Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preparing to Grasp Emotionally Laden Stimuli

Background Contemporary theories of motor control propose that motor planning involves the prediction of the consequences of actions. These predictions include the associated costs as well as the rewarding nature of movements’ outcomes. Within the estimation of these costs and rewards would lie the valence, that is, the pleasantness or unpleasantness of a given stimulus with which one is about to interact. The aim of this study was to test if motor preparation encompasses valence. Methodology/Principal Findings The readiness potential, an electrophysiological marker of motor preparation, was recorded before the grasping of pleasant, neutral and unpleasant stimuli. Items used were balanced in weight and placed inside transparent cylinders to prompt a similar grip among trials. Compared with neutral stimuli, the grasping of pleasant stimuli was preceded by a readiness potential of lower amplitude, whereas that of unpleasant stimuli was associated with a readiness potential of higher amplitude. Conclusions/Significance We show for the first time that the sensorimotor cortex activity preceding the grasping of a stimulus is affected by its valence. Smaller readiness potential amplitudes found for pleasant stimuli could imply in the recruitment of pre-set motor repertoires, whereas higher amplitudes found for unpleasant stimuli would emerge from a discrepancy between the required action and their aversiveness. Our results indicate that the prediction of action outcomes encompasses an estimate of the valence of a stimulus with which one is about to interact.
Bayesian Field Theory : From likelihood fields to hyperfields

Bayesian models are based on the combination of a likelihood model and a prior model. The nonparametric Bayesian models discussed in this chapter combine the likelihood models of density estimation, regression, and inverse quantum theory, expressed in terms of ‘likelihood fields’, with nonparametric prior models for such fields. Starting from Gaussian process priors, which, for example, are able to implement approximate symmetries for the likelihood fields, those are made more flexible by introducing hyperparameters and, generalized to a hyperparameter valued function, by hyperfields. In a joint Maximum A Posteriori approximation this results in coupled equations for likelihood fields and hyperfields. An example of a useful application of hyperfields is the adaption of the mean function of a Gaussian process prior.
Statistics of stop-and-go traffic: Emergent properties of congestion behavior arising from collective vehicular dynamics in an urban environment

The movement of large numbers of vehicles along the complex network of roads in a city result in interactions between them that become stronger as the traffic density increases. The non-trivial behavior arising from the collective dynamics of vehicles include the occurrence of persistent congestion at different points of the transport network that typically reduce the efficiency of overall traffic flow. In order to understand the mechanisms responsible for the characteristic spatio-temporal patterns of urban traffic, we first need to identify statistically robust features from empirical observations, which one can then try to recreate in computational models of traffic dynamics. In this article, we have analyzed the GPS traces collected round the clock for more than a hundred taxis operating in a major Indian city over a period of 1 month. The available information allows us to precisely measure the periods during which the vehicle is static and when it is moving. We focus on the intermittent patterns of rest and motion that a car exhibits during its passage through city traffic, which provides a window into key aspects of collective dynamics resulting from congestion. We show that the distribution of waiting time, i.e., the period during which a car is static between two successive epochs of movement, has a highly skewed nature. The bulk of the probability distribution appears to follow power-law scaling with exponent value of 1.78. As city traffic has very different densities during peak hours and off-peak hours, we have also investigated this distribution at different times of the day. While the power-law scaling is found to be robust, the exact value of the exponent does change slightly.We have also considered the active time distribution, i.e., the period of movement between two epochs when the car is static, which does not exhibit a power-law signature but rather resembles a inverse Gaussian or a log-logistic distribution. We also look at the recurrence relation between the durations of successive waiting times, as well as, that between active time duration and the duration of the preceding waiting time. Our results can be used to help understand how the statistical properties of large-scale traffic movement over complex road networks which characterize cities deviate from that of other types of collective dynamics, e.g., the diffusion of random walkers.
Building Attack Scenarios through Integration of Complementary Alert Correlation Method

Several alert correlation methods were proposed in the past several years to construct high-level attack scenarios from low-level intrusion alerts reported by intrusion detection systems (IDSs). These correlation methods have different strengths and limitations; none of them clearly dominate the others. However, all of these methods depend heavily on the underlying IDSs, and perform poorly when the IDSs miss critical attacks. In order to improve the performance of intrusion alert correlation and reduce the impact of missed attacks, this paper presents a series of techniques to integrate two complementary types of alert correlation methods: (1) those based on the similarity between alert attributes, and (2) those based on prerequisites and consequences of attacks. In particular, this paper presents techniques to hypothesize and reason about attacks possibly missed by IDSs based on the indirect causal relationship between intrusion alerts and the constraints they must satisfy. This paper also discusses additional techniques to validate the hypothesized attacks through raw audit data and to consolidate the hypothesized attacks to generate concise attack scenarios. The experimental results in this paper demonstrate the potential of these techniques in building high-level attack scenarios and reasoning about possibly missed attacks.
A quantitative study on automatic validation of the diagnostic services of Electronic Control Units

