Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual attribute modulates the time course of iconic memory decay

ABSTRACT Studies on iconic memory demonstrate that rich information from a visual scene quickly becomes unavailable with the passage of time. The decay rate of iconic memory refers to the dynamics of memory availability. The present study investigated the iconic memory decay of different stimulus attributes that comprised an object. Specifically, in Experiment 1, participants were presented with eight coloured numbers (e.g., red 4) and required to remember only one attribute, either colour or number, over different blocks of trials. The participants then reported the cued attribute in which the cue Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA) from the memory array onset was varied (0, 100, 200, 300, 500, and 1000 ms). We found that numerical information became unavailable more quickly than colour information, despite the fact that the memory accuracies at 0 and 1000 ms SOAs were comparable between the two attributes. In Experiment 2, we replicated the finding that a numerical representation was lost more quickly than a colour representation when visual masks followed the target stimulus. These results suggest that the various visual attributes comprising an object are lost over time at different rates in iconic memory. We discuss this finding in relation to how perceptual representation is transferred to the capacity-limited visual working memory.
Modeling and Communicating the Conceptual Intent of Geo‐Analytical Tasks for Human‐GIS Interaction

One of the fundamental issues of geographical information science is to design GIS interfaces and functionalities in a way that is easy to understand, teach, and use. Unfortunately, current geographical information systems (including ArcGIS) remains very difficult to use as spatial analysis tools, because they organize and expose functionalities according to GIS data structures and processing algorithms. As a result, GIS interfaces are conceptually confusing, cognitively complex, and semantically disconnected from the way human reason about spatial analytical activities. In this article, we propose an approach that structures GIS analytical functions based on the notion of “analytical intent”. We describe an experiment that replaces ArcGIS desktop interface with a conversational interface, to enable mixed‐initiative user‐system interactions at the level of analytical intentions. We initially focus on the subset of GIS functions that are relevant to “finding what's inside” as described by Mitchell, but the general principles apply to other types of spatial analysis. This work demonstrates the feasibility of delegating some spatial thinking tasks to computational agents, and also raises future research questions that are key to building a better theory of spatial thinking with GIS.
Local Neural Processing and the Generation of Dynamic Motor Commands within the Saccadic Premotor Network

The ability to accurately control movement requires the computation of a precise motor command. However, the computations that take place within premotor pathways to determine the dynamics of movements are not understood. Here we studied the local processing that generates dynamic motor commands by simultaneously recording spikes and local field potentials (LFPs) in the network that commands saccades. We first compared the information encoded by LFPs and spikes recorded from individual premotor and motoneurons (saccadic burst neurons, omnipause neurons, and motoneurons) in monkeys. LFP responses consistent with net depolarizations occurred in association with bursts of spiking activity when saccades were made in a neuron's preferred direction. In contrast, when saccades were made in a neuron's nonpreferred direction, neurons ceased spiking and the associated LFP responses were consistent with net hyperpolarizations. Surprisingly, hyperpolarizing and depolarizing LFPs encoded movement dynamics with equal robustness and accuracy. Second, we compared spiking responses at one hierarchical level of processing to LFPs at the next stage. Latencies and spike-triggered averages of LFP responses were consistent with each neuron's place within this circuit. LFPs reflected relatively local events (<500 μm) and encoded important features not available from the spiking train (i.e., hyperpolarizing response). Notably, quantification of their time-varying profiles revealed that a precise balance of depolarization and hyperpolarization underlies the production of precise saccadic eye movement commands at both motor and premotor levels. Overall, simultaneous recordings of LFPs and spiking responses provides an effective means for evaluating the local computations that take place to produce accurate motor commands.
attern recognition for sensor array signals using Fuzzy ARTMAP

