Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Amyloid-Beta Induced Changes in Vesicular Transport of BDNF in Hippocampal Neurons

The neurotrophin brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is an important growth factor in the CNS. Deficits in transport of this secretory protein could underlie neurodegenerative diseases. Investigation of disease-related changes in BDNF transport might provide insights into the cellular mechanism underlying, for example, Alzheimer's disease (AD). To analyze the role of BDNF transport in AD, live cell imaging of fluorescently labeled BDNF was performed in hippocampal neurons of different AD model systems. BDNF and APP colocalized with low incidence in vesicular structures. Anterograde as well as retrograde transport of BDNF vesicles was reduced and these effects were mediated by factors released from hippocampal neurons into the extracellular medium. Transport of BDNF was altered at a very early time point after onset of human APP expression or after acute amyloid-beta(1-42) treatment, while the activity-dependent release of BDNF remained unaffected. Taken together, extracellular cleavage products of APP induced rapid changes in anterograde and retrograde transport of BDNF-containing vesicles while release of BDNF was unaffected by transgenic expression of mutated APP. These early transport deficits might lead to permanently impaired brain functions in the adult brain.
The Impact of Multinationals’ Overseas Expansion on Employment at Suppliers at Home: New Evidence from Firm-Level Transaction Relationship Data for Japan

This paper focuses on non-internationalized supplier firms and investigates how the expansion of overseas activities by their main customer firms affects their employment, utilizing a unique dataset that includes information on buyer-supplier transaction relationships for Japanese manufacturing firms for the period 1998-2007. We do not find any negative effect of top buyers’ overseas expansion on domestic suppliers’ employment. 􀀁 Instead, we find a significant positive effect. Our result implies that, contrary to fears of a potential hollowing out of domestic supporting industries, the expansion of overseas activities of customer firms has a positive impact on suppliers’ employment. Expansion of overseas production by downstream firms may increase purchases from upstream firms in Japan and this would be the case if downstream firms can increase their world-wide sales by expanding overseas production. Therefore, our result suggests that having a transaction relationship with successful downstream multinational firms that expand their global sales through overseas production is important for non-internationalized suppliers in Japan.
Accelerating recognition system of leaves on Nios II embedded platform

In this paper, we present an efficient HW/SW codesign architecture of a Recognition System of Leaves. The architecture includes pre-processing modules for the input video signal from the camera and interfaces for the external video memory and the LCD. The recognition of leaf is implemented by hardware in FPGA. By using the five mega-pixel camera included in the Altera DE2–70 kit for input, image processing can be done by FPGA Cyclone II EP2C70F89C6N with ~70,000 LEs on Altera DE2–70 kit. The measurement results can verify HW/SW codesign architecture of leaves recognition easily achieves faster processing performance than the pure SW technique. Using hardware acceleration presents a speed up factor of 7 times over a software implementation.
Improving the Java Virtual Machine Using Type-Separated Bytecode

Java Bytecode is currently the most used mobile code representation, although it contains some well-known major flaws. In the paper we introduce the principle operation of type-separated bytecode. Type-separated bytecode is a new intermediate representation that compensates some of the drawbacks introduced by Java Bytecode. In particular the use of type-separated bytecode can considerably speed-up the verification process and supports optimizations performed on the producer side of a mobile code generation system. This is especially important when using bytecode on constrained devices like JavaCards or in embedded systems.
Single-Train Trajectory Optimization

An energy-efficient train trajectory describing the motion of a single train can be used as an input to a driver guidance system or to an automatic train control system. The solution for the best trajectory is subject to certain operational, geographic, and physical constraints. There are two types of strategies commonly applied to obtain the energy-efficient trajectory. One is to allow the train to coast, thus using its available time margin to save energy. The other one is to control the speed dynamically while maintaining the required journey time. This paper proposes a distance-based train trajectory searching model, upon which three optimization algorithms are applied to search for the optimum train speed trajectory. Instead of searching for a detailed complicated control input for the train traction system, this model tries to obtain the speed level at each preset position along the journey. Three commonly adopted algorithms are extensively studied in a comparative style. It is found that the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm obtains better balance between stability and the quality of the results, in comparison with the genetic algorithm (GA). For offline applications, the additional computational effort required by dynamic programming (DP) is outweighed by the quality of the solution. It is recommended that multiple algorithms should be used to identify the optimum single-train trajectory and to improve the robustness of searched results.
Selective Effects of Age of Acquisition on Morphological Priming: Evidence for a Sensitive Period

