Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Bahadur Representation of the Linear Support Vector Machine

The support vector machine has been successful in a variety of applications. Also on the theoretical front, statistical properties of the support vector machine have been studied quite extensively with a particular attention to its Bayes risk consistency under some conditions. In this paper, we study somewhat basic statistical properties of the support vector machine yet to be investigated, namely the asymptotic behavior of the coefficients of the linear support vector machine. A Bahadur type representation of the coefficients is established under appropriate conditions, and their asymptotic normality and statistical variability are derived on the basis of the representation. These asymptotic results do not only help further our understanding of the support vector machine, but also they can be useful for related statistical inferences.
Impact of AT2 Receptor Deficiency on Postnatal Cardiovascular Development

Background The angiotensin II receptor subtype 2 (AT2 receptor) is ubiquitously and highly expressed in early postnatal life. However, its role in postnatal cardiac development remained unclear. Methodology/Principal Findings Hearts from 1, 7, 14 and 56 days old wild-type (WT) and AT2 receptor-deficient (KO) mice were extracted for histomorphometrical analysis as well as analysis of cardiac signaling and gene expression. Furthermore, heart and body weights of examined animals were recorded and echocardiographic analysis of cardiac function as well as telemetric blood pressure measurements were performed. Moreover, gene expression, sarcomere shortening and calcium transients were examined in ventricular cardiomyocytes isolated from both genotypes. KO mice exhibited an accelerated body weight gain and a reduced heart to body weight ratio as compared to WT mice in the postnatal period. However, in adult KO mice the heart to body weight ratio was significantly increased most likely due to elevated systemic blood pressure. At postnatal day 7 ventricular capillarization index and the density of α-smooth muscle cell actin-positive blood vessels were higher in KO mice as compared to WT mice but normalized during adolescence. Echocardiographic assessment of cardiac systolic function at postnatal day 7 revealed decreased contractility of KO hearts in response to beta-adrenergic stimulation. Moreover, cardiomyocytes from KO mice showed a decreased sarcomere shortening and an increased peak Ca2+ transient in response to isoprenaline when stimulated concomitantly with angiotensin II. Conclusion The AT2 receptor affects postnatal cardiac growth possibly via reducing body weight gain and systemic blood pressure. Moreover, it moderately attenuates postnatal vascularization of the heart and modulates the beta adrenergic response of the neonatal heart. These AT2 receptor-mediated effects may be implicated in the physiological maturation process of the heart.
The impulses produced by sensory nerve endings

THIS paper describes an amplifier used in conjunction with the capillary electrometer and some preliminary observations with it on the action currents set up in sensory nerve fibres by appropriate stimulation of their end organs. Since the introduction of the triode valve a number of workers have used valve amplification in conjunction with the string galvanometer for recording electric responses of very small intensity. The results of Forbes(l) and his co-workers and of Gasser and Newcomer(2) have shown how valuable such a combination may be for studying reflex effects in nerve. There is one serious limitation, however, in the ordinary type of string galvanometer which no amount of amplification can overcome, and that is the limitation imposed by the inertia of the moving system. Owing to the mass of the string the record of its movement does not give a true picture of the changes of electromotive force applied to it and the distortion, though of little account in the record of a muscle action current, is quite enough to obscure the true form of the much briefer response of a nerve fibre. With sufficient amplification this defect might be overcome by the use of a recording system of very high natural period (as in the oscillograph), but it cannot be overcome in the usual type of string galvanometer without very extensive alterations'. The magnitude of the distortion and the possibility of correcting the records by mathematical analysis have been dealt with very clearly by E rl a ng e r and Gasser(3) and more recently by Williams(4). The ideal instrument for recording nerve action currents is undoubtedly the cathode ray oscillograph devised by Erlanger and Gas s er, for in this the moving system is a stream of cathode rays, the inertia of which is completely negligible. At present, however, the intensity of the illumination from the ray is far too small to allow photographs to be made from a single excursion, and similar excursions must be repeated many times over before the plate or the eye is affected. As a result the cathode ray oscillo1 These objections would not, of course, apply to the beautiful instrument recently constructed by Prof. Einthoven, where the string moves in a vacuum and has a very high natural period.
Types of Evaluation and Types of Evaluator

In response to the previous papers, Scriven defends the formative/ summative dichotomy as one reasonable way (of several possible ways) to classify evaluation activities. He argues that context ultimately ascribes to evaluation activities their formative or summative function, and clarifies areas of agreement and disagreement with authors Chen, Patton, and Wholey. The paper concludes with a definition of "evaluator" and a listing of competencies required for "entry into the club. "
Momentum-resolved Raman spectroscopy of bound molecules in ultracold Fermi gas

