Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multicasting Mesh AER: A Scalable Assembly Approach for Reconfigurable Neuromorphic Structured AER Systems. Application to ConvNets

This paper presents a modular, scalable approach to assembling hierarchically structured neuromorphic Address Event Representation (AER) systems. The method consists of arranging modules in a 2D mesh, each communicating bidirectionally with all four neighbors. Address events include a module label. Each module includes an AER router which decides how to route address events. Two routing approaches have been proposed, analyzed and tested, using either destination or source module labels. Our analyses reveal that depending on traffic conditions and network topologies either one or the other approach may result in better performance. Experimental results are given after testing the approach using high-end Virtex-6 FPGAs. The approach is proposed for both single and multiple FPGAs, in which case a special bidirectional parallel-serial AER link with flow control is exploited, using the FPGA Rocket-I/O interfaces. Extensive test results are provided exploiting convolution modules of 64 × 64 pixels with kernels with sizes up to 11 × 11, which process real sensory data from a Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) retina. One single Virtex-6 FPGA can hold up to 64 of these convolution modules, which is equivalent to a neural network with 262 × 103 neurons and almost 32 million synapses.
Genetic Variations in the Serotoninergic System Contribute to Body-Mass Index in Chinese Adolescents

Objective Obesity has become a worldwide health problem in the past decades. Human and animal studies have implicated serotonin in appetite regulation, and behavior genetic studies have shown that body mass index (BMI) has a strong genetic component. However, the roles of genes related to the serotoninergic (5-hydroxytryptamine,5-HT) system in obesity/BMI are not well understood, especially in Chinese subjects. Subjects and Design With a sample of 478 healthy Chinese volunteers, this study investigated the relation between BMI and genetic variations of the serotoninergic system as characterized by 136 representative polymorphisms. We used a system-level approach to identify SNPs associated with BMI, then estimated their overall contribution to BMI by multiple regression and verified it by permutation. Results We identified 12 SNPs that made statistically significant contributions to BMI. After controlling for gender and age, four of these SNPs accounted for 7.7% additional variance of BMI. Permutation analysis showed that the probability of obtaining these findings by chance was low (p = 0.015, permuted for 1000 times). Conclusion These results showed that genetic variations in the serotoninergic system made a moderate contribution to individual differences in BMI among a healthy Chinese sample, suggesting that a similar approach can be used to study obesity.
Neural network acoustic model with decision tree clustered triphones

This article tries to compare the performance of neural network and Gaussian mixture acoustic models (GMMs). We argue that using a multi layer perceptron as an emission probability estimator in hidden Markov model based automatic speech recognition can lead to better results than when the more traditional Gaussian mixtures are applied. We present a solution on how to model triphone phonetic units with neural networks and we show that this also leads to better performance in comparison with GMMs. The superior performance of the neural networks comes at a cost of extremely long training times.
Current Convention Course Offerings at the Top 25 Ranked Hospitality Management Undergraduate Programs: An Analysis of Objectives, Instructional Delivery, and Assessment Methods

In an effort to keep abreast of convention industry demands for a more qualified workforce, some hospitality and tourism undergraduate programs have implemented courses to prepare students for employment in the business. However, limited information exists regarding the content and quality of these programs and whether they are designed to adequately meet the needs of the industry. This current study evaluates the convention course offerings at the top 25 ranked hospitality and tourism undergraduate schools (Brizek & Khan, 2002). Course objectives, assessment and teaching methods, topics of instruction, and textbooks were analyzed using nonparametric statistics and CATPAC software to determine the similarities and differences among the various course offerings. Results revealed statistically significant differences among courses characterized as General MICE (Meetings, Incentive Travel, Conventions, Events) Industry, Convention and Meeting Planning, and Event Management. Limitations and suggestions for future research in convention education are provided
Xenbase, the Xenopus model organism database; new virtualized system, data types and genomes

Xenbase (http://www.xenbase.org), the Xenopus frog model organism database, integrates a wide variety of data from this biomedical model genus. Two closely related species are represented: the allotetraploid Xenopus laevis that is widely used for microinjection and tissue explant-based protocols, and the diploid Xenopus tropicalis which is used for genetics and gene targeting. The two species are extremely similar and protocols, reagents and results from each species are often interchangeable. Xenbase imports, indexes, curates and manages data from both species; all of which are mapped via unique IDs and can be queried in either a species-specific or species agnostic manner. All our services have now migrated to a private cloud to achieve better performance and reliability. We have added new content, including providing full support for morpholino reagents, used to inhibit mRNA translation or splicing and binding to regulatory microRNAs. New genomes assembled by the JGI for both species and are displayed in Gbrowse and are also available for searches using BLAST. Researchers can easily navigate from genome content to gene page reports, literature, experimental reagents and many other features using hyperlinks. Xenbase has also greatly expanded image content for figures published in papers describing Xenopus research via PubMedCentral.
Spatial distribution of insecticide resistance in Caribbean populations of Aedes aegypti and its significance.

