Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reconstructing the indirect light field for global illumination

Stochastic techniques for rendering indirect illumination suffer from noise due to the variance in the integrand. In this paper, we describe a general reconstruction technique that exploits anisotropy in the light field and permits efficient reuse of input samples between pixels or world-space locations, multiplying the effective sampling rate by a large factor. Our technique introduces visibility-aware anisotropic reconstruction to indirect illumination, ambient occlusion and glossy reflections. It operates on point samples without knowledge of the scene, and can thus be seen as an advanced image filter. Our results show dramatic improvement in image quality while using very sparse input samplings.
Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites (BORTAS) experiment: design, execution and science overview

Abstract. We describe the design and execution of the BORTAS (Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites) experiment, which has the overarching objective of understanding the chemical aging of air masses that contain the emission products from seasonal boreal wildfires and how these air masses subsequently impact downwind atmospheric composition. The central focus of the experiment was a two-week deployment of the UK BAe-146-301 Atmospheric Research Aircraft (ARA) over eastern Canada, based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Atmospheric ground-based and sonde measurements over Canada and the Azores associated with the planned July 2010 deployment of the ARA, which was postponed by 12 months due to UK-based flights related to the dispersal of material emitted by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, went ahead and constituted phase A of the experiment. Phase B of BORTAS in July 2011 involved the same atmospheric measurements, but included the ARA, special satellite observations and a more comprehensive ground-based measurement suite. The high-frequency aircraft data provided a comprehensive chemical snapshot of pyrogenic plumes from wildfires, corresponding to photochemical (and physical) ages ranging from 45 sr 10 days, largely by virtue of widespread fires over Northwestern Ontario. Airborne measurements reported a large number of emitted gases including semi-volatile species, some of which have not been been previously reported in pyrogenic plumes, with the corresponding emission ratios agreeing with previous work for common gases. Analysis of the NO y data shows evidence of net ozone production in pyrogenic plumes, controlled by aerosol abundance, which increases as a function of photochemical age. The coordinated ground-based and sonde data provided detailed but spatially limited information that put the aircraft data into context of the longer burning season in the boundary layer. Ground-based measurements of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM 2.5 ) over Halifax show that forest fires can on an episodic basis represent a substantial contribution to total surface PM 2.5 .
Childhood parasomnias and psychotic experiences at age 12 years in a United Kingdom birth cohort.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To examine associations between specific parasomnias and psychotic experiences in childhood. DESIGN Birth cohort study. Information on the presence of frequent nightmares in children was obtained prospectively from mothers during multiple assessments conducted when children were aged between 2.5 and 9 y. Children were interviewed at age 12 y about nightmares, night terrors, sleepwalking, and psychotic experiences (delusions, hallucinations, and thought interference) occurring in the previous 6 mo. SETTING Assessments were completed in participants' homes or a University clinic within the UK. PATIENTS OR PARTICIPANTS There were 6,796 children (3,462 girls, 50.9%) who completed the psychotic experiences interview. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Children who were reported by their mothers as experiencing frequent nightmares between 2.5 and 9 y of age were more likely to report psychotic experiences at age 12 y, regardless of sex, family adversity, emotional or behavioral problems, IQ and potential neurological problems (odds ratio (OR) = 1.16, [95% confidence intervals (CI) = 1.00, 1.35], P = 0.049). Children reporting any of the parasomnias at age 12 y also had higher rates of concurrent psychotic experiences than those without such sleeping problems, when adjusting for all confounders (OR = 3.62 [95% CI = 2.57, 5.11], P < 0.001). Difficulty getting to sleep and night waking were not found to be associated with psychotic experiences at age 12 y when controlling for confounders. CONCLUSION Nightmares and night terrors, but not other sleeping problems, in childhood were associated with psychotic experiences at age 12 years. These findings tentatively suggest that arousal and rapid eye movement forms of sleep disorder might be early indicators of susceptibility to psychotic experiences.
Rationale and cross-sectional study design of the Research on Obesity and type 2 Diabetes among African Migrants: the RODAM study

