Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Convergence of the Visual Field Split: Hemispheric Modeling of Face and Object Recognition

Anatomical evidence shows that our visual field is initially split along the vertical midline and contralaterally projected to different hemispheres. It remains unclear at which processing stage the split information converges. In the current study, we applied the Double Filtering by Frequency (DFF) theory (Ivry & Robertson, 1998) to modeling the visual field split; the theory assumes a right-hemisphere/low-frequency bias. We compared three cognitive architectures with different timings of convergence and examined their cognitive plausibility to account for the left-side bias effect in face perception observed in human data. We show that the early convergence model failed to show the left-side bias effect. The modeling, hence, suggests that the convergence may take place at an intermediate or late stage, at least after information has been extracted/encoded separately in the two hemispheres, a fact that is often overlooked in computational modeling of cognitive processes. Comparative anatomical data suggest that this separate encoding process that results in differential frequency biases in the two hemispheres may be engaged from V1 up to the level of area V3a and V4v, and converge at least after the lateral occipital region. The left-side bias effect in our model was also observed in Greeble recognition; the modeling, hence, also provides testable predictions about whether the left-side bias effect may also be observed in (expertise-level) object recognition.
Phosphorus Fertilizer for Corn; How Should it be Applied?

In 1968, soil phosphorus deficiency was known to limit yield of small grain crops, alfalfa, potatoes and corn in North Dakota as evidenced from yield responses that have been obtained from application of phosphorus fertilizers on many soils throughout the state. Selecting the most suitable method of applying fertilizer to correct soil phosphorus deficiency varies with, but is not limited to, crop characteristics such as total need, rooting habit, and growth stage when maximum uptake occurs, and with economic factors such as purchasing power and consideration of return on the investment. Methods of applying phosphate fertilizers to corn in North Dakota have been investigated for several years. These studies show that a combination of band plus broadcast application of phosphorus produced larger yield increases than the broadcast treatment at four sites. These are discussed in this article. Banded phosphorus fertilizer superimposed over broadcast phosphorus increased corn grain yield over a broadcast treatment alone in 50 per cent of the responding trials.
Periodically weighted model-matching problems by LPTV controllers formulated in dual lifted forms

We propose two types of periodically weighted model-matching problem by linear periodically time-varying (LPTV) control for LTI plants. The causality constraint of LPTV controller is satisfied via a representation that we call dual lifted forms. We show the superiority of LPTV control to LTI control and demonstrate a design example.
On the star formation history of IZw 18

It has been suggested that a continuous low star formation rate has been the dominant regime in IZw 18 and in dwarf galaxies for the lifetime of these objects (Legrand et al. 1999). Here, we discuss and model various star-forming histories for IZw 18. Particularly, we show that if the metallicity observed in IZw 18 results from starburst events only, the observed colors constrain the fraction of the metals ejected from the galaxy to be less than 50-70 %. We demonstrate that the continuous star formation scenario reproduces the observed parameters of IZw 18. A continuous star formation rate (SFR) of about 10E-4 Msol/yr during 14 Gyr reproduces precisely the observed abundances. This SFR is comparable with the lowest SFR observed in low surface brightness galaxies (van Zee et al. 1997). Generalized to all galaxies, the low continuous SFR scenario accounts for various facts: the presence of star formation in quiescent dwarfs and LSBG, the metallicity increase with time in the most underabundant DLA systems, and the metal content extrapolations to the outskirts of spiral galaxies. Also the apparent absence of galaxies with a metallicity lower than IZw 18, the apparent absence of HI clouds without optical counterparts, and the homogeneity of abundances in dwarfs galaxies are natural outcomes of the scenario. This implies that, even if starbursts are strong and important events in the life of galaxies, their more subdued but continuous star formation regime cannot be ignored when accounting for their chemical evolution.
The UNIX Process Identity Crisis: A Standards-Driven Approach to Setuid

