new therapeutic targets for the treatment of AD.
Maximum likelihood estimation of cascade point-process neural encoding models

Recent work has examined the estimation of models of stimulus-driven neural activity in which some linear filtering process is followed by a nonlinear, probabilistic spiking stage. We analyze the estimation of one such model for which this nonlinear step is implemented by a known parametric function; the assumption that this function is known speeds the estimation process considerably. We investigate the shape of the likelihood function for this type of model, give a simple condition on the nonlinearity ensuring that no non-global local maxima exist in the likelihood—leading, in turn, to efficient algorithms for the computation of the maximum likelihood estimator—and discuss the implications for the form of the allowed nonlinearities. Finally, we note some interesting connections between the likelihood-based estimators and the classical spike-triggered average estimator, discuss some useful extensions of the basic model structure, and provide two novel applications to physiological data.
Continuous field measurements of δ13C–CO2 and trace gases by FTIR spectroscopy

Continuous analysis of the 13C/12C ratio of atmospheric CO2 (δ13C–CO2) is a powerful tool to quantify CO2 flux strengths of the two major ecosystem processes assimilation and respiration. Traditional laboratory techniques such as isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) in combination with flask sampling are subject to technical limitations that do not allow to fully characterising variations of atmospheric δ13C–CO2 at all relevant timescales. In our study, we demonstrate the strength of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy in combination with a PLS-based calibration strategy for online analysis of δ13C–CO2 in ambient air. The ability of the instrument to measure δ13C–CO2 was tested on a grassland field-site and compared with standard laboratory-based IRMS measurements made on field-collected flask samples. Both methods were in excellent agreement, with an average difference of 0.4‰ (n=81). Simultaneously, other important trace gases such as CO, N2O and CH4 were analysed by FTIR spectroscopy.
Federated Optimization: Distributed Optimization Beyond the Datacenter

We introduce a new and increasingly relevant setting for distributed optimization in machine learning, where the data defining the optimization are distributed (unevenly) over an extremely large number of \nodes, but the goal remains to train a high-quality centralized model. We refer to this setting as Federated Optimization. In this setting, communication efficiency is of utmost importance. A motivating example for federated optimization arises when we keep the training data locally on users' mobile devices rather than logging it to a data center for training. Instead, the mobile devices are used as nodes performing computation on their local data in order to update a global model. We suppose that we have an extremely large number of devices in our network, each of which has only a tiny fraction of data available totally; in particular, we expect the number of data points available locally to be much smaller than the number of devices. Additionally, since different users generate data with different patterns, we assume that no device has a representative sample of the overall distribution. We show that existing algorithms are not suitable for this setting, and propose a new algorithm which shows encouraging experimental results. This work also sets a path for future research needed in the context of federated optimization.
Error Analysis of a Continuous-Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element Method for Generalized 2D Vorticity Dynamics

A detailed a priori error estimate is provided for a continuous-discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for the generalized two-dimensional vorticity dynamics equations. These equations describe several types of geophysical flows, including the Euler equations. The algorithm consists of a continuous Galerkin finite element method for the stream function and a discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for the (potential) vorticity. Since this algorithm satisfies a number of invariants, such as energy and enstrophy conservation, it is possible to provide detailed error estimates for this nonlinear problem. The main result of the analysis is a reduction in the smoothness requirements on the vorticity field from $H^2(\Omega)$, obtained in a previous analysis, to $W^r_p(\Omega)$ with $r> \frac{1}{p}$ and $p>2$. In addition, sharper estimates for the dependence of the error on time and numerical examples on a model problem are provided.
Recitation: Rehearsing Wireless Packet Reception in Software

This paper presents Recitation, the first software system that uses lightweight channel state information (CSI) to accurately predict error-prone bit positions in a packet so that applications atop the wireless physical layer may take the best action during subsequent transmissions. Our key insight is that although Wi-Fi wireless physical layer operations are complex, they are deterministic. This enables us to rehearse physical-layer operations on packet bits before they are transmitted. Based on this rehearsal, we calculate a hidden parameter in the decoding process, called error event probability (EVP). EVP captures fine-grained information about the receiver's convolutional or LDPC decoder, allowing Recitation to derive precise information about the likely fate of every bit in subsequent packets, without any wireless channel training. Recitation is the first system of its kind that is both software-implementable and compatible with the existing 802.11 architecture for both SISO and MIMO settings. We experiment with commodity Atheros 9580 Wi-Fi NICs to demonstrate Recitation's utility with three representative applications in static, mobile, and interference-dominated scenarios. We show that Recitation achieves 33.8% and 16% average throughput gains for bit-rate adaptation and partial packet recovery, respectively, and 6 dB PSNR quality improvement for unequal error protection-based video.
PUF Modeling Attacks on Simulated and Silicon Data

