Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface ( BBCI ) towards a new communication channel for online control of multimedia applications and computer games

The investigation of innovative HumanComputer Inter faces (HCI) provides a challenge for future multimedia research and development. BrainComputer Inter faces (BCI) exploit the ability of human communication and control bypassing the classical neuromuscular communication channels. In general, BCIs offer a possibility of communication for people with severe neuromuscular disorders, such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or spinal cord injury. Beyond medical applications, a BCI conjunction with exciting multimedia applications, e.g. a dexter ity game, could define a new level of control possibilities also for healthy customers decoding information directly from the user ’s brain, as reflected in EEG signals which are recorded noninvasively from the scalp. This contr ibution introduces the Ber lin BrainComputer Inter face (BBCI) and presents setups where the user is provided with intuitive control strategies in plausible multimedia-based bio-feedback applications. Yet at its beginning, BBCI thus adds a new dimension in multimedia research by offer ing the user an additional and independent communication channel based on brain activity only. First successful exper iments already yielded inspir ing proofs-of-concept. A diversity of multimedia application models, say computer games, and their specific intuitive control strategies are now open for BCI research aiming at a fur ther speed up of user adaptation and increase of learning success and transfer bit rates.
A review of recent advances in 3D ear- and expression-invariant face biometrics

Biometric-based human recognition is rapidly gaining popularity due to breaches of traditional security systems and the lowering cost of sensors. The current research trend is to use 3D data and to combine multiple traits to improve accuracy and robustness. This article comprehensively reviews unimodal and multimodal recognition using 3D ear and face data. It covers associated data collection, detection, representation, and matching techniques and focuses on the challenging problem of expression variations. All the approaches are classified according to their methodologies. Through the analysis of the scope and limitations of these techniques, it is concluded that further research should investigate fast and fully automatic ear-face multimodal systems robust to occlusions and deformations.
An MDAC synapse for analog neural networks

Efficient weight storage and multiplication are important design challenges which must be addressed in analog neural network implementations. Many schemes which treat storage and multiplication separately have been previously reported for implementation of synapses. We present a synapse circuit that integrates the weight storage and multiplication into a single, compact multiplying digital-to-analog converter (MDAC) circuit. The circuit has a small layout area (5400 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ in a 1.5-/spl mu/m process) and exhibits good linearity over its entire input range. We have fabricated several synapses and characterize their responses. Average maximum INL and DNL values of 0.2 LSB and 0.4 LSB, respectively, have been measured. We also report on the performance of an analogue neural network which uses these synapses.
Parallel-in-time method for calculation of long-range electrostatic interactions

Large molecular dynamics simulations (millions of atoms, tens of microseconds, thousands of processors) hit the strong scalability wall: simulation on twice as many processors does not take half the time. Inspired by large N-body space simulations, we suggest to calculate the bottleneck---the long-range interactions---parallel in time. This technical report aims to present the combination of parareal method and multilevel summation method. We thoroughly describe both methods and reasons for their particular combination. We also propose several optimizations that should provide the acceleration by an order of magnitude.
Acoustic Echo Cancellation Employing Delayless Subband Adaptive Filters

The use of hands-free communication in cars, computer applications and video conferencing has created a demand for high-quality acoustic echo cancellation. In these applications these acoustic channel has typically a long impulse response in the order of 100ms. Typical lengths of adaptive FIR-filters can be 500-1500 taps. In order to reduce the complexity and also to improve the convergence rate, subband processing schemes have been suggested. This paper presents an implementation of a delayless subband adaptive filter. The study shows a possible suppression of about 30 dB and also a more rapid convergence compared to a fullband LMS-filter.
WIDAR: Bistatic WI-fi Detection And Ranging for off-the-shelf devices

The huge spread of wireless networks and the success of location-aware applications require novel indoor positioning mechanisms based on existing technologies such as IEEE 802.11. Taking inspiration from the RADAR, we propose WIDAR: a bistatic WI-fi Detection And Ranging system for off-the-shelf devices. WIDAR implementation is based on the USRP2 platform and is able to locate 802.11 stations while they operate in existing legacy networks. No substitution or repositioning of the Access Points is necessary. WIDAR works passively and does not expect any dedicated action from the target WiFi node. No airtime is wasted and the target cannot even detect that it is being ranged. Such features make WIDAR desirable in surveillance and monitoring applications where it can provide real-time tracking functionalities.
Forest ecological services of regulating temperature based on remote sensing technology