We revisit the setuid family of calls for privilege management that is implemented in several widely-used operating systems. Three of the four commonly used calls in the family are standardized by POSIX. We investigate the current status of setuid, and in the process, challenge some assertions in prior work. We address three sets of questions with regards to the setuid family. (1) Is the POSIX standard indeed broken as prior work suggests? (2) Are implementations POSIX-compliant as claimed? (3) Are the wrapper functions that prior work proposes to circumvent issues with setuid calls correct and usable? Towards (1), we express the standards in a precise syntax that allows us to assess whether they are unambiguous, logically consistent descriptions of well-formed functions. We have discovered that two of the three functions that are standardized fit these criteria, thereby challenging assertions in prior work regarding the quality of the standard. In cases wherein the standard is broken, we give a clear characterization, and suggest that the standard can be fixed easily, but at the cost of backwards-compatibility. Towards (2), we perform a state-space enumeration as in prior work, report on our discoveries, and discuss the implications of non-conformance and differences in implementation. Towards (3), we discuss some issues that we have discovered with prior wrappers. We then propose a new suite of wrapper functions which are designed with a different mindset from prior work, and provide both stronger guarantees with respect to atomicity and a clearer semantics for permanent and temporary changes in process identity. With a fresh approach, our work is a contribution to a well-established approach to privilege management.
Vaccinia Viral Protein A27 Is Anchored to the Viral Membrane via a Cooperative Interaction with Viral Membrane Protein A17*

Background: Vaccinia viral protein A27 associates with viral membrane protein A17 for anchoring to the viral membrane. Results: A27 specifically interacts with two binding regions within the N-terminal domain of A17. Conclusion: The A27-A17 interaction is mediated through a specific and cooperative binding mechanism. Significance: As demonstrated, the F1 and F2 bindings are critical for A27 anchoring to the viral membrane and virion assembly. The vaccinia viral protein A27 in mature viruses specifically interacts with heparan sulfate for cell surface attachment. In addition, A27 associates with the viral membrane protein A17 to anchor to the viral membrane; however, the specific interaction between A27 and A17 remains largely unclear. To uncover the active binding sites and the underlying binding mechanism, we expressed and purified the N-terminal (18–50 residues) and C-terminal (162–203 residues) fragments of A17, which are denoted A17-N and A17-C. Through surface plasmon resonance, the binding affinity of A27/A17-N (KA = 3.40 × 108 m−1) was determined to be approximately 3 orders of magnitude stronger than that of A27/A17-C (KA = 3.40 × 105 m−1), indicating that A27 prefers to interact with A17-N rather than A17-C. Despite the disordered nature of A17-N, the A27-A17 interaction is mediated by a specific and cooperative binding mechanism that includes two active binding sites, namely 32SFMPK36 (denoted as F1 binding) and 20LDKDLFTEEQ29 (F2). Further analysis showed that F1 has stronger binding affinity and is more resistant to acidic conditions than is F2. Furthermore, A27 mutant proteins that retained partial activity to interact with the F1 and F2 sites of the A17 protein were packaged into mature virus particles at a reduced level, demonstrating that the F1/F2 interaction plays a critical role in vivo. Using these results in combination with site-directed mutagenesis data, we established a computer model to explain the specific A27-A17 binding mechanism.
The ten-day mark as a practical diagnostic approach for acute paranasal sinusitis in children.

BACKGROUND Sinusitis is one of the diseases most frequently overlooked by the primary practitioner. METHODS We suspected the diagnosis of sinusitis in children with respiratory symptoms that persisted for > 10 days: the 10-day mark. A radiographic projection of maxillary sinuses (Water's view) was indicated, and patients with abnormal radiographs were diagnosed as having sinusitis. After antimicrobial treatment for 2 weeks, we evaluated clinical outcome and follow-up radiographs. RESULTS The 10-day mark culled 146 suspected children from 2013 outpatients with respiratory complaints. Water's view radiographs revealed sinusitis in 135 patients (92.5% of the suspected children). They included 35 patients with allergy. After treatment only 4 patients in the allergy group (11%) improved completely. In contrast 61 nonallergic patients (61%) were completely improved. CONCLUSIONS The 10-day mark is a simple and practical diagnostic basis for acute paranasal sinusitis. The associated allergic respiratory diseases respond infrequently to antimicrobial treatment.
A Frailty Mixture Cure Model with Application to Hospital Readmission Cata