To monitor resistance to insecticides, bioassays were performed on 102 strains of the dengue vector Aedes aegypti (L.) from 16 countries ranging from Suriname in South America and through the chain of Caribbean Islands to the Bahamas, where the larvicide temephos and the adulticide malathion have been in use for 15 to 30 years. There was wide variation in the sensitivity to the larvicide in mosquito populations within and among countries. Mosquito strains in some countries such as Antigua, St. Lucia, and Tortola had consistently high resistance ratios (RR) to temephos, ranging from 5.3 to 17.7. In another group of countries--e.g., Anguilla and Curaçao--mosquitoes had mixed levels of resistance to temephos (RR = 2.5-10.6), and in a third group of countries, including St. Kitts, Barbados, Jamaica, and Suriname, mosquitoes had consistently low levels of resistance to temephos (RR = 1-4.6) (P < 0.05). On occasion significantly different levels of resistance were recorded from neighboring A. aegypti communities, which suggests there is little genetic exchange among populations. The impact of larval resistance expressed itself as reduced efficacy of temephos to kill mosquitoes when strains were treated in the laboratory or in the field in large container environments with recommended dosages. Although a sensitive strain continued to be completely controlled for up to 7 weeks, the most resistant strains had 24% survival after the first week. By week 6, 60% to 75% of all resistant strains of larvae were surviving the larval period. Responses to malathion in adult A. aegypti varied from a sensitive population in Suriname (RR = 1.3) to resistant strains in St. Vincent (RR = 4.4), Dominica (RR = 4.2), and Trinidad (RR = 4.0); however, resistance was generally not on the scale of that observed to temephos in the larval stages and had increased only slightly when compared to the levels that existed 3 to 4 years ago. Suggestions are made for a pesticide usage policy for the Caribbean region, with modifications for individual countries. This would be formulated based on each country's insecticide-resistance profile. Use of physical and biological control strategies would play a more critical role than the use of insecticides.
Psychopathy and Institutional Misbehavior Among Incarcerated Sex Offenders: A Comparison of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and the Personality Assessment Inventory

The present study compared the utility of two measures of psychopathic traits, the Antisocial Features scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory (Morey, 1991) and the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare, 1991), to postdict serious institutional misbehavior among incarcerated sex offenders. Archival disciplinary infraction data for 92 offenders were coded as major acts of physical aggression, major acts of verbal aggression/ defiance, or non-aggressive major offenses. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses indicated that ANT performed comparably to the PCL-R in terms of predicting the occurrence of these infractions during the prior two years, although there was a trend for PCL-R scores to be associated somewhat more strongly with physically aggressive offenses. Regression analyses indicated that each measure accounted for unique variance in the criterion variables, suggesting that both may evidence incremental validity in terms of their relation to disciplinary infractions.
Tight Hardness Results for Distance and Centrality Problems in Constant Degree Graphs

Finding important nodes in a graph and measuring their importance is a fundamental problem in the analysis of social networks, transportation networks, biological systems, etc. Among popular such metrics are graph centrality, betweenness centrality (BC), and reach centrality (RC). These measures are also very related to classic notions like diameter and radius. Roditty and Vassilevska Williams~[STOC'13] showed that no algorithm can compute a (3/2-\delta)-approximation of the diameter in sparse and unweighted graphs faster that n^{2-o(1)} time unless the widely believed strong exponential time hypothesis (SETH) is false. Abboud et al.~[SODA'15] and [SODA'16] further analyzed these problems under the recent line of research on hardness in P. They showed that in sparse and unweighted graphs (weighted for BC) none of these problems can be solved faster than n^{2-o(1)} unless some popular conjecture is false. Furthermore they ruled out a (2-\delta)-approximation for RC, a (3/2-\delta)-approximation for Radius and a (5/3-\delta)-approximation for computing all eccentricities of a graph for any \delta > 0. We extend these results to the case of unweighted graphs with constant maximum degree. Through new graph constructions we are able to obtain the same approximation and time bounds as for sparse graphs even in unweighted bounded-degree graphs. We show that no (3/2-\delta) approximation of Radius or Diameter, (2-\delta)-approximation of RC, (5/3-\delta)-approximation of all eccentricities or exact algorithm for BC exists in time n^{2-o(1)} for such graphs and any \delta > 0. This strengthens the result for BC of Abboud et al.~[SODA'16] by showing a hardness result for unweighted graphs, and follows in the footsteps of Abboud et al.~[SODA'16] and Abboud and Dahlgaard~[FOCS'16] in showing conditional lower bounds for restricted but realistic graph classes.
Queue aware precoder design via OTA training

