Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Revisiting the Linear Programming Relaxation Approach to Gibbs Energy Minimization and Weighted Constraint Satisfaction

We present a number of contributions to the LP relaxation approach to weighted constraint satisfaction (= Gibbs energy minimization). We link this approach to many works from constraint programming, which relation has so far been ignored in machine vision and learning. While the approach has been mostly considered only for binary constraints, we generalize it to n-ary constraints in a simple and natural way. This includes a simple algorithm to minimize the LP-based upper bound, n-ary max-sum diffusion-however, we consider using other bound-optimizing algorithms as well. The diffusion iteration is tractable for a certain class of high-arity constraints represented as a black box, which is analogical to propagators for global constraints CSP. Diffusion exactly solves permuted n-ary supermodular problems. A hierarchy of gradually tighter LP relaxations is obtained simply by adding various zero constraints and coupling them in various ways to existing constraints. Zero constraints can be added incrementally, which leads to a cutting-plane algorithm. The separation problem is formulated as finding an unsatisfiable subproblem of a CSP.
The nearest extreme starburst: bubbles, young star clusters and outflow in the merger NGC 3256

We have studied the extreme starburst in the infrared merger NGC 3256. We detect four galactic bubbles (using ESO New Technology Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 Hα images). These shells would be associated with previous supernova explosions. The first analysis of the spatial distribution of young star cluster candidates shows that more than 90 per cent of them are located in a complex starburst structure, including some of the bubble walls, three nuclei and three blue asymmetrical spiral arms. We have made a kinematic study of the ionized gas in the core of the main optical nucleus, performed with HST STIS spectra. The shape of the rotation curve and the emission-line profile can be explained by the presence in the core of young star clusters with outflow. Any low-luminosity active galactic nucleus associated with this core would have a mass less than 107 M⊙. It is also probable that the compact X-ray and radio emission of ULX(7)N – the source coincident with the main optical nucleus – is the result of a few recent supernova remnants.
Developmental regulation of ecdysone receptor (EcR) and EcR-controlled gene expression during pharate-adult development of honeybees (Apis mellifera)

Major developmental transitions in multicellular organisms are driven by steroid hormones. In insects, these, together with juvenile hormone (JH), control development, metamorphosis, reproduction and aging, and are also suggested to play an important role in caste differentiation of social insects. Here, we aimed to determine how EcR transcription and ecdysteroid titers are related during honeybee postembryonic development and what may actually be the role of EcR in caste development of this social insect. In addition, we expected that knocking-down EcR gene expression would give us information on the participation of the respective protein in regulating downstream targets of EcR. We found that in Apis mellifera females, EcR-A is the predominantly expressed variant in postembryonic development, while EcR-B transcript levels are higher in embryos, indicating an early developmental switch in EcR function. During larval and pupal stages, EcR-B expression levels are very low, while EcR-A transcripts are more variable and abundant in workers compared to queens. Strikingly, these transcript levels are opposite to the ecdysteroid titer profile. 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) application experiments revealed that low 20E levels induce EcR expression during development, whereas high ecdysteroid titers seem to be repressive. By means of RNAi-mediated knockdown (KD) of both EcR transcript variants we detected the differential expression of 234 poly-A+ transcripts encoding genes such as CYPs, MRJPs and certain hormone response genes (Kr-h1 and ftz-f1). EcR-KD also promoted the differential expression of 70 miRNAs, including highly conserved ones (e.g., miR-133 and miR-375), as well honeybee-specific ones (e.g., miR-3745 and miR-3761). Our results put in evidence a broad spectrum of EcR-controlled gene expression during postembryonic development of honeybees, revealing new facets of EcR biology in this social insect.
Physical design implementation of segmented buses to reduce communication energy

The amount of energy consumed for interconnecting the IP-blocks is increasing significantly due to the suboptimal scaling of long wires. To limit this energy penalty, segmented buses have gained interest in the architectural community. However, the netlist topology and the physical design stage significantly influence the final communication energy cost. We present in this paper an automated way to implement a netlist consisting of hard macro blocks, which are interconnected with heavily segmented buses in an energy optimal fashion for communication. We optimize the network wires energy dissipation in two separate, but related steps: minimizing the number of segments for active communication paths at the first step (block ordering), followed by the activity aware floorplanning step to minimize the physical length of these segments. Energy gains of up to a factor of 4 are achieved compared to a standard system implementation using a shared bus. Especially, the block ordering step contributes significantly to the network energy optimization process.
A detection model for driver's unsafe states based on real-time face-vision

