Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-resolution motion-compensated imaging photoplethysmography for remote heart rate monitoring

We present a novel non-contact photoplethysmographic (PPG) imaging system based on high-resolution video recordings of ambient reflectance of human bodies that compensates for body motion and takes advantage of skin erythema fluctuations to improve measurement reliability for the purpose of remote heart rate monitoring. A single measurement location for recording the ambient reflectance is automatically identified on an individual, and the motion for the location is determined over time via measurement location tracking. Based on the determined motion information motion-compensated reflectance measurements at different wavelengths for the measurement location can be acquired, thus providing more reliable measurements for the same location on the human over time. The reflectance measurement is used to determine skin erythema fluctuations over time, resulting in the capture of a PPG signal with a high signal-to-noise ratio. To test the efficacy of the proposed system, a set of experiments involving human motion in a front-facing position were performed under natural ambient light. The experimental results demonstrated that skin erythema fluctuations can achieve noticeably improved average accuracy in heart rate measurement when compared to previously proposed non-contact PPG imaging systems.
GRB 070610: A Curious Galactic Transient

GRB 070610 is a typical high-energy event with a duration of 5 s. Yet within the burst localization we detect a highly unusual X-ray and optical transient, Swift J195509.6+261406. We see high-amplitude X-ray and optical variability on very short timescales even at late times. Using near-infrared imaging assisted by a laser guide star and adaptive optics, we identified the counterpart of Swift J195509.6+261406. Late-time optical and near-infrared imaging constrain the spectral type of the counterpart to be fainter than a K-dwarf, assuming it is of Galactic origin. It is possible that GRB 070610 and Swift J195509.6+261406 are unrelated sources. However, the absence of a typical X-ray afterglow from GRB 070610 in conjunction with the spatial and temporal coincidence of the two motivate us to suggest that the sources are related. The closest (imperfect) analog to Swift J195509.6+261406 is V4641 Sgr, an unusual black hole binary. We suggest that Swift J195509.6+261406 along with V4641 Sgr define a subclass of stellar black hole binaries—the fast X-ray novae. We further suggest that fast X-ray novae are associated with bursts of gamma rays. If so, GRB 070610 defines a new class of celestial gamma-ray bursts and these bursts dominate the long-duration GRB demographics.
A synthesis of evidence on inhibitory control and auditory hallucinations based on the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework

The National Institute of Mental Health initiative called the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project aims to provide a new approach to understanding mental illness grounded in the fundamental domains of human behavior and psychological functioning. To this end the RDoC framework encourages researchers and clinicians to think outside the [diagnostic] box, by studying symptoms, behaviors or biomarkers that cut across traditional mental illness categories. In this article we examine and discuss how the RDoC framework can improve our understanding of psychopathology by zeroing in on hallucinations- now widely recognized as a symptom that occurs in a range of clinical and non-clinical groups. We focus on a single domain of functioning—namely cognitive [inhibitory] control—and assimilate key findings structured around the basic RDoC “units of analysis,” which span the range from observable behavior to molecular genetics. Our synthesis and critique of the literature provides a deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved in the emergence of auditory hallucinations, linked to the individual dynamics of inhibitory development before and after puberty; favors separate developmental trajectories for clinical and non-clinical hallucinations; yields new insights into co-occurring emotional and behavioral problems; and suggests some novel avenues for treatment.
The Structure of International Demand for Soybean Products

Abstract This study used a new body of quarterly data to estimate multilateral import demand relations for soybeans and soymeal. The countries of origin were the United States, Brazil, and Argentina. The areas of destination were the EEC, Japan, and Eastern Europe. The results indicated that own- and cross-price elasticities were quite large. These demand relations were then inverted and solved for prices to examine the effect on total revenue of increases in supplies from each of the exporting countries. Results showed that, in all cases except one, own-total revenue was inflexible with respect to increase in the own-quantity supplied. These results imply that an increase in exports will be associated with smaller proportional increase in revenue from exports.
The novel high efficiency on chip transformers for the CMOS power amplifier

This paper proposes a novel on chip transformer for the purpose of combining output voltage of the high power amplifier in a standard 0.13-µm TSMC CMOS technology. The transformer adopts multi-finger architecture which provides low insertion loss and allows high current capacity on the transformer. The proposed transformer is estimated and designed by 3-D electromagnetic simulator. Due to the multi-finger structure, the voltage transfer efficiency from input to output at the transformer reaches 81%. To enhance linearity of the PA, cross coupled compensation capacitors are added. With all integration of transformers, baluns, and paralell 4 diff-amps, the prototype Class AB Power Amplifier shows 30dBm saturation power with 1.8V supply voltage and 35dBm with 3V supply voltage at 2.4 GHz. The output P1dB is 27dBm with 18% drain efficiency and 30dBm with 15.6% drain efficiency.
Effects of Exchange Rates on World Prices of Australian Wool

