Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chromatophore Activity during Natural Pattern Expression by the Squid Sepioteuthis lessoniana: Contributions of Miniature Oscillation

Squid can rapidly change the chromatic patterns on their body. The patterns are created by the expansion and retraction of chromatophores. The chromatophore consists of a central pigment-containing cell surrounded by radial muscles that are controlled by motor neurons located in the central nervous system (CNS). In this study we used semi-intact squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana) displaying centrally controlled natural patterns to analyze spatial and temporal activities of chromatophores located on the dorsal mantle skin. We found that chromatophores oscillated with miniature expansions/retractions at various frequencies, even when the chromatic patterns appear macroscopically stable. The frequencies of this miniature oscillation differed between “feature” and “background” areas of chromatic patterns. Higher frequencies occurred in feature areas, whereas lower frequencies were detected in background areas. We also observed synchronization of the oscillation during chromatic pattern expression. The expansion size of chromatophores oscillating at high frequency correlated with the number of synchronized chromatophores but not the oscillation frequency. Miniature oscillations were not observed in denervated chromatophores. These results suggest that miniature oscillations of chromatophores are driven by motor neuronal activities in the CNS and that frequency and synchrony of this oscillation determine the chromatic pattern and the expansion size, respectively.
Fabrication of Nanopores in an Ultra-Thin Polyimide Membrane for Biomolecule Sensing

Single molecule detection using nanopores has proven to be a powerful way of identifying biomolecules. Therefore, a variety of materials and methods have been developed by the nanopore community to generate credible outcomes. Here we report as the first time a novel polyimide nanopore platform for single DNA sensing. Novelty of the platform arises both from the ultra-thin structure of the polyimide membrane and also the technique used in the nanopore fabrication on a polymer membrane. Furthermore, the ultra-thin nature of the membrane eliminates the involvement of highly demanding fabrication steps often employed in the solid-state nanopore membrane production. Herein we present the fabrication of nanopores in such an ultra-thin polymer membrane and its successful application in sensing DNA molecules at single molecule level, holding a promise as a potential single-molecule analytical device unlike its common use in research.
Naltrexone Reverses Ethanol Preference and Protein Kinase C Activation in Drosophila melanogaster

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a major health, social and economic problem for which there are few effective treatments. The opiate antagonist naltrexone is currently prescribed clinically with mixed success. We have used naltrexone in an established behavioral assay (CAFE) in Drosophila melanogaster that measures the flies' preference for ethanol-containing food. We have confirmed that Drosophila exposed to ethanol develop a preference toward this drug and we demonstrate that naltrexone, in a dose dependant manner, reverses the ethanol-induced ethanol preference. This effect is not permanent, as preference for alcohol returns after discontinuing naltrexone. Additionally, naltrexone reduced the alcohol-induced increase in protein kinase C activity. These findings are of interest because they confirm that Drosophila is a useful model for studying human responses to addictive drugs. Additionally because of the lack of a closely conserved opiate system in insects, our results could either indicate that a functionally related system does exist in insects or that in insects, and potentially also in mammals, naltrexone binds to alternative sites. Identifying such sites could lead to improved treatment strategies for AUD.
Myopia Progression in Children Wearing Spectacles vs. Switching to Contact Lenses