As a result of the strong competition on the world car market the development cycles are decreasing while the complexity of todaypsilas E/E vehicle architectures is growing. This requires the introduction of new methods to speed up the development process and guarantee correct functionality of the deployed Electronic Control Units (ECUs). Especially, in the context of the diagnostic functionality provided by the ECUs the correctness of the services is significant, as the information provided by the built-in diagnostic subsystem shall guide the mechanic at the service station. This way high warranty costs due to unnecessary component replacements can be avoided and effective problem solving guaranteed. In this paper we introduce CANoe Option DiVa (Diagnostic Integration and Validation Assistant) as a new tool for diagnostic validation that closes an open gap in the existing tool chain used at General Motors Europe. We thereby establish fully automatic test case generation for the first time in the context of the Opel Insignia development. Based on the machine readable diagnostic specifications for Opel Insignia ECUs, DiVa generates test code to be executed within the CANoe test environment. In order to elaborate on the economic benefits of this new validation method we compare the efforts for automatic testing with manual testing and provide details on the resulting speed-up factor on the basis of a series production project.
Combined deficiencies of Msx1 and Msx2 cause impaired patterning and survival of the cranial neural crest

The neural crest is a multipotent, migratory cell population that contributes to a variety of tissues and organs during vertebrate embryogenesis. Here, we focus on the function of Msx1 and Msx2, homeobox genes implicated in several disorders affecting craniofacial development in humans. We show that Msx1/2 mutants exhibit profound deficiencies in the development of structures derived from the cranial and cardiac neural crest. These include hypoplastic and mispatterned cranial ganglia, dysmorphogenesis of pharyngeal arch derivatives and abnormal organization of conotruncal structures in the developing heart. The expression of the neural crest markers Ap-2α, Sox10 and cadherin 6 (cdh6) in Msx1/2 mutants revealed an apparent retardation in the migration of subpopulations of preotic and postotic neural crest cells, and a disorganization of neural crest cells paralleling patterning defects in cranial nerves. In addition, normally distinct subpopulations of migrating crest underwent mixing. The expression of the hindbrain markers Krox20 and Epha4 was altered in Msx1/2 mutants, suggesting that defects in neural crest populations may result, in part, from defects in rhombomere identity. Msx1/2 mutants also exhibited increased Bmp4 expression in migratory cranial neural crest and pharyngeal arches. Finally, proliferation of neural crest-derived mesenchyme was unchanged, but the number of apoptotic cells was increased substantially in neural crest-derived cells that contribute to the cranial ganglia and the first pharyngeal arch. This increase in apoptosis may contribute to the mispatterning of the cranial ganglia and the hypoplasia of the first arch.
Field Theory as a Classical Ising Model

We approximate a (spatially cutoff) (φ4)2 Euclidean field theory by an ensemble of spin 1/2 Ising spins with ferromagnetic pair interactions. This approximation is used to prove a Lee-Yang theorem and GHS type correlation inequalities for the (0 4 ) 2 theory. Application of these results are presented.
Adaptive turbo equalizer with stopping rule based on LDPC codes

In this paper we propose a stopping rule for adaptive turbo equalizers based on low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Using an extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart, we analyze the convergence behavior of a turbo equalizer and devise an adaptive turbo equalizer with stopping rule. It monitors the status of iterative decoding and stops performing equalization when the decoding messages are reliable enough to converge successfully only by LDPC decoding. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has lower complexity than the conventional schemes, while it has a similar performance.
Crest Line Extra tion From Point Clouds

We present a simple, automatic method for extracting featur curves, called crest lines, from point clouds. Crest lines a r surface shape features having a mathematical background. Given an u nstructured point cloud as input, we pre-process the data to g enerate some topological information by creating an undirectional surface graph. The method starts with the approximation of normal cu rvature on every point. Utilizing the crest point definition, th e crest points are identified. Region growth follows to implicitly c onnect the crest points and create crest graphs. Finally, the compu tation of minimum spanning trees for every crest graph and the pruning of short branches create crest lines.
Guest Editors’ Introduction

Abstract: This article serves as a preface to the four articles presented in this special issue of the International Journal of Sociology, which is devoted to pro-democratic values in cross-national perspective. The pro-democratic values considered in this issue concern tolerance toward revolutionaries and immigrants as well as support of European integration and environmentalism. Because all four articles are based on data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), we provide basic information about this program and discuss some methodological problems involved in cross-national analyses of survey data. The articles in this special volume address some of the limitations and future prospects jor cross-national survey research, which is becoming more frequent with the increasing accessibility of cross-national survey data.
ASIP design methodology with Target ’ s Chess / Checkers retargetable tools

