Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distinct and Cooperative Functions for the Protocadherin-α, -β and -γ Clusters in Neuronal Survival and Axon Targeting

The clustered protocadherin (Pcdh) genes are divided into the Pcdhα, Pcdhβ, and Pcdhγ clusters. Gene-disruption analyses in mice have revealed the in vivo functions of the Pcdhα and Pcdhγ clusters. However, all Pcdh protein isoforms form combinatorial cis-hetero dimers and enter trans-homophilic interactions. Here we addressed distinct and cooperative functions in the Pcdh clusters by generating six cluster-deletion mutants (Δα, Δβ, Δγ, Δαβ, Δβγ, and Δαβγ) and comparing their phenotypes: Δα, Δβ, and Δαβ mutants were viable and fertile; Δγ mutants lived less than 12 h; and Δβγ and Δαβγ mutants died shortly after birth. The Pcdhα, Pcdhβ, and Pcdhγ clusters were individually and cooperatively important in olfactory-axon targeting and spinal-cord neuron survival. Neurodegeneration was most severe in Δαβγ mutants, indicating that Pcdhα and Pcdhβ function cooperatively for neuronal survival. The Pcdhα, Pcdhβ, and Pcdhγ clusters share roles in olfactory-axon targeting and neuronal survival, although to different degrees.
Measuring source memory

Abstract. The investigation of source monitoring (SM) as a special faculty of episodic memory has gained much attention in recent years. However, several measures of source memory have been used in research practice that show empirical and theoretical shortcomings: First, they often confound various cognitive processes like source memory, item memory and response bias, and second, they do not do justice to the multitude of processes involved in SM according to the framework of Johnson, Hashtroudi, and Lindsay (1993). We therefore review model-based measurement approaches, focusing on multinomial models, and we distinguish between theorizing about source memory and the pragmatics of source memory measurement as two partly separate goals of research. Whereas signal detection models seem to be more adequate theories of the underlying source monitoring process, multinomial models have some pragmatic advantages that nevertheless recommend them as viable measurement tools.
Point Cloud Glue: constraining simulations using the procrustes transform

In physical simulation, it is frequently useful to define constraints between deformable objects, ensuring that one object follows another. Existing techniques for enforcing these constraints define the relationship between the objects using barycentric coordinates, a linear combination of vertices. While simple to implement and understand, barycentric coordinates have one important drawback: for stability, weights must be non-negative, which limits the types of constraints that can be defined. We introduce the Point Cloud Glue, which uses the nearest fit rigid rotation (the Procrustes transform) to the deformable object's particles. Our key contribution is to demonstrate that we can differentiate through this minimization in a numerically stable manner, allowing our method to be used in many constrained dynamics systems including those based on bindings/embeddings and those based on Lagrange multipliers. We demonstrate the flexibility of our method through several examples.
Deterioration of average evoked potential waveform due to asynchronous averaging and its compensation

The deterioration of the average due to the asynchronous sampling of evoked potential data is discussed. The asynchronous averaging in the frequency domain is analyzed, and a relationship between the fluctuating time and the degree of the deterioration is derived. By using this relationship, a required sampling rate is derived to ensure the accuracy of the averaging. In the case of coarse sampling, a compensation procedure for the asynchronous averaging is deduced, by which the compensated signal approaches the original signal as the number of averagings increases. <<ETX>>
Enterprise Architecture Measurement: A Systematic Mapping Study

The literature about enterprise architecture (EA) measurement discusses a number of challenges. This systematic mapping survey explores the EA measurement research area to figure out how the research area is structured, look at gaps in EA measurement research, and recommend future improvements. Some of the key findings of this paper show that current research only address a limit perspective on the meaning of EA. In addition, the EA measurement literature presents indications that its theoretical grounding is lacking with regards to the meaning of EA measurement, the evaluation of EA, the assessment of EA, and the analysis of EA.
Radar Scattering from Ice Aggregates Using the Horizontally Aligned Oblate Spheroid Approximation

AbstractThe assumed relationship between ice particle mass and size is profoundly important in radar retrievals of ice clouds, but, for millimeter-wave radars, shape and preferred orientation are important as well. In this paper the authors first examine the consequences of the fact that the widely used “Brown and Francis” mass–size relationship has often been applied to maximum particle dimension observed by aircraft Dmax rather than to the mean of the particle dimensions in two orthogonal directions Dmean, which was originally used by Brown and Francis. Analysis of particle images reveals that Dmax ≃ 1.25Dmean, and therefore, for clouds for which this mass–size relationship holds, the consequences are overestimates of ice water content by around 53% and of Rayleigh-scattering radar reflectivity factor by 3.7 dB. Simultaneous radar and aircraft measurements demonstrate that much better agreement in reflectivity factor is provided by using this mass–size relationship with Dmean. The authors then examine t.
An insight into accountability and politics in universities: a case study

In an era when improved accountability and more comprehensive annual reporting was sought from all parts of the New Zealand public sector, this paper focuses on universities to explore the political influences on accountability. The changing nature of accountability is considered and the internal political factors that may impinge on annual report disclosures are discussed. Issues considered at the societal level include the public right to know, the interest in public sector annual reports and the influence of the accountancy profession in determining the form and content of annual reporting. A case study recounts events on a university campus surrounding the issue of resource allocation and the lack of publicly available information, to provide insights about the political influences upon annual reporting. Fulfilling public accountability obligations is as important for organizations involved in learning and caring as it is for other organizations with more overt commercial, administrative or political objectives.
Why Should We Care about Group Inequality?

