Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two classes of single-input X-cells in cat lateral geniculate nucleus. I. Receptive-field properties and classification of cells.

Cells in the cat's dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) were studied by presentation of visual stimuli and also by simultaneous recording of their ganglion cell inputs in the retina. This paper describes receptive-field properties and a new system of classification for LGN X-cells that appear to receive essentially only one excitatory retinal input. These X-cells were of two distinct classes. The visual responses of one class of cell (XS, single) replicated the basic form of the responses of a retinal X-cell. The other class of cell (XL, lagged) had responses with two remarkable features: their firing lagged 40-80 ms behind that of XS-cells or ganglion cells at response onset, and they fired anomalously at times when XS-cells or ganglion cells would not be firing. Thus, for a flashing spot, XL-cells were inhibited from firing after stimulus onset, during the time when XS-cells or retinal X-cells had an initial transient peak in firing; XL-cells generally had an anomalous peak in firing after stimulus offset, after XS-cells or retinal X-cells had stopped firing. For a moving bar, XS-cells or retinal X-cells responded primarily while the bar was in the receptive-field center, whereas most of a typical XL-cell's response occurred after the bar had left the receptive-field center. The latencies of various features in the visual responses were analyzed. For several visual response latencies, the distribution was clearly bimodal, thus objectively demonstrating the existence of two cell classes. Using only the latencies from spot and bar responses, over 90% of these single-input cells could be reliably identified as belonging to one of the two classes. The remaining cells (7 of 128) were intermediate between the two classes in some but not all respects; because they had some properties in common, these cells were kept in a separate group (XPL, partially lagged). The axons of both XS- and XL-cells could be antidromically activated from visual cortex. Cortical latencies were typically 0.7-2.0 ms for XS-cells but much longer, typically 2.4-5.0 ms, for XL-cells. It is possible that XL-cells have not previously been recognized as a separate class because cells with such long latencies have been recorded infrequently in the past. Responses to central flashing spots were more transient than those of retinal X-cells for most XS-cells and more sustained for most XL-cells. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Bi-level and anti-aliased rendering methods for a low-resolution 2D vibrotactile array

We investigate rendering methods for 2D tactile arrays. We present four rendering methods, two of which are anti-aliased methods to improve display quality and smoothness. We describe three experiments to evaluate the methods. The first experiment compares them based on subjective ratings and finds that anti-aliased methods improve perceived quality and smoothness. The second experiment investigates the potential for one approach to communicate information at a sub-tactor resolution, based on the shortest line segment allowing identification of its direction. The third experiment is a shape discrimination experiment and finds that only one of the approaches allows reasonable discrimination for the selected shapes.
Multi-label propagation for coherent video segmentation and artistic stylization

We present a new algorithm for segmenting video frames into temporally stable colored regions, applying our technique to create artistic stylizations (e.g. cartoons and paintings) from real video sequences. Our approach is based on a multi-label graph cut applied to successive frames, in which the color data term and label priors are incrementally updated and propagated over time. We demonstrate coherent segmentation and stylization over a variety of home videos.
Ontology-driven Conceptual Document Classification

Document classification based on the lexical-semantic network, wordnet, is presented. Two types of document classification in Serbian have been experimented with – classification based on chosen concepts from Serbian WordNet (SWN) and proper names-based classification. Conceptual document classification criteria are constructed from hierarchies rooted in a set of chosen concepts (first case) or in hierarchies rooted in some of the proper names’ hypernyms (second case). A classificator of the first type is trained and then tested on an indexed and already classified Ebart corpus of Serbian newspapers (476917 articles). Precision, recall and F-measure show that this type of classification is promising although incomplete due mainly to SWN incompleteness. In the context of proper names-based classification, a proper names ontology based on the SWN is presented in the paper. A distance based similarity measure is defined, based on Euclidean and Manhattan distances. Classification of a subset of Contemporary Serbian Language Corpus is presented.
Closed-Form Asymptotics and Numerical Approximations of 1D Parabolic Equations with Applications to Option Pricing

We construct closed-form asymptotic formulas for the Green's function of parabolic equations (e.g., Fokker-Planck equations) with variable coefficients in one space dimension. More precisely, let $u(t,x)=\int\mathcal{G}_t(x,y)f(y)dy$ be the solution of $\partial_tu-(au”+bu'+cu)=0$ for $t>0$, $u(0,x)=f(x)$. Then we find computable approximations $\mathcal{G}_t^{[n]}$ of $\mathcal{G}_t$. The approximate kernels are derived by applying the Dyson-Taylor commutator method that we have recently developed for short-time expansions of heat kernels on arbitrary dimension Euclidean spaces. We then utilize these kernels to obtain closed-form pricing formulas for European call options. The validity of such approximations to large time is extended using a bootstrap scheme. We prove explicit error estimates in weighted Sobolev spaces, which we test numerically and compare to other methods.
Cardiovascular Stress Hyperreactivity in Babies of Smokers and in Babies Born Preterm