Hardware accelerators are commonly found in complex platforms. They assist in computing intensive tasks such as modem physical layer or multimedia codecs, which a central, general purpose processor could not perform quickly enough on its own. Such accelerators are typically handdesigned, hard-wired, and their very dedicated nature and instruction set usually doesn’t allow them to be programmed in a high-level programming language.
Effect of Increasing System Latency on Localization of Virtual Sounds

In a virtual acoustic environment, the total system latency (TSL) refers to the time elapsed from the transduction of an event or action, such as movement of the head, until the consequences of that action cause the equivalent change in the virtual sound source. This paper reports on the impact of increasing TSL on localization accuracy when head motion is enabled. Five subjects estimated the location of 12 virtual sound sources (individualized head-related transfer functions) with latencies of 33.8, 100.4, 250.4 or 500.3 ms in an absolute judgement paradigm. Subjects also rated the perceived latency on each trial. The data indicated that localization was generally accurate, even with a latency as great as 500 ms. In particular, front-back confusions were minimal and unaffected by latency. Mean latency ratings indicated that latency had to be at least 250 ms to be readily perceived. The fact that accuracy was generally comparable for the shortest and longest latencies suggests that listeners are able to ignore latency during active localization, even though delays of this magnitude produce an obvious spatial “slewing” of the source such that it is no longer stabilized in space.
Navigation of multiple mobile robots in unknown environments using a new decentralized navigation function

This paper studies navigation for multiple mobile robots while avoiding collisions and ensuring global network connectivity in unknown environments. It is found that when the traditional navigation function is employed, control input is extremely small if robots work in a large environment, which implies that robots will almost stop at their initial positions. To solve this problem, a new decentralized navigation function is proposed with a novel goal function which is then applied in a multi-robot navigation scenario. Based on the properties of navigation function and dual Lyapunov theorem, a sufficient condition is derived for robots converging to regions surrounding their corresponding goal positions in a collision-free and connectivity-keeping manner. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.
Wang Tiles for Image and Texture Generation

This paper discusses the use of Wang Tiles for image and texture generation as originally presented in Cohen et al. , 2003. Creating large expanses of nonperiodic texture, point distributions or geometry can be efficiently done at runtime by constructing a tiling of the plane using a small set of Wang tiles. Wang Tiles are squares whose edges are each assigned a color. The method involves filling a small set of Wang Tiles with texture, Poisson point distributions or geometry and non-periodically tiling the plane to stochastically create a continuous representation. For a tiling to be valid, all shared edges between tiles need to have matching colors. An algorithm for runtime generation of such valid tilings is presented. Creating the tiles so that tiles with matching edge colors have textures that fit together is also discussed, as well as usage of an extended notion of Wang Tiles with colored corners that allows discrete objects to overlap tile corners and the creation of inhomogeneous textures. The Wang Tiles technique is also put into perspective through a short introduction to previous methods for texture synthesis and the modeling of complex 3D scenes. The main differences between using Wang Tiles and other techniques are also discussed.
When cultures clash: the story of one school’s journey from acculturation to understanding

Abstract This qualitative case study examines the conflicts and challenges that one American junior high school experienced when a substantial number of African-American families migrated to the community from Chicago to secure Section 8 housing; their housing projects had recently been felled through the auspices of HOPE VI (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere), a federally-funded bi-partisan initiative that sought to decentralize poverty in America. The study’s findings highlight the conflicts and tensions this in-migration caused, the school’s initial efforts to mediate them through a process of acculturation, and the progress it made once it recognized cultural difference and refused to let it function as an on-going source of cultural conflict.
Evidence for inversion polymorphism related to sympatric host race formation in the apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella.

