Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial stimulus-response compatibility and affordance effects are not ruled by the same mechanisms

Stimulus position is coded even if it is task-irrelevant, leading to faster response times when the stimulus and the response locations are compatible (spatial Stimulus–Response Compatibility–spatial SRC). Faster responses are also found when the handle of a visual object and the response hand are located on the same side; this is known as affordance effect (AE). Two contrasting accounts for AE have been classically proposed. One is focused on the recruitment of appropriate grasping actions on the object handle, and the other on the asymmetry in the object shape, which in turn would cause a handle-hand correspondence effect (CE). In order to disentangle these two accounts, we investigated the possible transfer of practice in a spatial SRC task executed with a S–R incompatible mapping to a subsequent affordance task in which objects with either their intact handle or a broken one were used. The idea was that using objects with broken handles should prevent the recruitment of motor information relative to object grasping, whereas practice transfer should prevent object asymmetry in driving handle-hand CE. A total of three experiments were carried out. In Experiment 1 participants underwent an affordance task in which common graspable objects with their intact or broken handle were used. In Experiments 2 and 3, the affordance task was preceded by a spatial SRC task in which an incompatible S–R mapping was used. Inter-task delays of 5 or 30 min were employed to assess the duration of transfer effect. In Experiment 2 objects with their intact handle were presented, whereas in Experiment 3 the same objects had their handle broken. Although objects with intact and broken handles elicited a handle-hand CE in Experiment 1, practice transfer from an incompatible spatial SRC to the affordance task was found in Experiment 3 (broken-handle objects), but not in Experiment 2 (intact-handle objects). Overall, this pattern of results indicate that both object asymmetry and the activation of motor information contribute to the generation of the handle-hand CE effect, and that the handle AE cannot be reduced to a SRC effect.
Monitoring Response and Resistance to the Novel Arsenical Darinaparsin in an AML Patient

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with inversion of chromosome 3 is characterized by overexpression of EVI1 and carries a dismal prognosis. Arsenic-containing compounds have been described to be efficacious in malignancies overexpressing EVI1. Here, we describe a case of AML with inv(3)(q21q26.2) treated with the organic arsenical darinaparsin. Using a “personalized medicine approach,” two different arsenicals were screened for anti-leukemic effect against the patient’s cells ex vivo. The most promising compound, darinaparsin, was selected for in vivo treatment. Clinical effect was almost immediate, with a normalization of temperature, a stabilization of white blood cell (WBC) counts and an increased quality of life. Longitudinal monitoring of patient response and resistance incorporating significant correlative studies on patient-derived blood samples over the two cycles of darinaparsin given to this patient allowed us to evaluate potential mechanisms of response and resistance. The anti-leukemic effects of darinaparsin correlated with inhibition of the alternative NF-κB pathway and production of the inflammatory cytokine IL-8. Emergence of resistance was suspected during treatment cycle 2 and supported by xenograft studies in nude mice. Darinaparsin resistance correlated with an attenuation of the effect of treatment on the alternative NF-κB pathway. The results from this patient indicate that darinaparsin may be a good treatment option for inv(3) AML and that inhibition of the alternative NF-κB pathway may be predictive of response. Longitudinal monitoring of disease response as well as several correlative parameters allowed for the generation of novel correlations and predictors of response to experimental therapy in a heavily pretreated patient.
No substitute for real data: phylogenies from birth-death polytomy resolvers should not be used for many downstream comparative analyses

The statistical estimation of phylogenies is always associated with uncertainty, and accommodating this uncertainty is an important component of modern phylogenetic comparative analysis. The birth-death polytomy resolver is a method of accounting for phylogenetic uncertainty that places missing (unsampled) taxa onto phylogenetic trees, using taxonomic information alone. Recent studies of birds and mammals have used this approach to generate pseudo-posterior distributions of phylogenetic trees that are complete at the species level, even in the absence of genetic data for many species. Many researchers have used these distributions of phylogenies for downstream evolutionary analyses that involve inferences on phenotypic evolution, geography, and community assembly. I demonstrate that the use of phylogenies constructed in this fashion is inappropriate for many questions involving traits. Because species are placed on trees at random with respect to trait values, the birth-death polytomy resolver breaks down natural patterns of trait phylogenetic structure. Inferences based on these trees are predictably and often drastically biased in a direction that depends on the underlying (true) pattern of phylogenetic structure in traits. I illustrate the severity of the phenomenon for both continuous and discrete traits using examples from a global bird phylogeny.
Entrepreneurial Regions: Do Macro-Psychological Cultural Characteristics of Regions Help Solve the “Knowledge Paradox” of Economics?

