Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Principles for developing animal models of military PTSD

The extent to which animal studies can be relevant to military posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) continues to be a matter of discussion. Some features of the clinical syndrome are more easily modeled than others. In the animal literature, a great deal of attention is focused on modeling the characteristics of military exposures and their impact on measurable behaviors and biological parameters. There are many issues to consider regarding the ecological validity of predator, social defeat or immobilization stress to combat-related experience. In contrast, less attention has been paid to individual variation following these exposures. Such variation is critical to understand how individual differences in the response to military trauma exposure may result to PTSD or resilience. It is important to consider potential differences in biological findings when comparing extremely exposed to non-exposed animals, versus those that result from examining individual differences. Animal models of military PTSD are also critical in advancing efforts in clinical treatment. In an ideal translational approach to study deployment related outcomes, information from humans and animals, blood and brain, should be carefully considered in tandem, possibly even computed simultaneously, to identify molecules, pathways and networks that are likely to be the key drivers of military PTSD symptoms. With the use novel biological methodologies (e.g., optogenetics) in the animal models, critical genes and pathways can be tuned up or down (rather than over-expressed or ablated completely) in discrete brain regions. Such techniques together with pre-and post-deployment human imaging will accelerate the identification of novel pharmacological and non-pharmacological intervention strategies.
Parallel force-position control scheme with fuzzy gain tuning for single port laparoscopic surgery

This paper proposes a navigation method for manipulators which handle a surgical instrument or robotic platform introduced through a SILS multiport trocar. This method is based on a parallel position and force control which allow to the manipulator makes movements around the fulcrum point making the minimum force in the patient's abdomen. In order to avoid the hysteresis effect due to the space between the instrument and the trocar when the instrument is inserted, a fuzzy gain scheduler has been designed. These algorithms have been implemented in a six degrees of freedom manipulator with a force sensor in the end effector. Finally, the experimental results are shown in order to demonstrate how it works in a real environment.
Discovering Conceptual Metaphors using Source Domain Spaces

This article makes two contributions towards the use of lexical resources and corpora; specifically making use of them for gaining access to and using word associations. The direct application of our approach is for detecting linguistic and conceptual metaphors automatically in text. We describe our method of building conceptual spaces, that is, defining the vocabulary that characterizes a Source Domain (e.g., Disease) of a conceptual metaphor (e.g., Poverty is a Disease). We also describe how these conceptual spaces are used to group linguistic metaphors into conceptual metaphors. Our method works in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Russian and Farsi. We provide details of how our method can be evaluated and evaluation results that show satisfactory performance across all languages.
On the Rate of Information Gain in Experiments with a Finite Parameter Set

Let (E k) be a sequence of experiments with the same nite parameter set. Suppose only that identiication of the parameter is possible asymptotically. For large classes of information functionals we show that their exponential rates of convergence towards complete information coincide. As a special case we obtain the rate of the Shannon capacity of product experiments.
A texture-based approach for content based image retrieval system for plant leaves images

Image identification of plant leaves based on human vision is difficult task as well as plant identification based on keywords retrieval. It requires the domain knowledge in the botanist field. This work proposes the image texture analysis using Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT) and combined with an entropy measurement to identify a query image to one of seven classes that consists of 280 plant leaves images. The experimental results show that the proposed method yields higher correctness retrieval accuracy rate which reaches up to 92% compared to the Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) that gives 49.28%.
2DPCA and IMLDA method of feature extraction for online handwritten Tibetan recognition

Feature extraction not only extracts the best feature which suits for the pattern classification from the original information, but also reduces the dimensions of sample in great degree. It is the significant part in the area of pattern recognition. Firstly, to extract principal component of Tibetan characters features by 2DPCA method, which can make within-class matrix no longer singularity and, the feature vectors extract from Tibetan characters have relatively high independence. And then, reducing dimension and compressing feature matrix by the IMLDA (image matrix liner discriminate analysis) approach. Finally, the reduction dimensionality Tibetan characters feature is applied to the system of online handwritten Tibetan recognition and the recognition rate increase slightly; meanwhile the paper analyzed the reasons that influence the Tibetan characters recognition.
Micro-detail comparative forest site analysis using high-resolution satellite imagery