The auto industry has developed fast in the last 100 years. Although it brings us convenience, more and more traffic accidents are happening every day. There are many factors which can cause a car accident. Based on the record of a large number of accidents, fatigue is one of the most important factors. Additionally, driver's distraction and conversations with passengers during driving can lead to serious results. In this paper, a real-time vision-based model is proposed for monitoring driver's unsafe states, including fatigue state, distraction state and talking state, etc. By analyzing driver's real-time face vision, a method for detecting driver's fatigue, distraction and talking states is given. Also, the model is its extreme high speed and very simple equipment. It can run at about 20 frames per second in video with 640*480 resolutions on a normal computer platform.
Compressed beamforming with applications to ultrasound imaging

Recent developments in medical treatment put challenging demands on ultrasound imaging systems. These demands typically imply increasing the number of transducer elements involved in each imaging cycle. Confined to traditional sampling methods, the inevitable result is a significant growth in the amount of raw data that needs to be transmitted from the system front end, and then processed by the processing unit, effecting machinery size and power consumption. In this paper, we derive a scheme which reduces the amount of transmitted data, by applying Compressed Sensing (CS) techniques to analog ultrasound signals detected in the transducer elements. We follow the spirit of Xampling, which combines classic methods from sampling theory with recent developments in CS, aimed at sampling analog signals far below the Nyquist rate. Our scheme enhances SNR, by integrating low-rate samples extracted from multiple transducer elements. We refer to this process as “beamforming in the compressed domain”, or “compressed beamforming”.
On the Memory Consumption of Probabilistic Pushdown Automata

We investigate the problem of evaluating memory consumption for systems modelled by probabilistic pushdown automata (pPDA). The space needed by a runof a pPDA is the maximal height reached by the stack during the run. Theproblem is motivated by the investigation of depth-first computations that playan important role for space-efficient schedulings of multithreaded programs. We study the computation of both the distribution of the memory consumption and its expectation. For the distribution, we show that a naive method incurs anexponential blow-up, and that it can be avoided using linear equation systems.We also suggest a possibly even faster approximation method.Given~$\varepsilon>0$, these methods allow to compute bounds on the memoryconsumption that are exceeded with a probability of at most~$\varepsilon$. For the expected memory consumption, we show that whether it is infinite can be decided in polynomial time for stateless pPDA (pBPA) and in polynomial space for pPDA. We also provide an iterative method for approximating theexpectation. We show how to compute error bounds of our approximation methodand analyze its convergence speed. We prove that our method convergeslinearly, i.e., the number of accurate bits of the approximation is a linear function of the number of iterations.
The Pivotal Role of 5-Lipoxygenase-Derived LTB4 in Controlling Pulmonary Paracoccidioidomycosis

Leukotrienes (LTs) produced from arachidonic acid by the action of 5-lipoxygenase (5-LO) are classical mediators of inflammatory responses. However, studies published in the literature regarding these mediators are contradictory and it remains uncertain whether these lipid mediators play a role in host defense against the fungal pathogen Paracoccidioides brasiliensis. To determine the involvement of LTs in the host response to pulmonary infection, wild-type and LT-deficient mice by targeted disruption of the 5-lipoxygenase gene (knockout mice) were studied following intratracheal challenge with P. brasiliensis yeasts. The results showed that infection is uniformly fatal in 5-LO-deficient mice and the mechanisms that account for this phenotype are an exacerbated lung injury and higher fungal pulmonary burden. Genetic ablation or pharmacological inhibition of LTs resulted in lower phagocytosis and fungicidal activity of macrophages in vitro, suggesting that deficiency in fungal clearance seems to be secondary to the absence of activation in 5-LO−/− macrophages. Exogenous LTB4 restored phagocytosis and fungicidal activity of 5-LO−/− macrophages. Moreover, P. brasiliensis killing promoted by LTB4 was dependent on nitric oxide (NO) production by macrophages. Taken together, these results reveal a fundamental role for 5-LO-derived LTB4 in the protective response to P. brasiliensis infection and identify relevant mechanisms for the control of fungal infection during the early stages of the host immune response.
AIRPlay: Towards a 'Breathgiving' Approach

Children with exercise-induced asthma face several challenges in their daily life, which can improve by proper self-management practices. AIRplay combines biomedical sensing with gamified environments to improve physical conditioning and self-management of asthma among children aged 7 to 9 years old. The goal is to develop a proof-of-concept of coaching application that monitors physical activity of a young asthma patient, provide feedback based on this activity data, and integrates this application with an interactive playground to improve fitness. We discuss three areas where we can improve the current management of asthma among children based on literature and interviews with health care professionals. We present the coaching application and the interactive playground game, followed by a discussion where we discuss the current proof-of-concept using the Persuasive Design Model (PSD). We also foresee some challenges for future development and research.
Fast computed tomography and volume rendering using the body-centered cubic lattice

