Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Segmentation by surface-to-image registration

This paper presents a new image segmentation algorithm using surface-to-image registration. The algorithm employs multi-level transformations and multi-resolution image representations to progressively register atlas surfaces (modeling anatomical structures) to subject images based on weighted external forces in which weights and forces are determined by gradients and local intensity profiles obtained from images. The algorithm is designed to prevent atlas surfaces converging to unintended strong edges or leaking out of structures of interest through weak edges where the image contrast is low. Segmentation of bone structures on MR images of rat knees analyzed in this manner performs comparably to technical experts using a semi-automatic tool.
A multistage PoS-tagger at the EVALITA 2009 PoS-tagging Task

This paper presents an experimental system architecture for Part-OfSpeech Tagging for the Italian language, able to manage a large tagset to provide both lexical and morphological information. The tagger was built as a cascade of four classifiers where each classifier in the cascade accepts data from an initial input or the guesses of the previous one, executes its annotation, and sends the resulting data to the next stage, or to the output of the cascade. At the EVALITA 2009 PoS-tagging task the combined classifier attained an accuracy of 96.06% on the open task and of 93.54% on the closed one.
Neural coding partially accounts for the relationship between children’s number-line estimation and number comparison performance

ABSTRACT Numerical comparison is a primary measure of the acuity of children’s approximate number system. Approximate number system acuity is associated with key developmental outcomes such as symbolic number skill, standardized test scores, and even employment outcomes (Halberda, Mazzocco, & Feigenson, 2008; Parsons & Bynner, 1997). We examined the relation between children’s performance on the numerical comparison task and the number-line estimation task. It is important to characterize the relation between tasks to develop mathematics interventions that lead to transfer across tasks. We found that number-line performance was significantly predicted by nonsymbolic comparison performance for participants ranging in age from 5 to 8 years. We also evaluated, using a computational model, whether the relation between the 2 tasks could be adequately explained based on known neural correlates of number perception. Data from humans and nonhuman primates characterized neural activity corresponding to the perception of numerosities. Results of behavioral experimentation and computational modeling suggested that though neural coding of numbers predicted a correlation in participants’ performance on the 2 tasks, it could not account for all the variability in the human data. This finding was interpreted as being consistent with accounts of number-line estimation in which number-line estimation does not rely solely on participants’ numerical perception.
Prior Expectation Modulates the Interaction between Sensory and Prefrontal Regions in the Human Brain

How do expectations about the identity of a forthcoming visual stimulus influence the neural mechanisms of perceptual decision making in the human brain? Previous investigations into this issue have mostly involved changing the subjects' attentional focus or the behavioral relevance of certain targets but rarely manipulated subjects' prior expectation about the likely identity of the stimulus. Also, because perceptual decisions were often paired with specific motor responses, it has been difficult to dissociate neural activity that reflects perceptual decisions from motor preparatory activity. Here we designed a task in which we induced prior expectations about the direction of a moving-dot pattern and withheld the stimulus–response mapping until the subjects were prompted to respond. In line with current models of perceptual decision making, we found that subjects' performance was influenced by their expectation about upcoming motion direction. The integration of such information into the decision process was reflected by heightened activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Activity in this area reflected the degree to which subjects adjusted their decisions based on the prior expectation cue. Furthermore, there was increased effective connectivity between sensory regions (motion-sensitive medial temporal area MT+) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when subjects had a prior expectation about the upcoming motion direction. Dynamic causal modeling suggested that stimulus expectation modulated both the feedforward and feedback connectivity between MT+ and prefrontal cortex. These results provide a mechanism of how prior expectations may affect perceptual decision making, namely by changing neural activity in, and sensory drive to, prefrontal areas.
Nerve Growth Factor Induces Axonal Filopodia through Localized Microdomains of Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase Activity That Drive the Formation of Cytoskeletal Precursors to Filopodia

The initiation of axonal filopodia is the first step in the formation of collateral branches and synaptic structures. In sensory neurons, nerve growth factor (NGF) promotes the formation of axonal filopodia and branches. However, the signaling and cytoskeletal mechanisms of NGF-induced initiation of axonal filopodia are not clear. Axonal filopodia arise from precursor axonal cytoskeletal structures termed filamentous actin (F-actin) patches. Patches form spontaneously and are transient. Although filopodia emerge from patches, only a fraction of patches normally gives rise to filopodia. Using chicken sensory neurons and live imaging of enhanced yellow fluorescent protein (eYFP)–actin dynamics, we report that NGF promotes the formation of axonal filopodia by increasing the rate of F-actin patch formation but not the fraction of patches that give rise to filopodia. We also demonstrate that activation of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)–Akt pathway is sufficient and required for driving the formation of axonal F-actin patches, filopodia, and axon branches. Using the green fluorescent protein–plekstrin homology domain of Akt, which targets to PI3K-generated phosphatidylinositol-3,4,5-triphosphate (PIP3), we report localized microdomains of PIP3 accumulation that form in synchrony with F-actin patches and that NGF promotes the formation of microdomains of PIP3 and patches. Finally, we find that, in NGF, F-actin patches form in association with axonal mitochondria and oxidative phosphorylation is required for patch formation. This investigation demonstrates that surprisingly NGF promotes formation of axonal filopodia by increasing the formation of cytoskeletal filopodial precursors (patches) through localized microdomains of PI3K signaling but not the emergence of filopodia from patches.
Experience Report State-Replication-Based Matching System