In recent years, modern economies have shifted away from being based on physical capital and towards being based on new knowledge (e.g., new ideas and inventions). Consequently, contemporary economic theorizing and key public policies have been based on the assumption that resources for generating knowledge (e.g., education, diversity of industries) are essential for regional economic vitality. However, policy makers and scholars have discovered that, contrary to expectations, the mere presence of, and investments in, new knowledge does not guarantee a high level of regional economic performance (e.g., high entrepreneurship rates). To date, this “knowledge paradox” has resisted resolution. We take an interdisciplinary perspective to offer a new explanation, hypothesizing that “hidden” regional culture differences serve as a crucial factor that is missing from conventional economic analyses and public policy strategies. Focusing on entrepreneurial activity, we hypothesize that the statistical relation between knowledge resources and entrepreneurial vitality (i.e., high entrepreneurship rates) in a region will depend on “hidden” regional differences in entrepreneurial culture. To capture such “hidden” regional differences, we derive measures of entrepreneurship-prone culture from two large personality datasets from the United States (N = 935,858) and Great Britain (N = 417,217). In both countries, the findings were consistent with the knowledge-culture-interaction hypothesis. A series of nine additional robustness checks underscored the robustness of these results. Naturally, these purely correlational findings cannot provide direct evidence for causal processes, but the results nonetheless yield a remarkably consistent and robust picture in the two countries. In doing so, the findings raise the idea of regional culture serving as a new causal candidate, potentially driving the knowledge paradox; such an explanation would be consistent with research on the psychological characteristics of entrepreneurs.
Performance evaluation of smart grid communications via network simulation version 3

In this paper, we simulate the smart grid communications from network by data concentrator unit (DCU) to advance metering infrastructure (AMI) by using network simulation version 3. Three well-known communication technologies including ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Long Term Evolution (LTE) are considered under smart grid protocol standard that is DLMS/COSEM. Due to recommendations of existing work on ZigBee deployment, we set the parameters on experiment based on those recommendations in order to evaluate its performance under several conditions. In details, several factors are evaluated including DCU location, the number of AMIs and the pattern of data connection in smart grid systems.
A comparison of posture and muscle activity during tablet computer, desktop computer and paper use by young children

Computers are now widely used by children. Tablet computers are becoming widely available and promoted for use by school children. The primary objective of this study was to compare the posture and muscle activity of children using a tablet computer to the posture and muscle activity of children using a desktop computer and paper technology. Eighteen children (mean age 5.6 years) performed a colouring-in task in tablet, desktop and paper conditions. 3-D posture and muscle activity around the neck and shoulder was assessed. Tablet computer use was similar to paper use, with less neutral spinal posture, more elevated scapular posture and greater upper trapezius and cervical erector spinae activity. This was offset by greater variability of posture and muscle activity. Tablet computer use clearly results in different musculoskeletal stresses than desktop computer use. Computer use guidelines need to be appropriate to traditional and emerging technologies. Tablet computers are being promoted for use by adults and children. However, the physical impact of using this type of technology is not known. The findings of this study provide the first tablet-specific evidence to inform guidelines on wise use of tablet computers by children.
Application of centrality measures of complex network framework in power grid

The classical definitions of various centrality measures are modified to incorporate electrical parameters of the power grid. In this paper three distinct measures of centrality are presented and they are described with suitable examples. The usefulness of these measures are described. Various standard test systems are simulated to find critical nodes of the system. Complex network is a new area of research in power system. Simulation of several systems suggests that the definitions proposed in this paper can be used as a standard.
Comparison of Digital Filter Design Methods for 3-D Sound

In this paper, we will compare filter design methods for binaural and transaural processing. Most of the HRTF filter design techniques use a linear frequency scale approach with additional weighting functions in some cases. The human ear, however, processes the auditory information according to a nonuniform critical band frequency resolution. We have presented new methods for HRTF filter design using auditory criteria [1]. These methods are evaluated and compared with traditional design techniques. Results of the study are applicable to real-time auralization tasks where computational efficiency is at its most important.
Metabolomic Profiling in Perinatal Asphyxia: A Promising New Field

Metabolomics, the latest “omic” technology, is defined as the comprehensive study of all low molecular weight biochemicals, “metabolites” present in an organism. As a systems biology approach, metabolomics has huge potential to progress our understanding of perinatal asphyxia and neonatal hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy, by uniquely detecting rapid biochemical pathway alterations in response to the hypoxic environment. The study of metabolomic biomarkers in the immediate neonatal period is not a trivial task and requires a number of specific considerations, unique to this disease and population. Recruiting a clearly defined cohort requires standardised multicentre recruitment with broad inclusion criteria and the participation of a range of multidisciplinary staff. Minimally invasive biospecimen collection is a priority for biomarker discovery. Umbilical cord blood presents an ideal medium as large volumes can be easily extracted and stored and the sample is not confounded by postnatal disease progression. Pristine biobanking and phenotyping are essential to ensure the validity of metabolomic findings. This paper provides an overview of the current state of the art in the field of metabolomics in perinatal asphyxia and neonatal hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy. We detail the considerations required to ensure high quality sampling and analysis, to support scientific progression in this important field.
Depth-Aware Video Abstraction

