Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blends of rostral and caudal scratch reflex motor patterns elicited by simultaneous stimulation of two sites in the spinal turtle

Simultaneous tactile stimulation of 2 sites on the body surface of a spinal turtle elicits complex blends of the scratch forms and motor patterns associated with each site. Our previous work has utilized 1- site stimulation to elicit distinct forms of the scratch reflex in the spinal turtle (Mortin et al., 1985; Robertson et al., 1985). Using this paradigm, stimulation of a site on the shell bridge anterior to the hindlimb elicits a rostral scratch reflex in which the dorsum of the foot rubs against the stimulated site; stimulation of a site near the tail elicits a caudal scratch reflex in which the heel or side of the foot rubs against the stimulated site (Mortin et al., 1985). During each scratch cycle, the monoarticular knee extensor muscle is active when the limb rubs against the stimulated site, and there is rhythmic alternation between hip protractor and hip retractor muscle activity (Robertson et al., 1985). In a rostral scratch, the monoarticular knee extensor muscle is active during the latter portion of hip protractor muscle activity; in a caudal scratch, the monoarticular knee extensor muscle is active near the end of hip retractor muscle activity. Pure- form motor patterns that are similar to those recorded from these muscles during movement can be recorded from the corresponding nerves in a spinal turtle immobilized with a neuromuscular blocking agent (Robertson et al., 1985). In this paper, we describe blend responses to simultaneous stimulation of 2 sites, one in the rostral scratch and the other in the caudal scratch receptive field. During these blends, the responding hindlimb rubs against both stimulated sites in one continuous movement sequence. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Shadow Hamiltonians of structure-preserving integrators for Nambu mechanics

Symplectic integrators are widely implemented numerical integrators for Hamiltonian mechanics, which preserve the Hamiltonian structure (symplecticity) of the system. Although the symplectic integrator does not conserve the energy of the system, it is well known that there exists a conserving modified Hamiltonian, called the shadow Hamiltonian. For the Nambu mechanics, which is one of the generalized Hamiltonian mechanics, we can also construct structure-preserving integrators by the same procedure used to construct the symplectic integrators. In the structure-preserving integrator, however, the existence of shadow Hamiltonians is non-trivial. This is because the Nambu mechanics is driven by multiple Hamiltonians and it is non-trivial whether the time evolution by the integrator can be cast into the Nambu mechanical time evolution driven by multiple shadow Hamiltonians. In the present paper we construct structure-preserving integrators for a simple Nambu mechanical system, and derive the shadow Hamiltonians in two ways. This is the first attempt to derive shadow Hamiltonians of structure-preserving integrators for Nambu mechanics. We show that the fundamental identity, which corresponds to the Jacobi identity in Hamiltonian mechanics, plays an important role to calculate the shadow Hamiltonians using the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula. It turns out that the resulting shadow Hamiltonians have indefinite forms depending on how the fundamental identities are used. This is not a technical artifact, because the exact shadow Hamiltonians obtained independently have the same indefiniteness.
Standard-Setting bei C-Tests

Zusammenfassung. C-Tests sind Luckentests zur Messung der allgemeinen Sprachkompetenz. Die vorliegende Arbeit geht der Frage nach, wie sich mittels C-Tests Niveaus der Sprachkompetenz bestimmen lassen. Eine hierzu entwickelte Standard-Setting-Methode verbindet Prinzipien der Rasch-Skalierung von C-Tests mit dem Prototypenkonzept (Prototypgruppenmethode). Experten identifizieren zunachst typische Lernende auf einem von vier Sprachniveaus (A2 bis C1) wie sie im Gemeinsamen europaischen Referenzrahmen fur Sprachen (GER; Europarat, 2001) beschrieben sind. Anhand der Verteilungen von Fahigkeitsschatzungen der Prototypen je zweier benachbarter Niveaus werden Trennwerte (Cut-Scores) berechnet. Diese Cut-Scores erlauben es, fur jede Testperson anzugeben, welches Niveau der allgemeinen Sprachkompetenz sie erreicht hat. Daten aus 23 Erprobungen unterschiedlicher Sets von jeweils 10 C-Test-Texten, bearbeitet von insgesamt 4.842 Testpersonen, illustrieren die Vorgehensweise.
Effective Computation of the Heegaard Genus of 3-Manifolds