Traditional financial trading systems were developed in database-based standalone model years ago. Given that there exist some evident drawbacks like high latency and low availability in such architecture, it is imperative to design a new model which can meet the requirements of time-sensitive financial transactions. Therefore, in this paper we design and implement a state-replication based matching system which includes the critical technical points like order sequencing and asynchronous data persistence. The performance experiment indicates that this new model can dramatically increase the throughput by three times and the latency only accounts for nearly 10% compared with the conventional architecture. High availability and robustness can be guaranteed as well.
Soccer player tracking using particle filters

We present a multi-target tracking system for estimating the position of multiple soccer players as they move around during a soccer game. Our system relies on silhouette observations recorded by a static camera, and utilises 3D models and particle filter methods to estimate athlete positions. Tracking parameters can be adapted in order to tip the scales towards precision or performance. We present the system's software architecture as a client-server application, and demonstrate results based on a simulated yet realistic dataset produced using the Unity3D game engine.
Adding Extrinsic Goals to the Quality-Adjusted Life Year Model

Methods for evaluating health quality are central to medical decision analyses. The most important such method is the quality-adjusted life year (QALY), in which a patient's length of life is given weight proportional to his/her quality of health. QALYs have become ubiquitous in medical cost-effectiveness as a measure of preference for health outcomes. However, numerous studies have demonstrated that the correlation between measured QALYs and a patient's current health is at best modest. Moreover, it is known that individuals may trade lifetime for improved health quality when remaining lifetime is long, but not when it is short; and those with poor health quality may prefer to survive only until important life milestones and no longer. These behaviors are inconsistent with the QALY model. To address these concerns, we examine methods for including life goals in health preference models. The QALY model already captures ongoing goals such as minimizing chronic pain or maintaining physical mobility, goals whose achievement has impact proportional to length of life. However, other goals, termed extrinsic goals, such as completing an important project or seeing a child graduate from college, are qualitatively different---their achievement has impact that is independent of length of life, and therefore cannot be captured using QALYs. In this paper, we present a generalization of the QALY model that incorporates both ongoing goals and extrinsic goals. The new model allows the plausible behaviors mentioned above but forbidden by the QALY model.
Free radical homopolymerization of a vinylferrocene/cyclodextrin complex in water

Summary We report the radical initiated homopolymerization of a soluble vinylferrocene cyclodextrin-complex in water. Uncomplexed vinylferrocene 1 and the corresponding homopolymer are hydrophobic and completely insoluble in water. Complexation of 1 with methyl-β-cyclodextrin 2 results in clearly water-soluble structures due to incorporation of the ferrocene moiety into the cyclodextrin cavity. After free radical polymerization of the water-soluble complexed monomer, corresponding to polyvinylferrocene (PVFc), the water-soluble polymer is obtained due to the host guest interactions. Those polymeric complexes are stable in water up to about 90 °C. Above this temperature the polymer precipitates due to decomplexation. The complex was investigated by 1H NMR spectrometry, dynamic light scattering (DLS), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and lower critical solution temperature (LCST) measurements.
Skill-based telemanipulation by means of intelligent robots

In order to enable robots to execute highly dynamic tasks in dangerous or remote environments, a semiautomatic teleoperation concept has been developed and will be presented in this paper. It relies on a modular software architecture, which allows intuitive control over the robot and compensates latency-based risks by using Augmented Reality techniques together with path prediction and collision avoidance to provide the remote user with visual feedback about the tasks and skills that will be executed. Based on this architecture different skills with high dynamics are integrated in the robot control, so that they can be executed autonomously without the delayed feedback of the user. The skill-based grasping by adherence of smooth or fragile objects during a remote controlled picking and placing task will be exemplary presented.
Automatic clustering of vector time-series for manufacturing machine monitoring

