Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Saccadic Movement Strategy in Common Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis)

Most moving animals segregate their locomotion trajectories in short burst like rotations and prolonged translations, to enhance distance information from optic flow, as only translational, but not rotational optic flow holds distance information. Underwater, optic flow is a valuable source of information as it is in the terrestrial habitat, however, so far, it has gained only little attention. To extend the knowledge on underwater optic flow perception and use, we filmed the movement pattern of six common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) with a high speed camera in this study. In the subsequent analysis, the center of mass of the cuttlefish body was manually traced to gain thrust, slip, and yaw of the cuttlefish movements over time. Cuttlefish indeed performed short rotations, saccades, with rotational velocities up to 343°/s. They clearly separated rotations from translations in line with the saccadic movement strategy documented for animals inhabiting the terrestrial habitat as well as for the semiaquatic harbor seals before. However, this separation only occurred during fin motion. In contrast, during jet propelled swimming, the separation between rotational and translational movements and thus probably distance estimation on the basis of the optic flow field is abolished in favor of high movement velocities. In conclusion, this study provides first evidence that an aquatic invertebrate, the cuttlefish, adopts a saccadic movement strategy depending on the behavioral context that could enhance the information gained from optic flow.
Recognition of ultrasonic multi-echo sequences for autonomous symbolic indoor tracking

This paper presents an autonomous symbolic indoor tracking system for ubiquitous computing applications. The proposed approach is based upon the assumption that topologically discriminable information can be assigned explicitly to different spaces of a given indoor environment. On that assumption, continuous time-of-flight (ToF) measurements of echo-bursts obtained from four orthogonally and coplanarly mounted ultrasonic transducer are used to learn a stochastic room model. While the individual acoustic representation of space is captured using Gaussian mixture densities, the stochastic variabilities in the moving direction of a person are modeled by hidden-Markov-models (HMMs). Experiments within a six room environment resulted in a room recognition rate of 92.21% and a room sequence recognition rate of 66.00% without any pre-fixed devices.
The Mesoscopic Modeling of Burst Suppression during Anesthesia

The burst-suppression pattern is well recognized as a distinct feature of the mammalian electroencephalogram (EEG) waveform. Consisting of alternating periods of high amplitude oscillatory and isoelectric activity, it can be induced in health by deep anesthesia as well as being evoked by a range of pathophysiological processes that include coma and anoxia. While the electroencephalographic phenomenon and clinical implications of burst suppression have been studied extensively, the physiological mechanisms underlying its emergence remain unresolved and obscure. Because electroencephalographic bursting phenomenologically resembles the bursting observed in single neurons, it would be reasonable to assume that the theoretical insights developed to understand bursting at the cellular (“microscopic”) level would enable insights into the dynamical genesis of bursting at the level of the whole brain (“macroscopic”). In general action potential bursting is the result of the interplay of two time scales: a fast time scale responsible for spiking, and a slow time scale that modulates such activity. We therefore hypothesize that such fast-slow systems dynamically underpin electroencephalographic bursting. Here we show that a well-known mean field dynamical model of the electroencephalogram, the Liley model, while unable to produce burst suppression unmodified, is able to give rise to a wide variety of burst-like activity by the addition of one or more slow systems modulating model parameters speculated to be major “targets” for anesthetic action. The development of a physiologically plausible theoretical framework to account for burst suppression will lead to a more complete physiological understanding of the EEG and the mechanisms that serve to modify ongoing brain activity necessary for purposeful behavior and consciousness.
Modelling success networks to improve the quality of undergraduate education

Abstract Discussions of support and intervention in undergraduate university education are dominated by discussion of attrition. This study quests more broadly in arguing that support and intervention for undergraduate students may also benefit from models of engagement and success as well as conventional risk and failure. Supporting this proposition is a study that involved multifactorial approaches based in a combination of aspects of social network theory and social ecology theory. Analysis was enacted through social network analysis of archival data sets derived from a single cohort of 4065 undergraduate students at a regional Australian university. The findings suggest that models of academic success are suited to examination of the broader issues of student agency and undergraduate university education. The success networks developed are uniquely student-centred and place-based and may serve as more nuanced models for university intervention and support structures and mechanisms.
The new mothers’ little helpers: medicalization, victimization, and criminalization of motherhood via prescription drugs