The Heegaard genus is a fundamental invariant of 3-manifolds. However, computing the Heegaard genus of a triangulated 3-manifold is NP-hard, and while algorithms exist, little work has been done in making such an algorithm efficient and practical for implementation. Current algorithms use almost normal surfaces, which are an extension of the algorithm-friendly normal surface theory but which add considerable complexity for both running time and implementation. Here we take a different approach: instead of working with almost normal surfaces, we give a general method of modifying the input triangulation that allows us to avoid almost normal surfaces entirely. The cost is just four new tetrahedra, and the benefit is that important surfaces that were once almost normal can be moved to the simpler setting of normal surfaces in the new triangulation. We apply this technique to the computation of Heegaard genus, where we develop algorithms and heuristics that prove successful in practice when applied to a data set of 3,000 closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds; we precisely determine the genus for at least 2,705 of these.
Partial PCA in frequency domain

Partial principal component analysis has demonstrated to be a robust face recognition approach for big pose variations. The main idea behind P2CA is to use 3D (2.5D) data during the training stage but only a single 2D image in the recognition stage, to achieve a practical system for face recognition which is robust against pose variations. Nevertheles this approach present two major drawbacks: First one is that the training data should be well aligned to obtain good results; the second drawback is computational cost since the face space is computed maintaining the spatial dimensionality of the images. Thus, in this paper, we address both problems. First, we propose a two step procedure for a more accurate alignment of the 2.5D training texture maps. This alignment is done by applying a global and local affine transformation to all texture maps, while the local alignment is applied to some facial features using a triangulation mesh. Second, the computational cost is also reduced by applying P2CA in the frequency domain and perform the normalized cross correlation as similarity measure. Introducing these two improvements the recognition accuracy increases by 4% due to the alignment procedure and the computational time is reduced by a factor between 10 and 100 (depending on the number of eigenvectors used) due to the application of P2CA in the frequency domain.
Detecting immersed obstacle in Stokes fluid flow using the coupled complex boundary method

A non-conventional shape optimization approach is introduced to address the identification of an obstacle immersed in a fluid described by the Stokes equation within a larger bounded domain, relying on boundary measurements on the accessible surface. The approach employs tools from shape optimization, utilizing the coupled complex boundary method to transform the over-specified problem into a complex boundary value problem by incorporating a complex Robin boundary condition. This condition is derived by coupling the Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions along the accessible boundary. The identification of the obstacle involves optimizing a cost function constructed based on the imaginary part of the solution across the entire domain. The subsequent calculation of the shape gradient of this cost function, rigorously performed via the rearrangement method, enables the iterative solution of the optimization problem using a Sobolev gradient descent algorithm. The feasibility of the method is illustrated through numerical experiments in both two and three spatial dimensions, demonstrating its effectiveness in reconstructing obstacles with pronounced concavities under high-level noise-contaminated data, all without perimeter or volume functional penalization.
Acquisition of reaction force distributions for a walking humanoid robot

A method of acquiring reaction force distributions on a sole of a walking humanoid robot from ground is developed. The tactile sensors are embedded on the soles of a humanoid robot for the acquisition of the ground reaction force distributions. The tactile sensor consists of a pressure conductive rubber sheet put between upper and lower electrode arrays and was able to measure the reaction forces from 0.00 MPa to 0.05 MPa at all of the sensing elements. Force distribution data including 30 /spl times/ 16 points can be obtained at a period of 20 ms by using RTLinux. It is shown that the ground reaction force distributions can experimentally be obtained by a humanoid robot "HOAP-I" and the locus of ZMP along walking of a humanoid robot is given. This information is useful for constructing feedback control loops or generating a new walking gait.
L-arginine supplementation of reduced-protein diets improves pulmonary hypertensive response in broiler chickens reared at high altitude