Background— Being born preterm, small, and to a mother who smokes are common perinatal complications with major public health implications. Evidence suggests that each affects the body’s structure and function in ways that could increase susceptibility to cardiovascular dysfunction later in life. Here, we used 2 routine stress reactivity tests to identify incipient “silent” programming of cardiovascular dysfunction associated with adverse perinatal events. Methods and Results— We studied 29 control babies born at term to nonsmokers, 18 term-born babies of mothers who smoked throughout pregnancy (mean, 15 cigarettes a day), and 31 babies born preterm to nonsmokers. All infants were compared at the same age after conception (ie, at 40 to 42 weeks), during sleep. We analyzed blood pressure (BP) and heart rate responses to breathing 4% CO2 for 4 minutes or to passive head-up tilt to 60°. BP was measured continuously from a wrist cuff. CO2 exposure raised heart rate and BP in controls by 10%, and tilt increased their BP by 5%. CO2 elicited the expected BP but no heart rate response from preterm infants but a much-greater-than-expected BP and heart rate response from babies of smokers. Tilt elicited a 3- to 4-fold greater rise in BP from preterm and tobacco-exposed babies. Conclusions— Vascular, cardiac, and blood pressure reactivity is heightened in babies born preterm or to smokers. The findings are consistent with in utero and early postnatal “programming” of human cardiovascular dysfunction by adverse circumstances. This incipient dysfunction may be an early manifestation of processes that lead to other problems or complications later on (eg, higher BP or sudden infant death syndrome).
Integrating Language/Communication Objectives into the Total Preschool Curriculum

• The recent literature about language/communication intervention with language-delayed children suggests that intervention is more effective when it occurs throughout the day rather than only during the time specifically set aside for it in the schedule (Hart & Rogers -Warren, 1978; Nietupski, Scheutz, & Ockwood, 1980). The ultimate goal of language intervention is to facilitate the appropriate use of language/ communication skills in the natural environment; that is, to use the skills taught in a variety of functional contexts in day-to-day environments (Warren & Rogers-Warren, 1980). Mastery of specific skills during language lesson time does not necessarily mean that children will use these skills when occasions for their display arise in everyday situations (Guess, Keogh , & Sailor, 1978). Language-delayed children at the preschool level must be given opportunities throughout the school day to demonstrate that they use the skills in natural contexts and that the skills are displayed appropriately and independently. In other words, children must demonstrate generalization before skills can be considered mastered.
Larvicidal Activity of Nerium oleander against Larvae West Nile Vector Mosquito Culex pipiens (Diptera: Culicidae)

Background. Outbreaks of the West Nile virus infection were reported in Morocco in 1996, 2003, and 2010. Culex pipiens was strongly suspected as the vector responsible for transmission. In the North center of Morocco, this species has developed resistance to synthetic insecticides. There is an urgent need to find alternatives to the insecticides as natural biocides. Objective. In this work, the insecticidal activity of the extract of the local plant Nerium oleander, which has never been tested before in the North center of Morocco, was studied on larval stages 3 and 4 of Culex pipiens. Methods. Biological tests were realized according to a methodology inspired from standard World Health Organization protocol. The mortality values were determined after 24 h of exposure and LC50 and LC90 values were calculated. Results. The extract had toxic effects on the larvae of culicid mosquitoes. The ethanolic extract of Nerium oleander applied against the larvae of Culex pipiens has given the lethal concentrations LC50 and LC90 in the order of 57.57 mg/mL and 166.35 mg/mL, respectively. Conclusion. This investigation indicates that N. oleander could serve as a potential larvicidal, effective natural biocide against mosquito larvae, particularly Culex pipiens.
Understanding and assessing intercultural competence in an online environment: a case study of transnational educatioin programme delivery between college students in ULPGC, Spain, and ICES, France

Throughout the literature, researchers use a wide range of more or less related terms to discuss and describe ‘intercultural competence’. They have in common the attempt to account for the ability to go beyond one’s own culture and interact with other individuals from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. In that sense, contact with other languages and cultures provides an excellent opportunity to foster the development of intercultural communicative competence and online transnational programmes play a unique role in offering students the opportunity to put into practice their intercultural competencies. In this article we summarize theory and research on intercultural competence, paying particular attention to existing approaches and tools for its assessment in online educational programmes. We also present the example of a case study: the setting up of a transnational education programme between college students in ULPGC, Spain, and ICES, France.
ViCE Registry: An Image Registry for Virtual Collaborative Environments