Mixture cure models have been utilized to analyze survival data with possible cure. This paper considers the inclusion of frailty into the mixture cure model to model recurrent event data with a cure fraction. An attractive feature of the proposed model is the allowance for heterogeneity in risk among those individuals experiencing the event of interest in addition to the incorporation of a cured component. Maximum likelihood estimates can be obtained using the Expectation Maximization algorithm and standard errors are calculated from the Bootstrap method. The model is applied to hospital readmission data among colorectal cancer patients. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Advanced Client/Server Authentication in TLS

Many business transactions on the Internet occur between strangers, that is, between entities with no prior relationship and no common security domain. Traditional security approaches based on identity or capabilities do not solve the problem of establishing trust between strangers. New approaches to trust establishment are required that are secure, scalable, and portable. One new approach to mutual trust establishment is trust negotiation, the bilateral exchange of digital credentials to establish trust gradually. This paper describes the Trust Negotiation in TLS (TNT) protocol, an extension to the TLS handshake protocol that incorporates recent advances in trust negotiation into TLS to provide advanced client/server authentication in TLS. In this paper we describe the current limitations in TLS client/server authentication with respect to trust establishment, and show how the TNT protocol overcomes them. We also describe our implementation of TNT, built using PureTLS, a Java TLS package that is freely available. This implementation is the first to provide confidential trust negotiation, verification of private keys during trust negotiation, and a single trust negotiation protocol supporting interoperable trust negotiation strategies.
Vortex : taking SQL-on-Hadoop to the next level

Vortex is a new SQL-on-Hadoop system built on top of the fast Vectorwise analytical database system. Vortex achieves fault tolerance and scalable data storage by relying on HDFS, extending the state-of-the-art in SQL-on-Hadoop systems by instrumenting the HDFS block replication policy to ensure local reads under most circumstances. Vortex integrates with YARN for workload management, achieving a high degree of elasticity. Even though HDFS is an append-only filesystem, and it supports ordered table storage, Vortex can accommodate trickle updates through Positional Delta Trees (PDTs), a differential update structure that can be queried efficiently. We describe the main technical extensions to single-server Vectorwise that turned it into a Hadoop-based MPP system, in terms of workload management, parallel query optimization and execution, HDFS storage, transaction processing and Spark integration. In the evaluation section we compare Vortex with HAWQ, Impala, SparkSQL and Hive, showing orders of magnitude better performance than these competitors.
Astrocyte pathology and the absence of non-cell autonomy in an induced pluripotent stem cell model of TDP-43 proteinopathy

Glial proliferation and activation are associated with disease progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar dementia. In this study, we describe a unique platform to address the question of cell autonomy in transactive response DNA-binding protein (TDP-43) proteinopathies. We generated functional astroglia from human induced pluripotent stem cells carrying an ALS-causing TDP-43 mutation and show that mutant astrocytes exhibit increased levels of TDP-43, subcellular mislocalization of TDP-43, and decreased cell survival. We then performed coculture experiments to evaluate the effects of M337V astrocytes on the survival of wild-type and M337V TDP-43 motor neurons, showing that mutant TDP-43 astrocytes do not adversely affect survival of cocultured neurons. These observations reveal a significant and previously unrecognized glial cell-autonomous pathological phenotype associated with a pathogenic mutation in TDP-43 and show that TDP-43 proteinopathies do not display an astrocyte non-cell-autonomous component in cell culture, as previously described for SOD1 ALS. This study highlights the utility of induced pluripotent stem cell-based in vitro disease models to investigate mechanisms of disease in ALS and other TDP-43 proteinopathies.
Dynamic Community Detection in Weighted Graph Streams