Abstract This study was conducted at high altitude (2100 m above sea level). A total of 208 d-old male broilers (Ross 308) were randomised across 16 floor pens and reared up to 42 d. A normal-protein diet (NPD) was formulated according to the National Research Council. A reduced-protein diet (RPD) was prepared with dietary protein reduced by 30 g/kg relative to that of the NPD. Two additional diets were prepared by adding 2 and 4 g L-arginine (ARG)/kg to the RPD. At the end of trial (42 d), blood sampling was done and carcass characteristics were recorded. ARG supplementation of the RPD at 4 g improved feed:gain in the growing stage and throughout the trial compared with the RPD. The right-to-total ventricular weight ratio was significantly increased in birds fed on RPD compared with those fed on NPD or ARG-supplemented RPD. Feeding RPD caused a significant decrease in plasma concentrations of nitric oxide (NO) and uric acid. Plasma NO level, however, was restored by ARG supplementation of RPD. ARG supplementation of RPD, however, significantly reduced the rate of pulmonary hypertension syndrome mortality compared to the negative control fed on RPD.
A fast index assignment method for robust vector quantisation of image data

Vector quantisation is a widely used technique in low-bit rate coding of speech and image data, but is highly sensitive to noise in the transmission channel. If the reference vector recalled by a corrupted index differs greatly from the intended reference vector, image quality can be degraded quite dramatically. The index assignment (IA) process attempts to re-order the code book so as to minimise the effects of errors introduced in the transmission channel, by assigning indices with similar binary patterns to similar reference vectors, usually at considerable computational expense. This paper describes a fast, novel index assignment algorithm based on Hall's solution (1970) to the quadratic assignment problem.
Imagens do Brasil

"Portraits of Brazil", "interpretation of Brazil"; "Brazilian social thought", "theories about Brazil" are all terms that refer to a fundamental unit, namely, the existence of a certain country. Indeed, there is a long intellectual tradition devoted to coming to terms with such a country, which include a myriad of authors who are considered to partake of this partheon of notorious interpreters (Rocha Pita, Varnhagen, Silvio Romero, Nina Rodrigues, Euclydes da Cunha, Sergio Buarque de Holanda, Gilberto Freyre, Cai Prado Jr., Darcy Ribeiro, just to name some of them). This scholarly debate about national identity rests on certain analytical categories, among which nation and culture stand out. The present article intends to inquire into the meaning of such a debate in the contemporary scene.To what extent the global transformations that occurred in recent times have an impact on the images that Brazilians project on themselves, that is, do the symbolic representations built around the Brazilian tradition are impacted by such events? What is their intellectual legacy?
NBTI Lifetime Evaluation and Extension in Instruction Caches

CMOS devices suffer from wearout mechanisms resulting in reliability issues. Negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) is one of the dominant ageing effects that can cause threshold voltage shift on PMOS devices and subsequently impact circuit performance. The static noise margin (SNM) of an SRAM cell may be sharply reduced with unbalanced NBTI stress. This will impact SRAM read stability. From our observations of instruction caches, NBTI stress duty cycles for each cache line generally have similar but unbalanced patterns even when running very different programs. Based on the patterns, we propose an algorithm to evaluate the lifetime of instruction caches by running SPICE simulation. The results predict 6 and 7 years NBTI lifetimes of instruction caches for ARM and MIPS architectures respectively. One of the practical solutions is periodically flipping each cell to balance the degradation rate. However the performance benefits in terms of lifetime are not actually proven before. Using the stress patterns and lifetime evaluation algorithm, our work for the first time prove this technique can extend the lifetime of the cache by two orders of magnitude.
Variability of Attention Processes in ADHD