We discuss numerical modeling attacks on several proposed strong physical unclonable functions (PUFs). Given a set of challenge-response pairs (CRPs) of a Strong PUF, the goal of our attacks is to construct a computer algorithm which behaves indistinguishably from the original PUF on almost all CRPs. If successful, this algorithm can subsequently impersonate the Strong PUF, and can be cloned and distributed arbitrarily. It breaks the security of any applications that rest on the Strong PUF's unpredictability and physical unclonability. Our method is less relevant for other PUF types such as Weak PUFs. The Strong PUFs that we could attack successfully include standard Arbiter PUFs of essentially arbitrary sizes, and XOR Arbiter PUFs, Lightweight Secure PUFs, and Feed-Forward Arbiter PUFs up to certain sizes and complexities. We also investigate the hardness of certain Ring Oscillator PUF architectures in typical Strong PUF applications. Our attacks are based upon various machine learning techniques, including a specially tailored variant of logistic regression and evolution strategies. Our results are mostly obtained on CRPs from numerical simulations that use established digital models of the respective PUFs. For a subset of the considered PUFs-namely standard Arbiter PUFs and XOR Arbiter PUFs-we also lead proofs of concept on silicon data from both FPGAs and ASICs. Over four million silicon CRPs are used in this process. The performance on silicon CRPs is very close to simulated CRPs, confirming a conjecture from earlier versions of this work. Our findings lead to new design requirements for secure electrical Strong PUFs, and will be useful to PUF designers and attackers alike.
Modelling issues in vision based aircraft navigation during landing

This paper investigates the the feasibility of using visual and infrared imaging sensors to aid in the location of the aircraft position during operations such as landing in bad weather. The choice of the airport model used is crucial to algorithms which are used for position estimation based on pattern recognition. In this paper we describe the effects the choice of a model has on the behaviour of such matching algorithms. Three basic models are chosen: a line segment based model, an area based model and a texture based model. It is seen that a sparse line segment based model is not adequate to identify the runway since it matches a number of false artifacts in the image. An enhanced line segment based model containing a large number of features compares favourably with the area based model. The texture based model is seen to need a number of camera and weather dependent parameters and the performance of such a scheme is not seen to be substantially better. Thus either a proper area based model or a pseudo-area based model (based on a very large number of line features) can be seen to provide the best performance for such landmark identification and position determination algorithms. <<ETX>>
An online approach: Learning-Semantic-Scene-by-Tracking and Tracking-by-Learning-Semantic-Scene

Learning the knowledge of scene structure and tracking a large number of targets are both active topics of computer vision in recent years, which plays a crucial role in surveillance, activity analysis, object classification and etc. In this paper, we propose a novel system which simultaneously performs the Learning-Semantic-Scene and Tracking, and makes them supplement each other in one framework. The trajectories obtained by the tracking are utilized to continually learn and update the scene knowledge via an online un-supervised learning. On the other hand, the learned knowledge of scene in turn is utilized to supervise and improve the tracking results. Therefore, this “adaptive learning-tracking loop” can not only perform the robust tracking in high density crowd scene, dynamically update the knowledge of scene structure and output semantic words, but also ensures that the entire process is completely automatic and online. We successfully applied the proposed system into the JR subway station of Tokyo, which can dynamically obtain the semantic scene structure and robustly track more than 150 targets at the same time.
An Introduction to Duplicate Detection