Purpose. To investigate myopia progression in Correction of Myopia Evaluation Trial (COMET) participants who switched to soft contact lenses (CLs) vs. remained in spectacles after the clinical trial ended. Methods. Four hundred sixty-nine ethnically diverse, 6- to 11-year-old myopic children were randomly assigned to wear single vision lenses (SVLs) or progressive addition spectacle lenses (PALs) for 5 years as part of COMET. Afterwards they could choose another lens type, including CLs. Data in this article are from 286 participants who wore their original spectacle lenses for 6 years (n = 199) or wore CLs most or all the time between the 5- and 6-year visits (n = 87). Refractive error and axial length (AL) were measured after cycloplegia with 1% Tropicamide. The primary outcome was myopia progression between the 5- and 6-year visits. Two-year myopia progression was evaluated in a subset of 183 participants who wore the same lens type for an additional year. Myopia progression and AL were compared between the two lens groups using multiple linear regression. Results. Participants in the two groups were similar with respect to age, ethnicity, myopia at 5-years, accommodation and phoria, but more girls switched to CLs than remained in spectacles (p < 0.0001). Mean (±SD) myopia progression was higher (p = 0.003) after 1 year in the CL group [−0.28 ± 0.33 diopter (D)] than the spectacle group (−0.14 ± 0.36 D), and remained higher after 2 years in the 2-year subset (−0.52 ± 0.46 D vs. −0.25 ± 0.39 D, p < 0.0001). Results were similar after adjustment for related factors. No significant differences in AL were found between groups after adjustment. Corneal curvature remained unchanged in both groups. Conclusions. COMET children switching from glasses to CLs experienced a small, statistically significant but clinically inconsequential increase in myopia progression.
Causal Consistency and Latency Optimality: Friend or Foe?

Causal consistency is an attractive consistency model for geo-replicated data stores. It is provably the strongest model that tolerates network partitions. It avoids the long latencies associated with strong consistency, and, especially when using read-only transactions (ROTs), it prevents many of the anomalies of weaker consistency models. Recent work has shown that causal consistency allows "latency-optimal" ROTs, that are nonblocking, single-round and single-version in terms of communication. On the surface, this latency optimality is very appealing, as the vast majority of applications are assumed to have read-dominated workloads. In this paper, we show that such "latency-optimal" ROTs induce an extra overhead on writes that is so high that it actually jeopardizes performance even in read-dominated workloads. We show this result from a practical as well as from a theoretical angle. We present the Contrarian protocol that implements "almost latency-optimal" ROTs, but that does not impose on the writes any of the overheads incurred by latency-optimal protocols. In Contrarian, ROTs are nonblocking and single-version, but they require two rounds of client-server communication. We experimentally show that this protocol not only achieves higher throughput, but, surprisingly, also provides better latencies for all but the lowest loads and the most read-heavy workloads. We furthermore prove that the extra overhead imposed on writes by latency-optimal ROTs is inherent, i.e., it is not an artifact of the design we consider, and cannot be avoided by any implementation of latency-optimal ROTs. We show in particular that this overhead grows linearly with the number of clients.
Building an Image Database for Studying Image Retargeting

Modern electronic devices(such as TVs, laptops, and mobile devices) come with a huge variety in screen sizes, resolutions, and aspect ratios. Image retargeting is a technique to retarget or (resize) an image to better utilize the viewing device screen and to protect the main content of the image. Different retargeting techniques have been proposed in the literature that mainly utilizes one of the following main techniques: cropping, seam carving, and scale and stretch. The current problem of image retargeting is that it is very hard to determine the best technique to use on an image to get a target dimension. To apply techniques such as machine learning to determine the best technique to perform image retargeting, an annotated image set is needed to perform the training step. In this work, we build and annotate an image set that is suitable to develop such advance retargeting techniques. We build a dataset that include 500 original images. We apply 4 different retargeting techniques to get two different sizes. The resulting image set contains 4000 images annotated by three people. We also analyze the annotation results to get useful remarks from the annotators perceptual point of view.
Kinking of Flow Diverter in a Giant Wide-Necked Supraclinoid Internal Carotid Artery Aneurysm

We report here a rare complication in the form of kinking of flow diverter in a case of giant wide-necked supraclinoid internal carotid artery (ICA) aneurysm 48 hours after the procedure. This 28-year female presented with giant wide-necked right supraclinoid ICA aneurysm which was managed by flow diversion. On 2nd post-op day, patient developed weakness of left side with altered sensorium - angiography and CT showed kinking of flow diverter at the neck of the aneurysm with poor distal flow. Eventually, the patient developed right middle cerebral artery infarct for which decompressive hemicraniectomy was done. The likely cause of development of kink is because the aneurysm was wide-necked, the hemodynamic forces have resulted in inward buckling of the flow diverter at the aneurysm neck. This case shows that kinking of flow diverter can still happen 48 hours post-procedure.
Female orgasm and the emergence of prosocial empathy: An evo‐devo perspective

