Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Linear and nonlinear pathways of spectral information transmission in the cochlear nucleus.

At the level of the cochlear nucleus (CN), the auditory pathway divides into several parallel circuits, each of which provides a different representation of the acoustic signal. Here, the representation of the power spectrum of an acoustic signal is analyzed for two CN principal cells-chopper neurons of the ventral CN and type IV neurons of the dorsal CN. The analysis is based on a weighting function model that relates the discharge rate of a neuron to first- and second-order transformations of the power spectrum. In chopper neurons, the transformation of spectral level into rate is a linear (i.e., first-order) or nearly linear function. This transformation is a predominantly excitatory process involving multiple frequency components, centered in a narrow frequency range about best frequency, that usually are processed independently of each other. In contrast, type IV neurons encode spectral information linearly only near threshold. At higher stimulus levels, these neurons are strongly inhibited by spectral notches, a behavior that cannot be explained by level transformations of first- or second-order. Type IV weighting functions reveal complex excitatory and inhibitory interactions that involve frequency components spanning a wider range than that seen in choppers. These findings suggest that chopper and type IV neurons form parallel pathways of spectral information transmission that are governed by two different mechanisms. Although choppers use a predominantly linear mechanism to transmit tonotopic representations of spectra, type IV neurons use highly nonlinear processes to signal the presence of wide-band spectral features.
Comparative Evaluation of Server-push and Client-pull Architectures for Multimedia Servers

Realizing a wide range of multimedia services will require the development of high performance, integrated multimedia servers (or file systems) which can efficiently manage the storage, access, and transmission of audio, video, and textual objects. Traditionally storage servers have employed fundamentally different mechanisms for managing the storage and access of each of these objects. Whereas most conventional text file systems employ a client-pull architecture, most video servers proposed in the literature employ a server-push architecture. Hence, the most fundamental question is: what is an appropriate architecture for integrated multimediaservers? In this paper, we take a step towards addressing this question by outlining the qualitative and quantitative differences between the server-push and client-pull architectures.
Tobacco Mosaic Virus Infection Results in an Increase in Recombination Frequency and Resistance to Viral , Bacterial , and Fungal Pathogens in the Progeny of Infected Tobacco Plants 1 [ C ] [ W ] [ OA ]

Our previous experiments showed that infection of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants with Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) leads to an increase in homologous recombination frequency (HRF). The progeny of infected plants also had an increased rate of rearrangements in resistance gene-like loci. Here, we report that tobacco plants infected with TMV exhibited an increase in HRF in two consecutive generations. Analysis of global genome methylation showed the hypermethylated genome in both generations of plants, whereas analysis of methylation via 5-methyl cytosine antibodies demonstrated both hypomethylation and hypermethylation. Analysis of the response of the progeny of infected plants to TMV, Pseudomonas syringae, or Phytophthora nicotianae revealed a significant delay in symptom development. Infection of these plants with TMV or P. syringae showed higher levels of induction of PATHOGENESIS-RELATED GENE1 gene expression and higher levels of callose deposition. Our experiments suggest that viral infection triggers specific changes in progeny that promote higher levels of HRF at the transgene and higher resistance to stress as compared with the progeny of unstressed plants. However, data reported in these studies do not establish evidence of a link between recombination frequency and stress resistance.
TCTL Model Checking of Time Petri Nets