This study presents comparative analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery taken on different dates around a detected incident of interest. Under an assumption of a micro-detail land monitoring and disturbance detection interests we compared the patterns of image captured disturbances on the analyzed site and leveraged their interpretation with knowledge base published on relevant subjects. The incident of interest was the Polish Air Force One TU-154M plane destruction on Apr. 10, 2010. We analyzed the image changes on micro-detail level tracked over time and considered with respect to the patterns of destruction and the plane debris size distribution in space against a broad engineering literature describing destruction patterns of thin walled structures, such as planes and cars. Then, we compared the spatial distribution of the debris between the pictures taken on different dates. Finally, we also considered on ground changes in soil moisture and landscape features between different images. The main conclusions from the study were that: (i) the pattern of the plane destruction debris and their spatial distribution found on the ground following the catastrophe was not consistent with expectations associated with a plane crash but rather was suggestive of a plane explosion; (ii) the scene and the plane debris were manipulated over time during the very initial period after the destruction; (iii) surprisingly the numerous heavy equipment vehicles present on the site , which were much larger than the image spatial resolution, were not recorded on any of the satellite images from Apr. 11, 12, or 14, 2010; (iv) the frequency of the high resolution satellite imagery captured around this airport on the dates of Apr. 5, 9, 11, 12, and 14, 2010, is intriguing given that the last captured image of this type prior to April 5, 2010, took place only in 2007; and (v) a large amount of snow-like high reflectivity coverage in the middle of the crash scene was followed by low reflectivity (suggestive of dry ground) areas following the crash despite generally swampy surroundings of the site and no reported explosion of the plane, which could imply a fast drying out of the melting snow large amounts of water.
(Non)cooperative Dialogues

Objective: The effect of emotion on (non)co-operation in unscripted, ecological communication is investigated. Background: The participants in an interaction are generally cooperative in that, for instance, they tend to reduce the chance of misunderstandings in communication. However, it is also clear that cooperation is not complete. Positive and negative emotional states also appear to be connected to the participants’ commitment to cooperate or not, respectively. So far, however, it has proven remarkably difficult to test this because of the lack of entirely objective measurements of both cooperation levels and emotional responses. Method: In this article, the authors present behavioral methods and coding schemes for analyzing cooperation and (surface) indicators of emotions in face-to-face interactions and show that they can be used to study the correlation between emotions and cooperation effectively. Results: The authors observed large negative correlations between heart rate and cooperation, and a group of facial expressions was found to be predictive of the level of cooperation of the speakers. Conclusion: It is possible to develop reliable methods to code for cooperation, and with such coding schemes it is possible to confirm the commonsense prediction that noncooperative behavior by a conversational participant affects the other participant in ways that can be measured quantitatively. Application: These results shed light on an aspect of interaction that is crucial to building adaptive systems able to measure cooperation and to respond to the user’s affective states. The authors expect their methods to be applicable to building and testing such interaction systems.
Multiview Triplet Embedding: Learning Attributes in Multiple Maps

For humans, it is usually easier to make statements about the similarity of objects in relative, rather than absolute terms. Moreover, subjective comparisons of objects can be based on a number of different and independent attributes. For example, objects can be compared based on their shape, color, etc. In this paper, we consider the problem of uncovering these hidden attributes given a set of relative distance judgments in the form of triplets. The attribute that was used to generate a particular triplet in this set is unknown. Such data occurs, e.g., in crowdsourcing applications where the triplets are collected from a large group of workers. We propose the Multiview Triplet Embedding (MVTE) algorithm that produces a number of low-dimensional maps, each corresponding to one of the hidden attributes. The method can be used to assess how many different attributes were used to create the triplets, as well as to assess the difficulty of a distance comparison task, and find objects that have multiple interpretations in relation to the other objects.
Coordinated Regulation of Murine Cardiomyocyte Contractility by Nanomolar (−)-Epigallocatechin-3-Gallate, the Major Green Tea Catechin

Green tea polyphenolic catechins exhibit biological activity in a wide variety of cell types. Although reports in the lay and scientific literature suggest therapeutic potential for improving cardiovascular health, the underlying molecular mechanisms of action remain unclear. Previous studies have implicated a wide range of molecular targets in cardiac muscle for the major green tea catechin, (−)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), but effects were observed only at micromolar concentrations of unclear clinical relevance. Here, we report that nanomolar concentrations of EGCG significantly enhance contractility of intact murine myocytes by increasing electrically evoked Ca2+ transients, sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca2+ content, and ryanodine receptor type 2 (RyR2) channel open probability. Voltage-clamp experiments demonstrate that 10 nM EGCG significantly inhibits the Na+-Ca2+ exchanger. Of importance, other Na+ and Ca2+ handling proteins such as Ca2+-ATPase, Na+-H+ exchanger, and Na+-K+-ATPase were not affected by EGCG ≤1 μM. Thus, nanomolar EGCG increases contractility in intact myocytes by coordinately modulating SR Ca2+ loading, RyR2-mediated Ca2+ release, and Na+-Ca2+ exchange. Inhibition of Na+-K+-ATPase activity probably contributes to the positive inotropic effects observed at EGCG concentrations >1 μM. These newly recognized actions of nanomolar and micromolar EGCG should be considered when the therapeutic and toxicological potential of green tea supplementation is evaluated and may provide a novel therapeutic strategy for improving contractile function in heart failure.
Impact of Financial Liberalization and Governance on the Financial Development in Developing Countries