In human females, direct or indirect stimulation of the clitoris plays a central role in reaching orgasm. A majority of women report that penetrative coitus alone is insufficient for triggering orgasm, puzzling researchers who expect orgasm to be an outcome of procreative intercourse. In the present paper, we turn our attention to the evolutionary role that such unreliability of orgasm at coitus might have played in human evolution. We emphasize that we do not thereby attempt an explanation of its origin, but its potential evolutionary effect. The present proposal suggests that the variable female orgasm, the position of the clitoris remote from the vagina, and the mismatch of the male refractory period with the female capacity for multiple orgasms, may have contributed to the evolution of human prosocial qualities.
JU_NLP at SemEval-2016 Task 6: Detecting Stance in Tweets using Support Vector Machines

We describe the system submitted to the SemEval-2016 for detecting stance in tweets (Task 6, Subtask A). One of the main goals of stance detection is to automatically determine the stance of a tweet towards a specific target as ‘FAVOR’, ‘AGAINST’, or ‘NONE’. We developed a supervised system using Support Vector Machines to identify the stance by analyzing various lexical and semantic features. The average F1 score achieved by our system is 60.60.
Implementation of electronic crosstalk correction for terra MODIS PV LWIR bands

The MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is one of the primary instruments in the fleet of NASA’s Earth Observing Systems (EOS) in space. Terra MODIS has completed 15 years of operation far exceeding its design lifetime of 6 years. The MODIS Level 1B (L1B) processing is the first in the process chain for deriving various higher level science products. These products are used mainly in understanding the geophysical changes occurring in the Earth’s land, ocean, and atmosphere. The L1B code is designed to carefully calibrate the responses of all the detectors of the 36 spectral bands of MODIS and provide accurate L1B radiances (also reflectances in the case of Reflective Solar Bands). To fulfill this purpose, Look Up Tables (LUTs), that contain calibration coefficients derived from both on-board calibrators and Earth-view characterized responses, are used in the L1B processing. In this paper, we present the implementation mechanism of the electronic crosstalk correction in the Photo Voltaic (PV) Long Wave InfraRed (LWIR) bands (Bands 27-30). The crosstalk correction involves two vital components. First, a crosstalk correction modular is implemented in the L1B code to correct the on-board Blackbody and Earth-View (EV) digital number (dn) responses using a linear correction model. Second, the correction coefficients, derived from the EV observations, are supplied in the form of LUTs. Further, the LUTs contain time stamps reflecting to the change in the coefficients assessed using the Noise Equivalent difference Temperature (NEdT) trending. With the algorithms applied in the MODIS L1B processing it is demonstrated that these corrections indeed restore the radiometric balance for each of the affected bands and substantially reduce the striping noise in the processed images.
Do Cues Matter? Highly Inductive Settlement Cues Don't Ensure High Post-Settlement Survival in Sea Urchin Aquaculture

