Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Projecting the impacts of rising seawater temperatures on the distribution of seaweeds around Japan under multiple climate change scenarios

Seaweed beds play a key role in providing essential habitats and energy to coastal areas, with enhancements in productivity and biodiversity and benefits to human societies. However, the spatial extent of seaweed beds around Japan has decreased due to coastal reclamation, water quality changes, rising water temperatures, and heavy grazing by herbivores. Using monthly mean sea surface temperature (SST) data from 1960 to 2099 and SST-based indices, we quantitatively evaluated the effects of warming seawater on the spatial extent of suitable versus unsuitable habitats for temperate seaweed Ecklonia cava, which is predominantly found in southern Japanese waters. SST data were generated using the most recent multiple climate projection models and emission scenarios (the Representative Concentration Pathways or RCPs) used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5). In addition, grazing by Siganus fuscescens, an herbivorous fish, was evaluated under the four RCP simulations. Our results suggest that continued warming may drive a poleward shift in the distribution of E. cava, with large differences depending on the climate scenario. For the lowest emission scenario (RCP2.6), most existing E. cava populations would not be impacted by seawater warming directly but would be adversely affected by intensified year-round grazing. For the highest emission scenario (RCP8.5), previously suitable habitats throughout coastal Japan would become untenable for E. cava by the 2090s, due to both high-temperature stress and intensified grazing. Our projections highlight the importance of not only mitigating regional warming due to climate change, but also protecting E. cava from herbivores to conserve suitable habitats on the Japanese coast.
Exploring beam-based shift-reduce dependency parsing with DyALog: Results from the SPMRL 2013 shared task

The SPMRL 2013 shared task was the op- portunity to develop and test, with promising results, a simple beam-based shift-reduce de- pendency parser on top of the tabular logic programming system DYALOG. The parser was also extended to handle ambiguous word lattices, with almost no loss w.r. t. disam- biguated input, thanks to specific training, use of oracle segmentation, and large beams. We believe that this result is an interesting new one for shift-reduce parsing.
Identification of hair cell progenitors and intermitotic migration of their nuclei in the normal and regenerating avian inner ear

Postembryonic production of sensory hair cells occurs in both normal and aminoglycoside-damaged avian inner ears. The cellular source and mechanism that results in new differentiated hair cells were investigated in the avian vestibular epithelia using three distinct cell-cycle-specific labeling methods to identify proliferating sensory epithelial cells. First, immunocytochemical detection of the proliferating cell nuclear antigen, an auxiliary protein of DNA polymerase, allowed labeling of cells in late G1, S, and early G2 phases of the cell cycle. Second, a pulse-fix tritiated thymidine autoradiographic protocol was used to identify cells in S phase of the cell cycle. Finally, Hoechst 33342, a fluorescent DNA stain, was used to identify epithelial cells in mitosis. The distribution of cells active in the cell cycle within the normal and ototoxin-damaged vestibular epithelium suggests that supporting cells within the sensory epithelia are the cellular precursors to the regenerated hair cells. Differences between the proliferation marker densities in control and damaged end organs indicate that the upregulation of mitotic activity observed after streptomycin treatment is due primarily to an increase in the number of dividing progenitor cells. The differences between the extent of ototoxic damage and the level of reparative proliferative response suggest a generalized stimulus, such as a soluble chemical factor, plays a role in initiating regeneration. Finally, after DNA replication is initiated, progenitor cell nuclei migrate from their original location close to the basement membrane to the lumenal surface, where cell division occurs. This pattern of intermitotic nuclear migration is analogous to that observed in the developing inner ear and neural epithelium.
Purification, immunochemical, and biologic characterization of the Schistosoma circulating M antigen.

Circulating M antigen, specific for genus Schistosoma, was previously described in serum, urine, patients' milk, and in serum and urine of animals infected by S. mansoni. The M antigen was thermostable and soluble in trichloroacetic acid. It was not hydrolyzed by protease, ribonuclease, amylase, or neuraminidase but destroyed by sodium metaperiodate. In the present study, we have purified the M ag by using trichloroacetic acid solubility, DEAE Sephadex, and immunoadsorption. The M ag showed a neutral electric charge, a m.w. heterogeneity, and was only stained by periodic acid-Schiff. The composition study revealed M ag was a glycoprotein with a polysaccharide moiety (63% of the molecules) particularly rich in galactose, fucose, glucosamine, and mannose, and with a high molecular ratio of serine and threonine. The presence of O-glycosidic linkage allowed M ag to be considered as a mucin or a mucus glycoprotein-like component. It was localized in the cell wall of the gut of adult worms.
Market Integration and Fairness: Evidence from Ultimatum, Dictator, and Public Goods Experiments in East Africa