ABSTRACT In order to understand the relationship between nonmedical prescription drug use, gender, and crime, interviews were conducted with 40 incarcerated women who self-identified as nonmedical Rx users. Of the women we interviewed, 70% were prescribed Rx drugs from their doctors to aid in recovery from cesarean section childbirth deliveries, treat postpartum depression, or for mental or physical health problems associated with childhood abuse and victimization. These women subsequently discovered that these pills also helped them cope with the stresses of caretaking and keeping the family together, particularly when experiencing intimate partner violence and prolonged poverty. Women were motivated to use Rx drugs in order to be a “good” mother, as defined by medical and cultural discourse; however, despite positive intentions, prolonged nonmedical use often hindered the realization of these ideals and ultimately resulted in their criminalization, incarceration, and separation from their children.
Proposal For Neuromorphic Hardware Using Spin Devices

We present a design-scheme for ultra-low power neuromorphic hardware using emerging spin-devices. We propose device models for 'neuron', based on lateral spin valves and domain wall magnets that can operate at ultra-low terminal voltage of ~20 mV, resulting in small computation energy. Magnetic tunnel junctions are employed for interfacing the spin-neurons with charge-based devices like CMOS, for large-scale networks. Device-circuit co-simulation-framework is used for simulating such hybrid designs, in order to evaluate system-level performance. We present the design of different classes of neuromorphic architectures using the proposed scheme that can be suitable for different applications like, analog-data-sensing, data-conversion, cognitive-computing, associative memory, programmable-logic and analog and digital signal processing. We show that the spin-based neuromorphic designs can achieve 15X-300X lower computation energy for these applications; as compared to state of art CMOS designs.
A Stem-Loop Motif Formed by the Immediate 5′ Terminus of the Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus Genome Modulates Translation as well as Replication of the Viral RNA

ABSTRACT Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV), aPestivirus member of the Flaviviridae family, has a positive-stranded RNA genome which consists of a single open reading frame (ORF) and untranslated regions (UTRs) at the 5′ and 3′ ends. The 5′ UTR harbors extensive RNA structure motifs; most of them were shown to contribute to an internal ribosomal entry site (IRES), which mediates cap-independent translation of the ORF. The extreme 5′-terminal region of the BVDV genome had so far been believed not to be required for IRES function. By structure probing techniques, we initially verified the existence of a computer-predicted stem-loop motif at the 5′ end of the viral genome (hairpin Ia) as well as at the 3′ end of the complementary negative-strand replication intermediate [termed hairpin Ia (−)]. While the stem of this structure is mainly constituted of nucleotides that are conserved among pestiviruses, the loop region is predominantly composed of variable residues. Taking a reverse genetics approach to a subgenomic BVDV replicon RNA (DI9c) which could be equally employed in a translation as well as replication assay system based on BHK-21 cells, we obtained the following results. (i) Proper folding of the Ia stem was found to be crucial for efficient translation. Thus, in the context of an authentic replication-competent viral RNA, the 5′-terminal motif operates apparently as an integral functional part of the ribosome entry. (ii) An intact loop structure and a stretch of nucleotide residues that constitute a portion of the stem of the Ia or the Ia (−) motif, respectively, were defined to represent important determinants of the RNA replication pathway. (iii) Formation of the stem structure of the Ia (−) motif was determined to be not critical for RNA replication. In summary, our findings affirmed that the 5′-terminal region of the BVDV genome encodes a bifunctional secondary structure motif which may enable the viral RNA to switch from the translation to the replicative cycle and vice versa.
Categorical knowledge and commonsense reasoning

Categorical Knowledge and Commonsense Reasoning Takashi Yamauchi (tya@psyc.tamu.edu) Department of Psychology, Mail Stop 4235 Texas AM American=[ a 1 , a 2 . , a n ] T and Football=[ b 1 , b 2 . , b n ] T , where individual elements of the dimensions correspond to some values associated with each feature. If the two vectors are sufficiently similar, then the argument described above is perceived as strong. If the premise concept, American, is more inclusive than the conclusion concept, Football, the a x ( C | P 1 )  F ( P 1 )  F ( C ) | F ( C ) | 2 | F ( P 1 ) | [ F ( P 1 )  F ( C )] | F ( P 1 ) | sim ( P 1 , C ) | F ( P 1 ) || F ( C ) || F ( C ) | | F ( C ) | As equation 3 shows, the Sloman model delineates that the strength of inductive arguments come from (a) the similarity between concepts in a premise (American) and conclusion (football), and (b) the degree of coverage of a premise concept (American) over a conclusion concept (football). A variant of similarity-based reasoning algorithms have been shown to account for a wide range of human reasoning, including legal judgment (Rissland, 2006), categorization (Love et al., 2005), and inference (Yamauchi & Markman, 1998, 2000). Is this similarity-based account sufficient to explain commonsense reasoning? The similarity-based approach assumes that concepts, such as American or football, consist of a set of features, and reasoning operates over concepts that exist prior to the operation. Categorical knowledge specifies relationships among instances and properties, but it may also help create new properties. For example, a categorical statement such as “Jane is a feminist” not only activates our general pre-existing knowledge about “feminist,” but it also leads us to seek some properties to
Simultaneous Multithreading VLIW DSP Architecture with Dynamic Dispatch Mechanism