Objective: Classroom- and laboratory-based efforts to study the attentional problems of children with ADHD are incongruent in elucidating attentional deficits; however, none have explored within- or between-minute variability in the classroom attentional processing in children with ADHD. Method: High and low attention groups of ADHD children defined via cluster analysis, and 36 typically developing children, were observed while completing academic assignments in their general education classrooms. Results: All children oscillated between attentive and inattentive states; however, children in both ADHD groups switched states more frequently and remained attentive for shorter durations relative to typically developing children. Conclusion: Overall differences in attention and optimal ability to maintain attention among the groups are consistent with laboratory studies of increased ADHD-related interindividual and intergroup variability but inconsistent with laboratory results of increased intra-individual variability and attention decrements over time. (J. of Att. Dis. 2009; 12(6) 563-573)
Mass Flows in Expanding Coronal Loops

An expansion of cross-sectional area directly impacts the mass flow along a coronal loop, and significantly alters the radiative and hydrodynamic evolution of that loop as a result. Previous studies have found that an area expansion from chromosphere to corona significantly lengthens the cooling time of the corona, and appears to suppress draining from the corona. In this work, we examine the fluid dynamics to understand how the mass flow rate, the energy balance, and the cooling and draining timescales are affected by a non-uniform area. We find that in loops with moderate or large expansion (cross-sectional area expansion factors of 2, 3, 10, 30, 100 from photosphere to apex), impulsive heating, for either direct thermal heating or electron beam heating, induces a steady flow into the corona, so that the coronal density continues to rise during the cooling phase, whereas a uniform loop drains during the cooling phase. The induced upflow carries energy into the corona, balancing the losses from thermal conduction, and continues until thermal conduction weakens enough so that it can no longer support the radiative losses of the transition region (TR). As a result, the plasma cools primarily radiatively until the onset of catastrophic collapse. The speed and duration of the induced upflow both increase in proportion to the rate of area expansion. We argue that observations of blue-shifted spectral lines, therefore, could place a constraint on a loop's area expansion.
Intracellular domain of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor: the importance of being unfolded

Bioinformatics methods with subsequent verification by experimental data were applied to the structural investigation of the intracellular loop of the δ‐subunit of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR). Three complementary methods were used: prediction of secondary structure elements, prediction of ordered/disordered protein regions and prediction of short functional binding motifs. The output of five different algorithms was used for the secondary structure construction. Most of the intracellular domain is predicted to be unfolded. The predictions correlate well with the experimental data of limited proteolysis and NMR performed on the mostly monomeric fraction of heterologously expressed Torpedo intracellular domain protein. Twelve functional binding motifs within the disordered regions of the nAChR intracellular domain are predicted. Identification of proteins that interact with the intracellular domain will provide a better understanding of protein–protein interactions involved in nAChR assembly, trafficking and clustering.
Corridor Detection and Tracking for Vision-Based Driver Assistance System

A significant component of driver assistance systems (DAS) is lane detection, and has been studied since the 1990s. However, improving and generalizing lane detection solutions proved to be a challenging task until recently. A (physical) lane is defined by road boundaries or various kinds of lane marks, and this is only partially applicable for modeling the space an ego-vehicle is able to drive in. This paper proposes a concept of (virtual) corridor for modeling this space. A corridor depends on information available about the motion of the ego-vehicle, as well as about the (physical) lane. This paper also suggests a modified version of Euclidean Distance Transform (EDT), named Row Orientation Distance Transform (RODT), to facilitate the detection of corridor boundary points. Then, boundary selection and road patch extension are applied as post-processing. Moreover, this paper also informs about the possible application of corridor for driver assistance. Finally, experiments using images from highways and urban roads with some challenging road situations are presented, illustrating the effectiveness of the proposed corridor detection algorithm. Comparison of lane and corridor on a public dataset is also provided.
A Comparative Analysis of East and West German Labor Markets: Before and after Unification