The binding energy of Feshbach molecules from a two component Fermi gas of $^{40}$K atoms has been experimentally measured with the momentum-resolved Raman spectroscopy. Comparing with the radio-frequency spectroscopy, in the present experiment the signal of unpaired (free atoms) and the bound molecules can be directly observed and the binding energy can be simultaneously determined in a single running experiment. The energy-momentum dispersion spectra of the strongly interacting ultracold Fermi gas in BEC side are also measured and reconstructed. The present experimental technology of the momentum-resolved Raman spectroscopy can be easily extended to perform spatially momentum-resolved Raman spectroscopy and to obtain the response spectra of a homogeneous system in the local density approximation.
Multirobot consensus while preserving connectivity in presence of obstacles with bounded control inputs

In the existing literatures of multirobots, it is usually assumed that the networked robots remain connected in topologyduring the task execution. In pracice, however, it is not easy to guarante connectivity of the networked robots in a clustered environment. Failure to maintain connectivity may decrease the performance of the networked robots or even fail the task. In this paper, we propose a multirobot motion coordination strategy that can maintain multirobot connectivity as well as guarante obstacle avoidance. A potential function is proposed to generate bounded control inputs for networked robots. The efficiency of the proposed apporach is demonstrated in both simulation and experiment performed on multirobot consensus tasks.
Dopamine Agonists and the Suppression of Impulsive Motor Actions in Parkinson Disease

The suppression of spontaneous motor impulses is an essential facet of cognitive control that is linked to frontal-BG circuitry. BG dysfunction caused by Parkinson disease (PD) disrupts the proficiency of action suppression, but how pharmacotherapy for PD impacts impulsive motor control is poorly understood. Dopamine agonists improve motor symptoms of PD but can also provoke impulsive–compulsive behaviors (ICB). We investigated whether dopamine agonist medication has a beneficial or detrimental effect on impulsive action control in 38 PD patients, half of whom had current ICB. Participants performed the Simon conflict task, which measures susceptibility to acting on spontaneous action impulses as well as the proficiency of suppressing these impulses. Compared with an off-agonist state, patients on their agonists were no more susceptible to reacting impulsively but were less proficient at suppressing the interference from the activation of impulsive actions. Importantly, agonist effects depended on baseline performance in the off-agonist state; more proficient suppressors off agonist experienced a reduction in suppression on agonist, whereas less-proficient suppressors off agonist showed improved suppression on agonist. Patients with active ICB were actually less susceptible to making fast, impulsive response errors than patients without ICB, suggesting that behavioral problems in this subset of patients may be less related to impulsivity in motor control. Our findings provide further evidence that dopamine agonist medication impacts specific cognitive control processes and that the direction of its effects depends on individual differences in performance off medication.
Rotman lens for mm-wavelengths

The 77 GHz band has been reserved for intelligent cruise control in luxury cars and some public transport services in America and the United Kingdom. The Rotman lens offers a cheap and compact means to extend the single beam systems generally used, to fully functional beam staring arrangements. Rotman lenses have been built for microwave frequencies with limited success. The flexibility of microstrip transmission lines and the advent of fast accurate simulation packages allow practical Rotman lenses to be designed at mm-wavelengths. This paper discusses the limitations of the conventional design approach and predicts the performance of a new Rotman lens designed at 77 GHz.
High-resolution multi-scale neural texture synthesis

We introduce a novel multi-scale approach for synthesizing high-resolution natural textures using convolutional neural networks trained on image classification tasks. Previous breakthroughs were based on the observation that correlations between features at intermediate layers of the network are a powerful texture representation, however the fixed receptive field of network neurons limits the maximum size of texture features that can be synthesized. We show that rather than matching statistical properties at many layers of the CNN, better results can be achieved by matching a small number of network layers but across many scales of a Gaussian pyramid. This leads to qualitatively superior synthesized high-resolution textures.
Infectivity titration of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome virus: use of immune adherence hemagglutination for detection of virus growth

Serial dilutions of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome viruses were inoculated into Vero-E6 cells in microplates. After 2 weeks of incubation, infected cells were disrupted by freezing and thawing, and virus antigens were detected by immune adherence hemagglutination. The infectivity titers of the virus as determined by this method were in close agreement with those obtained by the immunofluorescent antigen endpoint method. Then, a neutralization method was established. Japanese hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome isolates, strains SR-11 and TR-352, were found to be distinct from Hantaan virus, strain 76-118, by the neutralization test.
Minority Rights and Realpolitik: Justice-based vs. Pragmatic Arguments for Reserving Seats for National Minorities