The paper presents a concept and an implementation for an image registry for virtual collaborative environments (ViCE). This cross-platform and cross-organizational image registry bridges gaps between execution environment platforms and user communities. The presented concept consists of a conceptual architecture and a sophisticated set of metadata fields to describe images as virtual environments. The main challenge is the wide spread definition of an image. The terminology defines execution environments, which consist of runtime technologies (virtual machines, containers, applications) and a management layer (basic management, cloud computing, container clusters, job schedulers). An execution environment runs a deployable implicit or declarative image to build a virtual environment. With this abstraction the image registry can share virtual environment across Cloud computing, HPC, classroom setups, with any of KVM, Docker, Singularity, etc. in use. The open source implementation is written in Go and presented with a scalable microservice architecture, using Couchbase as metadata store and RabbitMQ as communication hub between software components.
Association of Changes in Air Quality With Bronchitic Symptoms in Children in California, 1993-2012

K Berhane, ML Chang, R McConnell. JAMA. 2017;315(14):1491–1501 Exposure to elevated concentrations of ambient air pollutants is associated with increases in the prevalence of bronchitic symptoms in children. The authors hypothesized that reductions in measured air pollutants over the periods studied would be associated with an improvement in respiratory symptoms in children with or without asthma. Data were collected from 3 successively recruited cohorts involving 4602 children (48% female subjects, age range of 5–18 years, mean age of 8 years, 45% Hispanic) from 8 Southern California communities during the years 1993 to 2001, 1996 to 2004, and 2003 to 2012. This was a longitudinal study with data from the 3 separate …
IPO underpricing and after-market liquidity

The underpricing of the shares sold through Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) is generally explained with asymmetric information and risk. We complement these traditional explanations with a new theory. Investors who buy IPO shares are also concerned by expected liquidity and by the uncertainty about its level when shares start trading on the after-market. The less liquid shares are expected to be, and the less predictable their liquidity is, the larger will be the amount of "money left on the table" by the issuer. We present a model that integrates such liquidity concerns within a traditional framework with adverse selection and risk. The model's predictions are supported by evidence from a sample of 337 British IPOs effected between 1998 and 2000. Using various measures of liquidity, we find that expected after-market liquidity and liquidity risk are important determinants of IPO underpricing, after controlling for variables traditionally used to explain underpricing.
An experimental burn wound‐healing study of non‐thermal atmospheric pressure microplasma jet arrays

In contrast with a thermal plasma surgical instrument based on coagulative and ablative properties, low‐temperature (non‐thermal) non‐equilibrium plasmas are known for novel medicinal effects on exposed tissue while minimizing undesirable tissue damage. In this study we demonstrated that arrays of non‐thermal microplasma jet devices fabricated from a transparent polymer can efficiently inactivate fungi (Candida albicans) as well as bacteria (Escherichia coli), both in vitro and in vivo, and that this leads to a significant wound‐healing effect. Microplasma jet arrays offer several advantages over conventional single‐jet devices, including superior packing density, inherent scalability for larger treatment areas, unprecedented material flexibility in a plasma jet device, and the selective generation of medically relevant reactive species at higher plasma densities. The therapeutic effects of our multi‐jet device were verified on second‐degree burns in animal rat models. Reduction of the wound area and the histology of the wound after treatment have been investigated, and expression of interleukin (IL)‐1α, ‐6 and ‐10 was verified to evaluate the healing effects. The consistent effectiveness of non‐thermal plasma treatment has been observed especially in decreasing wound size and promoting re‐epithelialization through collagen arrangement and the regulation of expression of inflammatory genes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Distributed Averaging With Random Network Graphs and Noises

We consider a discrete-time distributed averaging algorithm over multi-agent networks with measurement noises and time-varying random graphs. Each agent updates its state by a weighted sum of pairwise state differences between its neighbors and itself with both additive and multiplicative measurement noises. The network structure is modeled by a sequence of time-varying random digraphs, which may be spatially and temporally dependent. By stochastic Lyapunov method and the combination of algebraic graph theory and martingale convergence theory, we obtain sufficient conditions for stochastic approximation type algorithms to achieve mean square and almost sure average consensus. We prove that all states of the agents converge to a common random variable, whose mathematical expectation is the average of initial values, in mean square and almost surely if the sequence of digraphs is conditionally balanced and uniformly conditionally jointly connected. An upper bound of the variance of the limit random variable, that is, the mean square steady-state error for stochastic average consensus is given quantitatively related to the weights, the algorithm gain and the energy level of the noises.
Metric graph reconstruction from noisy data

Many real-world data sets can be viewed of as noisy samples of special types of metric spaces called metric graphs [16]. Building on the notions of correspondence and Gromov-Hausdorff distance in metric geometry, we describe a model for such data sets as an approximation of an underlying metric graph. We present a novel algorithm that takes as an input such a data set, and outputs the underlying metric graph with guarantees. We also implement the algorithm, and evaluate its performance on a variety of real world data sets.
Beat-to-beat P and T wave delineation in ECG signals using a marginalized particle filter