Two main tasks in the field of volumetric image processing are acquisition and visualization of 3D data. The main challenge is to reduce processing costs, while maintaining high accuracy. To achieve these goals for volume rendering (visualization), we demonstrate that non-separable box splines for body-centered cubic (BCC) lattices can be adapted to fast evaluation on graphics hardware. Thus, the BCC lattice can be used for interactive volume rendering leading to better image quality than comparable methods. Leveraging this result, we study volumetric reconstruction methods based on the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. We show the equivalence of the standard implementation of the EM-based reconstruction with an implementation based on hardware-accelerated volume rendering for nearest-neighbor interpolation to achieve fast reconstruction times. Accuracy is improved by adapting the EM algorithm for the BCC lattice, leading to superior accuracy, more compact data representation, and better noise reduction compared to the Cartesian one.
The Bossa Framework for Scheduler Development

Process scheduling is an old problem, but there is no single scheduler that is perfect for all applications. Indeed, in the last few years, the emergence of new applications, such as multimedia and real-time applications, and new execution environments, such as embedded systems, has given rise to a host of new scheduling algorithms [2, 3, 5, 7, 14, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25]. Nevertheless, because these algorithms are typically highly specialized, few have been included in commercial operating systems (OSes). Ideally, when the scheduling behavior required by an application is not available, the application programmer can implement a new scheduler in the target OS. Nevertheless, scheduler programming at the kernel level is a difficult task. First, there is no standard interface for implementing schedulers. Thus, the programmer must identify the parts of the kernel that should be modified and the code that should be written in each case. Because scheduling is affected by all kernel services, this analysis requires a global understanding of the kernel behavior. The analysis is further complicated by the pseudo-parallelism present in the kernel due to interrupts. Second, few debugging tools are available at the kernel level. Indeed, any errors in kernel code are likely to crash the machine, making bugs difficult to track down. Together these issues imply that the kind of expertise required to successfully integrate a new scheduler into an existing OS is outside the scope of application programmers.
Building Extraction from Aerial Imagery Based on the Principle of Confrontation and Priori Knowledge

Automatic building extraction is a bottleneck of automatic surveying and mapping of big scale urban image. For the single aerial gray-scale image, the automatic buildings extraction, an algorithm based on the principle of confrontation and using the priori knowledge of building is presented here. A two-dimension OTSU segmentation will be used to do the rough segmentation because of the characteristics of high-brightness which the roof of the building has; then we use mathematical morphology, image segmentation, edge detection and other measures to detect the non-building, so using the principle of confrontation and removing the non-buildings, the buildings can be extracted. At last the extraction result will be verified using the information of the building shadow, the area of building roof, altitude information and other prior knowledge, in order to improve the accuracy of building extraction in the aerial image. Moreover, the method proposed is test in our experiment using the true-color aerial image. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show building can be extracted effectively by means of the algorithm proposed and it is necessary to research deeply.
PIR-B-Deficient Mice Are Susceptible to Salmonella Infection1

Paired Ig-like receptors of activating (PIR-A) and inhibitory (PIR-B) isoforms are expressed by many hematopoietic cells, including B lymphocytes and myeloid cells. To determine the functional roles of PIR-A and PIR-B in primary bacterial infection, PIR-B-deficient (PIR-B−/−) and wild-type (WT) control mice were injected i.v. with an attenuated strain of Salmonella enterica Typhimurium (WB335). PIR-B−/− mice were found to be more susceptible to Salmonella infection than WT mice, as evidenced by high mortality rate, high bacterial loads in the liver and spleen, and a failure to clear bacteria from the circulation. Although blood levels of major cytokines and Salmonella-specific Abs were mostly comparable in the two groups of mice, distinct patterns of inflammatory lesions were found in their livers at 7–14 days postinfection: diffuse spreading along the sinusoids in PIR-B−/− mice vs nodular restricted localization in WT mice. PIR-B−/− mice have more inflammatory cells in the liver but fewer B cells and CD8+ T cells in the spleen than WT mice at 14 days postinfection. PIR-B−/− bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMMφ) failed to control intracellular replication of Salmonella in vitro, in part due to inefficient phagosomal oxidant production, when compared with WT BMMφ. PIR-B−/− BMMφ also produced more nitrite and TNF-α upon exposure to Salmonella than WT BMMφ did. These findings suggest that the disruption of PIR-A and PIR-B balance affects their regulatory roles in host defense to bacterial infection.
Turing ’ s Treatise on Enigma Universal Turing Machine

Unified omniscient communication have led to many compelling advances, including Internet QoS and 2 bit architectures. In fact, few theorists would disagree with the deployment of the location-identity split. We confirm not only that the infamous replicated algorithm for the visualizati on of journaling file systems runs in Θ(n) time, but that the same is
Psychometric Properties of the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale of Hewitt in a Dutch-Speaking Sample: Associations With the Big Five Personality Traits

