Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gating of local network signals appears as stimulus-dependent activity envelopes in striate cortex.

Neuronal activity often is treated as a composition of a stimulus-driven component and a second component that corrupts the signal, adding or deleting spikes at random. Standard quantitative methods such as peristimulus histograms and Fourier analysis use stimulus-locked averaging to enhance detection of the driven component of neuronal responses and de-emphasize the "noise. " However, neural activity also includes bursts, oscillations, and other episodic events that standard averaging methods overlook. If this activity is stimulus independent, it can be characterized by standard power spectral analysis (or autocorrelation). But activity that is excited by (but not temporally locked to) the visual stimulus cannot be characterized by averaging or standard spectral analysis. Phase-locked spectral analysis (PLSA) is a new method that examines this "residual" activity-the difference between the individual responses to each cycle of a periodic stimulus and their average. With PLSA, residual activity is characterized in terms of temporal envelopes and their carriers. Previously, PLSA demonstrated broadband interactions between periodic visual stimuli and fluctuations in the local field potential of macaque V1. In the present study, single-unit responses (SUA) from parafoveal V1 in anesthetized macaque monkey are examined with this technique. Recordings were made from 21 neurons, 6 of which were recorded in pairs along with multiunit activity (MUA) from separate electrodes and 8 of which were recorded along with MUA from the same electrode. PLSA was applied to responses to preferred (orientation, direction, and spatial frequency) and nonpreferred drifting gratings. For preferred stimuli, all cells demonstrated broadband (1-10 Hz and higher) residual activity that waxed and waned with the stimulus cycle, suggesting that changes in the residual activity are introduced routinely by visual stimulation. Moreover, some reconstructed envelopes indicate that the residual activity was sharply gated by the stimulus cycle. Oscillations occasionally were seen in the power spectrum of single units. Phase-locked cross-spectra were determined for 3 SUA/SUA pairs and 11 SUA/MUA pairs. Residual activity in the cross-spectra was generally much less than the residual activity determined separately from each neuron. The reduction in the residual activity in the cross-spectra suggests that nearby neurons may gate inputs from distinct and relatively independent neuronal subpopulations that together generate the background rhythms of striate cortex.
The PENG System: Practice and Experience

The PENG system is intended to provide an integrated and personalized environment for news professionals, providing functionalities for filtering, distributed retrieval, and a flexible interface environment for the display and manipulation of news materials. In this paper, we review the progress and results of the PENG system to date, and describe in detail the document filtering part of the system, which is designed to gather and filter documents to user profiles. The current architecture was described, along with some of the main issues which have so far been found in its development
Crop Disease Dynamic Forecast Integrated with Case-based Reasoning Methodology

Taking cucumber downy mildew (CDM) as research object, this research explores a technology of crop disease dynamic forecast integrated with case-based reasoning (CBR) methodology. A case indexing mechanism guided by idea of vantage case is developed to speed up the retrieval process and rapidly generate a similar case set for a new case in this CBR system. The range of optimal cluster number for this application is determined through the analysis and comparison between the exhaustive search and the search using proposed indexing mechanism. The precision and recall evaluations are conducted for each testing case using the X fold cross-validation approach, the reasoning effectiveness employing different thresholds of dissimilarity distance (TDD) is figured out and the optimal TDD for this CBR system is determined
Link Graph Analysis for Adult Images Classification

In order to protect an image search engine's users from undesirable results adult images' classifier should be built. The information about links from websites to images is employed to create such a classifier. These links are represented as a bipartite website-image graph. Each vertex is equipped with scores of adultness and decentness. The scores for image vertexes are initialized with zero, those for website vertexes are initialized according to a text-based website classifier. An iterative algorithm that propagates scores within a website-image graph is described. The scores obtained are used to classify images by choosing an appropriate threshold. The experiments on Internet-scale data have shown that the algorithm under consideration increases classification recall by 17% in comparison with a simple algorithm which classifies an image as adult if it is connected with at least one adult site (at the same precision level).
Describing query expansion using logic-induced vectors of performance measures

Practical information retrieval is pervaded by Boolean variety as much as it is by term selection. One of the problems of building models that describe IR is therefore that of characterising the effect of Boolean variety on retrieval performance. An approach to this problem is described based on the use of vectors to characterise retrieval performance and focusing on the changes in direction and magnitude of these vectors under the joint influences of term addition (i.e. query expansion) and choice of logic operator. Several novel multivariate constructs are proposed based on this ‘logic/vector’ approach, including: (1) the centroid vector of the vectors defined by ANDing, ORing and AND NOTing a new term to a predecessor search expression, (2) the area defined by the vertices of these three terms, when two or three performance variables are used, and (3) changes to the vector angles induced by these logic operators. The way in which these constructs change during query expansion offers a characterisation of that process and may suggest stopping rules for it. An analysis of MEDLINE data is described which generates several initial hypotheses using these constructs.
1 CFD PREDICTION OF PRESSURE DROP FOR THE INLET REGION OF A PWR FUEL ASSEMBLY