The paper took Shandong Province's forest resources as the object of study, and studied on the temperature regulation of forest ecological service for different tree species and different seasons during 2000–2006 by using MODIS temperature product, vegetation index product, the field surveying data and the meteorological data in Shandong, combining with GIS. The results were as the followed: 1)Forest had cooling effect in summer and warming effect in winter, but cooling effect more obvious than warming effect; forest regulation temperature at night not more obvious than during the day; 2) In the day, LST and NDVI of forest were negative correlation in summer, but they were positive correlation in the winter; in the evening, LST and NDVI had no correlation at all; 3) The forest temperature changes amplitude ratio was smaller than farms, urban, and the farms cooling and warming effect was not more obvious than forest; 4) The correlation of the LST change and the NDVI change was negative.
Detection of the Fabric Printing Quality Based on the Machine Vision

This paper introduces a detecting approach about the textile printing precision based on machine vision. First: by the model of rotary screen printing machine, we analysis the cause of the phenomenon of misregisteration, and summary the discipline of textile printing image combined by the technical feature; Second: we use the JSEG algorithm to segment the image, find out the edge of the image, later we make a match for the segmented edge information, to obtain deviation area of the image, and calculate the deviation position. Finally: Experiments show that the system has very good results.
Non-BPS excitations of D-branes and Black holes

This note discusses some results on the non-BPS excitations of D-branes. We show that the excitation spectrum of a bound state of D-strings changes character when the length of the wrapping circle becomes less than $\sim g^{-1}\LS$. We review the observed relation between the low energy absorption cross-section of D-branes and the low energy absorption cross-section for black holes. We discuss various issues related to the information question for black holes.
Automatic Detection and Clustering of Actor Faces based on Spectral Clustering Techniques

We describe a video indexing system that aims at indexing large video files in relation to the presence of similar faces. The detection of near-frontal view faces is done with a cascade of weak classifier. Face tracking is done through a particle filter and generate trajectories. Face clusters are found based on a spectral clustering approach. We compare the performance of various spectral clustering techniques based on 2DPCA features. The system performance is evaluated against a public face database as well as on a real full-length feature movie.
Arrest of DMA Elongation by DMA Polymerases at Guanine Adducts on 4-Hydroxyaminoquinoline 1-Oxide-modified DMA Template 1

In vitro modification of M13 phage single-stranded DMA with 4-hydroxyaminoquinoline 1-oxide (4HAQO) resulted in four kinds of adducts: three guanine adducts, QGh QGn, and QGm;and one adenine adduci, QA, at ratios of 16.4 47.3, 13.7, and 22.6, respectively. The carcinogen-modified DMA, initiated with a se quence-defined oligodeoxynucleotide primer, was replicated in vitro with Escherichia coli DNA polymerase I (Klenow fragment) and calf thymus DNA polymerases o and ÃŸ. The reaction prod ucts were analyzed on a DNA-sequencing gel. DNA elongation by DNA polymerase I was arrested at putative guanine adducts on the template in three ways: at one base prior to guanine; at positions opposite to guanine; and at one base beyond guanine. Similar patterns of elongation arrest were also obtained with the mammalian DNA polymerases a and ÃŸ. In contrast to guanine adducts, the adenine adduci, QA, might lack the capacity to arrest DNA chain elongation by DNA polymerases.
Immunological and Molecular Alterations in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the Reversibility through Psychotherapy

Ich widme diese Arbeit, in Liebe und Dankbarkeit, meiner Großmutter Mina Hangarter. Summary Summary The experience of traumatic life events has severe consequences on both psychological and physiological health. In particular, there is an augmented probability for the development of a with a cumulative number of traumatic life events. Therefore, individuals with PTSD present an increased risk for cardiovascular, infectious-, autoimmune diseases and cancer (Boscarino, 2004; Glaesmer et al., 2011). Previous research indicated extensive biological alterations concerning the endocrine-and the immune system in individuals with PTSD (Pace & Heim, 2011). Since many of these biological alterations are age-dependent and normally occur in people in old age (Ershler & Keller, 2000; Fagnoni et al., 2000), this might point towards an association between psychological stress and premature biological aging (alterations found in individuals with PTSD are specific for the diagnosis of PTSD, or if also individuals who experienced traumatic events, but did not develop a PTSD show stress-induced biological alterations. In this way, there might be a cumulative effect of traumatic load on biological alterations. The aim of the present thesis is to investigate, in a first step, the impact of traumatic load on biological alterations in individuals with PTSD, and to analyze in a second step the exertion of influence through psychotherapy. Immunological and molecular alterations were analyzed in severely traumatized refugees with multiple trauma exposure through war and organized violence. The control group included persons with a background of migration, but without traumatic load and without psychiatric diseases. To test the hypothesis of a dose-response effect of traumatic load on biological alterations, all three studies included an additional group with substantial trauma-exposure, but without the diagnosis of PTSD. In study 1 of this thesis, the findings of a reduced proportion in naïve cytotoxic (CD8 +) and regulatory T cells, as well as an increase in the proportion of memory CD8 + T cells, were approved in an expansion of the sample from Sommershof et al. (2009) of 34 individuals with PTSD, 24 trauma-exposed and 19 control subjects. Moreover, there was evidence for a dose-response effect of traumatic load on the alterations in T Lymphocyte distribution. In a second step, it was investigated if effective psychotherapeutic treatment can cause a normalization of the altered T Lymphocyte distribution in individuals with PTSD. Psychotherapeutic treatment Summary 7 included 12 sessions of Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), which has been verified as an effective trauma-focused …
Designing a Reinforcement Learning-based Adaptive AI for Large-Scale Strategy Games