, this volume, Fehr andSchmidt 1999). Intriguingly, the first data from a less developed society, namely theAmazonian Machiguenga study of Joseph Henrich (2000), which was a pilot for this volume,demonstrated far less fair-mindedness. Many of the other less developed societiesrepresented in this volume also have means and modes in the ultimatum game that arebelow those for developed societies. Indeed, one of the hypotheses that holds acrossthese less developed small-scale societies, is the positive relationship between marketintegration and offer size in the ultimatum game (see Henrich
Laplace Group Sensing for Acoustic Models

This paper presents the group sparse learning for acoustic models where a sequence of acoustic features is driven by Markov chain and each feature vector is represented by groups of basis vectors. The group of common bases represents the features across Markov states within a regression class. The group of individual basis compensates the intra-state residual information. Laplace distribution is used as the sparse prior of sensing weights for group basis representation. Laplace parameter serves as regularization parameter or automatic relevance determination which controls the selection of relevant bases for acoustic modeling. The groups of regularization parameters and basis vectors are estimated from training data by maximizing the marginal likelihood over sensing weights which is implemented by Laplace approximation using the Hessian matrix and the maximum a posteriori parameters. Model uncertainty is compensated through full Bayesian treatment. The connection of Laplace group sensing to lasso regularization is illustrated. Experiments on noisy speech recognition show the robustness of group sparse acoustic models in presence of different noise types and SNRs.
Efficient and reliable MAC-layer broadcast for IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Networks

IEEE 802.15. 4 represents a widely used MAC-layer standard for Wireless Sensor Networks. In multihop topologies, the protocol exploits a cluster-tree and organizes the transmissions by alternating sleeping and active periods in a superframe delimited by beacons. In this paper, we propose a new Contention Broadcast Only Period to limit beacon collisions and to reduce bandwidth wastage due to variable beacon durations. We adopt a CSMA-approach during the Contention Broadcast Only Period to efficiently deliver both beacon and broadcast packets. We also propose to use broadcast sequence numbers for a reliable MAC-layer broadcast delivery, for both cluster-tree and radio neighbors. Simulations with realistic conditions prove the relevance of this approach. We increase energy savings by reducing idle listening, and improve the MAC-layer broadcast reliability for both radio and cluster-tree delivery.
Impact of Irradiations by Protons with different Energies on Silicon Sensors

In the frame of the CMS tracker upgrade campaign the radiation damage of oxygenrich n-type silicon pad diodes induced by 23 MeV and 23 GeV protons was investigated. The diodes were manufactured by Hamamatsu Photonics. After irradiation with 1 MeV neutron equivalent fluences between 1× 10 cm and 1.5× 10 cm, the sensors were electrically characterized by means of capacitance-voltage (CV) and current-voltage (IV) measurements. Current pulses recorded by the Transient Current Technique (TCT) and Charge Collection Efficiency (CCE) measurements show a dependence of the bulk damage on the proton energy. At a fluence of Φeq ≈ 3 × 10 cm oxygen-rich n-type diodes demonstrate clear Space Charge Sign Inversion (SCSI) after 23 MeV proton irradiation. This effect does not appear after the irradiation with 23 GeV protons. Moreover, RD50 pad diodes were irradiated with 23 MeV protons, electrically characterized and compared to results obtained after 23 GeV irradiations. Our previous observation on the energy dependence of the radiation damage could be confirmed. In order to get a deeper understanding of the differences of the radiation induced defects, the Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS) and Thermally Stimulated Current Technique (TSC) were utilized. Defects with impact on the space charge could be identified and characterized and it was possible to find some hints for the reason of the SCSI after 23 MeV proton irradiation. Moreover, a dependence on the oxygen concentration of the sensors could be observed.
Magnetoresistance and spin transfer torque in electrodeposited NiFe/Cu multilayered nanowires

Magnetoresistance (MR) and spin transfer torque phenomena (STT) are studied for two different structures of multilayered nanowires, with diameter of 35 nm. The examined structures were: (a) conventional multilayered NiFe/Cu nanowires and (b) NiFe/Cu/NiFe trilayers magnetically isolated by a thick Cu layer. The nanowires are fabricated in the pores of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) templates by electrodeposition. The magnetoresistive properties of these two nanowire structures are measured as function of Cu layer thicknesses, and the results are interpreted in correlation with their magnetic measurements. Furthermore for both structures we have measured the variation of the resistance due to the dc current injection through the nanowires depending on the current step and also depending on the magnetic field applied perpendicular to the nanowire axis. For the magnetotransport measurements the electrical connection with a single or just a small number of nanowires is achieved by performing nanoindentation technique using an AFM system.
Multi-Level Probabilistic Relaxation

