Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sex-related differences in the correlations for tactile temporal thresholds , interhemispheric transfer times , and nonverbal intelligence q

The relationship between sensory discrimination and individual differences in intelligence has received renewed attention. This study examined the relationship between tactile temporal thresholds (including interhemispheric transfer times) and nonverbal intelligence. A tactile temporal threshold refers to the longest temporal interval that separates the onsets of two tactile stimuli when they are judged by the observer as simultaneous. Interhemispheric transfer time refers to the amount of time it takes to transfer information between cerebral hemispheres. The findings revealed that women had significantly longer interhemispheric transfer times than men. Correlations between bimanual temporal measures, including interhemispheric transfer times, and nonverbal intelligence were significant for women, but not men. Although women and men perform similarly in general intelligence, these findings suggest that the corpus callosum may facilitate nonverbal performance in women, but not men. These results are congruent with other findings which suggest that men and women may rely on different brain regions even though they achieve similar results on intelligence tests. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 0191-8869/$ see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid. 2007.05. 016 q This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. * Corresponding author. Present address: Department of Clinical Neurosciences, 12 Floor, Foothills Medical Centre, 1403 29 Street N.W. , Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 2T9. Tel. : +1 403 220 3598. E-mail address: lnbrown@ucalgary.ca (L.N. Brown). 1734 K. Rostad et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 43 (2007) 1733–1743
Toucan: deciphering the cis-regulatory logic of coregulated genes.

TOUCAN is a Java application for the rapid discovery of significant cis-regulatory elements from sets of coexpressed or coregulated genes. Biologists can automatically (i) retrieve genes and intergenic regions, (ii) identify putative regulatory regions, (iii) score sequences for known transcription factor binding sites, (iv) identify candidate motifs for unknown binding sites, and (v) detect those statistically over-represented sites that are characteristic for a gene set. Genes or intergenic regions are retrieved from Ensembl or EMBL, together with orthologs and supporting information. Orthologs are aligned and syntenic regions are selected as candidate regulatory regions. Putative sites for known transcription factors are detected using our MotifScanner, which scores position weight matrices using a probabilistic model. New motifs are detected using our MotifSampler based on Gibbs sampling. Binding sites characteristic for a gene set--and thus statistically over-represented with respect to a reference sequence set--are found using a binomial test. We have validated Toucan by analyzing muscle-specific genes, liver-specific genes and E2F target genes; we have easily detected many known binding sites within intergenic DNA and identified new biologically plausible sites for known and unknown transcription factors. Software available at http://www.esat. kuleuven.ac. be/ approximately dna/BioI/Software.html.
Inversion of an integral transform and ladder representations of U(1,q)

An integral transform for G=U(1,q) is studied. The transform maps the positive spin ladder representations of G on a Bargmann-Segal-Fock space F_n^1,q into a space of polynomial-valued functions on the bounded realization B^q of G/K. An inversion is given for the transform and unitary structures are given for the geometric realization of the positive spin ladder representations over G/K.
Reliability and validity of the Meaningfulness of Songwriting Scale with university students taking a popular songwriting class

Abstract Background: Songwriting is emerging as a popular activity for use in therapeutic contexts suggested. Our study tested the properties of the Meaningfulness of Songwriting Scale (MSS) with university students studying songwriting, to determine its validity and reliability in measuring the extent of meaning derived from the songwriting process. Method: Participants completed the MSS, Short State Flow Scale, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale immediately following their creation and performance of an original song. Seven days later, participants completed the MSS second time. Results: Analyses were performed and findings indicated that the measure has good content validity, strong internal consistency, acceptable test–retest reliability, limits of agreement, measurement error, and discriminant validity. Convergent validity was weaker than the other measurement property results. Conclusions: The MMS has adequate measurement properties for use with university students and may be utilized to further our understanding of the process and outcomes of this emerging, and potentially highly beneficial, music therapy strategy. Future research should seek to further investigate the psychometric properties of these instruments across different populations and contexts.
Analysis of Epitopes on Dengue Virus Envelope Protein Recognized by Monoclonal Antibodies and Polyclonal Human Sera by a High Throughput Assay