We consider Time Petri Nets (TPN) for which a firing time interval is associated with each transition. State space abstractions for TPN preserving various classes of properties (LTL, CTL and CTL*) can be computed, in terms of so called state classes. Some methods were proposed to check quantitative timed properties but are not suitable for effective verification of properties of real-life systems. In this article, we consider subscript TCTL for TPN (TPN-TCTL) for which temporal operators are extended with a time interval, specifying a time constraint on the firing sequences. We prove the decidability of TPN-TCTL on bounded TPN and give its theoretical complexity. We propose a zone-based state space abstraction that preserves marking reachability and traces of the TPN. As for Timed Automata (TA), the abstraction may use an over-approximation operator on zones to enforce the termination. A coarser (and efficient) abstraction is then provided and proved exact w.r. t. marking reachability and traces (LTL properties). Finally, we consider a subset of TPN-TCTL properties (TPN-TCTLS) for which it is possible to propose efficient on-the-fly model-checking algorithms. Our approach consists in computing and exploring the zone-based state space abstraction. On a practical point of view, the method is integrated in Romeo [Gardey et al. (2005, Proceedings of 17th International Conference on CAV’05, Vol. 3576 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 418–423)], a tool for TPN edition and analysis. In addition to the old features it is now possible to effectively verify a subset of TCTL directly on TPN.
Adaptive Self-Calibration Algorithm for Smart Sensors Linearization

Calibration and linearization are two important topics that must always be considered to assure measurement system's accuracy. Measurement errors, namely offset, gain and linearization errors, can be compensated as long as timely calibration routines are performed in the measurement system. Nowadays, with the advent of smart sensors, the new capabilities associated with microprocessor or microcontroller devices can support new and advanced calibration and self-calibration algorithms that contribute to increase measurement's accuracy. In the present paper an adaptive self-calibration algorithm for smart sensors' linearization is proposed which takes into consideration the probability density function of the measurement data in order to reduce the number of calibration points, and associated calibration time, for a required level of accuracy. The progressive polynomial interpolation method is considered in order to preserve the values of calibration coefficients, already evaluated for previous calibration points, without starting the algorithmic calculation of a new set of the calibration coefficients for each new additional calibration point. Some simulations and an experimental result, for a square root characteristic of a venturi type airflow transducer, will be presented in order to validate theoretical expectations
Towards a real-time agent architecture-a whitepaper

Applications such as military training simulations and electronic commerce can benefit from the flexible and responsive nature of multi-agent systems. These applications have inherent timing constraints on the operations and interactions that the agents might perform. This paper presents a real-time agent architecture in which agents communicate, cooperate, coordinate and negotiate to meet the goals of a particular application under specified timing constraints. The architecture provides a real-time CORBA layer to handle the underlying real-time communication. It also has a real-time agent communication layer in which agents interact via a real-time extension of a well-known agent communication language.
Excitatory synapses on dendritic shafts of the caudal basal amygdala exhibit elevated levels of GABAA receptor α4 subunits following the induction of activity‐based anorexia

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder characterized by self‐imposed severe starvation, excessive exercise, and anxiety. The onset of AN is most often at puberty, suggesting that gonadal hormonal fluctuations may contribute to AN vulnerability. Activity‐based anorexia (ABA) is an animal model that reproduces some of the behavioral phenotypes of AN, including the paradoxical increase in voluntary exercise following food restriction. The basal amygdala as well as the GABAergic system regulate trait anxiety. We therefore examined the subcellular distribution of GABA receptors (GABARs) in the basal amygdala of female pubertal rats and specifically of their α4 subunits, because expression of α4‐containing GABARs is regulated by gonadal hormone fluctuations. Moreover, because these GABARs reduce neuronal excitability through shunting of EPSPs, we quantified the frequency of occurrence of these GABARs adjacent to excitatory synapses. Electron microscopic immunoctychemistry revealed no change in the frequency of association of α4 subunits with excitatory synapses on dendritic spines, whether in the anterior (Bregma −2.8 mm) or caudal (Bregma −3.8 mm) portion of the basal amygdala. Sholl analysis of golgi‐stained neurons also revealed no change in the extent of dendritic branching by these densely spiny, pyramidal‐like neurons. However, there was an increase of membranous α4 subunits near excitatory synapses on dendritic shafts, specifically in the caudal basal amygdala, and this was accompanied by a rise of α4 subunits intracellularly. Because most dendritic shafts exhibiting excitatory synapses are GABAergic interneurons, the results predict disinhibition, which would increase excitability of the amygdaloid network, in turn augmenting ABA animals' anxiety. Synapse, 68:1–15, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A Simple and Efficient Edge Detection Algorithm