ABSTRACT Is there an ideal time window for language acquisition after which nativelike representation and processing are unattainable? Although this question has been heavily debated, no consensus has been reached. Here, we present evidence for a sensitive period in language development and show that it is specific to grammar. We conducted a masked priming task with a group of Turkish-German bilinguals and examined age of acquisition (AoA) effects on the processing of complex words. We compared a subtle but meaningful linguistic contrast, that between grammatical inflection and lexical-based derivation. The results showed a highly selective AoA effect on inflectional (but not derivational) priming. In addition, the effect displayed a discontinuity indicative of a sensitive period: Priming from inflected forms was nativelike when acquisition started before the age of 5 but declined with increasing AoA. We conclude that the acquisition of morphological rules expressing morphosyntactic properties is constrained by maturational factors.
INTRADAY LIQUIDITY PROVISION IN ELECTRONIC FUTURES MARKETS: “LIFFE” WITHOUT THE PITS

We find that intraday variation in profits and quoting behavior of liquidity providers at London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE), an electronic futures market, differ from those on an open outcry market, as documented by Ferguson and Mann's (2001). They find that trading profits of liquidity providers, locals, at the open outcry futures markets are mainly determined by market maker obligations (or, more aptly, lack thereof) and pit trading. In the absence of the trading pit at an electronic market, adverse selection and inventory management of voluntary liquidity providers affect trading profits of limit order traders in a manner similar to trading profits at transparent markets with liquidity supplied by competitive dealers. Examining separate evolutions of bid and ask quotes supports the notion that limit order traders pursue trading strategies different from those of locals.
Smoking and Its Impacts on Absenteeism and Stress: A Preliminary Study

The article highlights a preliminary study on smoking and its impact on absenteeism and stress in the work place. The article also includes an application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour in explaining the behavior of smoking. The Theory of Planned Behavior which was proposed by Icek Ajzen is used to predict an individual’s behav-ioural control and intention which are influenced by attitude and social norms to per-form a behaviour. This article also discusses previous researches done on smoking and its relationship with absenteeism and stress among employees in organizations.
Learning temporally consistent rigidities

We present a novel probabilistic framework for rigid tracking and segmentation of shapes observed from multiple cameras. Most existing methods have focused on solving each of these problems individually, segmenting the shape assuming surface registration is solved, or conversely performing surface registration assuming shape segmentation or kinematic structure is known. We assume no prior kinematic or registration knowledge except for an over-estimate k of the number of rigidities in the scene, instead proposing to simultaneously discover, adapt, and track its rigid structure on the fly. We simultaneously segment and infer poses of rigid subcomponents of a single chosen reference mesh acquired in the sequence. We show that this problem can be rigorously cast as a likelihood maximization over rigid component parameters. We solve this problem using an Expectation Maximization algorithm, with latent observation assignments to reference vertices and rigid parts. Our experiments on synthetic and real data show the validity of the method, robustness to noise, and its promising applicability to complex sequences.
Safe robot therapy: Adaptation and usability test of a three-position enabling device for use in robot mediated physical therapy of stroke

Safe therapeutic robot systems must be equipped with, among other, safety devices and enabling devices. Enabling devices were developed first for the operators of industrial systems for ensuring the safety thresholds during a short term presence in the safeguarded area. On the contrary, enabling devices for therapy robots must be continuously operated by the patients during the treatment session to permit therapy. The enabling devices used in therapy robotics, and in the broader sense rehabilitation robotics must adhere to different requirements than their industrial versions. The authors review the current legal framework that should be considered during the development of therapy robots. The authors analyze also the safety technologies used in key existing therapy robot systems. The central part of the paper describes the adaptation of an industrial three-position enabling device to the requirements of stroke upper limb therapy. The new device is intended to use with the REHAROB that is a robotic system for upper limb physiotherapy. The usability of the three-position enabling device was tested by 9 healthy volunteers and by 12 hemiparetic subjects with success.
Understanding Human Behavior Using a Language Modeling Approach

Visual analysis of human behavior has generated considerable interest in the field of computer vision because of the wide spectrum of potential applications. In this paper, we present a language modeling framework for understanding human behavior. The proposed framework consists of two modules: the key posture selection module, and the variable-length Markov model (VLMM) behavior recognition module. A key posture selection algorithm is developed based on the shape context matching technique. A codebook is then constructed with the computed key postures and used to convert input image sequences into training symbol sequences or recognition symbol sequences. Finally, a VLMM is applied to learn and recognize the constructed symbol sequences corresponding to human behavior patterns. Experiments on real data demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed system.
Artificial iImmune systems for data fusion: A novel biologically inspired approach

This paper considers the notion of the immune system as an information processing system for the purpose of data fusion. As the study of the brain inspired the development of neural networks, the immune system has inspired the development of a wide variety of algorithms. In this position paper, we argue how the various processes of molecular interaction and fusion in the biological immune system can produce analogous behavior for the fusing of data in an artificial context. We provide a mapping between several analogous immunological and artificial immune processes to illustrate this point, and discuss what an immune inspired data fusion system might look like.
Versatile and scalable parallel histogram construction