Background The envelope (E) protein of dengue virus (DENV) is the major target of neutralizing antibodies and vaccine development. While previous studies on domain III or domain I/II alone have reported several epitopes of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against DENV E protein, the possibility of interdomain epitopes and the relationship between epitopes and neutralizing potency remain largely unexplored. Methodology/Principal Findings We developed a dot blot assay by using 67 alanine mutants of predicted surface-exposed E residues as a systematic approach to identify epitopes recognized by mAbs and polyclonal sera, and confirmed our findings using a capture-ELISA assay. Of the 12 mouse mAbs tested, three recognized a novel epitope involving residues (Q211, D215, P217) at the central interface of domain II, and three recognized residues at both domain III and the lateral ridge of domain II, suggesting a more frequent presence of interdomain epitopes than previously appreciated. Compared with mAbs generated by traditional protocols, the potent neutralizing mAbs generated by a new protocol recognized multiple residues in A strand or residues in C strand/CC′ loop of DENV2 and DENV1, and multiple residues in BC loop and residues in DE loop, EF loop/F strand or G strand of DENV1. The predominant epitopes of anti-E antibodies in polyclonal sera were found to include both fusion loop and non-fusion residues in the same or adjacent monomer. Conclusions/Significance Our analyses have implications for epitope-specific diagnostics and epitope-based dengue vaccines. This high throughput method has tremendous application for mapping both intra and interdomain epitopes recognized by human mAbs and polyclonal sera, which would further our understanding of humoral immune responses to DENV at the epitope level.
Predicting Post-Test Performance from Student Behavior: A High School MOOC Case Study

With the success and proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for college curricula, there is demand for adapting this modern mode of education for high school courses. Online and open courses have the potential to ﬁll a much needed gap in high school curricula, especially in ﬁelds such as computer science, where there is shortage of trained teachers nationwide. In this paper, we analyze student post-test performance to determine the success of a high school computer science MOOC. We empirically characterize student success by using students’ performance on the Advanced Placement (AP) exam, which we treat as a post test. This post-test performance is more indicative of long-term learning than course performance, and allows us to model the extent to which students have internalized course material. Additionally, we analyze and compare the performance of a subset of students who received in-person coaching at their high school, to those students who took the course independently. This comparison provides better understanding of the role of a teacher in a student’s learning. We build a predictive machine learning model, and use it to identify the key factors contributing to the success of online high school courses. Our analysis demonstrates that high schoolers can thrive in MOOCs.
Field-programmable gate arrays

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are integrated circuits, which constitute the “new kid in town’’ where digital hardware technology is concerned. An FPGA is an array of logic blocks (cells) placed in an infrastructure of interconnections, which can be programmed at three distinct levels (see Figure 1): (1) the function of the logic cells, (2) the interconnections between cells, and (3) the inputs and outputs. All three levels are configured via a string of bits that is loaded from an external source, either once or several times. In the latter case the FPGA is considered reconfigurable. FPGAs are highly versatile devices that offer the designer a wide range of design choices and options. However, this potential power necessitates a suite of tools in order to design a system. Essentially, these tools generate the configuration bit string, given such inputs as a logic diagram or a high-level functional description. Our focus here is on the hardware aspect of digital FPGAs; we shall not treat such issues as programming tools and analog FPGAs [4, 5]. FPGAs enable engineers to mitigate the effects entailed by the wellknown tradeoff in computing between cost and performance. When one sets about implementing a certain computational task, obtaining the highest performance (speed) is inarguably achieved by constructing a specialized machine, that is, hardware. This possibility exists, for example, in the form of applicationspecific integrated circuits (ASICs); however, the price per application as well as the turnaround time (from design to actual operation) are both quite prohibitive. On the whole, the computing industry has opted for general-purpose computing, which trades maximum speed for much lower design and implementation costs. A general-purpose processor can be easily and quickly instructed to change its task, say, from word processing to number crunching. This ability is made possible since such a processor is programmable; nonetheless, programming (and reprogramming) does not change the processor’s hardware. An FPGA is programmable at the hardware level, thus combining the advantages of both general-purpose processors and specialized circuits.
High spectral efficiency optical transmission of OFDM ultra-wideband signals beyond 40 Gb/s

We for the first time propose the highly efficient method of RF and optical signal mixing based on two different architectures: the parallel-RF/serial-optics architecture characterized by all-optical mixing for sub-carrier multiplexing, and the parallel-RF/parallel-optics architecture based on the array of 12times10 GHz components with directly modulated VCSELs and 12 multimode optical fibers. The main advantages of the both architectures are simplicity and low-cost implementation. We have carried out numerical simulations of ultra-wideband signals propagation in the proposed systems and proved the high efficiency and feasibility of the proposed method.
Emergence of Things Felt: Harnessing the Semantic Space of Facebook Feeling Tags