A Fuzzy ARTMAP classifier for pattern recognition in chemical sensor array was developed based on Fuzzy Set Theory and Adaptive Resonance Theory. In contrast to most current classifiers with difficulty in detecting new analytes, the Fuzzy ARTMAP system can identify untrained analytes with comparatively high probability. And to detect presence of new analyte, the Fuzzy ARTMAP classifier does not need retraining process that is necessary for most traditional neural network classifiers. In this study, principal component analysis (PCA) was first implemented for feature extraction purpose, followed by pattern recognition
Interpreting news through the science of networks

On-line news sources provide a large and comprehensive corpus of world events and news entities. The Lydia project (www.textmap.com) analyzes over a thousand on-line newspapers every day to discover news trends, sentiments, and geographic biases. The aim of the project is to deliver news analysis on a scale of content that would be impossible for a person to read, and to mine the data to discover world facts that a human would be unable to realize. The architecture of the Lydia system is described in detail in [15]. The main components of Lydia are
A Posteriori Agreement for Clock Synchronization on Broadcast Networks

We present a clock synchronization algorithm, dubbed a posteriori agreement, based on a new variant of the well-known convergence non-averaging technique. By exploiting an obvious characteristic of broadcast networks, the e ect of message delivery delay variance is largely reduced. In consequence, the precision achieved by the algorithm is drastically improved. Accuracy preservation is near to optimal. Our solution, however, does not require the use of dedicated hardware. A shorter version of this report was published in the Digest of Papers, The 22th International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing, July, 1992, Boston USA, c 1992 IEEE Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, R. Alves Redol, 9 6 1000 Lisboa Portugal, Tel. +351-1-3100000 This work has been supported in part by the CEC, through Esprit Project 1226 DELTA-4, and JNICT, through Programa Ciência.
Clock skew scheduling for timing speculation

By assigning intentional clock arrival times to the sequential elements in a circuit, clock skew scheduling (CSS) techniques can be utilized to improve IC performance. Existing CSS solutions work in a conservative manner that guarantees “always correct” computation, and hence their effectiveness is greatly challenged by the ever-increasing process variation effects. By allowing infrequent timing errors and recovering from them with minor performance impact, timing speculation techniques such as Razor have gained wide interests from both academia and industry. In this work, we formulate the clock skew scheduling problem for circuits equipped with timing speculation capability and propose a novel CSS algorithm based on gradient-descent method. Experimental results on various benchmark circuits demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methodology.
Development of a removable multi-DOF manipulator system for man-portable underwater robots

In this paper, the authors design and develop a removable and lightweight underwater manipulator system for man-portable underwater robots. The aim of the development is to enhance manipulation capabilities of man-portable underwater robots. The developed manipulator system consists of two multi-degrees of freedom manipulators and an attitude control system. The dexterity of the developed manipulators will achieve various underwater missions. In this research, the manipulator system is attached to a commercial man-portable underwater robot and the performance of the system is tested in water tanks. We demonstrate several practical applications of the developed manipulator system in a lake and a harbor.
Veränderung motorischer Gleichgewichtsfähigkeit im Verlauf einer stationären psychosomatischen Rehabilitationsmaßnahme