The study examines the impact of financial liberalization and governance on the financial development in developing countries. The study takes the sample of 48 developing countries and time period from 2000 to 2014. The study uses the domestic credit to private sector (percentage of GDP) as proxy of financial development and for measurement of financial liberalization Chin-Ito index is used. The study finds that financial liberalization alone does not have a significant effect on financial development however when financial liberalization is endogenized with governance then this impact becomes positive and significant. Good governance enhances the positive and significant impact of financial liberalization. Therefore, financial development of the developing countries can be enhanced by the financial liberalization followed by good governance.
Mapping the conformational space accessible to catechol-O-methyltransferase

Crystal structures of mouse, rat and human catechol-O-methyltransferase were determined in apo, semi-holo, holo and Michaelis forms under a variety of conditions. Domain swaps and large conformational changes in the active sites are observed, which testify to why this enzyme is a difficult drug target.
A Divide and Conquer Framework for Distributed Graph Clustering

Graph clustering is about identifying clusters of closely connected nodes, and is a fundamental technique of data analysis with many applications including community detection, VLSI network partitioning, collaborative filtering, etc. In order to improve the scalability of existing graph clustering algorithms, we propose a novel divide and conquer framework for graph clustering, and establish theoretical guarantees of exact recovery of the clusters. One additional advantage of the proposed framework is that it can identify small clusters - the size of the smallest cluster can be of size o(√n, in contrast to Ω(√n required by standard methods. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our framework.
Leveraging Decomposed Trust in Probabilistic Matrix Factorization for Effective Recommendation

Trust has been used to replace or complement rating-based similarity in recommender systems, to improve the accuracy of rating prediction. However, people trusting each other may not always share similar preferences. In this paper, we try to fill in this gap by decomposing the original single-aspect trust information into four general trust aspects, i.e. benevolence, integrity, competence, and predictability, and further employing the support vector regression technique to incorporate them into the probabilistic matrix factorization model for rating prediction in recommender systems. Experimental results on four datasets demonstrate the superiority of our method over the state-of-the-art approaches.
EVALUATING E-LEARNING PLATFORMS THROUGH SCORM SPECIFICATIONS

A diaphragm device has a first base plate and a second base plate that are installed with a predetermined interval therebetween and formed into a unit. The diaphragm device is installed to a mounting portion of a lens frame such that the second base plate is disposed adjacently to a light source. The two base plates are partitioned with an intermediate plate to form two accommodating chambers, a stopping-down blade and a covering blade being disposed in each accommodating chamber. A motor is attached to the first base plate to relatively rotate a set of plate members and another set of plate members so as to restrict optical path apertures by the stopping-down blades. Portions directly exposed to light source light are provided with gray or white heat-resistant painting.
On reverse concatenation and soft decoding algorithms for PRML magnetic recording channels

High-density magnetic recording systems require increasingly sophisticated signal processing techniques. In magnetic recording channels, the information bits are encoded by the concatenation of an outer nonbinary error correcting code (ECC) and an inner line code. Furthermore, the high intersymbol interference that characterizes the channel is controlled by "partial response" equalization. This paper presents a study on a better-integrated decoding procedure between the inner and outer codes. Inversion of the concatenated codes (reverse concatenation) allows the direct mapping of soft information from the partial response channel to the outer ECC. A simplified soft decoding technique, based on the use of erasures, is applied to two typical magnetic recording systems. Performance curves are obtained by an analysis of the distributions of the reliability measures associated with incorrect and correct symbols.
"I Find that What I Do Is at Total Odds..." Holistic Wellness in a Woman Leader Working in a Male- dominated Engineering Profession

To explore holistic wellness in depth, single, longitudinal case studies are needed. This article explores the holistic wellness of a woman leader in the male-dominated profession of Engineering, based on the holistic wellness model (HWM). The article focuses on the question of how holistic wellness is constructed by this outstanding individual working in the challenging Australian Engineering field. The study is grounded in Dilthey's modern hermeneutics and applies a single case study design using an in-depth interview, conversations on a regular basis and observation over a period of 18 months. Findings show that the woman leader, working in the male-dominated global Australian global Engineering profession, builds and bases her holistic wellness on life tasks (work and leisure, self-direction, spirituality, friendship and love) and life forces (family, religion, community and business and industry) which are part of the holistic wellness model. Life tasks and life forces support her as she tackles challenges in life, and provide her with the coping mechanisms she needs as a woman leader in Engineering.
Information Driven Approach for Sensor Positioning in WSN's in Dynamic Environment