With the ever increasing volume of data, data quality problems abound. Multiple, yet different representations of the same real-world objects in data, duplicates, are one of the most intriguing data quality problems. The effects of such duplicates are detrimental; for instance, bank customers can obtain duplicate identities, inventory levels are monitored incorrectly, catalogs are mailed multiple times to the same household, etc. Automatically detecting duplicates is difficult: First, duplicate representations are usually not identical but slightly differ in their values. Second, in principle all pairs of records should be compared, which is infeasible for large volumes of data. This lecture examines closely the two main components to overcome these difficulties: (i) Similarity measures are used to automatically identify duplicates when comparing two records. Well-chosen similarity measures improve the effectiveness of duplicate detection. (ii) Algorithms are developed to perform on very large volumes of data in search for duplicates. Well-designed algorithms improve the efficiency of duplicate detection. Finally, we discuss methods to evaluate the success of duplicate detection. Table of Contents: Data Cleansing: Introduction and Motivation / Problem Definition / Similarity Functions / Duplicate Detection Algorithms / Evaluating Detection Success / Conclusion and Outlook / Bibliography
Delay Analysis of Timer-Based Frame Coalescing in Energy Efficient Ethernet

IEEE 802.3az, also known as Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE), aims at reducing the energy consumption of an Ethernet link by placing it in sleep mode when the link is idle. Frame coalescing mechanism proposed for EEE is an effective means to increase the average idle time of the link, thus reducing the overhead stemming from sleep/wake transitions, but at the expense of increased frame delays. Therefore, it is imperative to quantify the energy-delay trade-off while employing frame coalescing. As opposed to existing delay models that focus only on the average delays, a simple but exact queuing model is introduced for timer-based frame coalescing to find the delay distribution when the frame arrival process is Poisson and frame lengths are generally distributed. An expression for average saving in power consumption is also provided.
Database techniques for the World-Wide Web: a survey

The popularity of the World-Wide Web (WWW) has made it a prime vehicle for disseminating information. The relevance of database concepts to the problems of managing and querying this information has led to a significant body of recent research addressing these problems. Even though the underlying challenge is the one that has been traditionally addressed by the database community how to manage large volumes of data the novel context of the WWW forces us to significantly extend previous techniques. The primary goal of this survey is to classify the different tasks to which database concepts have been applied, and to emphasize the technical innovations that were required to do so.
Pronounced Fixation, Strong Population Differentiation and Complex Population History in the Canary Islands Blue Tit Subspecies Complex

Evolutionary molecular studies of island radiations may lead to insights in the role of vicariance, founder events, population size and drift in the processes of population differentiation. We evaluate the degree of population genetic differentiation and fixation of the Canary Islands blue tit subspecies complex using microsatellite markers and aim to get insights in the population history using coalescence based methods. The Canary Island populations were strongly genetically differentiated and had reduced diversity with pronounced fixation including many private alleles. In population structure models, the relationship between the central island populations (La Gomera, Tenerife and Gran Canaria) and El Hierro was difficult to disentangle whereas the two European populations showed consistent clustering, the two eastern islands (Fuerteventura and Lanzarote) and Morocco weak clustering, and La Palma a consistent unique lineage. Coalescence based models suggested that the European mainland forms an outgroup to the Afrocanarian population, a split between the western island group (La Palma and El Hierro) and the central island group, and recent splits between the three central islands, and between the two eastern islands and Morocco, respectively. It is clear that strong genetic drift and low level of concurrent gene flow among populations have shaped complex allelic patterns of fixation and skewed frequencies over the archipelago. However, understanding the population history remains challenging; in particular, the pattern of extreme divergence with low genetic diversity and yet unique genetic material in the Canary Island system requires an explanation. A potential scenario is population contractions of a historically large and genetically variable Afrocanarian population, with vicariance and drift following in the wake. The suggestion from sequence-based analyses of a Pleistocene extinction of a substantial part of North Africa and a Pleistocene/Holocene eastward re-colonisation of western North Africa from the Canaries remains possible.
A Genome based Vision of Multi-agent Systems

A set of software agents can be programmed to provide a large but finite set of services, often defined during design phase. After an evolution of the external environment, the pre-defined services could be unable to satisfy the requested quality. In this work it is proposed an agent framework capable to adapt the agents in order to improve the quality of services provided by an agent society in correspondence with a modification of the external environment. These agents are based on a biologically inspired structure (genome), that defines all their behaviors and knowledges. The effectiveness of the approach is proved by a set of successful experimental results.
A Tryptophan-Rich Motif in the Human Parainfluenza Virus Type 2 V Protein Is Critical for the Blockade of Toll-Like Receptor 7 (TLR7)- and TLR9-Dependent Signaling