In 2013 Facebook launched a feature allowing users to add a feeling tag to their posts as part of their daily interactions online. Our research leverages the text accompanying all such volunteered feeling tags in an effort to map the semantic space of ‘Facebook feelings’ as they are catalogued by the crowd. By letting the data speak for itself, a folksonomy of feelings reveal temporal and social patterns in the most commonly shared feelings. Unlike many such studies, however, we do not only focus on examining the patterns emerging from big data, but also put the expressed feelings to work using machine learning towards both the classification and detection of emotions. This paper first demonstrates that feelings expressed online self-organize along the same lines (valence and arousal dimensions) experts in psychology and emotions have organized them for decades. As we enter the debate of classifying human emotions, our analysis directly contrasts Facebook’s manifestation of feelings with prior theoretical proposals to detect both similarities and differences from past assumptions. In line with the ‘exhibitional’ nature of Facebook, we illustrate that ‘extreme’ feelings, such as excitement and anger, are expressed in even more extreme levels of both valence and arousal. Beyond contrasting the folksonomy of feelings with dimensional mappings of emotions proposed by past research, we further utilize artificial intelligence techniques towards building a test version of an automatic ‘Feelings Meter’ able to detect feelings from text.
A Photo-Realistic Generator of Most Expressive and Discriminant Changes in 2D Face Images

This work describes a photo-realistic generator that creates semi-automatically face images of unseen subjects. Unlike previously described methods for generating face imagery, the approach described herein incorporates texture and shape information in a single computational framework based on high dimensional encoding of variance and discriminant information from sample groups. The method produces realistic, frontal pose, images with minimum manual intervention. We believe that the work presented describes a useful tool for face perception applications where privacy-preserving analysis might be an issue and the goal is not the recognition of the face itself, but rather its characteristics like gender, age or race, commonly explored in social and forensic contexts.
Information mapping and indexing in DAYS

Data in Your Space (DAYS) is an information dissemination system, which aims to provide desired information to use users through wireless channels. DAYS pushes data and control information to wireless channels and users tune correct channel from anywhere in the world to retrieve information. Unlike Web-based systems, it does not require any logon or system setup steps to access the information. In this working paper we present our mapping scheme and discuss a number of approaches for defining indexing necessary for information dissemination and retrieval.
Licensed Dengue Vaccine: Public Health Conundrum and Scientific Challenge

A tetravalent live attenuated vaccine composed of chimeras of yellow fever 17D and the four dengue viruses (chimeric yellow fever dengue [CYD]) manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur has completed phase III clinical testing in over 35,000 children 2–16 years of age. The vaccine was recently licensed in four countries. During the first 2 years of observation, CYD vaccine efficacy ranged between 30% and 79% in 10 different countries with an overall efficacy of 56.8%. During year 3, there was an overall efficacy against hospitalization of 16.7%, but a relative risk of hospitalization of 1.6 among children younger than 9 years and 4.95 in children 5 years of age and younger. Vaccination of seronegative children resulted in universal broad dengue neutralizing antibody responses, but poor protection against breakthrough dengue cases. Unless proven otherwise, such breakthrough cases in vaccinated subjects should be regarded as vaccine antibody-enhanced (ADE). The provenance of these cases can be studied serologically using original antigenic sin immune responses in convalescent sera. In conventional dengue vaccine efficacy clinical trials, persons vaccinated as seronegatives may be hospitalized with breakthrough ADE infections, whereas in the placebo group, dengue infection of monotypic immunes results in hospitalization. Vaccine efficacy trial design must identify dengue disease etiology by separately measuring efficacy in seronegatives and seropositives. The reason(s) why CYD vaccine failed to raise protective dengue virus immunity are unknown. To achieve a safe and protective dengue vaccine, careful studies of monotypic CYD vaccines in humans should precede field trials of tetravalent formulations.
Low power mixed-mode BIST based on mask pattern generation using dual LFSR re-seeding

Low power design techniques have been employed for more than two decades, however an emerging problem is satisfying the test power constraints for avoiding destructive test and improving the yield. Our research addresses this problem by proposing a new method which maintains the benefits of mixed-mode built-in self-test (BIST) (low test application time and high fault coverage), and reduces the excessive power dissipation associated with scan-based test. This is achieved by employing dual linear feedback shift register (LFSR) re-seeding and generating mask patterns to reduce the switching activity. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed method consistently reduces the switching activity by 25% when compared to the traditional approaches, at the expense of a limited increase in storage requirements.
Dynamical mass estimates for two luminous young stellar clusters in Messier 83