In this paper, we aim to tackle the problem of discovering dynamic communities in weighted graph streams, especially when the underlying social behavior of individuals varies considerably over different graph regions. To tackle this problem, a novel structure termed Local Weighted-Edge-based Pattern (LWEP) Summary is proposed to describe a local homogeneous region. To efficiently compute LWEPs, some statistics need to be maintained according to the principle of preserving maximum weighted neighbor information with limited memory storage. To this end, the proposed approach is divided into online and offline components. During the online phase, we introduce some statistics, termed top-k neighbor lists and topk candidate lists, to track. The key is to maintain only the top-k neighbors with the largest link weights for each node. To allow for less active neighbors to transition into top-k neighbors, an auxiliary data structure termed top-k candidate list is used to identify emerging active neighbors. The statistics can be efficiently maintained in the online component. In the offline component, these statistics are used at each snapshot to efficiently compute LWEPs. Clustering is then performed to consolidate LWEPs into high level clusters. Finally, mapping is made between clusters of consecutive snapshots to generate temporally smooth communities. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.
Improving the Quality of the Community Relations Knowledge Using Implicit Connections

This paper presents a research that looks for discovering implicit community-based relations by identifying connection degrees and shared patterns between individuals. It introduces the Newsletter Tracking System (NTS) that gathers individuals' implicit information and supports a Connection Degree Model (CDM) that identifies the grain of connection between individuals. Also, based on that, it can foster the quality of community relations. Still, this paper describes the Nano-Tera.ch case study where this research was developed and evaluated with.
Economic and Policy Implications of Restricted Patch Distribution

In this paper, we study how restricting the availability of patches to legal users impacts the vendor’s profits, market share, software maintenance decisions, and welfare outcomes. Prior work on this topic assumes that the hacker’s effort is independent of the vendor’s decision to release the patch freely or not. Clearly, if the patch is not available to everyone, the hacker finds it easier to exploit the vulnerability in the product and, as a result, is likely to alter his effort. To understand the role of a strategic hacker, we build a game-theoretic model, where the hacker’s decision is endogenous. With this model, we find that the hacker’s effort may, on the one hand, decrease the utility that the vendor can extract from the consumers but, on the other hand, may help differentiate the legal version of the product from the pirated version. A vendor can strategically exploit the hacker’s behavior in its pricing and software maintenance decisions. The endogeneity of the hacker’s actions drives several of.
Polyurethane Membranes Modified with Isopropyl Myristate as a Potential Candidate for Encapsulating Electronic Implants: A Study of Biocompatibility and Water Permeability

Medical polyurethanes have shown good bio-stability and mechanical properties and have been used as coating for implantable medical devices. However, despite their excellent properties, they are relatively permeable to liquid water and water vapour which is a drawback for electronic implant encapsulation. In this study polyether polyurethanes with different soft segment molecular weights were modified by incorporating isopropyl myristate (IPM), as a hydrophobic modifying agent, and the effect of IPM on water resistant and biocompatibility of membranes were investigated. IPM changed the surface properties of the polyurethane film and reduced its surface energy. Polyurethane films were found to be stable with IPM concentrations of 1–5 wt% based upon their chemistry; however it leached out in BSA at higher concentrations. Though, low concentrations of IPM reduced both liquid water and water vapour permeability; at higher IPM content liquid permeability did not improved significantly. In general, the polyurethane materials showed much lower water permeability compared with currently used silicone packaging material for electronic implants. In addition, cytotoxicity assessment of IPM containing polyurethanes showed no evidence of cytotoxcity up to 5 wt% IPM.
Considering basic emotional state information in speaker verification