We consider the problem of designing transmit and receive precoders to minimize the number of backlogged packets at the base stations (BSs) in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) scenario. Due to the nonconvex nature of the problem, we propose an iterative method for designing transmit precoders and receive beamformers. Since the overhead involved in exchanging channel state information (CSI) to a centralized controller is large, we propose a distributed precoder design using Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) expressions. In order to efficiently implement precoders and to reduce the signaling overhead, we use bi-directional training (BiT) design to feedback the involved variables in an analog format. By doing so, we penalize the achievable throughput by the number of resources consumed in the BiT procedure. A realistic dynamic traffic model is considered, where the transmission rates of all users depend on the current arrivals and the number of backlogged packets present in the respective BS. To improve the performance with limited BiT steps, we perform BS specific updates for the corresponding transmit and receive beamformers between each BiT exchange. Numerical simulations are provided to highlight the benefits of proposed schemes by considering multiple transmission slots under time-correlated fading model.
THE GALACTIC BULGE SURVEY: OUTLINE AND X-RAY OBSERVATIONS

We introduce the Galactic Bulge Survey (GBS) and we provide the Chandra source list for the region that has been observed to date. Among the goals of the GBS are constraining the neutron star (NS) equation of state and the black hole (BH) mass distribution via the identification of eclipsing NS and BH low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). The latter goal will, in addition, be obtained by significantly enlarging the number of BH systems for which a BH mass can be derived. Further goals include constraining X-ray binary formation scenarios, in particular the common envelope phase and the occurrence of kicks, via source-type number counts and an investigation of the spatial distribution of X-ray binaries, respectively. The GBS targets two strips of 6° × 1° (12 deg2 in total), one above (1° < b < 2°) and one below (−2° < b < −1°) the Galactic plane in the direction of the Galactic center at both X-ray and optical wavelengths. By avoiding the Galactic plane (−1° < b < 1°) we limit the influence of extinction on the X-ray and optical emission but still sample relatively large number densities of sources. The survey is designed such that a large fraction of the X-ray sources can be identified from their optical spectra. The X-ray survey, by design, covers a large area on the sky while the depth is shallow using 2 ks per Chandra pointing. In this way we maximize the predicted number ratio of (quiescent) LMXBs to cataclysmic variables. The survey is approximately homogeneous in depth to a 0.5–10 keV flux of 7.7 × 10−14 erg cm−2 s−1. So far, we have covered about two-thirds (8.3 deg2) of the projected survey area with Chandra providing over 1200 unique X-ray sources. We discuss the characteristics and the variability of the brightest of these sources.
The effectiveness of using spreadsheets to teach financial accounting

There have been numerous attempts to integrate micro-computers into the teaching of accounting courses in higher education. Two of the reasons that have been suggested for using computers on accounting courses are: firstly, the educational benefits and, secondly, that students will then be equipped with the computing and spreadsheet skills that they will require in the workplace. One method of using the computer is to use it as a computational tool, allowing the student to develop models from scratch. Such an approach was developed by Marriott & Simon (1990a). However, as there is little evidence regarding the educational effectiveness of using such methods, a rigourous and structured research project was conducted using first–year accounting degree students at Cardiff Business School. This article outlines the rationale for the project and analyses the results obtained. The results indicate that while spreadsheets can be successfully integrated into an accounting course, their use had no measurable impac.
Learning, differentiation and strategic action in secondary education: analyses from the Identity and Learning Programme

This paper reports on the social factors influencing the learning of two cohorts of school students and their experience of compulsory secondary education in a city in southern England—the secondary schooling phase of a 12‐year, longitudinal ethnographic study that also tracked the same children’s experiences through primary schooling. We embed our report of secondary school findings within the theoretical models and understandings generated by the Identity and Learning Programme as a whole. The paper addresses three key issues. First, we trace how social influences on learning broaden as young people develop through adolescence, and illustrate why viewing learning as social activity is so important. Second, we discuss evolving processes of social differentiation in relation to gender and social class. We draw particular attention to the dangers of over‐simplified models of social reproduction. Finally, we review an analysis of strategic action and identities, contrasting the differentiated experience of young people attending independent and selective schools compared with those attending non‐selective comprehensive schools. Overall, this analysis seeks to complement studies of differentiated educational outcomes by suggesting possible social processes that could help to account for them. The Identity and Learning Programme, both in its secondary phase and as a whole, shows clearly how individual agency enables young people to cope with their circumstances. However, in so doing, they both reproduce elements of constraint/opportunity and construct others anew. This has significant implications for policy and practice.
Developing Students' Adaptive Learning Skills