In 1988, the wage distribution in East Germany was much more compressed than in West Germany or the U.S. Since the collapse of Communism and unification with West Germany, however, the wage structure in eastern Germany has changed considerably. In particular, wage variation has increased, the payoff to education has decreased somewhat, industry differentials have expanded, and the white collar premium has increased. Although average wage growth has been remarkably high in eastern Germany, individual variation in wage growth is similar to typical western levels. The wage structure of former East Germans who work in western Germany resembles the wage structure of native West Germans in some respects, but their experience-earnings profile is flat.
Contact Force and Joint Torque Estimation Using Skin

In this letter, we present algorithms to estimate contact locations, external forces, and joint torques using skin, i.e., distributed tactile sensors, kinematic sensors, and a single Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) without the need for force-torque sensors. Distributed tactile sensors are an array of discrete tactile sensors (taxels) with gaps between them. To cope with the gaps, we use interpolation techniques to improve accuracy of the measurements in the skin. Then, we estimate the external force. Finally, we use this information combined with the contact location obtained from the skin to estimate the joint torques. Validation was performed using the iCub humanoid robot. Results show a performance comparable to the joint torque estimation using expensive force-torque sensors. Since the skin is less expensive and does not require modification of the internal structure of the robot, using the skin is an interesting solution.
Processing of Artificial Peptide-DNA-Conjugates by the Mitochondrial Intermediate Peptidase (MIP)

Abstract Import of DNA from the cytoplasm into the mitochondrial matrix is an obligatory step for an in organello site-directed mutagenesis or gene therapy approach on mitochondrial DNA diseases. In this context, we have developed an artificial DNA translocation vector that is composed of the mitochondrial signal peptide of the ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) and a DNA moiety. While this vector is capable of directing attached passenger molecules to the mitochondrial matrix, the recognition of this artificial molecule by the endogenous mitochondrial signal peptide processing machinery as well as the cleavage of the peptide plays a pivotal role in the release of the attached DNA. To study the proteolytic processing of the artificial vector, various signal peptide-DNA-conjugates were treated with purified mitochondrial intermediate peptidase. When the leader peptide is directly linked to the DNA moiety without an intervening spacer, MIP processing is prevented. Cleavage of the peptide can be restored, however, when the first ten amino acid residues of the mature part of OTC are appended at the carboxy-terminal end of the signal peptide. Our results show that artificial peptide-DNA-conjugates are recognized by the mitochondrial proteolytic machinery, and therefore an interference of the peptide with the DNA function can be excluded.
Potential Measurement Errors Due to Image Enlargement in Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging

The effect of interpolation and super-resolution (SR) algorithms on quantitative and qualitative assessments of enlarged optical coherence tomography (OCT) images was investigated in this report. Spectral-domain OCT images from 30 eyes in 30 consecutive patients with diabetic macular edema (DME) and 20 healthy eyes in 20 consecutive volunteers were analyzed. Original image (OR) resolution was reduced by a factor of four. Images were then magnified by a factor of four with and without application of one of the following algorithms: bilinear (BL), bicubic (BC), Lanczos3 (LA), and SR. Differences in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness, photoreceptor layer status, and parallelism (reflects the complexity of photoreceptor layer alterations) were analyzed in each image type. The order of PSNRs from highest to lowest was SR > LA > BC > BL > non-processed enlarged images (NONE). The PSNR was statistically different in all groups. The NONE, BC, and LA images resulted in significantly thicker RNFL measurements than the OR image. In eyes with DME, the photoreceptor layer, which was hardly identifiable in NONE images, became detectable with algorithm application. However, OCT photoreceptor parameters were still assessed as more undetectable than in OR images. Parallelism was not statistically different in OR and NONE images, but other image groups had significantly higher parallelism than OR images. Our results indicated that interpolation and SR algorithms increased OCT image resolution. However, qualitative and quantitative assessments were influenced by algorithm use. Additionally, each algorithm affected the assessments differently.