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been widely used in pressure drop/hydraulic loss calculations in many industries, including the aerospace and turbo-machinery industry as well as in the nuclear power industry. During the past 30 years, a significant amount of time and effort have been spent in benchmarking the CFD tools and models against test data in aerospace and turbo-machinery industry. The application of the CFD methods in the nuclear power industry is relatively new in comparison and has accelerated in recent years. This paper focuses on the benchmarking of the CFD modeling of Westinghouse fuel assemblies. The pressure drop across the fuel assembly is a very important characteristic to consider in the design of any new fuel assembly design. The ability to accurately predict the pressure drop across the fuel assembly is critical in nuclear fuel design. In this paper, the effect of the turbulence model in the CFD modeling is investigated. Different computational meshes are generated and evaluated. The results show that the turbulence model and mesh density both have a significant effect on the pressure drop predictions. A well calibrated modeling procedure is needed to meet the strict requirements of the nuclear power industry. This paper shows that a well calibrated CFD model shortens the design cycle and saves costs in the development of new fuel assembly components. Most importantly, it enables Westinghouse to more easily investigate new fuel assembly component designs, some of which were never thought possible before because of the involved development process.
Reputation Based Security Model for Android Applications

The market for smart phones has been booming in the past few years. There are now over 400,000 applications on the Android market. Over 10 billion Android applications have been downloaded from the Android market. Due to the Android popularity, there are now a large number of malicious vendors targeting the platform. Many honest end users are being successfully hacked on a regular basis. In this work, a cloud based reputation security model has been proposed as a solution which greatly mitigates the malicious attacks targeting the Android market. Our security solution takes advantage of the fact that each application in the android platform is assigned a unique user id (UID). Our solution stores the reputation of Android applications in an anti-malware providers' cloud (AM Cloud). The experimental results witness that the proposed model could well identify the reputation index of a given application and hence its potential of being risky or not.
Gene density and transcription influence the localization of chromatin outside of chromosome territories detectable by FISH

Genes can be transcribed from within chromosome territories; however, the major histocompatibilty complex locus has been reported extending away from chromosome territories, and the incidence of this correlates with transcription from the region. A similar result has been seen for the epidermal differentiation complex region of chromosome 1. These data suggested that chromatin decondensation away from the surface of chromosome territories may result from, and/or may facilitate, transcription of densely packed genes subject to coordinate regulation. To investigate whether localization outside of the visible confines of chromosome territories can also occur for regions that are not coordinately regulated, we have examined the spatial organization of human 11p15.5 and the syntenic region on mouse chromosome 7. This region is gene rich but its genes are not coordinately expressed, rather overall high levels of transcription occur in several cell types. We found that chromatin from 11p15.5 frequently extends away from the chromosome 11 territory. Localization outside of territories was also detected for other regions of high gene density and high levels of transcription. This is shown to be partly dependent on ongoing transcription. We suggest that local gene density and transcription, rather than the activity of individual genes, influences the organization of chromosomes in the nucleus.
Efficacy of a Direct Instruction Approach to Promote Early Learning

EFFICACY OF A DIRECT INSTRUCTION APPROACH TO PROMOTE EARLY LEARNING By Jennifer Lee Salaway May 2008 Dissertation Supervised by Dr. Kara E. McGoey This study examined the effectiveness of Direct Instruction (DI) as an enhancement to a Developmentally Appropriate Preschool (DAP) curriculum in the form of increased pre-academic, language, and early literacy competencies for high-risk preschool children. Sixty-one preschool children were randomly assigned to either a DIAdd-On group or DAP-Only group. The children were administered the Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills (K-SEALS; Kaufman & Kaufman, 1993) and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Good & Kaminski, 2002) prior to receiving the intervention and upon completion of the study. All of the children were also administered the DIBELS throughout the implementation of the DI intervention to monitor their progress throughout the curriculum. It was hypothesized that children receiving both DI and DAP would demonstrate greater attainment of pre-
Different RNA Secondary Structure Prediction Methods