This paper presents a novel simultaneous multithreading (SMT) VLIW DSP architecture with dynamic dispatch mechanism to address the challenge of the underutilization of computing resources in the non-unit assumed latency (NUAL) VLIW DSPs. The SMT technology exploits the unused instruction slots by converting the threadlevel parallelism to the instruction-level parallelism, improving the efficiency. With the specifically designed registers for eliminating the horizontal dependencies among the executionpacket, the NUAL VLIW DSP architecture supports issuing any subset of instructions of the execution-packet based on the availability of the corresponding functional units. With the dynamic dispatch mechanism, the DSP issues instructions to functional unit at run-time rather than at compile-time, such that the issue conflicts among multiple threads are reduced significantly. The new VLIW DSP architecture is implemented and evaluated, and the results show that the architecture can effectively increase the processor throughput, hide the cache miss latencies, and improve the performance on digital signal processing. Keywords-SMT;VLIW;DSP;Dynamic dispatch
TEMPO INDUCTION BY INVESTIGATING THE METRICAL STRUCTURE OF MUSIC USING A PERIODICITY SIGNAL THAT RELATES TO THE TATUM PERIOD

The estimation of the musical tempo of audio signals is of large interest for various applications, e.g. the synchronization of multi-media content to music and music information retrieval systems. This article describes the author’s contribution to the 2 Annual Music Information Retrieval Evaluation Exchange (MIREX 2005) and gives an evaluation and comparison of the recognition performance. The presented method computes a representation of the metrical structure of a musical piece as a function of the degree of periodicity of a phenomenal accent signal at lags that relate to the period of the fastest pulse. This representation is compared to pre-defined metric templates, corresponding to various time signatures and metrical structures. A list of tempo hypotheses is obtained from the best fitting template, from which the tempo is chosen with respect to their salience and apriori probabilities of tempo values.
Interpolation between Outline Font Characters

Outline fonts use Bezier curves to describe the outer boundaries of the characters of specific outline fonts. In this paper, we consider the interpolation problem between two different but quite similar outline fonts. Since the compositions of different outline fonts of a character may be different, such as the total number of curves a font of the character contains, and the endpoints of curve segments of different fonts of the character possess may be different, it is not straightforward to directly perform the interpolation between two different outline fonts of a specific character. Consequently, a pretty simple and efficient method is thus proposed to perform the interpolation between two different fonts of a character. Such resulting interpolated font characters can be considered as a newly designed font. Our experimentation shows that our algorithm to compute such an interpolated font is effective and efficient.
Feature Lattices for Maximum Entropy Modelling

Maximum entropy framework proved to be expressive and powerful for the statistical language modelling, but it suffers from the computational expensiveness of the model building. The iterative scaling algorithm that is used for the parameter estimation is computationally expensive while the feature selection process might require to estimate parameters for many candidate features many times. In this paper we present a novel approach for building maximum entropy models. Our approach uses the feature collocation lattice and builds complex candidate features without resorting to iterative scaling.
Efficiencies Blockin Blockin for Blockin Blockin the Blockin Blockin Statistics Blockin Blockin of Blockin Blockin Size Blockin Blockin Discrimination

Different laboratories have achieved a consensus regarding how well human observers can estimate the average orientation in a set of N objects. Such estimates are not only limited by visual noise, which perturbs the visual signal of each object's orientation, they are also inefficient: Observers effectively use only objects in their estimates (e.
Validity and reliability of the Time Organisation and Participation Scale (TOPS)

The ability to organise daily life tasks and to execute them on time constitutes an essential component of being efficient and may have consequences for an individual's well-being. The objective of the study was to develop a self-report scale for detecting difficulties in the organisation of daily life tasks on time, as perceived by the individual, and to examine its validity and reliability. In order to test the scale's content and face validity, 228 Israeli adults, 83 (36%) males and 145 (64%) females, aged 18–44 (mean age 26.49, SD = 5.83), participated in the study. Internal consistencies following factor analysis, as well as construct validity, were initiated. Results of the analysis of the Time Organisation and Participation Scale (TOPS) revealed three distinct factors with Eigen values > 1, comprised of 32 items. These three factors explained 49.68% of the total variance. The scale demonstrated good internal consistency for the overall score (α = .92), as well as for the three factors (α ranges .87 to .92). The corrected item total correlation that was performed for each of the three factors indicated good results, ranging from . 46 to . 76. Construct validity was confirmed, while the MANOVA yielded significant age group differences. Initial results suggest that the TOPS is a valid and reliable tool for detecting difficulties in the organisation of daily life tasks on time among adults.
Vector Microprocessors for Desktop Computing