Australian wool producers are being told that exchange rate have driven systematic fluctuation in the price of their wool at auction. This paper presents some key findings of a major collaborative study on the effect of exchange rates on Australian wool prices with the Economic Research Centre at the University of Western Australia. The effect of the exporter and importer’s market powers on the extent of price changes due to exchange rates, was analysed using Australian Bureau of Statistics wool trade data. The results reflect the extent to which Australian wool exporters or importers of destination countries have “market power” that can be used to their advantage in the form of increasing prices.
LANGUAGE AND EARNINGS AMONG IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES

This study of the determinants of earnings among adult foreign-born men using the 1990 Census of Population focuses on the effects of the respondent's own English language skills, the effects of living in a linguistic enclave, and the stage of the business cycle at entry into the U.S. labor market. The analysis demonstrates the importance of English language fluency among the foreign born from non-English speaking countries. Those who are fluent earn 15 to 19 percent more than those who lack fluency. Earnings are lower in an area with a higher minority language concentration, especially among those with greater English language fluency. There is strong evidence for the endogeneity between language and earnings. Language skills are acquired in response to economic incentives. There is also strong evidence for the complementarity between language skills and other forms of human capital. The partial effects on earnings of schooling and on-the-job-training are greater for those who are more fluent in English. Weekly earnings are lower among those who enter the U.S. labor market in a period of high unemployment. This adverse effect, however, is temporary as it disappears over time.
Contextual advertising for web article printing

Advertisements provide the necessary revenue model supporting the Web ecosystem and its rapid growth. Targeted or contextual ad insertion plays an important role in optimizing the financial return of this model. Nearly all the current ad payment strategies such as "pay-per-impression" and "pay-per-click" on web pages are geared for electronic viewing purposes. Little attention, however, is focused on deriving additional ad revenues when the content is repurposed for alternative mean of presentation, e.g. being printed. Although more and more content is moving to the Web, there are still many occasions where printed output of web content or RSS feeds is desirable, such as maps and articles; thus printed ad insertion can potentially be lucrative. In this paper, we describe a cloud-based printing service that enables automatic contextual ad insertion, with respect to the main web page content, when a printout of the page is requested. To encourage service utilization, it would provide higher quality printouts than what is possible from current browser print drivers, which generally produce poor outputs - ill formatted pages with lots of unwanted information, e.g. navigation icons. At this juncture we will limit the scope to only article-related web pages although the concept can be extended to arbitrary web pages. The key components of this system include (1) automatic extraction of article from web pages, (2) the ad service network for ad matching and delivering, and (3) joint content and ad printout creation.
Sequential changes in plasma lipoproteins and body fat composition during polyunsaturated fat feeding in man

1. The early effects of a moderate polyunsaturated fat diet on the composition of circulating lipoproteins and adipose tissue fatty acids were measured in five healthy adults. 2. The fatty acid content and gross composition of the three major plasma lipoprotein fractions altered within 7 d of treatment. The response of depot fat was slower but did show a significant and progressive change after 14 d on the diet. 3. The efficiency of the moderate diet in changing the composition of the lipoproteins suggests that it should be equally dfective in altering their metabolic handling.
Methodologies for Load Forecasting

The ability to accurately forecast load is vitally important for the electric industry in a deregulated economy. Load forecasting has many applications including energy purchasing and generation, load switching, contract evaluation, and infrastructure development. A large variety of methods have been developed for and applied to load forecasting. In this paper we examine various approaches to load forecasting, highlighting the importance of intelligent systems and explore the possible future directions of forecasting research
Towards sequencing malicious system calls

System-call analysis is recognized as one of the most promising approaches to malware detection due to its ability to facilitate detection of malware variants as well as zero-day malware. However, one of the key challenges of system-call based analysis - which prevents it from being used in real-time detection systems - is the excessive size/dimensionality of the system-call sequences that correspond to most current day malware. The main contributions of our work are two-fold: (1) We propose a novel approach to malware system-call sequence representation that ensures more effective detection and analysis of individual malware instances as well as their corresponding malware families. In particular, our approach results in a considerable reduction in the size of system-call sequences of presented software/malware instances, while not falling victim to the so-called “dummy insertion attacks”. (2) Building upon (1), we also propose a novel supervised-learning based framework for detection of malicious system-call sequences in previously unseen software programs. This framework can also be used for effective identification and auditing of benign software programs that are not necessary malicious.
Towards Temporal Reasoning Using Qualitative Probabilities