Zusammenfassung Ziel der Studie Sowohl die körperliche Gleichgewichtsfähigkeit als auch das Gefühl, seelisch standfest und im Gleichgewicht zu sein, ist für viele Rehabilitanden eine Voraussetzung für die Teilhabe am Erwerbsleben und an der Gesellschaft. Bisher gibt es keine Befunde, ob sich die Gleichgewichtsfähigkeit im Rahmen der psychosomatischen Rehabilitation verbessern lässt. Ziel unserer explorativ angelegten Studie war es, Veränderungen in der motorischen Gleichgewichtsfähigkeit im Verlauf einer stationären psychosomatischen Rehabilitationsmaßnahme zu erfassen und diese in Bezug zu Veränderungen psychischer Variablen zu setzen. Methodik 118 Patienten einer psychosomatischen Klinik (49,3±8,6 Jahre; 75,4% Frauen) wurden zu Beginn und am Ende ihres Aufenthaltes untersucht. Zur Messung des Gleichgewichts wurden der Gleichgewichtstest (GGT) von Bös, Wydra und Karisch eingesetzt, der Timed up and go Test (TUG), 8 Standaufgaben auf instabiler Unterlage sowie 8 Standaufgaben auf festem Untergrund. Als psychische Variablen wurden die Selbstwertschätzung des Patienten (MSWS), depressive Symptome (BDI-II) und Angstsymptome (BAI) erhoben. Ergebnisse Die Gleichgewichtsfähigkeit, gemessen über den GGT (d=1,37, den TUG (d=0,56) und Standaufgaben auf instabiler (d=1,48) sowie stabiler Unterlage (d=0,67), stieg im Verlauf der Rehabilitation signifikant an. Ähnliche Ergebnisse mit Effektstärken im hohen bis mittleren Bereich zeigten sich bei den psychischen Variablen. Zusammenhänge in der Veränderung der motorischen und psychischen Variablen zeigten sich nur bei den Standaufgaben auf instabilem und festem Untergrund und verschiedenen Skalen der MSWS, nicht aber bei den Symptomskalen. Diskussion Im Verlauf der Rehabilitation kam es zwar zu einer Verbesserung sowohl der psychischen Symptombelastung als auch der Gleichgewichtsfähigkeit; zwischen beiden fanden sich jedoch wider Erwarten keine signifikanten Korrelationen. Dies lässt zunächst darauf schließen, dass kein Zusammenhang zwischen psychischen Faktoren und der Gleichgewichtsfähigkeit der Patienten besteht. Allerdings ist zu berücksichtigen, dass das Gleichgewicht in einer standardisierten Situation überprüft wurde, in der die Patienten keiner besonderen psychischen Belastung ausgesetzt waren. Beobachtungen während der Durchführung der Studie legen nahe, dass sich Veränderungen hinsichtlich der motorischen Gleichgewichtsfähigkeit eher in Merkmalen der Gleichgewichtsregulation (z. B. Anspannung und Entspannung) widerspiegeln als in der Zahl der erfüllten Aufgaben. Die Gleichgewichtstests wurden von den Rehabilitanden nicht nur sehr gut akzeptiert, sondern lösten häufig auch Selbstreflexionsprozesse zu Themen wie Gleichgewicht und Standfestigkeit im psychosomatischen Sinne aus. Weitere Forschung sowohl zu den Wirkfaktoren auf die Gleichgewichtsfähigkeit als auch zu deren Zusammenhang mit der Verbesserung in Aktivität und Teilhabe erscheint vielversprechend.
Query Substitution based on N-gram Analysis

Query substitution replaces original query words with a new words that express the same meaning. In this paper, the technique of n-gram analysis is proposed to flnd the synonyms or quasi-synonyms of the original query word. The synonyms found are then incorporated into the original query with difierent methods. Experiments show that the proposed n-gram analysis techniques can obtain interesting synonyms, which help to improve retrieval efiectiveness.
Overview of the Informational Retrieval Task at NTCIR-4 WEB

This paper gives an overview of the Informational Retrieval Task 2 that was conducted from 2003 to 2004 as a subtask of the WEB Task at the Fourth NTCIR Workshop (‘NTCIR-4 WEB’). In the Informational Retrieval Task, we attempted to assess the retrieval effectiveness of Web search engine systems from a viewpoint of topical relevance, and to build a re-usable test collection suitable for evaluating Web search engine systems from such a viewpoint. We used 100gigabyte document data that were mainly gathered from the ‘. jp’ domain. Relevance judgments were performed on the retrieved documents, which were written in Japanese or English, by considering the relationshiop between the pages referenced by hyper-links. We also investigated the evaluation methods considering non-redundancy of contents and diversity of queries.
A TDM NoC supporting QoS, multicast, and fast connection set-up