Histograms are used in various fields to quickly profile the distribution of a large amount of data. However, it is challenging to efficiently utilize abundant parallel resources in modern processors for histogram construction. To make matters worse, the most efficient implementation varies depending on input parameters (e.g., input distribution, number of bins, and data type) or architecture parameters (e.g., cache capacity and SIMD width). This paper presents versatile histogram methods that achiev competitive performance across a wide range of input types and target architectures. Our open source implementations are highly optimized for various cases and are scalable for more threads and wider SIMD units. We also show that histogram construction can be significantly accelerated by Intel® Xeon Phi coprocessors for common input data sets because of their compute power from many cores and instructions for efficient vectorization, such as gather-scatter. For histograms with 256 fixed-width bins, a dual-socket 8-core Intel® Xeon® E5-2690 achieves 13 billion bin updates per second (GUPS), while a 60-core Intel® Xeon Phi 5110P coprocessor achieves 18 GUPS for a skewed input. For histograms with 256 variable-width bins, the Xeon processor achieves 4.7 GUPS, while the Xeon Phi coprocessor achieves 9.7 GUPS for a skewed input. For text histogram, or word count, the Xeon processor achieves 342.4 million words per seconds (MWPS). This is 4.12×, 3.46× faster than PHOENIX and TBB. The Xeon phi processor achieves 401.4 MWPS, which is 1.17× faster than the Xeon processor. Since histogram construction captures essential characteristics of more general reduction-heavy operations, our approach can be extended to other settings.
Image Abstraction by Structure Adaptive Filtering

In this work we present a framework of automatic non-photorealistic image processing techniques that create simpliﬁed stylistic illustrations from color images, videos and 3D renderings. To smooth low-contrast regions while preserving edges, we present a new fast separated implementation of the bilateral ﬁlter. Our approach works by ﬁltering in direction of the gradient and then ﬁltering the intermediate result in perpendicular direction. When applied iteratively, our approach does not suffer from horizontal or vertical artifacts and creates smooth output at curved boundaries. To extract salient important edges we ﬁrst apply a one-dimensional difference-of-Gaussians ﬁlter in direction of the gradient and then apply smoothing along a ﬂow ﬁeld which we derive from the smoothed structure tensor. Our method creates smooth coherent output for line and curve segments.
Particle filter based 3D position tracking for terrain rovers using laser point clouds

Difficult conditions on outdoor terrains make outdoor autonomy for rovers, a challenging task. The conventional wheel odometry method uses orientation measurements to assume a momentary plane to apply wheel encoder readings. On uneven terrains, this method often gives poor results for position tracking, and therefore rarely used. To improve the conventional odometry motion model, immediate terrain data can be used. This paper proposes a novel state variable extension (SVE) method to establish a connection between state space variables of a terrain rover by combining terrain point clouds with rover kinematics. The simulation results show that when the 2D state variables (x, y, yaw) are known, the 2D state can be extended to its 3D state (x, y, z, roll, pitch, yaw) with minimal error. The proposed SVE method is employed in a particle filter to determine the 2D state variables, which in turn results in achieving the full 3D position tracking of the rover.
The energetics of the jump of the locust Schistocerca gregaria.

The anatomy of the metathoracic leg is redescribed with particular reference to storage of energy in cuticular elements and the way in which the stored energy is used in jumping. The jump of adult male locusts requires an energy of 9 mJ and that of the female requires 11 mJ. The semilunar processes of each metafemur store 4 mJ at a stress of 15 N, and the extensor tibiae apodeme stores a further 3 mJ at the same stress. The total stored energy in both metathoracic legs is 14 mJ. The extensor tibiae muscle produces a maximum isometric force of over 15 N at 30 degrees C and, when loaded with the extensor apodeme and semilunar processes, attains this force in 0.3 sec with a strain of 0.8 mm. The peak power output is 36 mW or 0.45 W.g-1. The peak isometric force is attained when the tibia is fully flexed and the force falls as the tibia extends. The extensor tibiae muscle A band is 5.5 mum long and the peak force is over 0.75 N.m-2. The peak velocity of shortening is 7 mm.sec-1 or about 1.75 lengths/sec at 30 degrees C. The tensile strength of the extensor apodeme is 0.6 kN.mm-2 and Young's modulus is 19 kN.mm-2. The safety factor does not exceed 1.2 and the safety factor of the semilunar processes and tibial cuticle is little higher. The jump impulse lasts 25-30 msec. A velocity of 3.2 m.sec-1 is reached after a peak acceleration of 180 m.sec-2. The peak power output is 0.75 W at close to maximum velocity. Energy losses in rotating the femur and tibia are small and it is shown that the leg is able to extend at 7 times the normal rate with losses of about 20%. Most of the stored energy is converted to kinetic energy as the animal jumps. A model is based on the relaxation of a spring that has the properties of the elastic elements of the locust leg into a lever with the same kinematics as the locust leg produces a force-distance curve similar to that measured for locust jumps. The major part of the jump energy is stored before the jump.
A fast two-microphone noise reduction algorithm based on power level ratio for mobile phone