Bioinformatics is the combination of two fields Biology and Computer Science. Now a days this application plays vital role for each molecular biological study. It uses various implementations and algorithms for analyzing and integration of biological data. RNA (ribo-nucleic acid) provides a mechanism to copy the genetic information of the DNA. It is very important to study the folding of RNA molecules to understand their role and functionalities. Researchers can find different important role of RNA molecules depending upon their RNA secondary structure which will be useful to discover antiviral drugs for diseases. In this paper we have given a review of various implementations and algorithms for RNA Secondary structure prediction.
A MAGNETOELECTRIC ENERGY HARVESTER AND MANAGEMENT CIRCUIT

This paper proposes an H-type magnetoelectric (ME) composite structure consisting of a fork Fe-Ni magnetostrictive substrate and PZT piezoelectric plates. The fork composite structure has a higher ME voltage coefficient and a higher ME power output relative to other ME composite structures due to its higher quality (Q) factor. The fork composite structure can obtain an output power of 61µW at an ac magnetic field of 0.2Oe. In order to increase the output power, a new power management circuit is presented, which can collect/store the energy in a long time and release the energy for driving load in a short time. Experiments show that the instantaneous discharge circuit can drive a WSN node with an output power of 75mW at a distance of over 60m.
Subunit Recombinant Vaccine Protects against Monkeypox1

The smallpox vaccine Dryvax, a live vaccinia virus (VACV), protects against smallpox and monkeypox, but is contraindicated in immunocompromised individuals. Because Abs to VACV mediate protection, a live virus vaccine could be substituted by a safe subunit protein-based vaccine able to induce a protective Ab response. We immunized rhesus macaques with plasmid DNA encoding the monkeypox orthologs of the VACV L1R, A27L, A33R, and B5R proteins by the intradermal and i.m. routes, either alone or in combination with the equivalent recombinant proteins produced in Escherichia coli. Animals that received only DNA failed to produce high titer Abs, developed innumerable skin lesions after challenge, and died in a manner similar to placebo controls. By contrast, the animals vaccinated with proteins developed moderate to severe disease (20–155 skin lesions) but survived. Importantly, those immunized with DNA and boosted with proteins had mild disease with 15 or fewer lesions that resolved within days. DNA/protein immunization elicited Th responses and binding Ab titers to all four proteins that correlated negatively with the total lesion number. The sera of the immunized macaques recognized a limited number of linear B cell epitopes that are highly conserved among orthopoxviruses. Their identification may guide future efforts to develop simpler, safer, and more effective vaccines for monkeypox and smallpox.
Accessibility layers: levelling the field for blind people in mobile social contexts

Enabling access to a computing device is likely to have a huge impact in the quality of life of a person. Every once in a while, new technologies are devised and impact the way we communicate, work and even, how we have fun. Paradigmatically, it is often the case that a new technology empowers the general able-bodied user and fosters exclusion of people with disabilities. The emergence of touch-based smartphones as the de facto mobile interaction gadget created a gap between those that were able to use the device as it was deployed in the market and those that were not able to do so. The potential usages of these devices exploded and users that were at that time able to use mobile phones with physical keypads similarly to their peers, saw themselves living in the past of mobile interaction, from one day to the other. This was the case of blind people when smartphones started to dominate the market circa 2007.
Modeling and Simulation analysis of a new Photonic crystal fiber

A new Photonic crystal fiber structure with five air-holes in the first ring is proposed. This new PCF possess the advantages of fabrication and welding. The effective index, modal field profile and the dispersion (D) characteristics are analyzed by employing the finite element method. It is found that, by adjusting the fabrication parameters, the quinquangular photonic crystal fiber can achieve similar optical properties, even better, be superior to the hexagonal PCF.
Multivariate Statistical Process Control Charts and the Problem of Interpretation: A Short Overview and Some Applications in Industry

Woodall and Montgomery in a discussion paper, state that multivariate process control is one of the most rapidly developing sections of statistical process control. Nowadays, in industry, there are many situations in which the simultaneous monitoring or control, of two or more related quality - process characteristics is necessary. Process monitoring problems in which several related variables are of interest are collectively known as Multivariate Statistical Process Control (MSPC). This article has three parts. In the first part, we discuss in brief the basic procedures for the implementation of multivariate statistical process control via control charting. In the second part we present the most useful procedures for interpreting the out-of-control variable when a control charting procedure gives an out-of-control signal in a multivariate process. Finally, in the third, we present applications of multivariate statistical process control in the area of industrial process control, informatics, and business
Decentralized Innovation Marking for Neural Controllers in Embodied Evolution