The paper presents speaker verification results for six basic emotional states. The database of emotional speech (six acted states: anger, sadness, happiness, fear, disgust, surprise) plus the neutral state were examined with a typical speaker verification system based on MFCC features and GMM classifiers. The obtained results were confronted with the subjective and objective emotion recognition scores. The significant influence of emotion on speaker recognition scores is substantially bigger for emotions with a strong activation factor.
Behavioral activation versus cognitive restructuring to reduce automatic negative thoughts in anxiety generating situations

Background: Recent studies have compared the efficacy of cognitive intervention compared to behavioral techniques for the treatment of different disorders. In line with that work, the empirical study presented here examined the efficacy of Behavioral Activation (BA) and Cognitive Therapy (CT) on Negative Automatic Thoughts (PANs) elicited in situations generating anxiety. Method: Based on a sample of 42 students aged 18 to 21 who took the ISRA B, BADS and EROS, 18 subjects with the highest scores were selected and assigned at random to one of two experimental groups or to a control group. Experimental Group 1 was given intervention based on CT and Experimental Group 2 based on BA. Both interventions consisted of five 60‐min sessions. Results: Pre and post treatment measurement analyses reveal that both conditions effectively reduced the intensity of the anxiety response. However, BA was the only condition showing a significant reduction in ANTs. Conclusions: The results are discussed stressing the efficacy of BA in exclusively cognitive intervention. &NA; Activación conductual versus reestructuración cognitiva para la reducción de pensamientos automáticos negativos ante situaciones generadoras de ansiedad. Antecedentes: varios estudios han comparado la eficacia de las intervenciones cognitivas frente a las basadas en técnicas conductuales para el tratamiento de distintos trastornos. En línea con estos trabajos, se presenta un estudio empírico en el que se examina la efectividad de la Activación Conductual (AC) y la Terapia Cognitiva (TC) sobre los Pensamientos Automáticos Negativos (PANs) elicitados ante situaciones generadoras de ansiedad. Método: una muestra de 42 estudiantes entre los 18 y 21 años completaron el ISRA B, BADS y EROS. 18 sujetos con puntuaciones más altas se asignaron de forma aleatoria a dos grupos experimentales o a un grupo control. En el grupo experimental 1 se aplicó una intervención basada en la TC y en el grupo experimental 2 una a partir de la AC. Ambas constaron de cinco sesiones de 60 minutos cada una. Resultados: los análisis realizados revelan que ambas condiciones fueron eficaces para la reducción de la intensidad de la respuesta de ansiedad de acuerdo con las medidas pre y postratamiento. Sin embargo, para la cantidad de PANs, la AC fue la única condición en mostrar una reducción significativa. Conclusiones: se discuten los resultados destacando la eficacia de la AC sobre las intervenciones exclusivamente cognitivas.
Logging and recovery in adaptive software distributed shared memory systems

Software distributed shared memory (DSM) improves the programmability of message-passing machines and workstation clusters by providing a shared memory abstract (i.e., a coherent global address space) to programmers. As in any distributed system, however; the probability of software DSM failures increases as the system size grows. This paper presents a new efficient logging protocol for adaptive software DSM (ADSM), called adaptive logging (AL). It is suitable for both coordinated and independent checkpointing since it speeds up the recovery process and eliminates the unbounded rollback problem associated with independent checkpointing. By leveraging the existing coherence data maintained by ADSM, our AL protocol adapts to log only unrecoverable data (which cannot be recreated or retrieved after a failure) necessary for correct recovery, reducing both the number of messages logged and the amount of logged data. We have performed experiments on a cluster of eight Sun Ultra-5 workstations, comparing our AL protocol against the previous message logging (ML) protocol by implementing both protocols in TreadMarks-based ADSM. The experimental results show that our AL protocol consistently outperforms the ML protocol: Our protocol increases the execution time slightly by 2% to 10% during failure-free execution, while the ML protocol lengthens the execution time by many folds due to its larger log size and higher number of messages logged. Our AL-based recovery also outperforms ML-based recovery by 9% to 17% under parallel application examined.