Our research in online monitoring of industrial milling tools has focused on the occurrence of certain wide-band transient events. Time-frequency representations of these events appear to reveal a variety of classes of transients, and a time-structure to these classes which would be well modeled using hidden Markov models. However, the identities of these classes are not known, and obtaining a labeled training set based on a priori information is not possible for reasons both theoretical and practical. Unsupervised clustering algorithms which exist are only appropriate for single vector patterns. We introduce an approach to unsupervised clustering of vector series based around the hidden Markov model. This system is justified as a generalization of a common single-vector approach, and applied to a set of vector patterns from a milling data set. Results presented illustrate the value of this approach in the milling application.
Functional Connectivity in the Left Dorsal Stream Facilitates Simultaneous Language Translation: An EEG Study

Cortical speech processing is dependent on the mutual interdependence of two distinctive processing streams supporting sound-to-meaning (i.e., ventral stream) and sound-to-articulation (i.e., dorsal stream) mapping. Here, we compared the strengths of intracranial functional connectivity between two main hubs of the dorsal stream, namely the left auditory-related cortex (ARC) and Broca’s region, in a sample of simultaneous interpreters (SIs) and multilingual control subjects while the participants performed a mixed and unmixed auditory semantic decision task. Under normal listening conditions such kind of tasks are known to initiate a spread of activation along the ventral stream. However, due to extensive and specific training, here we predicted that SIs will more strongly recruit the dorsal pathway in order to pre-activate the speech codes of the corresponding translation. In line with this reasoning, EEG results demonstrate increased left-hemispheric theta phase synchronization in SLI compared to multilingual control participants during early task-related processing stages. In addition, within the SI group functional connectivity strength in the left dorsal pathway was positively related to the cumulative number of training hours across lifespan, and inversely correlated with the age of training commencement. Hence, we propose that the alignment of neuronal oscillations between brain regions involved in “hearing” and “speaking” results from an intertwining of training, sensitive period, and predisposition.
Homology cobordism invariants and the Cochran-Orr-Teichner filtration of the link concordance group

For any group G, we define a new characteristic series related to the derived series, that we call the torsion-free derived series of G. Using this series and the Cheeger‐ Gromov ‐invariant, we obtain new real-valued homology cobordism invariants n for closed . 4k 1/‐dimensional manifolds. For 3‐dimensional manifolds, we show thatf njn2 Ng is a linearly independent set and for each n 0, the image of n is an infinitely generated and dense subset of R. In their seminal work on knot concordance, T Cochran, K Orr and P Teichner define a filtration F m . n/ of the m‐component (string) link concordance group, called the . n/‐solvable filtration. They also define a grope filtration G m n . We show that n vanishes for . nC1/‐solvable links. Using this, and the nontriviality of n , we show that for each m 2, the successive quotients of the . n/‐solvable filtration of the link concordance group contain an infinitely generated subgroup. We also establish a similar result for the grope filtration. We remark that for knots (mD1), the successive quotients of the . n/‐solvable filtration are known to be infinite. However, for knots, it is unknown if these quotients have infinite rank when n 3. 57M27; 20F14
Lorentz Symmetry of Supermembrane in Light Cone Gauge Formulation

We prove the Lorentz symmetry of supermembrane theory in the light cone gauge to complete the program initiated by de Wit, Marquard and Nicolai. We give some comments on extending the formulation to the M(atrix) theory. After the discovery of string duality, our perception of string theory was dras­ tically changed. What used to be the obscure inhabitants of the string theory, the p-branes, turned out to be the key ingredients of the non-perturbative physics. M­ theory is believed to be one of the most symmetric forms of the "string" theory. However, because of our ignorance of the quantization of the p-branes, the very definition of the theory has been unknown. By critical use of the simplification due to the infinite momentum frame, BFSS 1) proposed a constructive definition of the M-theory. The momentum along the eleventh dimension is identified with the zero-brane charge. The infinite boost kills the degree of freedom which has zero (fundamental string) and negative (anti-zero brane) charges. The resulting Lagrangian is made up of only the zero-branes de­ scribed by the large N limit of the SU(N) Yang-Mills theory. BFSS have indicated two major pieces of evidence which support their idea. 1. The matrix theory Lagrangian coincides with that of supermembrane proposed by de Wit, Hoppe and Nicolai (dWHN) 2) if one replaces the gauge group from SU(N) to the area preserving diffeomorphism (APD) in two dimensions. 2. The scattering of the zero-branes coincides with the prediction of eleven­ dimensional supergravity. As usual, the subtlety in the infinite momentum frame is the Lorentz symmetry. This problem is very difficult to analyze in the matrix theory since the momentum exchange in the eleventh dimension implies the exchange of zero-brane charge. We need to treat the quantum process which changes the size of matrices. **) On the other hand, the analysis of a similar problem in the dWHN model is
Polymorphism of the 5-HT2A Receptor Gene: Association with Stress-Related Indices in Healthy Middle-Aged Adults

