Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Frame Rate vs Resolution: A Subjective Evaluation of Spatiotemporal Perceived Quality Under Varying Computational Budgets

Maximizing performance for rendered content requires making compromises on quality parameters depending on the computational resources available . Yet, it is currently unclear which parameters best maximize perceived quality. This work investigates perceived quality across computational budgets for the primary spatiotemporal parameters of resolution and frame rate. Three experiments are conducted. Experiment 1 (n = 26) shows that participants prefer fixed frame rates of 60 frames per second (fps) at lower resolutions over 30 fps at higher resolutions. Experiment 2 (n = 24) explores the relationship further with more budgets and quality settings and again finds 60 fps is generally preferred even when more resources are available. Experiment 3 (n = 25) permits the use of adaptive frame rates, and analyses the resource allocation across seven budgets. Results show that while participants allocate more resources to frame rate at lower budgets the situation reverses once higher budgets are available and a frame rate of around 40 fps is achieved. In the overall, the results demonstrate a complex relationship between frame rate and resolution's effects on perceived quality. This relationship can be harnessed, via the results and models presented, to obtain more cost‐effective virtual experiences.
Epilepsy-associated gene Nedd4-2 mediates neuronal activity and seizure susceptibility through AMPA receptors

The neural precursor cell expressed developmentally down-regulated gene 4–2, Nedd4-2, is an epilepsy-associated gene with at least three missense mutations identified in epileptic patients. Nedd4-2 encodes a ubiquitin E3 ligase that has high affinity toward binding and ubiquitinating membrane proteins. It is currently unknown how Nedd4-2 mediates neuronal circuit activity and how its dysfunction leads to seizures or epilepsies. In this study, we provide evidence to show that Nedd4-2 mediates neuronal activity and seizure susceptibility through ubiquitination of GluA1 subunit of the α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptor, (AMPAR). Using a mouse model, termed Nedd4-2andi, in which one of the major forms of Nedd4-2 in the brain is selectively deficient, we found that the spontaneous neuronal activity in Nedd4-2andi cortical neuron cultures, measured by a multiunit extracellular electrophysiology system, was basally elevated, less responsive to AMPAR activation, and much more sensitive to AMPAR blockade when compared with wild-type cultures. When performing kainic acid-induced seizures in vivo, we showed that elevated seizure susceptibility in Nedd4-2andi mice was normalized when GluA1 is genetically reduced. Furthermore, when studying epilepsy-associated missense mutations of Nedd4-2, we found that all three mutations disrupt the ubiquitination of GluA1 and fail to reduce surface GluA1 and spontaneous neuronal activity when compared with wild-type Nedd4-2. Collectively, our data suggest that impaired GluA1 ubiquitination contributes to Nedd4-2-dependent neuronal hyperactivity and seizures. Our findings provide critical information to the future development of therapeutic strategies for patients who carry mutations of Nedd4-2.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy for PANDAS-related obsessive-compulsive disorder: findings from a preliminary waitlist controlled open trial.

OBJECTIVE To provide preliminary estimates of the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in treating pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) of the pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcus (PANDAS) subtype. METHOD Seven children with OCD of the PANDAS subtype (range 9-13 years) were treated in a 3-week intensive CBT program conducted at a university clinic. Six of seven children were taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medication(s) upon presentation. Assessments were conducted at four time points: baseline, pretreatment approximately 4 weeks later, posttreatment, and 3-month follow-up. Raters were blind to the nature of the study treatment. RESULTS Six of seven participants were classified as treatment responders (much or very much improved) at posttreatment, and three of six remained responders at follow-up. Clinician severity ratings, as measured by the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale and Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule for DSM-IV Child Interview Schedule-Parent version, decreased significantly following intervention, with effect sizes of 3.38 and 2.29, respectively. Self-reported general anxiety and depression symptoms were not significantly reduced. CONCLUSIONS This study provides preliminary support for CBT in treating the PANDAS subtype of pediatric OCD. This approach is also considered a safe and minimally invasive treatment approach.
Individual Differences in Motor Timing and Its Relation to Cognitive and Fine Motor Skills