A simple and efficient edge detection algorithm based on wavelet transform and morphology is proposed. Combined with dyadic wavelet transform and image gradient calculation, the smoothing filter operators are introduced. Then to the non-uniform illumination problem, a local thresholding, which determines the edges, can be constructed by the algorithm of maximization of between-class variance (Otsu¿s method) and morphological opening. Through the synthetic image experiment, the proposed scheme has the better performance than Mallat¿s and Canny¿s algorithms. Experiments on Lena and Peppers benchmark images show that it not only detects the image edge correctly but also has the good suppressing noise ability. Further it is effective to the Bank image darkened gradually.
The Free Value Tool for Asn.1

The Free Value Tool is suitable for studying and evaluating one or several ASN.1 modules or for building a prototype encoder-decoder. Its main asset is a very general representation of types and values, known as our model of ASN.1. The model is instructive in its own right and also a good foundation for a variety of tools. The model is object-oriented in the sense that the design itself and some of the notation used in this document are object-oriented. The implementation , however, uses more conventional techniques. The tool kit includes a fairly complete translator from ASN.1 modules into an instance of the model, except that it can't handle macros. This instance of the model enjoys a close relationship to the ASN.1 source text, thereby contributing to generality, and it is used as the basis for activating a tool. The model instance can be saved in a le, known as a snapshot, which can then become input to some tool for processing values. The most general activation for the Free Value Tool provides a set of free value commands. For this purpose, an instance of the model produced by the translator acts as a kind of interpretive description of types. A free value is a value that occurs outside an ASN.1 module. (Values may occur within modules only in a limited role.) The commands of the Free Value Tool request transformations of free values among several diierent representations. Each command requests transformation of a value between the model's internal representation of an ASN.1 value and one of four external forms of values. Sequences of commands can specify fairly complex operations, such as reading an ASN.1 print value (value in the deened notation), encoding it, decoding the resulting octet string, and printing it again. The four external forms of values are: print values printable values written in the deened notation for values that is implied for any particular abstract syntax, transfer values encoded octet strings as implied by Basic Encoding Rules for an abstract syntax, local values the aggregate contents of a local data structure in the C language that is capable of representing values from an abstract syntax, and led values a representation of an internal value temporarily stored in an external le so that it can be retrieved by the tool. Print values and transfer values are described indirectly by the ASN.1 standard when coupled with a valid abstract …
Contextualising Narrative Inquiry: Devloping Methodological Approaches for Local Contexts

1. What's in a Sign? Narrative inquiry and deaf storytellers Donna West 2. Private Lives, Public Property: Narrating the lives of mothers whose children have significant special needs Jenny Knibb 3. Looking Down on the World from a Wooden Balcony: A narrative autoethnnographic study of voluntary celibacy Dione Mifsud 4. Workplace Bullying in Higher Education: An autothnographic perspective Mary Baker 5. 'The Teeth and the Tongue': A narrative inquiry journey in Ghana Janetta Sika Akoto 6. Seeing with New Eyes: Becoming a narrative inquirer in higher education practice Narina A. Samah 7. Narrative Inquiry in a Divided Island: Dealing with Sensitive and complex methodological issues in Cyprus Evgenia Partasi 8. A Conversation with Ah Leung Christina Yip Pui Lin 9. Catalan Teacher Meets Chilean Researcher: (De) constructing subjectivities through the interplay of textual narratives Veronica Larrain 10. No Horror Stories to Tell: Critical moments in exploring the literacy practices of Jamaican -born elders in the UK Pam Bennett 11. Words Collide, Mindsets Remain: A journey of cross-cultural narrative inquiry Jane Horan
Data-driven Rank Breaking for Efficient Rank Aggregation