Previously proposed qualitative probabilities do not satisfy the requirements of temporal reasoning, and a new abstraction is proposed here that represents probability changes over time using four values: increasing, decreasing, constant, and unknown. The qualitative temporal probability presented satisfies the axioms of probability by obeying a set of probabilistic constraints. Temporal constraints are imposed through a set of causality, ordering and probabilistic constraints.
PDK1 and HR46 Gene Homologs Tie Social Behavior to Ovary Signals

The genetic basis of division of labor in social insects is a central question in evolutionary and behavioral biology. The honey bee is a model for studying evolutionary behavioral genetics because of its well characterized age-correlated division of labor. After an initial period of within-nest tasks, 2–3 week-old worker bees begin foraging outside the nest. Individuals often specialize by biasing their foraging efforts toward collecting pollen or nectar. Efforts to explain the origins of foraging specialization suggest that division of labor between nectar and pollen foraging specialists is influenced by genes with effects on reproductive physiology. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping of foraging behavior also reveals candidate genes for reproductive traits. Here, we address the linkage of reproductive anatomy to behavior, using backcross QTL analysis, behavioral and anatomical phenotyping, candidate gene expression studies, and backcross confirmation of gene-to-anatomical trait associations. Our data show for the first time that the activity of two positional candidate genes for behavior, PDK1 and HR46, have direct genetic relationships to ovary size, a central reproductive trait that correlates with the nectar and pollen foraging bias of workers. These findings implicate two genes that were not known previously to influence complex social behavior. Also, they outline how selection may have acted on gene networks that affect reproductive resource allocation and behavior to facilitate the evolution of social foraging in honey bees.
Metropolis Based Posterior Integration Schemes

This paper proposes a Metropolis based algorithm to generate posterior Monte Carlo samples. The algorithm does not directly depend upon any approximation or envelope function for the posterior density. Convergence in total variation and an ergodic theorem are shown. Applying the proposed scheme to generate from the conditional distributions required for the Gibbs sampler extends the applicability of the Gibbs sampling scheme to problems without conjugate structure and makes orthogo-nalization possible. Orthogonalization improves the convergence of the Gibbs sampler by reducing serial correlation. The proposed algorithms nicely complement available posterior integration schemes. Most currently used posterior integration techniques rely on approximate posterior normality (importance sampling, Laplace integration) or complete conditionals of the posterior distribution which are available for ef-cient random variate generation (Gibbs sampling). The suggested algorithms rely to a much lesser extent on such regularity assumptions. However, some limitations remain. Severe deviation from approximate posterior normality would cause the algorithms to fail by rendering the suggested default choices for initialization and probing distributions unreasonable. Examples are well separated posterior modes or L-shaped posterior distributions. Both algorithms have several free implementation parameters. Default choices which are adequate for a wide range of common problems are suggested. Using these defaults the proposed algorithms are illustrated in four application examples. The rst example deals with a hierarchical model with Poisson likelihood and log student-t prior. The usual Gibbs approach to estimating the model is impractical because of the lack of conjugacy. The second example concerns a nonlinear regression with highly correlated parameters. Example 3 illustrates application of the proposed algorithms for inference in a contingency table with monotone odds ratios. The monotonicity constraint leads to a posterior mode on the boundary of the parameter space. The last example estimates a proportional hazard rates model with random eeects. The high dimensional parameter vector (125 parameters) and lack of conjugacy makes posterior integration diicult.
Support Vector Machine classification of muscle cocontraction to improve physical human-robot interaction

Current control strategies in physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) face some limitations: endpoint stiffness level is not directly measurable in typical haptic control situations and the bilateral nature of the interaction requires proper treatment of operator dynamics. These limitations have reduced current control approaches to estimation techniques based on correlated metrics, such as electromyographic (EMG) signals. The current study investigates a parameter known to represent the nullspace of the mapping from muscle forces to joint torques in the human musculoskeletal system, i.e., muscle co-activation. It is hypothesized that this parameter is a random variable that correlates with muscle activities, measured through EMG signals. A change in this variable directly affects endpoint stiffness, and therefore system performance and stability. This study additionally presents a methodology for processing EMG (cocontraction) data prior to training a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier, meant to be used as a decision tool for haptic impedance control. Results presented serve as a springboard for the incorporation of a human operator model suitable for real-time implementation and sufficient to support bilateral human-robot interaction. The long-term goals of this research are to understand the mechanisms governing neuromotor adaptation in pHRI, and ultimately design a novel haptic device that tunes its impedance gains in conjunction with changes in an operator's physical and cognitive state. Such implementation would improve the efficacy of robot co-workers operated in industrial settings, among other applications.
Research on Modified Root-MUSIC Algorithm of DOA Estimation Based on Covariance Matrix Reconstruction