Rapid advances in IC technology combined with recent trends in design complexity and application usage indicate that vector microprocessors can provide a scalable, cost-eeective solution for desktop computers in the near future. In this paper, we review these trends and explain how they beneet vector processors. A decentralized design coupled with a simpler in-order issue mechanism will allow vector microprocessors to achieve the higher clock frequencies enabled by future IC technology. Moreover, the simpler vector hardware ooers a favorable alternative to the increasing design sophistication of OOO superscalar processors. From the application side, it is expected that, by the year 2000, 90% of desktop cycles will be dedicated to multimedia workloads. For these applications vector microprocessors can supply up to twice the performance of today's out-of-order superscalar processors which are already aided by short-vector multimedia instructions. One potential drawback to a vector-based desktop computer is the general belief that they can improve the performance of only vectorizable programs. In this paper, we use two approaches to address the problem of non-vectorizable performance. First, we quantify the performance loss that might result and determine that the loss is not signiicant. This is because non-vectorizable applications tend to have only modest amounts of ILP. A 2-way in-order vector microprocessor should require no more than twice as many clock periods as a wider 4-way out-of-order processor to execute such applications. Some if not most of this cycle count diierence should be made up by the greater clock rate possible by the vector microprocessor's decentralized design or by identifying vectorizable loops. Second, we investigate the use of outer-loop parallelism to expand the number of loops that can be vectorized eeectively. We show that directly vectorizing outer loops ooers the greatest promise among compilation techniques that exploit outer-loop parallelism. The vector microprocessor can use outer-loop vectorization to execute select benchmarks 4 to 9 times faster than the OOO superscalar using loop interchange.
Police officers’ experiences as victims of hate crime

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to fill a research and literature gap by examining the nature and impact of hate crime victimisation on police officers, and their responses to it. The research explores victimisation due to the occupational stigma of policing and the personal characteristics and identities of individual officers. Design/methodology/approach The research design is qualitative, based on 20 in-depth interviews with police officers in one English police force. Thematic analysis was applied to the data. Findings All participants had experienced hate crime arising from their occupational or personal identities. Initially shocked, officers became desensitized and responded in different ways. These include tolerating and accepting hate crime but also challenging it through communication and the force of law. Research limitations/implications This research is based on a small sample. It does not claim to be representative but it is exploratory, aiming to stimulate debate and further research on a contemporary policing issue. Practical implications If further research works were to confirm these findings, there are implications for police training, officer welfare and support, supervision and leadership. Originality/value The police occupy a problematic position within hate crime literature and UK legislation. This paper opens up debate on an under-researched area and presents the first published study of the hate crime experiences of police officers.
Design of Wireless Sensor Units with Embedded Statistical Time-Series Damage Detection Algorithms for Structural Health Monitoring

A low-cost wireless sensing unit is designed and fabricated for deployment in a structural monitoring system that uses wireless radios as the sole channel for communications. The finite operational life of portable power supplies such as batteries necessitates optimization of the wireless sensing unit design to attain power efficiency. To attain far reaching communication ranges required in structural monitoring applications, the wireless communication channel consumes significant amount of power. To reduce the quantity of raw time-history data for transmission and reception, a computational core that can accommodate localized processing of data is designed and implemented. To illustrate the ability of the computational core to execute embedded engineering analyses, a two-tiered time-series damage detection algorithm is implemented. Local execution of the embedded damage detection method is shown to save energy by avoiding utilization of the wireless channel to transmit raw time-history data.
A Novel High Rigid 2-DOF Parallel Translating Robot

A novel high rigid two DOF (degree of freedom) parallel translating robot is presented in this paper. Firstly, a new passive mechanism which can translate freely along a circular path is presented based on the singularity configuration of the 3-UPU (universal-prismatic-universal) parallel manipulator. And the novel two degree of freedom parallel translating manipulator whose orientation can remain constant is put forward by the new passive mechanism. Then the kinematics of the two degree of freedom parallel translating manipulator is studied. Closed form solutions are developed for both the inverse and forward kinematics. The Jacobin matrix of the two degree of freedom parallel translating manipulator is also derived. Besides, a description of the workspace for the mechanism is provided. The new passive mechanism gives the novel 2-DOF translational parallel manipulator a good architecture to resist the force which is perpendicular to the kinematics plane. And its rigidity perpendicular to the kinematics plane is higher than the other 2-DOF translational parallel manipulators.