Introductory undergraduate courses are a special challenge to teach because the course materials often introduce students simultaneously to new vocabu lary, new procedures, and many theoreti cal perspectives.1 Students who actually have the potential to become both inter ested and competent in a subject may barely scrape by simply because they lack the experience (e.g., interacting with chil dren before taking a child development course, or looking at paintings before tak ing an art history course) necessary to make meaning of the subject. The com mon advice we have all heard? to "reach students where they are" or to get stu dents interested by giving them "hands on experience"? typically is not put into effect, does not explain why such experi ence might be effective, and fails to in struct teachers how to connect experience to theory and research.
Forcing standardization or accommodating diversity?: a framework for applying the WCAG in the real world

Since 1999 the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have provided a solid basis for implementation of accessible Web design. However it is argued that in the context of evaluation and policymaking, inappropriate reference to the WCAG may lead to serious practical difficulties in implementation and monitoring of an effective accessibility policy. There is a pressing need for a framework that guides appropriate application of the WCAG in a holistic way, taking into account the diversity -- or homogeneity -- of factors such as context of use, audience and audience capability, and access environment. In particular, the current promotion of W3C technologies at the expense of widely used and accessible proprietary technologies may be problematic, as is the apparent reliance of the WCAG on compliant browsing technology.In this paper, a holistic application of the WCAG is proposed by the authors, whereby the context of the Web resource in question and other factors surrounding its use are used to shape an approach to accessible design. Its potential application in a real world environment is discussed.
Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization with local search strategy for Rule Classification

Rule discovery is an important classification method that has been attracting a significant amount of researchers in recent years. Rule discovery or rule mining uses a set of IF-THEN rules to classify a class or category. Besides the classical approaches, many rule mining approaches use biologically-inspired algorithms such as evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence approaches. In this paper, a Particle Swarm Optimization based discrete implementation with a local search strategy (DPSO-LS) was devised. The local search strategy helps to overcome local optima in order to improve the solution quality. Our DPSO-LS uses the Pittsburgh approach whereby a rule base is used to represent a `particle'. This rule base is evolved over time as to find the best possible classification model. Experimental results reveal that DPSO-LS outperforms other classification methods in most cases based on rule size, TP rates, FP rates, and precision.
S-Adenosylmethionine Inhibits the Growth of Cancer Cells by Reversing the Hypomethylation Status of c-myc and H-ras in Human Gastric Cancer and Colon Cancer

A global DNA hypomethylation might activate oncogene transcription, thus promoting carcinogenesis and tumor development. S-Adenosylmethionine (SAM) serves as a major methyl donor in biological transmethylation events. The object of this study is to explore the influence of SAM on the status of methylation at the promoter of the oncogenes c-myc, H-ras and tumor-suppressor gene p16 (INK4a), as well as its inhibitory effect on cancer cells. The results indicated that SAM treatment inhibited cell growth in gastric cancer cells and colon cancer cells, and the inhibition efficiency was significantly higher than that in the normal cells. Under standard growth conditions, C-myc and H-ras promoters were hypomethylated in gastric cancer cells and colon cancer cells. SAM treatment resulted in a heavy methylation of these promoters, which consequently downregulated mRNA and protein levels. In contrast, there was no significant difference in mRNA and protein levels of p16 (INK4a) with and without SAM treatment. SAM can effectively inhibit the tumor cells growth by reversing the DNA hypomethylation on promoters of oncogenes, thus down-regulating their expression. With no influence on the expression of the tumor suppressor genes, such as P16, SAM could be used as a potential drug for cancer therapy.
Behavioral methods to study anxiety in rodents

Stress is a precipitating factor for anxiety-related disorders, which are among the leading forms of psychiatric illness and impairment in the modern world. Rodent-based behavioral tests and models are widely used to understand the mechanisms by which stress triggers anxiety-related behaviors and to identify new treatments for anxiety-related disorders. Although substantial progress has been made and many of the key neural circuits and molecular pathways mediating stress responsiveness have been characterized, these advances have thus far failed to translate into fundamentally new treatments that are safer and more efficacious in humans. The purpose of this article is to describe methods that have been historically used for this type of research and to highlight new approaches that align with recent conceptualizations of disease symptomatology and that may ultimately prove to be more fruitful in facilitating the development of improved therapeutics.