We present a multi-level probabilistic relaxation scheme appropriate for image segmentation on the basis of features computed at various resolution levels. At each level, we incorporate contextual information computed from the features in the coarser scale representation of the scene, as well as information from the features computed in the ner scale representation, until a full segmentation is achieved at the highest level of resolution. The features used can be textural, colour, or the results of any other type of measurements performed on the image. We demonstrate our approach by the segmentation of colour textures.
Relay-Assisted Re-Transmission Scheme based on Mutual Information for Wireless Mesh Networks

This paper proposes a relay-assisted re-transmission scheme based on mutual information for wireless mesh networks. In the proposed scheme, re-transmission is done not from the source node but from the relay node, and minimal amount of spectrum corresponding to the remaining uncertainty for the data sequence is re-transmitted, where the number of spectrum components to be fed back is determined based on expected mutual information after re-transmission. Moreover, to directly convert reduction of feedback spectrum to spectrum efficiency improvement in carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) introduced systems, the re-transmitted spectrum is mapped on whole the bandwidth with equal spacing, thereby the time duration for the re-transmission is reduced. Computer simulation confirms that the proposed scheme can achieve much higher system throughput efficiency especially than the conventional two-hop transmission schemes.
On the Structural and Optical Properties of SnS Films Grown by Thermal Evaporation Method

Tin sulphide (SnS) has a direct energy band gap of 1.35 eV and it consists of abundant, non-toxic elements. It is therefore of interest for use as an absorber layer material in thin film photovoltaic solar cells. In this work, SnS layers with thicknesses in the range 2-3. 6μm, were thermally evaporated onto glass substrates using substrate temperatures in the range 280°C to 360°C, and the way the structural and optical properties of the layers varied with the deposition conditions investigated. X-ray diffraction spectra showed a strong (040) reflection as the most prominent peak for films formed between 320°C to 360°C. The peak intensity ratio, crystallite size and grain size were observed to increase with increasing substrate temperature whilst the strain decreased. All the layers were highly light absorbing with the optical absorption coefficient, α > 104 cm−1. The optical energy band gap was found to be in the range, 1.30-1.34eV, it not changing substantially with substrate temperature. Other optical parameters such as the refractive index and optical conductivity were also evaluated for the layers grown at different substrate temperatures.
Facial Features Tracking Applied to Drivers Drowsiness Detection

In this paper we describe a real time facial features tracker applied to the detection of some basic drowsiness behaviours in drivers, with a colour camera. It uses stochastic colour segmentation to robustly track a person’s skin and some facial features (eyes and lips). The system recovers 3D face direction, classifies rotation in all viewing directions and detects the driver’s state analysing eye blinking and face direction. We show some experimental results, using real sequences with several users, and some conclusions about the performance of the system. Key-Words: Facial Features Tracking, Driver Drowsiness, Colour Segmentation, 3D Recover, Eye Blinking.
Acoustic Feature Transformation Combining Average and Maximum Classification Error Minimization Criteria

Acoustic feature transformation is widely used to reduce dimensionality and improve speech recognition performance. In this letter we focus on dimensionality reduction methods that minimize the average classification error. Unfortunately, minimization of the average classification error may cause considerable overlaps between distributions of some classes. To mitigate risks of considerable overlaps, we propose a dimensionality reduction method that minimizes the maximum classification error. We also propose two interpolated methods that can describe the average and maximum classification errors. Experimental results show that these proposed methods improve speech recognition performance.
Fusion of methods for keystroke dynamic authentication

In this article, we present three methods for the keystroke dynamic authentication problem. We use in the first method, the average and the standard deviation, in the second the rhythm of striking and in the third, a comparison of the times order. After having presented these methods, we propose to realize a fusion of them. The results obtained indicate good performance of each method alone, as well as a significant improvement of performance with fusion, from 3.43% of EER for the best method alone down-to 1.8% with fusion.
Robust appearance based sign language recognition