The present study investigated the relationship between individual differences in timing movements at the level of milliseconds and performance on selected cognitive and fine motor skills. For this purpose, young adult participants (N = 100) performed a repetitive movement task paced by an auditory metronome at different rates. Psychometric measures included the digit-span and symbol search subtasks from the Wechsler battery as well as the Raven SPM. Fine motor skills were assessed with the Purdue Pegboard test. Motor timing performance was significantly related (mean r = .3) to cognitive measures, and explained both unique and shared variance with information-processing speed of Raven's scores. No significant relations were found between motor timing measures and fine motor skills. These results show that individual differences in cognitive and motor timing performance is to some extent dependent upon shared processing not associated with individual differences in manual dexterity.
Control of bud activation by an auxin transport switch

In many plant species only a small proportion of buds yield branches. Both the timing and extent of bud activation are tightly regulated to produce specific branching architectures. For example, the primary shoot apex can inhibit the activation of lateral buds. This process is termed apical dominance and is dependent on the plant hormone auxin moving down the main stem in the polar auxin transport stream. We use a computational model and mathematical analysis to show that apical dominance can be explained in terms of an auxin transport switch established by the temporal precedence between competing auxin sources. Our model suggests a mechanistic basis for the indirect action of auxin in bud inhibition and captures the effects of diverse genetic and physiological manipulations. In particular, the model explains the surprising observation that highly branched Arabidopsis phenotypes can exhibit either high or low auxin transport.
Certificate revocation and certificate update

We present a solution for the problem of certificate revocation. This solution represents certificate revocation lists by authenticated dictionaries that support: (1) efficient verification whether a certificate is in the list or not and (2) efficient updates (adding/removing certificates from the list). The suggested solution gains in scalability, communication costs, robustness to parameter changes, and update rate. Comparisons to the following solutions (and variants) are included: "traditional" certificate revocation lists (CRLs), Micali's (see Tech. Memo MIT/LCS/TM-542b, 1996) certificate revocation system (CRS), and Kocher's (see Financial Cryptography-FC'98 Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1998, vol.1465, p.172-7) certificate revocation trees (CRT). We also consider a scenario in which certificates are not revoked, but frequently issued for short-term periods. Based on the authenticated dictionary scheme, a certificate update scheme is presented in which all certificates are updated by a common message. The suggested solutions for certificate revocation and certificate update problems are better than current solutions with respect to communication costs, update rate, and robustness to changes in parameters, and are compatible, e.g., with X.500 certificates.
High Efficiency Molecular Delivery with Sequential Low-Energy Sonoporation Bursts

Microbubbles interact with ultrasound to induce transient microscopic pores in the cellular plasma membrane in a highly localized thermo-mechanical process called sonoporation. Theranostic applications of in vitro sonoporation include molecular delivery (e.g., transfection, drug loading and cell labeling), as well as molecular extraction for measuring intracellular biomarkers, such as proteins and mRNA. Prior research focusing mainly on the effects of acoustic forcing with polydisperse microbubbles has identified a “soft limit” of sonoporation efficiency at 50% when including dead and lysed cells. We show here that this limit can be exceeded with the judicious use of monodisperse microbubbles driven by a physiotherapy device (1.0 MHz, 2.0 W/cm2, 10% duty cycle). We first examined the effects of microbubble size and found that small-diameter microbubbles (2 µm) deliver more instantaneous power than larger microbubbles (4 & 6 µm). However, owing to rapid fragmentation and a short half-life (0.7 s for 2 µm; 13.3 s for 6 µm), they also deliver less energy over the sonoporation time. This translates to a higher ratio of FITC-dextran (70 kDa) uptake to cell death/lysis (4:1 for 2 µm; 1:2 for 6 µm) in suspended HeLa cells after a single sonoporation. Sequential sonoporations (up to four) were consequently employed to increase molecular delivery. Peak uptake was found to be 66.1 ± 1.2% (n=3) after two sonoporations when properly accounting for cell lysis (7.0 ± 5.6%) and death (17.9 ± 2.0%), thus overcoming the previously reported soft limit. Substitution of TRITC-dextran (70 kDa) on the second sonoporation confirmed the effects were multiplicative. Overall, this study demonstrates the possibility of utilizing monodisperse small-diameter microbubbles as a means to achieve multiple low-energy sonoporation bursts for efficient in vitro cellular uptake and sequential molecular delivery.
Filtering noisy parallel corpora of web pages