We administered the Dutch Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale of Hewitt and Flett (1991, 2004) in a large student sample (N = 959) and performed a confirmatory factor analysis to test the factorial structure proposed by the original authors. The existence of a method factor referring to the negatively keyed items in the questionnaire was investigated by including it in the tested models. Next, we investigated how the 3 perfectionism dimensions are associated with the Five-factor model (FFM) of personality. The 3-factor structure originally observed by the authors was confirmed, at least when a method factor that refers to the negatively keyed items was included in the model. Self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism were both distinguished by low extraversion and low emotional stability. Self-oriented perfectionism's positive relationship with both conscientiousness and openness to experience differentiated the 2 perfectionism dimensions from each other. Other-oriented perfectionism was not well-characterized by the Big Five personality traits.
A fast and simple surface reconstruction algorithm

We present an algorithm to reconstruct a surface from a dense sample. Given n sample points, it runs in O(n log n) time, which is optimal in the pointer machine model. The only existing O(n log n)-time algorithm due to Funke and Ramos uses some sophisticated data structures for the key task of extracting a locally uniform subsample. Our algorithm is based on a variant of the standard octree, and it is much simpler. We built a prototype, which runs an implementation of our algorithm to extract a locally uniform subsample, invokes Cocone to reconstruct a surface from the subsample, and adds back the samples points absent from the subsample via edge flips. The subsample extraction step is very fast and effective. In our experiments with some non-uniform samples, our prototype gives a 51% to 68% speedup from using Cocone alone. Even for locally uniform samples, our prototype is usually much faster.
Implementation of an FPGA based accelerator for virtual private networks

Virtual Private Networks (VPN) are becoming increasingly popular network architectures for corporate networks. As VPNs are built on the Internet infrastructure, the data exchange among different local area networks will be passed through the Internet and thus can be easily eavesdropped, masqueraded, etc. Therefore, certain security measures must be used to deal with these privacy issues. The Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) addresses the abovementioned security issues and the Free Secure Wide Area Network (FreeS/WAN) is an open source software implementation of IPSec for Linux which uses triple-DES as the default encryption mode. As shown in this paper, the performance of FreeS/WAN with IPSec is 50% of that without encryption. In order to improve its performance, a field programmable gate array (FPGA) based triple-DES accelerator was built on a reconfigurable computing development platform called Pilchard and achieved a throughput of more than 120 Mb/sec for triple-DES in cipher-block chaining mode, a speedup of 3 over a software implementation, Measurements show that an FPGA-accelerated FreeS/WAN offers a 30% speedup for the TCP protocol over the original software library.
Longitudinal prediction of language emergence in infants at high and low risk for autism spectrum disorder

Abstract This study used a prospective longitudinal design to examine the early developmental pathways that underlie language growth in infants at high risk (n = 50) and low risk (n = 34) for autism spectrum disorder in the first 18 months of life. While motor imitation and responding to joint attention (RJA) have both been found to predict expressive language in children with autism spectrum disorder and those with typical development, the longitudinal relation between these capacities has not yet been identified. As hypothesized, results revealed that 15-month RJA mediated the association between 12-month motor imitation and 18-month expressive vocabulary, even after controlling for earlier levels of RJA and vocabulary. These results provide new information about the developmental sequencing of skills relevant to language growth that may inform future intervention efforts for children at risk for language delay or other developmental challenges.
ASCA Observations of Groups at Radii of Low Overdensity: Implications for the Cosmic Preheating

Through a three-dimensional modeling of ASCA observations, we performed a spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopic study, extending to radii exceeding 150 kpc, for a sample of nine groups of galaxies. Combined with published ROSAT results, we conclude that these systems generally exhibit a strong temperature decline at outer radii. In our best case, NGC 3268, this corresponds to a flattening of the entropy profile at a level of ~400 keV cm2. This value is high compared both to the observed entropy floor of ~100 keV cm2 and to the expected value from gravitational heating. We suggest that the observed entropy profile in most groups at densities exceeding 500 times the critical is driven purely by nongravitational heating processes. After comparison with a larger sample of groups and clusters, we conclude that there is a variation in the level of nongravitational heating between ~100 and ~400 keV cm2 within every system. Using models of cluster formation as a reference frame, we established that the accreted gas reaches an entropy level of 400 keV cm2 by redshift 2.0-2.5, while such high entropies where not present at redshifts higher than 2.8-3.5, favoring nearly instantaneous preheating. Adopting galactic winds as a source of preheating and scaling the released energy by the observed metal abundance, the variation in the preheating could be ascribed mostly to variation in the typical overdensity of the energy injection, from ~30 for an entropy floor of 100 keV cm2 to ~5 for an entropy of 400 keV cm2.