In the standard root multiple signal classification algorithm, the performance of direction of arrival estimation will reduce and even lose effect in circumstances that a low signal noise ratio and a small signals interval. By reconstructing and weighting the covariance matrix of received signal, the modified algorithm can provide more accurate estimation results. The computer simulation and performance analysis are given next, which show that under the condition of lower signal noise ratio and stronger correlation between signals, the proposed modified algorithm could provide preferable azimuth estimating performance than the standard method. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.
Perisynaptic Schwann cells of the vertebrate motor endplate bear modified cilia

Perisynaptic Schwann cells (PSCs), descendants of the myelinating Schwann cells, cover the axon terminal of the vertebrate motor endplate of the skeletal muscle fiber. PSCs are assumed to support the function of the axon terminal. This function suggests a net material transport in the direction of the axon terminal. Morphologically it is to be expected that these cells have a cytoskeleton aligned to the axon terminal. Investigations clarifying this statement have not yet been undertaken. From previous investigations we know, however, that the PSCs have a microtubule‐organizing center, which is a part of this cytoskeleton. The centrioles of the organizing center may also participate in the formation of a modified cilium structure whose function is unknown. In the present investigation, characteristic ultrastructural features of the modified cilium structure and its relationship to the Golgi apparatus and the axon terminal are presented. A function for the modified cilium structure is discussed. Microsc. Res. Tech. 63:149–154, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Enrichment in the Centaurus cluster of galaxies

We perform a detailed spatially resolved, spectroscopic, analysis of the core of the Centaurus cluster of galaxies using a deep Chandra X-ray observation and XMM-Newton data. The Centaurus cluster core has particularly high metallicity, up to twice the solar values, and we measure the abundances of Fe, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca and Ni. We map the distribution of these elements in many spatial regions, and create radial profiles to the east and west of the centre. The ratios of the most robustly determined elements to iron are consistent with solar ratios, indicating that there has been enrichment by both Type Ia and Type II supernovae. For a normal initial stellar mass function, the metallicity peak represents the products of about 4 x 10 10 M ⊙ of star formation. This star formation can have occurred continuously at a rate of 5 M ⊙ yr -1 for the past 8 Gyr or more, or was part of the formation of the central galaxy at earlier times. Either conclusion requires that the inner core of the Centaurus cluster has not suffered a major disruption within the past 8 Gyr, or even longer.
Query Optimization for Dynamic Graphs

Given a query graph that represents a pattern of interest, the emerging pattern detection problem can be viewed as a continuous query problem on a dynamic graph. We present an incremental algorithm for continuous query processing on dynamic graphs. The algorithm is based on the concept of query decomposition; we decompose a query graph into smaller subgraphs and assemble the result of sub-queries to find complete matches with the specified query. The novelty of our work lies in using the subgraph distributional statistics collected from the dynamic graph to generate the decomposition. We introduce a "Lazy Search" algorithm where the search strategy is decided on a vertex-to-vertex basis depending on the likelihood of a match in the vertex neighborhood. We also propose a metric named "Relative Selectivity" that is used to select between different query decomposition strategies. Our experiments performed on real online news, network traffic stream and a synthetic social network benchmark demonstrate 10-100x speedups over competing approaches.
THE UTILITY OF ELAPSED TIME AS A USABILITY METRIC FOR SPOKEN DIALOGUE SYSTEMS

It is commonly assumed that elapsed time is an important objective metric for evaluating the performance of spoken dialogue systems. However, our studies based on the PARADISE framework consistently find that other predictors are stronger contributors to user satisfaction than elapsed time. In this paper, we show that several possible explanations for this apparently counter-intuitive finding are not feasible. Our conclusion is that users of spoken dialogue systems are as much or more attuned to qualitative aspects of the interaction as they are to elapsed time.
Autoregressive image interpolation via context modeling and multiplanar constraint

In this paper, we propose a novel image interpolation algorithm by context-aware autoregressive (AR) model and multiplanar constraint. Different from existing AR based methods which employ predetermined reference configuration to predict pixel values, the proposed method considers the anisotropic pixel dependencies in natural images and adaptively chooses the optimal prediction context by utilizing the nonlocal redundancy to interpolate pixels. Furthermore, the multiplanar constraint is applied to enhance the correlations within the estimation window by exploiting the self-similarity property of natural images. Similar patches are collected by the combination of patch-wise pixel values and the gradient information. And the inter-patch dependencies are adopted to improve the interpolation. The experimental results show that our method is effective in image interpolation and successfully decreases the artifacts nearby the sharp edges. The comparison experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can obtain better performance than other related ones in terms of both objective and subjective results.