In this work, we introduce a robust appearance-based sign language recognition system which is derived from a large vocabulary speech recognition system. The system employs a large variety of methods known from automatic speech recognition research for the modeling of temporal and language specific issues. The feature extraction part of the system is based on recent developments in image processing which model different aspects of the signs and accounts for visual variabilities in appearance. Different issues of appearance-based sign language recognition such as datasets, appearance-based features, geometric features, training, and recognition parts are investigated and analyzed. We discuss the state of the art in sign language and gesture recognition. In contrast to the proposed system, most of the existing approaches use special data acquisition tools to collect the data of the signings. The systems which use this kind of data capturing tools are not useful in practical environments. Furthermore, the datasets created within their own group are not publicly available which makes it difficult to compare the results. To overcome these shortcomings and the problems of the existing approaches, our system is built to use video data only and evaluated on publicly available data. First, to overcome the scarceness of publicly available data and to remove the dependency on impractical data capturing devices, we use normal video files publicly available and create appropriate transcriptions of these files. Then, appearance-based features are extracted directly from the videos. To cope with the visual variability of the signs occurring in the image frames, pronunciation clustering, invariant distances, and different reduction methods are investigated. Furthermore, geometric features capturing the configuration of the signers’ hand are investigated improving the accuracy of the recognition system. The geometric features represent the position, the orientation and the configuration of the signers’ dominant hand which plays a major role to convey the meaning of the signs. Finally, it is described how to employ the introduced methods and how to combine the features to construct a robust sign language recognition system.
Impact of RME/Diesel Blends on Particle Formation, Particle Filtration and PAH Emissions

HDV-Diesel engines have been investigated with respect to their emissions of toxic air contaminants including nanoparticles and PAH when using blends of RME and standard ULSDiesel fuel with and without passively regenerated Diesel particle filters. Blends of 10, 20 and 30 % of RME were compared to 100 % ULSD and 100 % RME. Smoke emission SZ and opacity during free acceleration was reduced when RME was mixed into ULSF, about proportional to the RME-content.
Methods for the analysis of neuronal plasticity and brain connectivity during neurological recovery

The study of neuronal plasticity under pathological conditions is now a major point of focus on the field of neurological recovery. After the repeated failure of acute neuroprotection strategies for stroke treatment, the design of studies aimed at promoting the reconstruction of neuronal networks has become essential. Methods for the delivery of therapeutic agents on a steady dosage, thus preventing pharmacological peaks or excessive manipulation of experimental animals, are thus required. Additionally, methods that allow the visualization of neurological remodeling processes are fundamental to the understanding of how a therapeutic agent exerts its function. Here we describe how the use of miniosmotic pumps for the steady delivery of such agents, together with tract tracer injections, can be combined to unveil important information on how the brain changes after stroke and how therapeutic agents promote brain remodeling recovery.
The Spatial Nature of Thought: Understanding Systems Design Through Diagrams

Design entails the interaction of minds and the tools used to express the design, notably, diagrams. Systems designers use the affordances of the page when they generate structural diagrams of systems. Specifically, they use proximity to augment connectedness (path) information by grouping subsystems. They use horizontal position on the page to express sequence and vertical position to reflect actual spatial position. Finally, they use the permanence of diagrams to generate alternative designs. These conclusions were reached through the analysis of work by student designers, many of whom were practicing information technology professionals. The analysis of designs in topological and Euclidean space required the creation of computational tools that show promise as decision aids for designers, by separating the intertwined qualities of topological and Euclidean space, and by making visible the conceptual similarity of design alternatives.
Improving left hemispatial neglect using virtual reality

Background: In hemispatial neglect, space can be dissociated on the basis of “near” peripersonal vs “far” extrapersonal space. The clinical manifestations of neglect can be modified by having patients use a tool to explore “far” extrapersonal space. An explanation for this is that the use of a stick produced an extension of body space resulting in a remapping of “far” space as “near” space. Objectives: To determine whether the remapping of space can be generalized to the amelioration of the “affected” vs the “nonaffected” space, rather than being confined to the selective amelioration of “far” vs “near” neglect; and to determine whether tool use is a necessary condition for the remapping of space. Methods: Using virtual reality, the authors asked six hemispatial neglect patients to reach and grasp a real object while simultaneously observing the grasping of a virtual object located within a virtual environment by a virtual hand. The virtual hand was commanded in real time by their real hand. Results: After a period of adaptation, hemispatial neglect patients coded the visual stimuli within the neglected space in an identical fashion as those presented within the preserved portions of space. Conclusions: It is possible to re-create links between the affected and the nonaffected space. Wielding a tool is not a necessary condition in reopening neglected space.
Experimental Characterization of the Iron Losses Variability in Stators of Electrical Machines

Manufacturing processes may introduce a significant variability on the magnetic properties of claw pole generator stators. The present work deals with the analysis of two groups of stator samples. The first group is composed of 28 slinky stators (SS) and the second group is composed of 5 stators, manufactured using laser cut stacked laminations (SL). Both groups are made from the same lamination grade and with the same geometrical dimensions. Characterization was carried out for several levels of excitation field at 50 Hz. A noticeable variability has been observed on the iron losses for SS samples, whereas it appears to be not significant for SL samples. The loss separation technique has then been investigated for the SS samples. Results show that the variability of static losses is more important than the one of dynamic losses.