Since last few years Wireless Sensor Network (WSNs) have shown explosive growth in monitoring physical phenomena but there are various challenges such as lack of coverage, large d eployment areas and need of efficient sensor positioning. This paper introduces an efficient approach for sensor position management by using polynomial prediction along with Kriging interpolation. The proposed technique affords monitoring of a physical phenomenon in distributed manner. A very good accuracy is achieved by using the available data coming from different sensor nodes. This is illustrated over an example for temperature monitoring in dynamic environments.
Mycobacterium ulcerans in the Elderly: More Severe Disease and Suboptimal Outcomes

Background The clinical presentation of M. ulcerans disease and the safety and effectiveness of treatment may differ in elderly compared with younger populations related to relative immune defficiencies, co-morbidities and drug interactions. However, elderly populations with M. ulcerans disease have not been comprehensively studied. Methodology/Principal Findings A retrospective analysis was performed on an observational cohort of all confirmed M. ulcerans cases managed at Barwon Health from 1/1/1998-31/12/2014. The cohort included 327 patients; 131(40.0%) ≥65 years and 196(60.0%) <65 years of age. Patients ≥65 years had a shorter median duration of symptoms prior to diagnosis (p<0.01), a higher proportion with diabetes (p<0.001) and immune suppression (p<0.001), and were more likely to have lesions that were multiple (OR 4.67, 95% CI 1.78–12.31, p<0.001) and WHO category 3 (OR 4.59, 95% CI 1.98–10.59, p<0.001). Antibiotic complications occurred in 69(24.3%) treatment episodes at an increased incidence in those aged ≥65 years (OR 5.29, 95% CI 2.81–9.98, p<0.001). There were 4(1.2%) deaths, with significantly more in the age-group ≥65 years (4 compared with 0 deaths, p = 0.01). The overall treatment success rate was 92.2%. For the age-group ≥65 years there was a reduced rate of treatment success overall (OR 0.34, 95% CI 0.14–0.80, p = <0.01) and when surgery was used alone (OR 0.21, 95% CI 0.06–0.76, p<0.01). Patients ≥65 years were more likely to have a paradoxical reaction (OR 2.06, 95% CI 1.17–3.62, p = 0.01). Conclusions/Significance Elderly patients comprise a significant proportion of M. ulcerans disease patients in Australian populations and present with more severe and advanced disease forms. Currently recommended treatments are associated with increased toxicity and reduced effectiveness in elderly populations. Increased efforts are required to diagnose M. ulcerans earlier in elderly populations, and research is urgently required to develop more effective and less toxic treatments for this age-group.
ATBAS: an efficient fair bandwidth allocation approach for multihop wireless ad hoc network

The application of multihop Wireless Ad Hoc Networks (WANETs) has been facing a great challenge to implement cooperative control over user transmission rates under the resource restrictions. In this paper, we propose an efficient bandwidth allocation scheme called Active-Time-Based Bandwidth Allocation Scheme (ATBAS) that can ensure fair bandwidth allocation among the users in a multihop WANET model. This scheme operates at each hop and fairly allots each competing flow a part of channel time, according to which each hop then computes the updating rate for each flow traversing the hop and records their updated rates into each data packet's special control header. The source of each flow in this scheme can eventually adjust its sending rate to reach its fair share. An algorithm is developed to implement the above mechanism. We will show through simulation results that our proposed algorithm is able to fairly distribute bandwidth among multihop flows.
Hardware Support for Relaxed Concurrency Control in Transactional Memory

Today's transactional memory systems implement the two-phase-locking (2PL) algorithm which aborts transactions every time a conflict happens. 2PL is a simple algorithm that provides fast transactional operations. However, it limits concurrency in applications with high contention by increasing the rate of aborts. More relaxed algorithms that can commit conflicting transactions have recently been shown to provide better concurrency both in software and hardware. However, existing approaches for implementing such algorithms increase latencies of transactional operations, require complex hardware support and alter standard cache coherence protocols. In this paper, we discuss how a relaxed concurrency control algorithm can be efficiently implemented in hardware. More specifically, we use a technique which approximates conflict-serializability and implement it in hardware on top a base hardware transactional memory system that provides support for isolation and conflict detection. Our novel hardware scheme is based on recording conflicts as they occur, instead of aborting transactions. Transactions serialize at commit time according to these conflicts by sending broadcast messages. Our evaluation of this hardware scheme using a simulator and standard benchmarks shows that it captures the benefits of conflict-serializability. Applications with long transactions and high contention benefit the most, abort rates are reduced up to 7.2 times and the performance is improved up to 66%. We argue that this improvement comes with little additional hardware complexity and requires no changes to the transactional programming model.