Rank aggregation systems collect ordinal preferences from individuals to produce a global ranking that represents the social preference. Rank-breaking is a common practice to reduce the computational complexity of learning the global ranking. The individual preferences are broken into pairwise comparisons and applied to efficient algorithms tailored for independent paired comparisons. However, due to the ignored dependencies in the data, naive rank-breaking approaches can result in inconsistent estimates. The key idea to produce accurate and consistent estimates is to treat the pairwise comparisons unequally, depending on the topology of the collected data. In this paper, we provide the optimal rank-breaking estimator, which not only achieves consistency but also achieves the best error bound. This allows us to characterize the fundamental tradeoff between accuracy and complexity. Further, the analysis identies how the accuracy depends on the spectral gap of a corresponding comparison graph.
Long Nights, Rainy Days, and Misspent Youth: Automatically Extracting and Categorizing Occasions Associated with Consumer Products.

One way in which marketers gain insights about consumers is by identifying the occasions in which consumers use their products and which are invoked by their products. Identifying occasions helps in consumer segmentation, answering why consumers purchase a product, and where and when they use it. Additionally, the types of occasions a consumer participates in and the social settings surrounding those occasions provide insights into the consumer’s personality and sociocultural self. Insights such as these are required for understanding consumer behavior, which marketers need to better design and sell their products. In this paper, we describe a methodology for extracting and categorizing occasions from product reviews, product descriptions, and forum posts. We examine using a maximum entropy markov model (MEMM) and a linear chain conditional random field (CRF) for extraction and find the CRF results in a 72.4% F1-measure. Extracted occasions are categorized as one of six high-level types (Celebratory, Special, Seasonal, Temporal, Weather-Related, and Other) using a support vector machine with an 88.5% macroaveraged F1-measure.
Expression and secretion of antiviral factors by trophoblast cells following stimulation by the TLR-3 agonist, Poly(I : C).

BACKGROUND During pregnancy, the placenta may become exposed to micro-organisms, such as viruses, which may pose a substantial threat to the embryo/fetus well-being. Recent insight into the immunological capabilities of the trophoblast suggests that the placenta may function as an active barrier by recognizing and responding to pathogens through Toll-like receptors (TLRs). METHODS The objective of this study was to determine whether the engagement of TLR-3 with viral dsRNA by first-trimester trophoblast could induce the production of factors necessary to generate an antiviral response. Therefore, trophoblast cells were exposed to the TLR-3 agonist, Poly(I : C). RESULTS We report that following stimulation with Poly(I : C), first-trimester trophoblast cells produce interferon beta (IFNbeta) and secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI), as well as the intracellular factors 2',5'-oligoadenylate synthetase (OAS), Myxovirus-resistance A (MxA) and apolipoprotein B mRNA-editing enzyme-catalytic polypeptide-like 3G (APOBEC3G). This response is TLR-3 specific because the TLR-4 ligand, lipopolysaccharide (LPS), had no effect on the production of these antimicrobial factors. Furthermore, we describe a positive feedback mechanism in which IFNbeta enhances the antiviral response by promoting the production of OAS, MxA and APOBEC3G. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that trophoblast cells are able to recognize and specifically respond to viral products in a highly regulated fashion and that the placenta may be pivotal in the control of viral infections at the maternal-fetal interface.
Induction of Syntactic Collocation Patterns from Generic Syntactic Relations

Syntactic configurations used in collocation extraction are highly divergent from one system to another, this questioning the validity of results and making comparative evaluation difficult. We describe a corpus-driven approach for inferring an exhaustive set of configurations from actual data by finding, with a parser, all the productive syntactic associations, then by appealing to human expertise for relevance judgements.
Imaging of blood flow and hypoxia in head and neck cancer: initial evaluation with [(15)O]H(2)O and [(18)F]fluoroerythronitroimidazole PET.