Evidence suggests that the apple maggot, Rhagoletis pomonella (Diptera: Tephritidae) is undergoing sympatric speciation (i.e., divergence without geographic isolation) in the process of shifting and adapting to a new host plant. Prior to the introduction of cultivated apples (Malus pumila) in North America, R. pomonella infested the fruit of native hawthorns (Crataegus spp.). However, sometime in the mid-1800s the fly formed a sympatric race on apple. The recently derived apple-infesting race shows consistent allele frequency differences from the hawthorn host race for six allozyme loci mapping to three different chromosomes. Alleles at all six of these allozymes correlate with the timing of adult eclosion, an event dependent on the duration of the overwintering pupal diapause. This timing difference differentially adapts the univoltine fly races to an approximately 3- to 4-week difference in the peak fruiting times of apple and hawthorn trees, partially reproductively isolating the host races. Here, we report finding substantial gametic disequilibrium among allozyme and complementary DNA (cDNA) markers encompassing the three chromosomal regions differentiating apple and hawthorn flies. The regions of disequilibrium extend well beyond the previously characterized six allozyme loci, covering substantial portions of chromosomes 1, 2, and 3 (haploid n = 6 in R. pomonella). Moreover, significant recombination heterogeneity and variation in gene order were observed among single-pair crosses for each of the three genomic regions, implying the existence of inversion polymorphism. We therefore have evidence that genes affecting diapause traits involved in host race formation reside within large complexes of rearranged genes. We explore whether these genomic regions (inversions) constitute coadapted gene complexes and discuss the implications of our findings for sympatric speciation in Rhagoletis.
Start-to-end Transport Design and Multi-particle Tracking for the ILC Electron Source

A train of 2-ns micro bunches of longitudinally polarized electrons are generated in a 120-kV DC-gun based injector in the ILC electron source; a bunching system with extremely high bunching efficiency to compress the micro-bunch down to 20 ps FWHM is designed. Complete optics to transport the electron bunch to the entrance of the 5-GeV damping ring injection line is developed. Start-to-end multi-particle tracking through the beamline is performed including the bunching system, pre-acceleration, chicane, 5-GeV superconducting booster linac, spin rotators and energy compressor. It shows that 94% of the electrons from the DC-gun are captured within the damping ring 6-D acceptance--A{sub x} + A{sub y} {le} 0.09 m and {Delta}E x {Delta}z {le} ({+-} 25 MeV) x ({+-} 3.46 cm)--at the entrance of the damping ring injection line. The field and alignment errors and orbit correction are analyzed.
A clustering-based approach on sentiment analysis

This paper introduces the clustering-based sentiment analysis approach which is a new approach to sentiment analysis. By applying a TF-IDF weighting method, voting mechanism and importing term scores, an acceptable and stable clustering result can be obtained. It has competitive advantages over the two existing kinds of approaches: symbolic techniques and supervised learning methods. It is a well performed, efficient, and non-human participating approach on solving sentiment analysis problems.
Prototyping Wearables: A Code-First Approach to the Design of Embedded Systems

As wearable devices become ubiquitous, there will be an increased demand for platforms that allow engineers and researchers to quickly prototype and evaluate new wearable devices. However, many of these platforms require that the hardware be configured before the code is written, thereby limiting the programmer to the limitations of the hardware. In this paper, we present a platform that allows researchers and engineers to quickly prototype new wearable devices using a code-first approach. This approach allows software developers to create new prototypes by first writing the code that the prototype is required to run. Once the code has been written, the hardware that is required to run the application can be generated by analyzing the code that the software developer has specified. This code-first approach is possible because of the system's architecture which is comprised of both a hardware and software component. The hardware component consists of a main board with four expansion ports, while the software platform is a modular middleware which consists of a collection of stateless libraries that abstract each hardware module. These modular abstractions allow us to synthesize the hardware configuration from the software definition. We evaluated our design using it to prototype three wearable devices: 1) an environmental exposure monitoring smartwatch; 2) an infrared indoor localization system; and 3) a step counter.
Iterative Network and Channel Decoding for the Two-Way Relay Channel

We introduce an extension of the relay channel that we call two-way relay channel. The two-way relay channel consists of two users which want to communicate to each other with the help of one relay. We consider the time-division two-way relay channel without power control, where the broadcast channels are orthogonalized in time and where the two users and the relay use the same transmission power. We describe a joint network-channel coding method for this channel model, where channel codes are used at both users and a network code is used at the relay. The channel code of one user and the network code form a distributed turbo code which we call turbo network code and which can be iteratively decoded at the other user. Moreover, we conjecture closed expressions for lower bounds for the channel capacities of the time-division relay and two-way relay channel without power control and deliver simulation results of the proposed turbo network code.
Detailed Enzyme Kinetics in Terms of Biochemical Species: Study of Citrate Synthase

The compulsory-ordered ternary catalytic mechanism for two-substrate two-product enzymes is analyzed to account for binding of inhibitors to each of the four enzyme states and to maintain the relationship between the kinetic constants and the reaction equilibrium constant. The developed quasi-steady flux expression is applied to the analysis of data from citrate synthase to determine and parameterize a kinetic scheme in terms of biochemical species, in which the effects of pH, ionic strength, and cation binding to biochemical species are explicitly accounted for in the analysis of the data. This analysis provides a mechanistic model that is consistent with the data that have been used support competing hypotheses regarding the catalytic mechanism of this enzyme.