In this paper, we present a novel depth-aware abstraction approach for videos. By introducing the additional depth cues, our approach is able to enhance the depth perception of the artistic-abstraction video. We first recover consistent depth information from the input video using multiview stereo and energy optimization algorithm. Then, the coherent line is extracted by employing the an isotropic difference-of-Gaussians filter, and the Gaussian Kuwahara filter is further employed to produce the effect of artistic-abstraction. Finally, the depth aware video artistic-abstraction is achieved by unsharp masking the consistent video depth. Our algorithm is effective for artistically representing the depth perception of artistic abstraction video. Experimental results on a variety of videos show that the proposed approach successfully produces a visually satisfying depth perception for the artistic-abstraction video.
A queue theory-based approach to staff software maintenance centers

The Internet and WEB pervasivenesses are changing the landscape of several different areas, ranging from information gathering/managing and commerce to software development, maintenance and evolution. Software companies having a geographically distributed structure, or geographically distributed customers, are adopting information communication technologies to cooperate. Communication technologies and infrastructures allow the companies to create a virtual software factory. This paper proposes to adopt queue theory to deal with an economically relevant category of problems: the staffing, the process management and the service level evaluation of massive maintenance projects in a virtual software factory. Data from a massive corrective maintenance intervention were used to simulate and study different service center configurations, in particular, a monolithic configuration and a configuration corresponding to a multi-phase maintenance process where several maintenance centers cooperated. Queue theory allowed effective control of the process supporting project management decisions. The mathematical tool provided a means to assess staffing, evaluate service level and balance the workload between maintenance centers while executing the project.
Induction motor's broken bars detection by using Stockwell transform

This paper presents a Stockwell transform-based method for processing starting angular speed data from an induction motor and transforming it into some forms that are useful for fault detection and diagnostics of rotor broken bars. The proposed method generates angular speed frequency-time spectrum that is dependent to the number of rotor broken bars and of the motor load level. The angular speed signal energy, the amplitude of its spectral component with the highest frequency and the amplitude-time diagrams of its spectral components are analyzed as number of broken rotor bars indicators. The results are obtained by simulation in Matlab/Simulink of a faulty induction motor.
Subword lexical modelling for speech recognition

In this work, we introduce and develop a novel framework, scANGIE, for modelling subword lexical phenomena in speech recognition. Our framework provides a flexible and powerful mechanism for capturing morphology, syllabification, phonology, and other subword effects in a hierarchical manner which maximizes sharing of subword structures. A scNGIE models the subword structure within a context-free grammar and an accompanying probability model. We believe that our framework has several advantages: The sharing mechanism allows training data to be pooled amongst instances of the same word substructure even when they occur across different words in the lexicon. Further, knowledge of this substructure can be extended to filler models in a word-spotter, new words added incrementally to a recognizer's vocabulary, and potentially in support of new word detection. The context-free foundation allows for ease of research and experimentation with varying subword representations, and also facilitates integration with a natural language understanding system. Finally, the availability of subword structural information in a recognition system enables exploration of prosodic models which use this information. In this thesis, we demonstrate scANGIE's feasibility and efficacy in a variety of applications. Using scATIS corpus data, we show that scANGIE results in performance improvements on phonetic recognition, reducing error rate from 39.8% to 36.1% as compared to a phone bigram baseline. We show its competitiveness in the task of word-spotting, where we also report on a comparative study of different subword lexical models for the filler space. The FOM results ranged from 85.3 for a phone bigram to 89.3 for a system using the full scANGIE parse tree and a lexicon of 1200 words. We also discuss an implementation of a competitive continuous speech recognition system based on scANGIE, which achieves a recognition error rate of 18.8% on our test set as compared to a baseline error rate of 18.9%, both using a word bigram. Finally, we explore the integration of scANGIE with a natural language understanding system, resulting in a fully coupled system, based on context-free frameworks for both phonological and linguistic modelling. The integrated system achieves a recognition error rate of 14.8% on the same test, an improvement of 21.6%. We will also discuss two pilot studies, one on handling dynamic vocabulary updates within a continuous speech recognizer and the second on hierarchical duration modelling within a word-spotter. Both studies showed promising results. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.)
Modeling genetic algorithms with interacting particle systems