The delineation of P and T waves is important for the interpretation of ECG signals. In this work, we propose a sequential Bayesian detection-estimation algorithm for simultaneous P and T wave detection, delineation, and waveform estimation on a beat-to-beat basis. Our method is based on a dynamic model which exploits the sequential nature of the ECG by introducing a random walk model to the waveforms. The core of the method is a marginalized particle filter that efficiently resolves the unknown parameters of the dynamic model. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on the annotated QT database and compared with state-of-the-art methods. Its on-line characteristic is ideally suited for real-time ECG monitoring and arrhythmia analysis.
The Validity of Retiming Sequential Circuits

Retiming has been proposed as an optimization step for sequential circuits represented at the net-list level. Retiming moves the latches across the logic gates and in doing so changes the number of latches and the longest path delay between the latches. In this paper we show by example that retiming a design may lead to differing simulation results when the retimed design replaces the original design. We also show, by example, that retiming may not preserve the testability of a sequential test sequence for a given stuck-at fault as measured by a simulator. We identify the cause of the problemas forward retiming moves across multiple-fanout points in the circuit. The primary contribution of this paper is to show that, while an accurate logic simulation may distinguish the retimed circuit fromthe original circuit, a conservative three-valued simulator cannot do so. Hence, retiming is a safe operation when used in a design methodology based on conservative three-valued simulation starting each latch with the unknown value.
Nonlocal Means With Dimensionality Reduction and SURE-Based Parameter Selection

Nonlocal means (NLM) is an effective denoising method that applies adaptive averaging based on similarity between neighborhoods in the image. An attractive way to both improve and speed-up NLM is by first performing a linear projection of the neighborhood. One particular example is to use principal components analysis (PCA) to perform dimensionality reduction. Here, we derive Stein's unbiased risk estimate (SURE) for NLM with linear projection of the neighborhoods. The SURE can then be used to optimize the parameters by a search algorithm or we can consider a linear expansion of multiple NLMs, each with a fixed parameter set, for which the optimal weights can be found by solving a linear system of equations. The experimental results demonstrate the accuracy of the SURE and its successful application to tune the parameters for NLM.
Relationships Among Jumping Performances and Sprint Parameters During Maximum Speed Phase in Sprinters

Kale, M, Aşçi, A, Bayrak, C, and Açikada, C. Relationships among jumping performances and sprint parameters during maximum speed phase in sprinters. J Strength Cond Res 23(8): 2272-2279, 2009-The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among jumping performances and speed parameters during maximum speed phase in sprinters. Twenty-one men sprinters volunteered to participate at the beginning of the preparation training phase. All tests-including 100-m sprint running, squat jump (SJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), drop jump (DJ), 60-second repetitive jump (RJ), standing long jump (SLJ), standing triple jump (STJ), standing quintuple jump (SQJ), and standing 10-stride jump (STENJ)-were done on switching mats. Flight (FT) and contact times (CT) during the vertical jump tests and 10-m split times during 100-m sprint running were measured by a 2-channel precision timing system (PTS) connected to the mats. The trace marking method was used for measuring the stride length (SL) through 60 m in 100-m sprint running. Stride frequency (SF), maximum velocity (Vmax), jump height for all vertical jumps, and lower-body power in DJ and RJ were calculated. Statistical analysis showed that the highest significant correlation was found between Vmax and DJ height (r = 0.69; p < 0.05). However, the lowest significant correlation coefficient was found between SL at maximum velocity phase of sprint running and SJ (r = 0.39; p < 0.05). In conclusion, DJ height is demonstrated to be a more effective way to reflect Vmax during sprint running than the other vertical and horizontal jump tests at the beginning of the preparation training phase.
Calvarial Bone Grafts and Temporalis Muscle Flap for Midfacial Reconstruction After Maxillary Tumor Resection: A Long-term Retrospective Evaluation of 17 Patients

Midfacial reconstruction after radical oncological resection is a challenging endeavor and several options can be employed: prosthethic devices, pedicled flaps (with or without the aid of autologous or alloplastic grafts), and microvascular flaps. Each technique has specific indications, advantages and disadvantages. The use of traditional surgical reconstructive procedures seems to be shifted nowadays by microvascular free flaps. Nevertheless, in our experience the myofascial temporalis flap associated with free calvarial bone grafts demonstrate to be a safe and versatile option in primary midfacial reconstruction. From this point of view the authors have developed a technique for one-stage reconstruction of the orbito-maxillary skeleton and soft tissues and without the use of microsurgical flaps; this surgical procedure can be used only on patients for whom a resection of the cutaneous tissues and exenteratio orbitae are not necessary. The aims of this paper is to describe the surgical technique and to show a retrospective analysis on 17 patients which underwent midfacial radical resection and immediate reconstruction with calvarial bone grafts and temporalis muscle flap along 15 years.