In our previous study, we successfully built an automatic mining system for parallel texts from the Web - PTMiner that is able to determine a large number of parallel Web pages for different language pairs. However, there are a number of non-parallel text pairs in this corpus. This paper proposes a filtering approach to clean up the corpus. Our experiments show that once the corpus is cleaned, both the translation accuracy of the resulting translation models and the effectiveness of cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) using these models are improved significantly.
A balanced 28 to 47 GHz GaAs pre-amplifier

A 0.1 Watt GaAs pre-amplifier has been developed with broadband match, gain, and power compression characteristics spanning 28 to 47 GHz. Flat gain was achieved by choosing a balanced topology and selectively mismatching the input and inter-stage networks at the low end of the band. The gain is 15.7 dB with 1.4 dB ripple. Input and output matches are −17 dB and −22 dB respectively. The Psat is +22.0 dBm, P1 +19.4 dBm and the DC current is 160 mA from a 4 V supply. The amplifer is suitable for cascading to multiple-stages to achieve a low ripple, high gain frequency response for broadband electronic warfare applications.
Transcriptional Expression of Myelin Basic Protein in Oligodendrocytes Depends on Functional Syntaxin 4: a Potential Correlation with Autocrine Signaling

ABSTRACT Myelination of axons by oligodendrocytes is essential for saltatory nerve conduction. To form myelin membranes, a coordinated synthesis and subsequent polarized transport of myelin components are necessary. Here, we show that as part of the mechanism to establish membrane polarity, oligodendrocytes exploit a polarized distribution of the soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) machinery components syntaxins 3 and 4, localizing to the cell body and the myelin membrane, respectively. Our data further reveal that the expression of myelin basic protein (MBP), a myelin-specific protein that is synthesized “on site” after transport of its mRNA, depends on the correct functioning of the SNARE machinery, which is not required for mRNA granule assembly and transport per se. Thus, downregulation and overexpression of syntaxin 4 but not syntaxin 3 in oligodendrocyte progenitor cells but not immature oligodendrocytes impeded MBP mRNA transcription, thereby preventing MBP protein synthesis. The expression and localization of another myelin-specific protein, proteolipid protein (PLP), was unaltered. Strikingly, conditioned medium obtained from developing oligodendrocytes was able to rescue the block of MBP mRNA transcription in syntaxin 4-downregulated cells. These findings indicate that the initiation of the biosynthesis of MBP mRNA relies on a syntaxin 4-dependent mechanism, which likely involves activation of an autocrine signaling pathway.
Design of H Congestion Controller for TCP Networks Based on LMI Formulation

In this paper, a state feedback H controller is proposed in order to design an active queue management (AQM) system based on congestion control algorithm for networks supporting TCP protocols. In this approach, the available link bandwidth is modeled as a timevariant disturbance. The purpose of this paper is to design a controller which is capable of achieving the queue size and can guarantee asymptotic stability in the presence of disturbance. An important feature of the proposed approach is that the performance of system, including the disturbance rejection and stability of closed-loop system, are guaranteed for all round-trip times that are less than a known value. The controller design is formulated in the form of some linear matrix inequalities, which can be efficiently solved numerically. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in comparison with the conventional methods.
Transparency service model for data security in cloud computing