We propose a novel innovation marking method for Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Topologies in Embodied Evolutionary Robotics. This method does not rely on a centralized clock, which makes it well suited for the decentralized nature of EE where no central evolutionary process governs the adaptation of a team of robots exchanging messages locally. This method is inspired from event dating algorithms, based on logical clocks, that are used in distributed systems, where clock synchronization is not possible. We compare our method to odNEAT, an algorithm in which agents use local time clocks as innovation numbers, on two multi-robot learning tasks: navigation and item collection. Our experiments showed that the proposed method performs as well as odNEAT, with the added benefit that it does not rely on synchronization of clocks and is not affected by time drifts.
HapTip: Displaying Haptic Shear Forces at the Fingertips for Multi-Finger Interaction in Virtual Environments

The fingertips are one of the most important and sensitive parts of our body. They are the first stimulated areas of the hand when we interact with our environment. Providing haptic feedback to the fingertips in virtual reality could thus drastically improve perception and interaction with virtual environments. In this paper, we present a modular approach called HapTip to display such haptic sensations at the level of the fingertips. This approach relies on a wearable and compact haptic device able to simulate 2 Degree of Freedom (DoF) shear forces on the fingertip with a displacement range of +/- 2 mm. Several modules can be added and used jointly in order to address multi-finger and/or bimanual scenarios in virtual environments. For that purpose, we introduce several haptic rendering techniques to cover different cases of 3D interaction such as touching a rough virtual surface, or feeling the inertia or weight of a virtual object. In order to illustrate the possibilities offered by HapTip, we provide four use cases focused on touching or grasping virtual objects. To validate the efficiency of our approach, we also conducted experiments to assess the tactile perception obtained with HapTip. Our results show that participants can successfully discriminate the directions of the 2 DoF stimulation of our haptic device. We found also that participants could well perceive different weights of virtual objects simulated using two HapTip devices. We believe that HapTip could be used in numerous applications in virtual reality for which 3D manipulation and tactile sensations are often crucial, such as in virtual prototyping or virtual training.
Turbulence from localized random expansion waves

In an attempt to determine the outer scale of turbulence driven by localized sources, such as supernova explosions in the interstellar medium, we consider a forcing function given by the gradient of Gaussian profiles localized at random positions. Different coherence times of the forcing function are considered. In order to isolate the effects specific to the nature of the forcing function, we consider the case of a polytropic equation of state and restrict ourselves to forcing amplitudes such that the flow remains subsonic. When the coherence time is short, the outer scale agrees with the half-width of the Gaussian. Longer coherence times can cause extra power at large scales, but this would not yield power-law behaviour at scales larger than that of the expansion waves. At scales smaller than the scale of the expansion waves the spectrum is close to power law with a spectral exponent of −2. The resulting flow is virtually free of vorticity. Viscous driving of vorticity turns out to be weak and self-amplification through the non-linear term is found to be insignificant. No evidence for small-scale dynamo action is found in cases where the magnetic induction equation is solved simultaneously with the other equations.
RealNet: A Topology Generator Based on Real Internet Topology

One of the challenges of large-scale network simulations is the lack of scalable and realistic Internet topology generators. Previous topology generators are either not scalable to millions of nodes, or not able to capture characteristics of the Internet topology. In this work, we propose a topology generator which can generate accurate large-scale models of the Internet. We extract the AS (autonomous system) level and router level topology of the Internet with various data sources such as BGP routing tables and traceroute records. With the real Internet topology, we infer the AS topology and the commercial relationship among ASes. We also group the routers into clusters according to their positions in the Internet. A compact routing core is built with the AS topology and router cluster topology. Each generated topology consists of the routing core and a set of end-hosts connected to router clusters. The generated topology is realistic since its routing core is extracted from Internet. We make the assumption of uniform routing policy within an AS. Therefore, the routing path calculation of any source/destination pair consists of finding the AS path for the source/destination ASes and finding the router level path within each AS in the AS path. Since the routing pate depends only on the routing core, its size is independent of the number of end-hosts in the generated topology.
Transmission Properties of Two-Dimensional Chirped Phononic Crystal

The mechanical wave transmission was investigated by a two-dimensional structure made of rods with a periodic arrangement — as the base structure. Compared structures had the same network constant in the direction perpendicular to the propagation of the acoustic wave, while the distances of subsequent layers of phononic crystal increased by a certain factor k. Depending on parameter k, chirped phononic crystal transmission properties were tested. The numerical analysis uses the finite difference time domain algorithm. The discrete Fourier transform allowed to determine the frequency characteristics of the tested systems. In order to verify numerical data, the experimental data was analyzed.