Abstract This article explores the arguments used in parliamentary debates, in 2008, to justify the adoption of reserved seats for national minorities in local parliaments in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Content analyses of two parliamentary debates at the state level and nine municipal assembly sessions reveal two dominant frames: an ‘obligation frame’ and a ‘constituent peoples frame’. The former refers to the adoption of reserved seats for minorities as an international and legal obligation, while the latter challenges this institution, emphasizing the rights of the three constituent peoples (Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs) to be guaranteed reserved seats in addition to, or in place of, national minorities. Interestingly, the frame based on an idea of justice and suggesting the right of minorities to political representation is absent from parliamentary debates. The article discusses the implications of these findings, with a reference to the functioning of the institution of reserved seats in the long run.
Interactive Remote-Sensing Image Retrieval Using Active Relevance Feedback

As the resolution of remote-sensing imagery increases, the full complexity of the scenes becomes increasingly difficult to approach. User-defined classes in large image databases are often composed of several groups of images and span very different scales in the space of low-level visual descriptors. The interactive retrieval of such image classes is then very difficult. To address this challenge, we evaluate here, in the context of satellite image retrieval, two general improvements for relevance feedback using support vector machines (SVMs). First, to optimize the transfer of information between the user and the system, we focus on the criterion employed by the system for selecting the images presented to the user at every feedback round. We put forward an active-learning selection criterion that minimizes redundancy between the candidate images shown to the user. Second, for image classes spanning very different scales in the low-level description space, we find that a high sensitivity of the SVM to the scale of the data brings about a low retrieval performance. We argue that the insensitivity to scale is desirable in this context, and we show how to obtain it by the use of specific kernel functions. Experimental evaluation of both ranking and classification performance on a ground-truth database of satellite images confirms the effectiveness of our approach
[Quantitative detection and species identificaton of human Plasmodium spp. by using SYBR Green I based real-time PCR].

OBJECTIVE To develop a real-time PCR method for human Plasmodium spp. qantitative detection and species identificaton. METHODS According to the sequence of Plasmodium 18S rRNA, the primer set was designed based on the genus-specific region around the species-specfic region. The PCR products were amplified and cloned into pGEM-T vector to produce standard plasmids of real-time PCR, and melting curve analysis was conducted following real-time PCR for Plasmodium species indentification. RESULTS By using the primer set, specific PCR products were produced from all of 4 human malaria parasites. The correlation of real-time PCR standard curve was good enough (r = -1.00) for quantitation. According to the melting curve analysis, the melting temperatures (Tm) of Plasmodium malariae, falciparum, ovale and vivax were significantly different, being 71.3, 72.8, 74.6 degrees C and 75.8 degrees C, respectively. CONCLUSION The SYBR Green I based real-time PCR method developed in this study can be used for human Plasmodium spp. quantitative detection and species identificaton.
Route Planning in Road Networks

The continuously increasing demand for mobility more and more frequently asks for the best driving directions to one's destination saving time and money. Using simple-minded approaches to the computation of suitable routes yields slow response times or suboptimal results. Therefore, there is considerable interest in exact and fast speedup techniques, which typically invest some time into a preprocessing step in order to generate auxiliary data that can be used to accelerate all subsequent route planning queries. We present three highly-efficient and provably accurate point-to-point route planning algorithms and one generic many-to-many approach, which computes for given source and target node sets the optimal distances between all source-target node pairs in a very efficient way. The performance is evaluated in an extensive experimental study using large real-world road networks with up to 33 million junctions. This book addresses students, researchers, and software developers that are interested in car navigation systems, route planning services, logistics, or any other application where route planning in road networks plays a crucial role.
Assessing the Appropriateness of Self‐managed Learning

Examines the use of Guglielmino′s Self‐directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS) by two major corporations to assess the appropriateness of self‐managed learning systems for a given population of employees. Provides a recommendation for an improved methodology for companies which are considering self‐managed learning systems.
Constrained stochastic gradient descent for large-scale least squares problem

The least squares problem is one of the most important regression problems in statistics, machine learning and data mining. In this paper, we present the Constrained Stochastic Gradient Descent (CSGD) algorithm to solve the large-scale least squares problem. CSGD improves the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) by imposing a provable constraint that the linear regression line passes through the mean point of all the data points. It results in the best regret bound $O(\log{T})$, and fastest convergence speed among all first order approaches. Empirical studies justify the effectiveness of CSGD by comparing it with SGD and other state-of-the-art approaches. An example is also given to show how to use CSGD to optimize SGD based least squares problems to achieve a better performance.
Nonuniform Dust Outflow Observed around Infrared Object NML Cygni