Cloud computing is hot innovation in Computer world today and data Security and Privacy are the real issues. Since the main party that has physical access to data storage is the supplier and to monitor where information is put away for specific clients. The suppliers keep meta-data in their own databases where sometimes it leads towards security and data protection issue. If meta-data is compromised than unapproved access to client data is possible. For the protection of client data, we have presented a Transparency Service Model in this research paper. TSM provides a mechanism where cloud provider configures the service on the cloud by giving the service information about the cloud storage devices that would exist the data. It is then responsibility of the TSM to store data on those devices and cloud providers no longer direct access to data storage on those devices.
Learning Inference d n Inferred Network Linear Cascade Sampling Combine Cascades Sample Cascades Linear Cascades Influence Cascades Network

ABSTRACT e diusion of a contagion (e.g. news, meme, virus) is a common event in online and oine social networks. Unfortunately, such networks, known as diusion networks, are oen unknown: that is, one can observe when subjects are infected by a given contagion (e.g., when a piece of information arrives, when a product is adopted, when a virus is caught), but does not know through which connection the infection has been transmied. e goal of this study is to infer such networks based on nodes infection contexts associated to diusion events (cascades). Previous studies mostly relied on delay paerns between infection events of nodes to infer edges. It has been argued, however, that delay-agnostic approaches are also ecient for such inference. Motivated by this nding, we present a novel delay-agnostic algorithm that is largely inspired by representation learning of words in documents and nodes in networks. Moreover, unlike some delay-agnostic methods, we only consider infection context of nodes in a restricted window. Aer empirically observing a similarity between the distribution of words in documents and nodes in cascades, we employ the Skip-Gram model to learn a representation of nodes from cascades. e learned representation is then used to compute the probability that an edge exists between a pair of nodes. rough extensive experiments we validate the eectiveness of our algorithm, showing that it is able to recover up to 95% of the hidden network in realistic datasets. We have also compared our algorithm to the state-of-the-art algorithm InfoPath, and achieved a large improvement on the quality of results.
On the Symmetry of Polar Codes for Symmetric Binary-Input Discrete Memoryless Channels

In this paper, we study the symmetry of polar codes on symmetric binary-input discrete memoryless channels (B-DMC). The symmetry property of polar codes is originally pointed out in Arikan's work for general B-DMC channels. With the symmetry, the output vector $y_1^N$ ($N$ be the block length) can be divided into equivalence classes in terms of their transition probabilities. In this paper, we present a new frame of analysis on the symmetry of polar codes for B-DMC channels. Theorems are provided to characterize the symmetries among the received vectors.
Factors Associated with Nurses’ Intention to Leave Their Jobs after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident

We conducted a survey among nurses who were working at the Fukushima Medical University Hospital at the time of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident to clarify the factors associated with their intention to leave their jobs during the radiation emergency. We asked 345 nurses (17 men and 328 women) about their intention to leave their jobs after the accident. We also asked about relevant factors including the participants’ demographic factors, living situation, working status, and knowledge of radiation health effects. We found that living with preschoolers (OR = 1.87, 95%CI: 1.02–3.44, p = 0.042), anxiety about life in Fukushima City after the accident (OR = 5.55, 95%CI: 1.18–26.13, p = 0.030), consideration of evacuation from Fukushima after the accident (OR = 2.42, 95%CI: 1.45–4.06, p = 0.001), consideration of the possible radiation health effects in children (OR = 1.90, 95%CI: 1.02–3.44, p = 0.042), and anxiety about relationships with colleagues in the hospital after the accident (OR = 3.23, p = 0.001) were independently associated with the nurses’ intention to leave their jobs after the accident. On the other hand, the percentage of nurses with knowledge on radiation health effects was relatively low among those who had the intention to leave the job and among those who did not have the intention to leave the job after the accident, with no significant differences between the two groups. Our results suggest the need for an education program for nurses regarding radiation health effects.
Efficient NAS Benchmark Kernels with C++ Parallel Programming