Past research has concentrated on the stress system and personality in order to explain the variance found in cognitive performance in old age. A growing body of research is starting to focus on genetic polymorphism as an individual difference factor to explain the observed heterogeneity in cognitive function. While the functional mechanism is still under investigation, polymorphism of the 5-HT2A receptor gene (−1438A/G) has been linked to certain behavioral and physiological outcomes, including cortisol secretion, the expression of certain personality traits, and memory performance. It was the goal of the present study to investigate the association between the −1438A/G polymorphism and stress hormone secretion, stress-related psychological measures, and cognitive performance in a group of adults between the ages of 50 and 65. To examine these associations, 101 middle-aged adults were recruited, completed a battery of psychological questionnaires and were administered a battery of cognitive tasks that assess frontal lobe and hippocampal function. Basal and stress-reactive salivary cortisol levels were collected, at home and in the laboratory. Analyses on psychological measures showed that participants with the GG genotype reported significantly higher levels of neuroticism compared to the AG group and higher levels of depression and more emotion-based coping strategies compared to both the AG and AA group. In terms of cortisol secretion, the AA genotype was related to a significantly higher awakening cortisol response (ACR) compared to the AG and GG group and the GG genotype group displayed a greater increase in cortisol secretion following a psychosocial stressor compared to the two other groups. On measures of cognitive performance, the AA genotype group performed significantly better on a test of declarative memory and selective attention compared to the other two groups. Together, these results suggest that carriers of the GG genotype are more susceptible to low mood and display a greater potential for an overactive stress system, which may influence cognitive function in later years.
A Hybrid-System Model of the coagulation Cascade: Simulation, sensitivity, and Validation

The process of human blood clotting involves a complex interaction of continuous-time/continuous-state processes and discrete-event/discrete-state phenomena, where the former comprise the various chemical rate equations and the latter comprise both threshold-limited behaviors and binary states (presence/absence of a chemical). Whereas previous blood-clotting models used only continuous dynamics and perforce addressed only portions of the coagulation cascade, we capture both continuous and discrete aspects by modeling it as a hybrid dynamical system. The model was implemented as a hybrid Petri net, a graphical modeling language that extends ordinary Petri nets to cover continuous quantities and continuous-time flows. The primary focus is simulation: (1) fidelity to the clinical data in terms of clotting-factor concentrations and elapsed time; (2) reproduction of known clotting pathologies; and (3) fine-grained predictions which may be used to refine clinical understanding of blood clotting. Next we examine sensitivity to rate-constant perturbation. Finally, we propose a method for titrating between reliance on the model and on prior clinical knowledge. For simplicity, we confine these last two analyses to a critical purely-continuous subsystem of the model.
2-D nonseparable wavelet filter bank with adaptive filter parameters

In this paper, a novel realization of two-dimensional nonseparable wavelet filter bank with adaptive filter parameters is proposed. Two-dimensional generalization of the previously presented 1-D scheme [4] is based on nonseparable quincunx decimation. 2-D filters are designed directly rather then obtained from 1-D filters using the pyramid scheme. Described space variant wavelet filter bank has several advantages when compared to fixed banks. Basic convergence and regularity properties of the limit wavelet functions and scales are provided by fixed part of the filter bank. Variable part of the bank adapts to the analyzed signal. Realization is based on the lifting scheme, derived from a method of fixed 2-D wavelet filter bank design. Original 2-D interpolation of samples in the space domain is modified to an approximation scheme that can be recomputed at each step of decomposition. Adaptation criterion is calculated from wavelet coefficients. Wavelet filter banks with adaptive filter parameters can outperform fixed banks in a number of applications, but the suitable adaptation criterion is still to be found.
KaBaGe-RL: Kanerva-based generalisation and reinforcement learning for possession football

The complexity of most modem systems prohibits a hand-coded approach to decision making. In addition, many problems have continuous or large discrete state spaces; some have large or continuous action spaces. The problem of learning in large spaces is tackled through generalisation techniques, which allow compact representation of learned information and transfer of knowledge between similar states and actions. In this paper Kanerva. coding and reinforcement learning are combined to produce the KaBaGe-RL decision-making module. The purpose of KaBaGe-RL is twofold. Firstly, Kanerva coding is used as a generalisation method to produce a feature vector from the raw sensory input. Secondly, the reinforcement learning uses this feature vector in order to learn an optimal policy. The efficiency of KaBaGe-RL is tested using the "3 versus 2 possession football" challenge, a subproblem of the RoboCup domain. The results demonstrate that the learning approach outperforms a number of benchmark policies including a hand-coded one.