As an indispensable instrument in today's daily life, mobile phone that is used in diverse environments suffers from the speech quality degradation due to the presence of background noises. In this paper, we propose a novel two-microphone noise reduction system based on the power level ratio (PLR) of the observed signals. In the system, a primary microphone is placed close to the talker's mouth and an auxiliary microphone is placed away. The proposed noise reduction algorithm first calculates the ratio of the power of observed signals at the two microphones, and subsequently calculates the spectral gain function based on the power level ratio using the sigmoid function. Experimental results demonstrate that this proposed algorithm yields the much higher speech quality than the state-of-the-art noise-reduction algorithms, and more importantly involves much less computational cost which makes it feasible for mobile phone.
Instructions for use Title Generalized phase retrieval algorithm based on informationmeasures

An iterative phase retrieval algorithm based on the maximum entropy method (MEM) is presented. Introducing a new generalized information measure, we derive a novel class of algorithms which includes the conventionally used error reduction algorithm and a MEM-type iterative algorithm which is presented for the first time. These different phase retrieval methods are unified on the basis of the framework of information measures used in Information Theory.
Building variable resolution occupancy maps assuming unknown but bounded sensor errors

A widely used technique for constructing two dimensional maps employing range sensors is occupancy grid mapping assuming normal distributed sensor errors. An alternative to the grid map model with its fixed grid cell size are variable resolution grid maps, e.g. quadtrees. In this paper, the authors propose an approach for building occupancy quadtree maps assuming unknown but bounded sensor errors. Therefore, they examine possible types of sensor uncertainty when using laser rangefinders. They show that the majority of possible types of sensor errors can be covered much better by bounded error models than by probabilistic models. Hence, a novel inverse sensor model has been developed that incorporates measurement and pose uncertainty in a mathematical straightforward way using interval analysis. With this model, an approach for incrementally building occupancy quadtree maps is proposed. A first real world experiment has shown the applicability of the approach. Moreover, the authors compare the map with its probabilistic grid map counterpart. The bounded error quadtree has proved to be conservative but more reliable than the conventional probabilistic grid map.
A Controlled Experiment in Testing of Safety-Critical Embedded Software

In engineering of safety critical systems, regulatory standards often put requirements on both traceable specification-based testing, and structural coverage on program units. Automated test generation techniques can be used to generate inputs to cover the structural aspects of a program. However, there is no conclusive evidence on how automated test generation compares to manual test design, or how testing based on the program implementation relates to specification-based testing. In this paper, we investigate specification -- and implementation-based testing of embedded software written in the IEC 61131-3 language, a programming standard used in many embedded safety critical software systems. Further, we measure the efficiency and effectiveness in terms of fault detection. For this purpose, a controlled experiment was conducted, comparing tests created by a total of twenty-three software engineering master students. The participants worked individually on manually designing and automatically generating tests for two IEC 61131-3 programs. Tests created by the participants in the experiment were collected and analyzed in terms of mutation score, decision coverage, number of tests, and testing duration. We found that, when compared to implementation-based testing, specification-based testing yields significantly more effective tests in terms of the number of faults detected. Specifically, specification-based tests more effectively detect comparison and value replacement type of faults, compared to implementation-based tests. On the other hand, implementation-based automated test generation leads to fewer tests (up to 85% improvement) created in shorter time than the ones manually created based on the specification.
A QUASI-MONTE CARLO ALGORITHM FOR THE NORMAL INVERSE GAUSSIAN DISTRIBUTION AND VALUATION OF FINANCIAL DERIVATIVES

We propose a quasi-Monte Carlo (qMC) algorithm to simulate variates from the normal inverse Gaussian (NIG) distribution. The algorithm is based on a Monte Carlo technique found in Rydberg [13], and is based on sampling three independent uniform variables. We apply the algorithm to three problems appearing in finance. First, we consider the valuation of plain vanilla call options and Asian options. The next application considers the problem of deriving implied parameters for the underlying asset dynamics based on observed option prices. We employ our proposed algorithm together with the Newton Method, and show how we can find the scale parameter of the NIG-distribution of the logreturns in case of a call or an Asian option. We also provide an extensive error analysis for this method. Finally we study the calculation of Value-at-Risk for a portfolio of nonlinear products where the returns are modeled by NIG random variables.