Measurements by the University of California Berkeley Infrared Spatial Interferometer at 11.15 μm have yielded strong evidence for multiple dust shells and/or significant asymmetric dust emission around NML Cyg. New observations reported also include multiple 8-13 μm spectra taken from 1994-1995 and N-band (10.2 μm) photometry from 1980-1992. These and past measurements are analyzed and fitted to a model of the dust distribution around NML Cyg. No spherically symmetric single dust shell model is found consistent with both near- and mid-infrared observations. However, a circularly symmetric maximum entropy reconstruction of the 11 μm brightness distribution suggests a double-shell model for the dust distribution. Such a model, consisting of a geometrically thin shell of intermediate optical depth (τ11 μm ~ 1.9) plus an outer shell (τ11 μm ~ 0.33), is consistent not only with the 11 μm visibility data but also with near-infrared speckle measurements, the broadband spectrum, and the 9.7 μm silicate feature. The outer shell, or large-scale structure, is revealed only by long-baseline interferometry at 11 μm, being too cold (~400 K) to contribute in the near-infrared and having no unambiguous spectral signature in the mid-infrared. The optical constants of Ossenkopf, Henning, & Mathis proved superior to the Draine & Lee (1984) constants in fitting the detailed shape of the silicate feature and broadband spectrum for this object. Recent observations of H2O maser emission around NML Cyg by Richards, Yates, & Cohen (1996) are consistent with the location of the two dust shells and provide further evidence for the two-shell model.
An African-specific polymorphism in the TP53 gene impairs p53 tumor suppressor function in a mouse model

In this study, Jennis et al. characterize the first mouse model of an African-specific naturally occurring coding region variant at codon 47 of the p53 tumor suppressor gene (S47). They show that homozygous S47 mice are markedly tumor-prone and that the S47 variant impairs not only p53-mediated cell death but also the ability of p53 to transactivate a subset of genes involved in metabolism and ferroptosis.
Long‐Term Follow‐Up of Overweight Children: After Training, After a Single Consultation Session, and Without Treatment

Background: A satisfactory treatment of childhood obesity has not yet been found. An individual consultation session is the usual practice while experts recommend an outpatient training program consisting of a combination of physical exercise, nutrition education, and behavior therapy. Methods: We analyzed degree of overweight (SDS‐BMI) after one and two years in overweight children (aged 6‐15 years) who had had a single consultation session (n = 66) and who had finished a one‐year, structured outpatient training program consisting of physical exercise, nutrition education, and behavior therapy (n = 81). Furthermore we collected data on changes in weight for a control group of overweight children not receiving any treatment (n = 100) over the same period of time. Results: There was no significant change in the degree of overweight over the period of two years either for the control group or for those having received single consultation. The participants of the training were in mean significantly less overweight than at the beginning of the training (P < 0.001), both after one year (mean change in SDS‐BMI ‐0.38) and after the second year (mean change in SDS‐BMI ‐0.30). Conclusions: Overweight children not receiving treatment do not reduce in weight. A single consultation session is not sufficient to achieve weight reduction in children. Weight reduction over at least two years can be achieved in part of the participants of a long‐term, specialized treatment. JPGN 37:72‐74, 2003.
Model-Based and Image-Based Methods for Facial Image Synthesis, Analysis and Recognition

We review several model-based and image-based methods that we have developed for analyzing, synthesizing, and recognizing facial images. Our model-based methods include a sophisticated, functional model of the human face/head, which incorporates a biomechanical tissue model with embedded muscle actuators, and techniques for applying it to computer animation and expression estimation in video. Our image-based methods include tensor-faces, a nonlinear (multilinear) representation for facial image ensembles that disentangles pose, illumination, and expression effects to improve facial recognition.
Encephalitis in Aborted Bovine Fetuses Associated with Bovine Herpesvirus 1 Infection

Brain tissue from 12 aborted bovine fetuses submitted to the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory revealed histologic lesions that consisted of glial nodules and variable degrees of mononuclear inflammation, microhemorrhage, neuronal necrosis, and cerebral cortical cavitation. A diagnosis of Bovine herpesvirus 1 (BHV-1) abortion had been made in all of these cases through multiple testing modalities. Brain tissue from 8 of the 12 fetuses was immunohistochemically stained with a monoclonal antibody specific to BHV-1, and, in 5 fetuses, there was positive intralesional staining of neurons, glial cells, and endothelial cells. This preliminary data suggested that herpesviral infection of brain tissue led to the described neurologic lesions. BHV-1 was then amplified from brain tissue in all 12 of the fetuses and was confirmed by partial sequencing of the thymidine kinase and glycoprotein C genes. To the authors' knowledge, neurologic lesions have not previously been described in BHV-1–infected fetuses, nor has BHV-1 previously been identified in bovine fetal brain tissue. The neurologic histopathology attributed to BHV-1 infection in these cases overlaps with the neurologic lesions produced by Neospora caninum, a common etiologic agent of bovine abortion. Therefore, when bovine fetal neurologic lesions are found, both etiologies should be considered and then distinguished by using additional diagnostic tools.