Using new data from the UVES spectrograph on the ESO Very Large Telescope and archive images from the Hubble Space Telescope, we have measured projected velocity dispersions and structural parameters for two bright young star clusters in the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 5236. One cluster is located near the nuclear starburst of NGC 5236, at a projected distance of 440 pc from the centre, while the other is located in the disk of the galaxy at a projected galactocentric distance of 2.3 kpc. We estimate virial masses for the two clusters of (4.2 ± 0.7) × 10 5 Mand (5.2 ± 0.8) × 10 5 Mand ages (from broad-band photometry) of 10 7.1±0.2 years and 10 8.0±0.1 years, respectively. Comparing the observed mass-to-light (M/L) ratios with simple stellar population models, we find that the data for both clusters are consistent with a Kroupa-type stellar mass function (MF). In particular, we rule out any MF with a significantly lower M/L ratio than the Kroupa MF, such as a Salpeter-like MF truncated at a mass of 1 Mor higher. These clusters provide a good illustration of the fact that massive, globular cluster-like objects ("super star clusters") can form at the present epoch even in the disks of seemingly normal, undisturbed spiral galaxies.
Common Agency and the Revelation Principle

In the common agency problem multiple mechanism designer simultaneously attempt to control the behavior of a single privately informed agent. The paper shows that the allocations associated with equilibria relative to any ad hoc set of fessible mechanisms can be reproduce as equilibria relative to (some subset of) the set of menus. Furthermore, equilibria relative to the set of menus are weakly robust in the sense that it is possible to find continuation equilibria so that the equilibrium allocations persist even when the set of feasible mechanisms is enlarged.
Observation of Human Eye Movements to Simulate Visual Exploration of Complex Scenes

The human eyes are always in action, they explore the environment every second we are awake. But what attracts our visual attention? In this paper we examine the eye movements of human subjects observing a breakfast scenario using an eye-tracking system. Moreover, we developed a hierarchical model consisting of three modules. This model is applied to the same visual stimuli and generates saccades depending on an empirically based set of image features extracted from the input image. The architecture of our model is motivated by the anatomy of the human visual pathway and the results from the eye-tracking experiment. The model uses low-level image features, extracted by filters similar to those found in the receptive fields of cortical neurons in mammals. The filter responses are combined in the adaptive multi-layered cortical map module. The activity in the saliency map of this first module roughly estimates the next fixation point. The second module refines this point using a neural network which shifts the model’s attention to locally interesting image regions. The third module finally determines the fixation point and recognizes the object found in the focused image region. To obtain a quantitative comparison of the common features between gaze trajectories of the human subjects and our model, we introduce the Markov-path distance measure. Based on this measure, we analyze common eye movement strategies between different subjects. Furthermore, we can show that our model generates “virtual eye movements” similar to those found in the eye-tracking experiment.
ChainGraph: A New Approach to Visualize Shared Properties in Resource Collections

Common graph visualizations tend to produce edge crossings and overlaps when used to display resource collections that are highly interrelated via shared properties. This hampers visual exploration and understanding of relationships between resources and can negatively affect information and knowledge management. In this paper, we present a new approach that visualizes resources and their shared properties in chains to prevent dense graphs and to better support the exploration of relationships. We explain the basic idea, describe an appropriate algorithm and discuss optimization issues. Furthermore, we report on a comparative evaluation showing that this kind of graph visualization supports particularly the visual tracking of relationships and the identification of commonalities between resources.
SecMiLiA: An Approach in the Agent Protection

Agent-based computing represents a promising paradigm for distributed computing. Unfortunately the lack of security is hindering the application of this paradigm in real world applications. The protection of malicious hosts is considered the most difficult security problem to solve in mobile agent systems. In this paper we provide a mechanism that aims to solve the problem of the malicious hosts. The core of our work is a new agent migration protocol based on the use of tamper resistant cryptographic hardware. Concretely, we base our work on the use of the Trusted Computing technology. Our protocol has been validated using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) model checking tool. As a result we have a library built on JADE that implements the secure migration for agents named Secure Migration Library for Agents (SecMiLiA). This library provides a friendly use of the Trusted Computing technology for agent based system developers.
Finding Defective Modules from Highly Unbalanced Datasets

Many software engineering datasets are highly unbalanced, i.e., the number of instances of a one class outnumber the number of instances of the other class. In this work, we analyse two balancing techniques with two common classification algorithms using five open public datasets from the PROMISE repository in order to find defective modules. The results show that although balancing techniques may not improve the percentage of correctly classified instances, they do improve the AUC measure, i.e., they classify better those instances that belong to the minority class from the minority class.