Increasing settlement and post-settlement survival during the critical transition from planktonic larvae to benthic juveniles will increase efficiency for sea urchin aquaculture. This study investigated the effects of temperature and settlement cues on the settlement and post-settlement survival of the sea urchin Tripneustes gratilla during this phase. The current commercial methodology, which utilises natural biofilm settlement plates, was tested and resulted in low settlement (<2%) and poor post-settlement survival (<1% of settled urchins). In laboratory trials, settlement was high and unaffected by temperatures between 24 and 30°C, but significantly decreased at 33°C. Development of spines, however, was significantly affected by temperatures over 29°C. Mirroring this result, post-settlement survival was optimal between 24–28°C. In laboratory assays, the macroalgae Sargassum linearifolium and Corallina officinalis, and seawater conditioned with these algae, induced significantly higher settlement (>90%) than a natural biofilm (∼25%). The addition of macroalgae-conditioned seawater to natural biofilm significantly increased settlement rates (>85%). Mixed consortia and single strains of bacteria isolated from macroalgae, biofilms and adult conspecifics all induced significant settlement, but at significantly lower rates than macroalgae. No evidence was found that higher rates of settlement to bacteria on macroalgae were generated by a cofactor from the macroalgae. Age of bacterial cultures, culturing bacteria on solid and liquid media and concentration of nutrients in cultures had little effect on settlement rates. Finally, macroalgae-conditioned seawater combined with natural biofilm settlement plates induced significantly higher settlement than to the biofilm plates alone in a commercial scale trial. However, high post-settlement mortality resulted in equivalent survival between treatments after 25 days. This study highlights that settlement studies should extend to post-settlement survival, which remains poor for T. gratilla and is a significant obstacle to increasing efficiency for aquaculture.
A 92-mW Real-Time Traffic Sign Recognition System With Robust Illumination Adaptation and Support Vector Machine

A low-power real-time traffic sign recognition system that is robust under various illumination conditions is proposed. It is composed of a Retinex preprocessor and an SVM processor. The Retinex preprocessor performs the Multi-Scale Retinex (MSR) algorithm for robust light and dark adaptation under harsh illumination environments. In the Retinex preprocessor, the recursive Gaussian engine (RGE) and reflectance engine (RE) exploit parallelism of the MSR tasks with a two-stage pipeline, and a mixed-mode scale generator (SG) with adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) performs parameter optimizations for various scene conditions. The SVM processor performs the SVM algorithm for robust traffic sign classification. The proposed algorithm-optimized small-sized kernel cache and memory controller reduce power consumption and memory redundancy by 78% and 35%, respectively. The proposed system is implemented as two separated ICs in a 0.13-μm CMOS process, and the two chips are connected using network-on-chip off-chip gateway. The system achieves robust sign recognition operation with 90% sign recognition accuracy under harsh illumination conditions while consuming just 92 mW at 1.2 V.
Detailed spatiotemporal brain mapping of chromatic vision combining high‐resolution VEP with fMRI and retinotopy

Neuroimaging studies have identified so far, several color‐sensitive visual areas in the human brain, and the temporal dynamics of these activities have been separately investigated using the visual‐evoked potentials (VEPs). In the present study, we combined electrophysiological and neuroimaging methods to determine a detailed spatiotemporal profile of chromatic VEP and to localize its neural generators. The accuracy of the present co‐registration study was obtained by combining standard fMRI data with retinotopic and motion mapping data at the individual level. We found a sequence of occipito activities more complex than that typically reported for chromatic VEPs, including feed‐forward and reentrant feedback. Results showed that chromatic human perception arises by the combined activity of at the least five parieto‐occipital areas including V1, LOC, V8/VO, and the motion‐sensitive dorsal region MT+. However, the contribution of V1 and V8/VO seems dominant because the re‐entrant activity in these areas was present more than once (twice in V8/VO and thrice in V1). This feedforward and feedback chromatic processing appears delayed compared with the luminance processing. Associating VEPs and neuroimaging measures, we showed for the first time a complex spatiotemporal pattern of activity, confirming that chromatic stimuli produce intricate interactions of many different brain dorsal and ventral areas.
Routing Group Formation in Ambient Networks

Mobile nodes are generally treated individually and in an uncoordinated fashion, even when nodes are, in fact, moving as a group. However, the ability to recognize that the nodes are travelling together enables a number of important optimizations to routing and mobility management mechanisms, in particular, aggregation and delegation of mobility management and use of ad-hoc routing protocols. The key challenges to providing these optimizations are recognizing the presence of a group of nodes, assessing the stability of the group, and deciding what optimizations are appropriate. Developing solutions to these challenges has been a key focus of the mobility work within the Ambient Networks project and this paper discusses these challenges and presents the solutions developed.
Multiple factor analysis for time-varying two-mode networks