This paper investigates the challenges posed by the application of reinforcement learning to large-scale strategy games. In this context, we present steps and techniques which synthesize new ideas with state-of-the-art techniques from several areas of machine learning in a novel integrated learning approach for this kind of games. The performance of the approach is demonstrated on the task of learning valuable game strategies for a commercial wargame.
Body Segment Differences in Surface Area, Skin Temperature and 3D Displacement and the Estimation of Heat Balance during Locomotion in Hominins

The conventional method of estimating heat balance during locomotion in humans and other hominins treats the body as an undifferentiated mass. This is problematic because the segments of the body differ with respect to several variables that can affect thermoregulation. Here, we report a study that investigated the impact on heat balance during locomotion of inter-segment differences in three of these variables: surface area, skin temperature and rate of movement. The approach adopted in the study was to generate heat balance estimates with the conventional method and then compare them with heat balance estimates generated with a method that takes into account inter-segment differences in surface area, skin temperature and rate of movement. We reasoned that, if the hypothesis that inter-segment differences in surface area, skin temperature and rate of movement affect heat balance during locomotion is correct, the estimates yielded by the two methods should be statistically significantly different. Anthropometric data were collected on seven adult male volunteers. The volunteers then walked on a treadmill at 1.2 m/s while 3D motion capture cameras recorded their movements. Next, the conventional and segmented methods were used to estimate the volunteers' heat balance while walking in four ambient temperatures. Lastly, the estimates produced with the two methods were compared with the paired t-test. The estimates of heat balance during locomotion yielded by the two methods are significantly different. Those yielded by the segmented method are significantly lower than those produced by the conventional method. Accordingly, the study supports the hypothesis that inter-segment differences in surface area, skin temperature and rate of movement impact heat balance during locomotion. This has important implications not only for current understanding of heat balance during locomotion in hominins but also for how future research on this topic should be approached.
Threshold-based TOA estimation for impulse radio UWB systems

Highly dispersive nature of ultra-wideband (UWB) channels makes time of arrival (TOA) estimation extremely challenging, where the leading-edge path is not necessarily the strongest path. Since the bandwidth of a received UWB signal is very large, the Nyquist rate sampling becomes impractical, hence motivating lower complexity and yet accurate ranging techniques at feasible sampling rates. In this paper, we consider TOA estimation based on symbol rate samples that are obtained after a square-law device. A normalized threshold selection approach based on the minimum and maximum values of the energy samples is introduced, and optimal values of the thresholds for different signal to noise ratios (SNRs) are investigated via simulations. Also, the effect of window size when searching the leading edge prior to maximum energy block is analyzed. Theoretical closed form expressions are derived for mean absolute TOA estimation error for a fixed threshold case. Performances of different algorithms are then compared via simulations using IEEE 802.15. 4a channel models and by choosing appropriate normalized threshold and search-back window parameters.
Representations of Trans People in Swedish Newspapers

This article analyses the discursive representations of trans people in 15,901 mainstream Swedish newspaper articles between 2000 and 2017 using topic modelling and critical discourse analysis. Drawing from critical perspectives on gender it was found that the articles to various degree assisted in maintaining heteronormativity. The discursive strategies employed by the journalists included trivialisation of trans expressions as dress-up and incorporation of them within binary stereotypes. Trans people were also excluded and deemed as deviant in some articles through insensitive gender descriptions and descriptions. Through the voices of experts, trans people were silenced and pathologized and while some representations of trans people were meant to empower, and offered a slightly less rigid view on gender, these articles too reinforced heteronormativity through continuous referral to binary gender.
Molecular cloning and sequence analysis of growth hormone cDNA of Neotropical freshwater fish Pacu (Piaractus mesopotamicus)