Introduction Obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) are highly prevalent among African migrants compared with European descent populations. The underlying reasons still remain a puzzle. Gene–environmental interaction is now seen as a potential plausible factor contributing to the high prevalence of obesity and T2D, but has not yet been investigated. The overall aim of the Research on Obesity and Diabetes among African Migrants (RODAM) project is to understand the reasons for the high prevalence of obesity and T2D among sub-Saharan Africans in diaspora by (1) studying the complex interplay between environment (eg, lifestyle), healthcare, biochemical and (epi)genetic factors, and their relative contributions to the high prevalence of obesity and T2D; (2) to identify specific risk factors within these broad categories to guide intervention programmes and (3) to provide a basic knowledge for improving diagnosis and treatment. Methods and analysis RODAM is a multicentre cross-sectional study among homogenous sub-Saharan African participants (ie, Ghanaians) aged >25 years living in rural and urban Ghana, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK (http://rod-am.eu/). Standardised data on the main outcomes, genetic and non-genetic factors are collected in all locations. The aim is to recruit 6250 individuals comprising five subgroups of 1250 individuals from each site. In Ghana, Kumasi and Obuasi (urban stratum) and villages in the Ashanti region (rural stratum) are served as recruitment sites. In Europe, Ghanaian migrants are selected through the municipality or Ghanaian organisations registers. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval has been obtained in all sites. This paper gives an overview of the rationale, conceptual framework and methods of the study. The differences across locations will allow us to gain insight into genetic and non-genetic factors contributing to the occurrence of obesity and T2D and will inform targeted intervention and prevention programmes, and provide the basis for improving diagnosis and treatment in these populations and beyond.
Semantically Significant Patterns in Dictionary Definitions

Natural language processing systems need large lexicons containing explicit information about lexical-semantic relationships, selection restrictions, and verb categories. Because the labor involved in constructing such lexicons by hand is overwhelming, we have been trying to construct lexical entries automatically from information available in the machine-readable version of Webster's Seventh Collegiate Dictionary. This work is rich in implicit information; the problem is to make it explicit. This paper describes methods for finding taxonomy and set-membership relationships, recognizing nouns that ordinarily represent human beings, and identifying active and stative verbs and adjectives.
Coherent quantum filtering for physically realizable linear quantum plants

The paper is concerned with a problem of coherent (measurement-free) filtering for physically realizable (PR) linear quantum plants. The state variables of such systems satisfy canonical commutation relations and are governed by linear quantum stochastic differential equations, dynamically equivalent to those of an open quantum harmonic oscillator. The problem is to design another PR quantum system, connected unilaterally to the output of the plant and playing the role of a quantum filter, so as to minimize a mean square discrepancy between the dynamic variables of the plant and the output of the filter. This coherent quantum filtering (CQF) formulation is a simplified feedback-free version of the coherent quantum LQG control problem which remains open despite recent studies. The CQF problem is transformed into a constrained covariance control problem which is treated by using the Frechet differentiation of an appropriate Lagrange function with respect to the matrices of the filter.
Coordinated manipulator and spacecraft motion planning for free-floating space robots

This paper studies the coordinated manipulator and spacecraft motion planning for free-floating space robots (FFSR). The kinematics of the FFSR is analyzed based on momentum conservation law firstly. Then a nonholonomic motion planning, including requirements on spacecraft's orientation and end-effector's position is proposed using the chained form transformation and time-state control form. A planar FFSR with a 2 DOFs manipulator is selected to develop the algorithm. And simulation results illustrate that the position of the end-effector and the spacecraft orientation reach the desired state simultaneously. Finally, deficiencies of the method and prospects for the future are summarized.
Is Approval Voting Optimal Given Approval Votes?

Some crowdsourcing platforms ask workers to express their opinions by approving a set of k good alternatives. It seems that the only reasonable way to aggregate these k-approval votes is the approval voting rule, which simply counts the number of times each alternative was approved. We challenge this assertion by proposing a probabilistic framework of noisy voting, and asking whether approval voting yields an alternative that is most likely to be the best alternative, given k-approval votes. While the answer is generally positive, our theoretical and empirical results call attention to situations where approval voting is suboptimal.
Identification of a Novel De Novo Mutation Associated with PRKAG2 Cardiac Syndrome and Early Onset of Heart Failure

Introduction The major structure elements of the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) are α, β, and γ sunbunits. Mutations in γ2 subunit (PRKAG2) have been associated with a cardiac syndrome including inherited ventricular preexcitation, conduction disorder and hypertrophy mimicking hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The aim of the present study was to identify PRKAG2 syndrome among patients presenting with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). Methods and Results Nineteen unrelated subjects with unexplained LVH were clinically and genetically evaluated. Among 4 patients with bradycardia, manifestations of preexcitation were only found in a 19 year old male who also developed congestive heart failure 3 years later. Electrophysiological study of this case identified the coexistence of an AV accessory pathway and AV conduction defect. Histological analysis of his ventricular tissue isolated by biopsy confirmed excessive glycogen accumulation, prominent myofibrillar disarray and interstitial fibrosis. Direct sequencing of his DNA revealed a heterozygous mutation in PRKAG2 consisting of an A-to-G transition at nucleotide 1453 (c.1453A>G), predicting a substitution of a glutamic acid for lysine at highly-conserved residue 485 (p.Lys485Glu, K485E), which was absent in his unaffected family members and in 215 healthy controls. To assess the role of K485 in the structure and function of the protein, computational modeling calculations and conservation analyses were performed. Electrostatic calculations indicate that K485 forms a salt bridge with the conserved D248 residue in the AMPK β subunit, which is critical for proper regulation of the enzyme, and the K485E mutant disrupts the connection. Conclusions Our study identifies a novel de novo PRKAG2 mutation in a young, in which progression of the disease warrants close medical attention. It also underlines the importance of molecular screening of PRKAG2 gene in patients with unexplained LVH, ventricular preexcitation, conduction defect, and/or early onset of heart failure.
Iron Promotes the Toxicity of Amyloid β Peptide by Impeding Its Ordered Aggregation*