ABSTRACT Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) do not produce alpha interferon (IFN-α) unless viruses cause a systemic infection or overcome the first-line defense provided by conventional DCs and macrophages. We show here that even paramyxoviruses, whose infections are restricted to the respiratory tract, have a V protein able to prevent Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7)- and TLR9-dependent IFN-α induction specific to pDCs. Mutational analysis of human parainfluenza virus type 2 demonstrates that the second Trp residue of the Trp-rich motif (Trp-X3-Trp-X9-Trp) in the C-terminal domain unique to V, a determinant for IRF7 binding, is critical for the blockade of TLR7/9-dependent signaling.
A Combined Memory-Based Semantic Role Labeler of English

A PWM solenoid operated valve control (42) arrangement which substantially eliminates supply voltage (70) dependent variability of the valve (30-40) without the expense or inefficiency of a conventional voltage regulator. The coil of the solenoid valve is pulse-width-modulated in relation to the commanded output result and the energization periods are submodulated in relation to the magnitude of the supply voltage. The effective voltage applied to the coil, and hence the operating characteristics of the solenoid valve, are thereby made substantially independent of supply voltage variations.
Higher DEFB4 genomic copy number in SLE and ANCA-associated small vasculitis.

OBJECTIVE Evidence shows that defensins are involved in the pathogenesis of SLE and ANCA-associated small vasculitis (AASV). The copy number variation of DEFB4 has been proposed to be susceptible to inflammatory disorders. This study aims to investigate whether the DEFB4 genomic copy number variations associate with the susceptibility to these two autoimmune diseases. METHODS A total of 1178 Chinese people were enrolled, including panel 1 comprising 240 SLE patients and 275 matched controls, panel 2 comprising 303 SLE patients and 248 matched controls and panel 3 with 112 AASV patients. The DEFB4 copy number was typed by a paralogue ratio test (PRT), and all the subjects in panel 1 were also typed using the restriction enzyme digest variant ratio (REDVR) for validation. RESULTS The results from PRT and REDVR were highly concordant (R = 0.911, P = 3.85 × 10(-199)) and allowed copy numbers to be assigned into integer classes with high confidence. Comparison of mean DEFB4 copy number revealed a small increase in cases with SLE both in Panel 1 (P = 0.063) and Panel 2 (P = 0.017). When pooling panels 1 and 2 together, the association was reinforced (P = 0.002) in SLE. Such association was also observed in AASV (P = 0.009). CONCLUSION We found that a higher DEFB4 gene copy number was associated with both SLE and AASV.
Ultraviolet irradiation of naphthalene in H2O ice: Implications for meteorites and biogenesis

Abstract— The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) naphthalene was exposed to ultraviolet radiation in H2O ice under astrophysical conditions, and the products were analyzed using infrared spectroscopy and high‐performance liquid chromatography. As we found in our earlier studies on the photoprocessing of coronene in H2O ice, aromatic alcohols and ketones (quinones) were formed. The regiochemistry of the reactions is described and leads to specific predictions of the relative abundances of various oxidized naphthalenes that should exist in meteorites if interstellar ice photochemistry influenced their aromatic inventory. Since oxidized PAHs are present in carbon‐rich meteorites and interplanetary dust particles (IDPs), and ubiquitous in and fundamental to biochemistry, the delivery of such extraterrestrial molecules to the early Earth may have played a role in the origin and evolution of life.
Explorando la distribución espacial colectiva en el baloncesto

Este estudio tuvo como objetivo analizar la distribucion espacial de los jugadores de acuerdo con la eficacia de las acciones de juego de baloncesto. Tres partidos oficiales de baloncesto, campeonato portugues U14, fueron filmados y despues analizados con el fin de seleccionar 10 secuencias de juego que terminaron en exito ofensivo o defensivo. Las trayectorias de los jugadores en la cancha fueron digitalizadas con el fin de acceder a sus coordenadas reales con software TACTO. Este procedimiento ha permitido calcular el numero de atacantes, defensores y ratio atacantes/defensores en cada uno de las siete areas de la cancha (A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7), sobre una base de momento a momento en toda la secuencia de juego. La distribucion espacial de los jugadores ha ocurrido en funcion de la posicion relativa a la canasta. En particular, la superioridad numerica defensiva en las zonas mas cercanas a la canasta (A3) se relaciono con una mayor eficacia ofensiva. Estos resultados sugieren que la interaccion entre constrenimientos, probablemente relacionados con la proximidad a la canasta, la ineficacia de las habilidades defensivas y la eficacia de la movilidad atacante pueden haber desencadenado patrones colectivos distintivos de distribucion espacial.