Networks-on-Chip are seen as promising interconnect solutions, offering the advantages of scalability and high frequency operation which the traditional bus interconnects lack. Several NoC implementations have been presented in the literature, some of them having mature tool-flows and ecosystems. The main differentiating factor between the various implementations are the services and communication patters they offer to the end-user. In this paper we present dAElite, a TDM Network-on-Chip that offers a unique combinations of features, namely guaranteed bandwidth and latency per connection, built-in support for multicast, and a short connection set-up time. While our NoC was designed from the ground up, we leverage on existing tools for network dimensioning, analysis and instantiation. We have implemented and tested our proposal in hardware and we found it to compare favorably to the other NoCs in terms of hardware area. Compared with aelite, which is closest in terms of offered services our network offers connection set-up times faster by a factor of 10 network, traversal latencies decreased by 33%, and improved bandwidth.
On the Complexity of Learning the Kernel Matrix

We investigate data based procedures for selecting the kernel when learning with Support Vector Machines. We provide generalization error bounds by estimating the Rademacher complexities of the corresponding function classes. In particular we obtain a complexity bound for function classes induced by kernels with given eigenvectors, i.e., we allow to vary the spectrum and keep the eigenvectors fix. This bound is only a logarithmic factor bigger than the complexity of the function class induced by a single kernel. However, optimizing the margin over such classes leads to overfitting. We thus propose a suitable way of constraining the class. We use an efficient algorithm to solve the resulting optimization problem, present preliminary experimental results, and compare them to an alignment-based approach.
The usefulness of the GHRH stimulation test in the diagnostics of growth hormone deficiency in children.

INTRODUCTION Stimulation tests form the basis for the diagnostic process in growth hormone deficiency (GHD). One of these tests uses the GH releasing hormone (GHRH). This provides the potential to differentiate patients with pituitary dysfunction from patients with hypothalamus abnormalities. However, the routine use of the GHRH test is still being debated. The aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic usefulness of the GHRH test in the diagnostics of GHD. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study group consisted of 20 prepubertal children with GHD. In all the children, one of the performed stimulation tests was the GHRH test. RESULTS The results showed that the mean peak concentration of GH in the GHRH test was 14.7 ± 11.3 ng/mL. In eight children the MRI showed pituitary hypoplasia, in one patient pituitary hypoplasia and pituitary stalk agenesis, and in one patient septo-optic dysplasia. All patients with pituitary malformations, except for one patient with a hypoplastic pituitary gland, presented GH levels < 10 ng/mL in the GHRH test. The sensitivity of the GHRH test in the diagnostics of GHD was 45%. CONCLUSIONS The high correlation between the GHRH test and anatomical changes in the pituitary provides this test with a high predictive value. In individual clinical cases, knowledge about the level of damage in the hypothalamic-pituitary area can determine diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.
Soft Error Mitigation Schemes for High Performance and Aggressive Designs

In this paper, we address the issue of soft errors in random logic and develop solutions that provide fault tolerance capabilities without logic duplication. First, we present a circuit level soft error mitigation technique which allows systems to operate without the performance overhead of soft error detection and correction circuitry. This is achieved by sampling data using our Soft Error Mitigation (SEM) register cell, which uses a distributed and temporal voting scheme for soft error detection and correction. Next, we present a scheme to concurrently detect and correct soft and timing errors using a Soft and Timing Error Mitigation (STEM) register cell, which offers soft error protection in aggressive designs that allow overclocking. Timing annotated gate level simulations, using 45nm libraries, of a pipelined addermultiplier circuit and five-stage DLX processor show that both of our techniques achieve near 100% fault coverage. For DLX processor, even under severe fault injection campaigns, SEM achieves an average performance improvement of 26.58% over a temporal Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) voter based register cell, while STEM outperforms SEM by 27.42%.
Reproductive rights approach to reproductive health in developing countries