We have previously shown that overexpressing subunits of the iron-binding protein ferritin can rescue the toxicity of the amyloid β (Aβ) peptide in our Drosophila model system. These data point to an important pathogenic role for iron in Alzheimer disease. In this study, we have used an iron-selective chelating compound and RNAi-mediated knockdown of endogenous ferritin to further manipulate iron in the brain. We confirm that chelation of iron protects the fly from the harmful effects of Aβ. To understand the pathogenic mechanisms, we have used biophysical techniques to see how iron affects Aβ aggregation. We find that iron slows the progression of the Aβ peptide from an unstructured conformation to the ordered cross-β fibrils that are characteristic of amyloid. Finally, using mammalian cell culture systems, we have shown that iron specifically enhances Aβ toxicity but only if the metal is present throughout the aggregation process. These data support the hypothesis that iron delays the formation of well ordered aggregates of Aβ and so promotes its toxicity in Alzheimer disease.
A Sub-Optimal Log-Domain Decoding Algorithm for Non-Binary LDPC Codes

Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes have gained significant popularity recently and have been recommended for various wireless standards of the future. Non-binary LDPC codes provide all the well-known advantages of binary LDPC codes but allow for much shorter block lengths. The sum-product decoding algorithm for non-binary LDPC codes is too complex for efficient implementation. Hence, we have represented the sum-product algorithm in a novel logdomain form in terms of operators defined earlier in literature. This form greatly simplifies the key step in the check-node processing and allows us to replace a max* operation in the decoder by a max operation. This leads to a sub-optimal decoding algorithm which we propose in this paper. Key-Words: Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) Codes, Decoding Algorithm
BNC Protects H9c2 Cardiomyoblasts from H2O2-Induced Oxidative Injury through ERK1/2 Signaling Pathway

Buchang naoxintong capsule (BNC) is a traditional Chinese medicine approved for the treatment of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases. However, little is known about the specific protective function or mechanism by which BNC protects against myocardial injury. This research was designed to investigate the cardioprotective effects of BNC in vitro model of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)-induced H9c2 rat cardiomyoblasts. BNC intestinal absorption liquid was used in this study instead of drug-containing serum or extracting solution. Our study revealed that BNC preconditioning enhanced antioxidant function by increasing the activities of total-antioxygen capacity, total-superoxide dismutase, and catalase and by decreasing the production of reactive oxygen species and malondialdehyde. BNC preconditioning also activated extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK1/2) and inhibited apoptosis-related proteins such as poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) and caspase-3. Additionally, preincubation with BNC reduced intracellular Ca2+ concentration, improved mitochondrial membrane potential, and decreased the apoptosis rate of H9c2 cells in a dose-dependent manner. These data demonstrated that BNC protects H9c2 cardiomyoblasts from H2O2-induced oxidative injury by increasing antioxidant abilities, activating ERK1/2, and blocking Ca2+-dependent and mitochondria-mediated apoptosis. Based on our results, the potency of BNC for protecting H9c2 cells from oxidative damage is comparable to that of trimetazidine.
Chatty Mobiles:Individual mobility and communication patterns

Human mobility analysis is an important issue in social sciences, and mobility data are among the most sought-after sources of information in ur-ban studies, geography, transportation and ter-ritory management. In network sciences mobility studies have become popular in the past few years, especially using mobile phone location data [1,2,3,4,5]. For preserving the customer pri-vacy, datasets furnished by telecom operators are anonymized. At the same time, the large size of datasets often makes the task of calculating all observed trajectories very difficult and time-con-suming. One solution could be to sample users. However, the fact of not having information about the mobile user makes the sampling deli-cate. Some researchers [1] select randomly a sample of users from their dataset. Others try to optimize this method, for example, taking into account only users with a certain number or fre-quency of locations recorded [2,3]. At the first glance, the second choice seems to be more effi-cient: having more individual traces makes the analysis more precise. However, the most fre-quently used CDR data (Call Detail Records) have location generated only at the moment of communication (call, SMS, data connection). Due to this fact, users’ mobility patterns cannot be precisely built upon their communication pat-terns. Hence, these data have evident short-comings both in terms of spatial and temporal scale. In this paper we propose to estimate the correla-tion between the user’s communication and mo-bility in order to better assess the bias of fre-quency based sampling. Using technical GSM network data (including communication but also independent mobility records - as in [6]), we will analyze the relationship between communication and mobility patterns.
Security in Pesto