Benchmarking is a way to study the performance of new architectures and parallel programming frameworks. Well-established benchmark suites such as the NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) comprise legacy codes that still lack portability to C++ language. As a consequence, a set of high-level and easy-to-use C++ parallel programming frameworks cannot be tested in NPB. Our goal is to describe a C++ porting of the NPB kernels and to analyze the performance achieved by different parallel implementations written using the Intel TBB, OpenMP and FastFlow frameworks for Multi-Cores. The experiments show an efficient code porting from Fortran to C++ and an efficient parallelization on average.
Design of an Outpupt Feedback Trajectory Controller for an Automated Guided Vehicle

This paper presents the design of an output feedback trajectory controller for a Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) differential drive. Its control architecture assumes that the two drive wheels are not coupled and the vehicle dynamics is not taken into account. It employs two independent velocity controllers that ensure the wheels’ velocities referenced by the trajectory controller. The reference trajectory is painted on the ground and is composed only by line segments and soft arcs. Simulation and experimental results show the satisfactory tracking performance of the proposed controller. Key Words— Robot control; mobile robots; nonlinear systems; trajectory tracking; control schemes.
Power Measurement and Modeling of Quadcopters on Horizontal Flight

Quadcopters are widely used for hobbies, video recording, etc., and the delivery quadcopters are expected as one of promising applications. However, the flight time of quadcopters is limited due to the battery capacity constraint. Therefore, effective power management and flight planning are necessary. In this paper, we present the measurement of power consumption of quadcopters on horizontal flight. We also construct the simple power model, and discuss about the usefulness of proposed model.
Coherent manipulation of quadrupole biexcitons in cuprous oxide by 2D femtosecond spectroscopy

We propose using coherent optical spectroscopy to study and control optically‐forbidden (dark) biexciton states in crystals of cuprous oxide. These states are revealed in the correlation spectra cross resonances due to coherence with the quadrupole allowed 1S exciton manifold. The signal is obtained by means of sum‐over‐state formalism and comparing equations of motion for the weakly interacting quadrupole excitons with their analogue of non‐interacting quasiparticles. The dephasing mechanisms include rapid Auger relaxation of biexcitons which allegedly impedes the Bose–Einstein condensation of quadrupole excitons. An interesting effect attributed to the deviation of the quadrupole excitons from the ortho–para excitons picture is that the positions of the biexciton resonances are defined by the energy splitting between $\Gamma _{5;yz}^{ + } $ and $\Gamma _{5;xz}^{ + } $ excitons and can be tuned by an external perturbation. Possible quantum computing and lasing applications of the quadrupole induced chirality effects of the excitons and biexcitons, and coherence between exciton/biexciton manifolds are discussed.
The effect of the thinking-aloud strategy on the reading comprehension skills of 4th grade primary school students

The purpose of this study, which is designed in quasi-experimental model, is to examine the effect of the thinking aloud strategy on the reading comprehension skills of the 4th grade primary school students. For this purpose, in the second semester of 2016-2017 academic year, the reading comprehension levels of 26 students in the 4th grade at a primary school located in the central district of Turkey's Bartin province were determined by applying a pre-test. Among the two classes, whose reading comprehension levels were equal, one class was assigned as the experimental and the other as the control group in an objective manner. In the research; Reading Comprehension Test 1, which included questions about the text 'Edison Invents the Light Bulb' developed by Sulak (2014); and the Reading Comprehension Test 2, which included questions about the text 'Everything Started with a Kite' developed by the researcher were used as data collection tools. The data obtained in the study were transferred to the SPSS 18 software pack; and statistical procedures such as arithmetic average, frequency, percentage, standard deviation, Mann Whitney U, Wilcoxon Marked Rank Test were performed on the data, in the direction of the questions in the research. As the result of the research, it was concluded that there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores, in favor of the post-test scores of the experimental group students who were taught the thinking aloud strategy.