RT-PCR was used for amplifying Piaractus mesopotamicus growth hormone (GH) cDNA obtained from mRNA extracted from pituitary cells. The amplified fragment was cloned and the complete cDNA sequence was determined. The cloned cDNA encompassed a sequence of 543 nucleotides that encoded a polypeptide of 178 amino acids corresponding to mature P. mesopotamicus GH. Comparison with other GH sequences showed a gap of 10 amino acids localized in the N terminus of the putative polypeptide of P. mesopotamicus. This same gap was also observed in other members of the family. Neighbor-joining tree analysis with GH sequences from fishes belonging to different taxonomic groups placed the P. mesopotamicus GH within the Otophysi group. To our knowledge, this is the first GH sequence of a Neotropical characiform fish deposited in GenBank.
Genetic feature selection for gait recognition

Abstract. Many research studies have demonstrated that gait can serve as a useful biometric modality for human identification at a distance. Traditional gait recognition systems, however, have mostly been evaluated without explicitly considering the most relevant gait features, which might have compromised performance. We investigate the problem of selecting a subset of the most relevant gait features for improving gait recognition performance. This is achieved by discarding redundant and irrelevant gait features while preserving the most informative ones. Motivated by our previous work on feature subset selection using genetic algorithms (GAs), we propose using GAs to select an optimal subset of gait features. First, features are extracted using kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) on spatiotemporal projections of gait silhouettes. Then, GA is applied to select a subset of eigenvectors in KPCA space that best represents a subject’s identity. Each gait pattern is then represented by projecting it only on the eigenvectors selected by the GA. To evaluate the effectiveness of the selected features, we have experimented with two different classifiers: k nearest-neighbor and Naïve Bayes classifier. We report considerable gait recognition performance improvements on the Georgia Tech and CASIA databases.
Therapeutic Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Myeloid Cell Adenosine Receptor A2a Stimulation in Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Lung Injury1

To determine the role of the adenosine receptor A2a in a murine model of LPS-induced lung injury, migration of polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) into the different compartments of the lung was determined by flow cytometry, microvascular permeability was assessed by the extravasation of Evans blue, and the release of chemotactic cytokines into the alveolar airspace was determined by ELISA. Measurements were performed in wild-type and A2a gene-deficient mice (A2a−/−). To differentiate the role of A2a on hemopoietic and nonhemopoietic cells, we created chimeric mice by transfer of bone marrow (BM) between wild-type and A2a−/− mice and used mice that lacked A2a expression selectively on myeloid cells (A2aflox/flox × LysM-cre). A specific A2a receptor agonist (ATL202) was used to evaluate its potential to reduce lung injury in vivo. In wild-type mice, therapeutic treatment with ATL202 reduced LPS-induced PMN recruitment, and release of cytokines. Pretreatment, but not posttreatment, also reduced Evans blue extravasation. In the BM chimeric mice lacking A2a on BM-derived cells, PMN migration into the alveolar space was increased by ∼50%. These findings were confirmed in A2aflox/flox × LysM-cre mice. ATL202 was only effective when A2a was present on BM-derived cells. A2a agonists may be effective at curbing inflammatory lung tissue damage.
1 System Analysis and Receptive Field Songting Li July 2014 Volterra Series

0 K(τ)s(t− τ)dτ, (1) where s(t) is the input signal, r(t) is the output signal, and K(·) is the linear kernel of the system that can be measured by using a Dirac-δ function δ(·) or any type of white noise (not necessarily gaussian) as the input signal. We take the convolution in Eq. (1) starting from 0 instead of −∞ in order to satisfy the causality condition: the input signal in the future will not affect the output response in the past.
Hypoxia Inducible Factor-1α Regulates the Migration of Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells via Integrin α 4

Although hypoxic environments have been known to regulate the migratory ability of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs), which is a critical factor for maximizing the therapeutic effect, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Therefore, we aimed to confirm the effect of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) on the migration of BM-MSCs and to analyze the interaction between HIF-1α and integrin-mediated signals. Hypoxia-activated HIF-1α significantly increased BM-MSC migration. The expression of integrin α 4 was decreased in BM-MSCs by increased HIF-1α under hypoxia, whereas the expression of Rho-associated kinase 1 (ROCK1) and Rac1/2/3 was increased. After downregulation of HIF-1α by YC-1, which is an inhibitor of HIF-1α, BM-MSC migration was decreased via upregulation of integrin α 4 and downregulation of ROCK1 and Rac1/2/3. Knockdown of integrin α 4 by integrin α 4 siRNA (siITGA4) treatment increased BM-MSC migration by upregulation of ROCK1, Rac1/2/3, and matrix metalloproteinase-2 regardless of oxygen tension. Moreover, siITGA4 treatment increased HIF-1α expression and augmented the translocation of HIF-1α into the nucleus under hypoxia. Taken together, the alternative expression of HIF-1α induced by microenvironment factors, such as hypoxia and integrin α 4, may regulate the migration of BM-MSCs. These findings may provide insights to the underlying mechanisms of BM-MSC migration for successful stem cell-based therapy.