Pesto aims at providing highly available and secure storage for long-lived data to mobile users roaming into (potentially) untrusted environments. This paper presents and discusses the security mechanisms and features of Pesto. Security in Pesto encompasses the following three aspects: availability, safety, and privacy. Most existing systems focus on a subset of these aspects, or assume they can be treated independently of each other. A mechanism supporting one aspect may adversely affect another. For example, replication of data may increase availability but complicates supporting confidentiality of the data, and simply encrypting data for confidentiality may defeat the whole purpose of replication. We show how an integral approach to these aspects leads to considerable savings in overall system complexity and efficiency. Mobile environments require fundamentally different solutions to availability, safety, and privacy. Users will suffer from temporary lack of (good) connectivity to the whole or part of the infrastructure. Most existing systems focus on efficient use of the local storage resources for availability during such periods. In Pesto, however, it is assumed that storage resources are plentiful in many environments a user may roam into. He could use such resources to supplement his limited local resources. The resource that we assume to be scarce in these environments is trust, while access to more trusted parts of the infrastructure may be severely limited at the same time. Our focus is on efficient use of the trusted resources that are available to a user. Users may specify different levels of trust in different parts of the infrastructure. In particular, nodes can be trusted to merely store (encrypted) data for a user. A user may trust a node to distribute replicas to other nodes and/or he may trust a node to enforce access control on his behalf to his (plaintext)
Stimulation of protein (collagen) synthesis in sponge cells by a cardiac myotrophin‐related molecule from Suberites domuncula

The body wall of sponges (Porifera), the lowest metazoan phylum, is formed by two epithelial cell layers of exopinacocytes and endopinacocytes, both of which are associated with collagen fibrils. Here we show that a myotrophinlike polypeptide from the sponge Suberites domuncula causes the expression of collagen in cells from the same sponge in vitro. The cDNA of the sponge myotrophin was isolated; the potential open reading frame of 360 nt encodes a 120 aa long protein (Mr of 12,837). The sequence SUBDOMYOL shares high similarity with the known metazoan myotrophin sequences. The expression of SUBDOMYOL is low in single cells but high after formation of primmorph aggregates as well as in intact animals. Recombinant myotrophin was found to stimulate protein synthesis by fivefold, as analyzed by incorporation studies using [3H] lysine. In addition, it is shown that after incubation of single cells with myotrophin, the primmorphs show an unusual elongated, oval‐shaped appearance. It is demonstrated that in the presence of recombinant myotrophin, the cells up‐regulate the expression of the collagen gene. The cDNA for S. domuncula collagen was isolated; the deduced aa sequence shows that the collagenous internal domain is rather short, with only 24 G‐x‐y collagen triplets. We conclude that the sponge myotrophin causes in homologous cells the same/similar effect as the cardiac myotrophin in mammalian cells, where it is involved in initiation of cardial ventricular hypertrophy. We assume that an understanding of sponge molecular cell biology will also contribute to a further elucidation of human diseases, here of the cardiovascular system. —Schröder, H. C. , Krasko, A. , Batel, R. , Skorokhod, A. , Pahler, S. , Kruse, M. , Müller, I. M. , Müller, W. E. G. Stimulation of protein (collagen) synthesis in sponge cells by a cardiac myotrophin‐related molecule from Suberites domuncula. FASEB J. 14, 2022–2031 (2000)
Compressive sensing for WiFi-based passive bistatic radar

Passive radars using WiFi base stations as illuminators are a promising option for local area surveillance. Unfortunately, the reflections of WiFi signals from a large object can easily mask any nearby objects making it difficult to detect all targets within range. Using the fact that most target scenes are only very sparsely populated makes it possible to apply compressive sensing (CS) for target detection. We analyze how well WiFi signals fit into the CS framework, propose corresponding detection schemes, and show how detection accuracy is increased and receiver complexity is reduced. It turns out that CS enables the detection of closely spaced targets with only a small number of recorded WiFi frames.
Demo Proposal: Liquid Types for Haskell

We present LIQUIDHASKELL, a verifier for Haskell programs which uses Liquid Types to reduce the verification of higher-order, polymorphic, recursive programs over complex data types, into first-order Horn Clauses over integers, booleans and uninterpretated functions, which are then solved using classical predicate abstraction. In this demo proposal, we present an overview of this approach, and describe how we handle Haskell specific features such as type classes, algebraic data structures and laziness.