Abstract Most social networks present complex structures. They can be both multi-modal and multi-relational. In addition, each relationship can be observed across time occasions. Relational data observed in such conditions can be organized into multidimensional arrays and statistical methods from the theory of multiway data analysis may be exploited to reveal the underlying data structure. In this paper, we adopt an exploratory data analysis point of view, and we present a procedure based on multiple factor analysis and multiple correspondence analysis to deal with time-varying two-mode networks. This procedure allows us to create static displays in order to explore network evolutions and to visually analyze the degree of similarity of actor/event network profiles over time while preserving the different statuses of the two modes.
Phase II study of copanlisib, a PI3K inhibitor, in relapsed or refractory, indolent or aggressive lymphoma

Abstract Background Copanlisib is a pan-class I phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitor with predominant activity against the α- and δ-isoforms. Patients and methods This phase II study evaluated the response rate of copanlisib administered intravenously on days 1, 8, and 15 of a 28-day cycle, in patients with indolent or aggressive malignant lymphoma. Archival tumor tissues were used for immunohistochemistry, gene-expression profiling, and mutation analysis. Results Thirty-three patients with indolent lymphoma and 51 with aggressive lymphoma received copanlisib. Follicular lymphoma (48.5%) and peripheral T-cell lymphoma (33.3%) were the most common histologic subtypes. Most patients (78.6%) had received prior rituximab and 54.8% were rituximab-refractory. Median duration of treatment was 23 and 8 weeks in the indolent and aggressive cohorts, respectively (overall range 2–138). Eighty patients were evaluated for efficacy. The objective response rate was 43.7% (14/32) in the indolent cohort and 27.1% (13/48) in the aggressive cohort; median progression-free survival was 294 days (range 0–874) and 70 days (range 0–897), respectively; median duration of response was 390 days (range 0–825) and 166 days (range 0–786), respectively. Common adverse events included hyperglycemia (57.1%; grade ≥3, 23.8%), hypertension (54.8%; grade ≥3, 40.5%), and diarrhea (40.5%; grade ≥3, 4.8%), all generally manageable. Neutropenia occurred in 28.6% of patients (grade 4, 11.9%). Molecular analyses showed enhanced antitumor activity in tumors with upregulated phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase pathway gene expression. Conclusion Intravenous copanlisib demonstrated promising efficacy and manageable toxicity in heavily pretreated patients with various subtypes of indolent and aggressive malignant lymphoma. Subtype-specific studies of copanlisib in patients with follicular, peripheral T-cell, and mantle cell lymphomas are ongoing. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT01660451 (Part A).
Population size does not explain past changes in cultural complexity

Significance Archaeologists have long tried to understand why cultural complexity often changed in prehistory. Recently, a series of highly influential formal models have suggested that demography is the key factor. According to these models, the size of a population determines its ability to invent and maintain cultural traits. In this paper, we demonstrate that the models in question are flawed in two important respects: They use questionable assumptions, and their predictions are not supported by the available archaeological and ethnographic evidence. As a consequence, little confidence can be invested in the idea that demography explains the changes in cultural complexity that have been identified by archaeologists. An alternative explanation is required. Demography is increasingly being invoked to account for features of the archaeological record, such as the technological conservatism of the Lower and Middle Pleistocene, the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition, and cultural loss in Holocene Tasmania. Such explanations are commonly justified in relation to population dynamic models developed by Henrich [Henrich J (2004) Am Antiq 69:197–214] and Powell et al. [Powell A, et al. (2009) Science 324(5932):1298–1301], which appear to demonstrate that population size is the crucial determinant of cultural complexity. Here, we show that these models fail in two important respects. First, they only support a relationship between demography and culture in implausible conditions. Second, their predictions conflict with the available archaeological and ethnographic evidence. We conclude that new theoretical and empirical research is required to identify the factors that drove the changes in cultural complexity that are documented by the archaeological record.