UNLABELLED Hypoxia is a characteristic feature of malignant tumors that should be evaluated before the start of therapy. (18)F-labeled fluoroerythronitroimidazole (FETNIM) is a possible candidate for imaging tumor hypoxia with PET. Quantitative analysis of [(18)F]FETNIM uptake in vivo is necessary before proceeding to assays predicting hypoxia. METHODS Eight patients with untreated head and neck squamous cell carcinoma were enrolled in the study. All patients underwent dynamic PET imaging with [(18)F]FETNIM, coupled with measurements of blood flow with [(15)O]H(2)O and blood volume with [(15)O]CO. The metabolically active tumor volume was determined from [(18)F]FDG PET performed on a separate day. [(18)F]FETNIM uptake in the tumor was correlated with that in neck muscles and arterial plasma and compared with the findings of other PET studies. RESULTS Blood flow in tumor was 5- to 30-fold greater than in muscle, in contrast to blood volume, which did not significantly differ in the 2 tissues. With [(18)F]FETNIM PET, muscle activity remained invariably less than plasma activity, whereas activity in whole tumors was always greater than that in muscle. In 4 instances, the maximum tumor uptake of [(18)F]FETNIM was 1.2-2.0 times higher than plasma activity in the late dynamic phase. A kinetic model developed for calculation of distribution volume of reversibly trapping tracers was successfully applied in the [(18)F]FETNIM studies. Tumor distribution volume correlated strongly with the standardized uptake value of [(18)F]FETNIM between 60 and 120 min and with blood flow but not with the standardized uptake value of [(18)F]FDG. The relationship between [(18)F]FETNIM uptake and the blood flow of the tumor was less obvious on a pixel-by-pixel level. CONCLUSION Uptake of [(18)F]FETNIM in head and neck cancer is highly variable and seems to be governed by blood flow at least in the early phase of tissue accumulation. Maximum tumor-to-muscle tracer uptake ratios > 180 min were in the range of 1-4, comparing favorably with those reported previously for [(18)F]fluoromisonidazole. Assessment of the distribution volume of [(18)F]FETNIM after the initial blood-flow phase is feasible for subsequent evaluation of hypoxia-specific retention.
Adaptive and Concurrent Secure Computation from New Notions of Non-Malleability

We present a unified framework for obtaining general secure computation that achieves adaptiveUniversally Composable (UC)-security. Our framework captures essentially all previous results on adaptive concurrent secure computation, both in relaxed models (e.g., quasi-polynomial time simulation), as well as trusted setup models (e.g., the CRS model, the imperfect CRS model). This provides conceptual simplicity and insight into what is required for adaptive and concurrent security, as well as yielding improvements to set-up assumptions and/or computational assumptions. Moreover, using our framework we provide first constructions of concurrent secure computation protocols that are adaptively secure in the timing model, and in the non-uniform simulation model. Conceptually, our framework can be viewed as an adaptive analogue to the recent work of Lin, Pass and Venkitasubramaniam [STOC ‘09], who considered only non-adaptive adversaries. Their main insight was that stand-alone non-malleability was sufficient for UC-security. A main conceptual contribution of this work is, quite surprisingly, that it is indeed the case even when considering adaptive security. A key element in our construction is a commitment scheme that satisfies a new notion of nonmalleability. The notion of concurrent equivocal non-malleable commitments, intuitively, guarantees that even when a man-in-the-middle adversary observes concurrent equivocal commitments and decommitments, the binding property of the commitments continues to hold for commitments made by the adversary. This notion is stronger than standard notions of concurrent non-malleable commitments which either consider only specific commits (e.g., statistically-binding) or specific scenarios (e.g., the commitment phase and the decommitment phase are executed in a non-overlapping manner). Previously, commitments that satisfy our definition, have been constructed in setup models, but either require existence of stronger encryption schemes such as CCA-secure encryption or require independent “trapdoors” provided by the setup for every pair of parties to ensure non-malleability. We here provide a construction that eliminates these requirements and require only a single trapdoor.