Background Research on reproductive health in developing countries focuses mostly on the role of economic development on various components of reproductive health. Cross-sectional and empirical research studies in particular on the effects of non-economic factors such as reproductive rights remain few and far between. Objective This study investigates the influence of two components of an empowerment strategy, gender equality, and reproductive rights on women's reproductive health in developing countries. The empowerment strategy for improving reproductive health is theoretically situated on a number of background factors such as economic and social development. Design Cross-national socioeconomic and demographic data from a number of international organizations on 142 developing countries are used to test a model of reproductive rights and reproductive health. Results The findings suggest that both economic and democratic development have significant positive effects on levels of gender equality. The level of social development plays a prominent role in promoting reproductive rights. It is found that reproductive rights channel the influences of social structural factors and gender equality on reproductive health.
Multi-Layer Network Operation and Management for Future Carrier Backbone Networks

We have been developing a network visualization technique: a network architecture technology to overlay IP networks over an optical backbone network to improve flexibility and resiliency. Virtual network topology created in the optical backbone network is used as a substrate for a IP network. In order to improve flexibility and resiliency, we need to implement carrier-grade mechanisms for operation, administration, and maintenance. For the IP network, the following management and controls are addressed: traffic measurement, route trace, topology and route optimization, and failure analysis. For the optical backbone network, the impact of the GMPLS control plane is addressed. We also discuss the integrated operation and management of the IP and optical backbone networks.
Development of the UserState Conventions for the Multimodal Corpus in SmartKom

This contribution deals with the problem of finding procedures for the labeling of a multimodal data corpus that is created within the SmartKom project. The goal of the SmartKom project is the development of an intelligent computer-user interface that allows almost natural communication with an adaptive and self-explanatory machine. The system does not only accept input in form of natural speech but also in form of gestures. Additionally the facial expression and prosody of speech is analyzed. To train recognizers and to explore how users interact with the system, data is collected in so-called Wizard-of-Oz experiments. Speech is transliterated and gestures as well as user-states are labeled. In this contribution we will describe the development process of the User-State Labeling Conventions as an example for our strategy of functional labeling. Key-words: multi-modal, annotation, user-states, human-machine interaction, coding conventions.
An Information-Theoretic Analysis of the Security of Communication Systems Employing the Encoding-Encryption Paradigm

This paper proposes a generic approach for providing enhanced security to communication systems which encode their data for reliability before encrypting it through a stream cipher for security. We call this counter-intuitive technique the {\em encoding-encryption} paradigm, and use as motivating example the standard for mobile telephony GSM. The enhanced security is based on a dedicated homophonic or wire-tap channel coding that introduces pure randomness, combined with the randomness of the noise occurring over the communication channel. Security evaluation regarding recovery of the secret key employed in the keystream generator is done through an information theoretical approach. We show that with the aid of a dedicated wire-tap encoder, the amount of uncertainty that the adversary must face about the secret key given all the information he could gather during different passive or active attacks he can mount, is a decreasing function of the sample available for cryptanalysis. This means that the wire-tap encoder can indeed provide an information theoretical security level over a period of time, but after a large enough sample is collected the function tends to zero, entering a regime in which a computational security analysis is needed for estimation of the resistance against the secret key recovery.
Energizing respites from work: a randomized controlled study on respite interventions

ABSTRACT Increasing and new work demands drain employees’ energy resources at work. This 4-week longitudinal field experiment investigated the energizing potential of a respite intervention conducted at the workplace (either a simulated savouring nature intervention or a progressive muscle relaxation intervention). First, growth modelling analyses confirmed a linear trend for the growth of vigour and decline in fatigue across the days of the intervention group, indicating a typical upward resource trajectory. No changes appeared in the control group. Mediation analyses indicated that repeatedly engaging in a daily respite intervention influenced more stable energy levels after the intervention period indirectly through the immediate changes in daily energy levels during the intervention period. Findings suggest that, in some cases, respite interventions may present a useful tool to replenish and build energy resources at work. Implications for using respite intervention in organizational research and practice are discussed.