We present in this work a natural Interacting Particle System (IPS) approach for modeling and studying the asymptotic behavior of Genetic Algorithms (GAs). In this model, a population is seen as a distribution (or measure) on the search space, and the Genetic Algorithm as a measure valued dynamical system. This model allows one to apply recent convergence results from the IPS literature for studying the convergence of genetic algorithms when the size of the population tends to infinity. We first review a number of approaches to Genetic Algorithms modeling and related convergence results. We then describe a general and abstract discrete time Interacting Particle System model for GAs, and we propose a brief review of some recent asymptotic results about the convergence of the N -IPS approximating model (of finite N -sized-population GAs) towards the IPS model (of infinite population GAs), including law of large number theorems, IL p -mean and exponential bounds as well as large deviations principles. Finally, the impact of modeling Genetic Algorithms with our interacting particle system approach is detailed on different classes of generic genetic algorithms including mutation, cross-over and proportionate selection. We explore the connections between Feynman-Kac distribution flows and the simple genetic algorithm. This Feynman-Kac representation of the infinite population model is then used to develop asymptotic stability and uniform convergence results with respect to the time parameter. Keywords: Genetic algorithms, Interacting particle systems, asymptotical convergence, Feynman-Kac formula, measure valued processes.
Is Routine Central Neck Dissection Necessary for the Treatment of Papillary Thyroid Microcarcinoma?

Objectives It remains unclear as to whether routine central neck dissection (CND) is necessary when performing surgery to treat patients with papillary thyroid microcarcinoma (PTMC). To determine the necessity for routine CND in PTMC patients, we reviewed the clinicopathologic and laboratory data of the patients of PTMC. Methods Between September 2001 and July 2005, 101 patients with PTMC and clinical N0 disease were retrospectively reviewed. The study cohort was devided into groups: the total thyroidectomy plus CND group (the CND group, N=48) and the total thyroidectomy without CND group (the no CND group, N=53). The serum stimulated thyroglobulin (Tg) levels were measured after surgery and prior to radioactive iodine ablation therapy (RAI) and at 6-12 months after RAI. Pathology, the Tg levels and recurrence data were compared between the 2 groups. Results Central nodal metastases were found in 18 of the 48 CND patients (37.5%). The incidence of Tg levels >5 ng/mL at RAI was higher in the no CND patients and in the 18 node-positive CND patients compared with the 30 node-negative CND patients (22-24% vs. 3%, respectively, P=0.020-0.058). The difference when performing a similar comparison using a >2 ng/mL Tg threshold level showed no significance (10-11% vs. 4%, respectively, P>0.1). Two of the no CND patients and one node-positive CND patient had recurrences in the thyroid bed or lateral neck during a mean follow-up of 24 months. Conclusion The data showed that occult metastasis to the central neck is common in PTMC patients. A CND provides pathologic information about the nodal metastases, and it potentially provides guidance for planning the postoperative RAI. However, the long-term benefit of CND on recurrence and survival remains somewhat questionable.
Sustained Diurnal Stimulation of Cyclic Electron Flow in Two Tropical Tree Species Erythrophleum guineense and Khaya ivorensis

The photosystem II (PSII) activity of C3 plants is usually inhibited at noon associated with high light but can be repaired fast in the afternoon. However, the diurnal variation of photosystem I (PSI) activity is unknown. Although, cyclic electron flow (CEF) has been documented as an important mechanism for photosynthesis, the diurnal variation of CEF in sun leaves is little known. We determined the diurnal changes in PSI and PSII activities, light energy dissipation in PSII and the P700 redox state in two tropical tree species Erythrophleum guineense and Khaya ivorensis grown in an open field. The PSI activity (as indicated by the maximum quantity of photo-oxidizable P700) was maintained stable during the daytime. CEF was strongly activated under high light at noon, accompanying with high levels of non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) and PSI oxidation ratio. In the afternoon, CEF was maintained at a relatively high level under low light, which was accompanied with low levels of NPQ and P700 oxidation ratio. These results indicated that CEF was flexibly modulated during daytime under fluctuating light conditions. Under high light at noon, CEF-dependent generation of proton gradient across the thylakoid membranes (ΔpH) mainly contributed to photoprotection for PSI and PSII. By comparison, at low light in the afternoon, the CEF-dependent formation of ΔpH may be important for PSII repair via an additional ATP synthesis.
Copula based Dynamic Hedging Strategy with Futures

We present in this paper a dynamic hedging strategy for futures based exclusively on copula functions. We develop an algorithm based on numerical simulations from estimated copula and marginal probability function to obtain innovations. We illustrate our approach through an empirical example with Crude Oil and Gold. OLS static estimate showed itself improper and the proposed algorithm obtained very good results in spot/future variance reduction strategy.