This essay is about the ethical propriety and practical efficacy of a range of policy undertakings which, in the last twenty years, has come to be referred to as “affirmative action. ” These policies have been contentious and problematic, and a variety of arguments have been advanced in their support. Here I try to close a gap, as I see it, in this “literature of justification” which has grown up around the practice of preferential treatment. My principal argument along these lines is offered in the next section. I then consider how some forms of argument in support of preferential treatment, distinctly different from that offered here, not only fail to justify the practice but, even worse, work to undermine the basis for cooperation among different ethnic groups in the American democracy. Finally, I observe that as a practical matter the use of group preference can, under circumstances detailed in the sequel, produce results far different from the egalitarian objectives which most often motivate their adoption. It may seem fatuous in the extreme to raise as a serious matter, in the contemporary United States, the question “Why should we care about group inequality? ” Is not the historical and moral imperative of such concern self-evident? Must not those who value the pursuit of justice be intensely concerned about economic disparities among groups of persons? The most obvious answer to the title question would seem, then, to be: “We should care because such inequality is the external manifestation of the oppression of individuals on the basis of their group identity. ”
Design and evaluation of isolated gate driver power supply for medium voltage converter applications

The commercial gate drivers are available upto 6.5 kV IGBTs. With the advances in the SiC, power devices rated beyond 10 kV are being researched. These devices will have use on medium voltage power converters. Commercial gate drivers rated for such high voltages are not available. These power devices have very high dv/dts (30-100 kV/μs) at switching transitions. Such high dv/dts bring in challenges in the gate driver design. The isolation stage of the gate power supply needs to have very low coupling capacitance to limit the high frequency circulating currents from reaching the gate driver control circuits. Also, the isolation stage has to be designed with insulation several times higher than the peak system voltage level. In this paper, design, development and evaluation of the gate power supply for medium voltage level applications have been investigated. Several isolation transformer designs have been investigated and optimum design, with very low coupling capacitance ≈ 0.5 pF, has been identified and used in the gate driver design. Experimental characterization of the transformer has been done. The performance of the gate driver power supply has been evaluated in several MV power converters, using 10 kV SiC MOSFETs.
A computationally efficient parallel Levenberg‐Marquardt algorithm for highly parameterized inverse model analyses

Inverse modeling seeks model parameters given a set of observations. However, for practical problems because the number of measurements is often large and the model parameters are also numerous, conventional methods for inverse modeling can be computationally expensive. We have developed a new, computationally efficient parallel Levenberg‐Marquardt method for solving inverse modeling problems with a highly parameterized model space. Levenberg‐Marquardt methods require the solution of a linear system of equations which can be prohibitively expensive to compute for moderate to large‐scale problems. Our novel method projects the original linear problem down to a Krylov subspace such that the dimensionality of the problem can be significantly reduced. Furthermore, we store the Krylov subspace computed when using the first damping parameter and recycle the subspace for the subsequent damping parameters. The efficiency of our new inverse modeling algorithm is significantly improved using these computational techniques. We apply this new inverse modeling method to invert for random transmissivity fields in 2‐D and a random hydraulic conductivity field in 3‐D. Our algorithm is fast enough to solve for the distributed model parameters (transmissivity) in the model domain. The algorithm is coded in Julia and implemented in the MADS computational framework (http://mads.lanl.gov). By comparing with Levenberg‐Marquardt methods using standard linear inversion techniques such as QR or SVD methods, our Levenberg‐Marquardt method yields a speed‐up ratio on the order of ∼101 to ∼102 in a multicore computational environment. Therefore, our new inverse modeling method is a powerful tool for characterizing subsurface heterogeneity for moderate to large‐scale problems.
‘Picture this’: using photo-methods in research on sexualities and schooling

Sexualities and schooling is often constituted as a ‘controversial’ topic. Similarly, photo-methods are an unconventional data collection method in educational research associated with ‘risk’ in school settings. Given this context, why use photo-methods in research on sexualities and schooling? While acknowledging the challenges of using photo-methods in school-based research I suggest their capacity to disclose qualitatively different insights about this field. These findings are drawn from the use of photo-diaries and photo-elicitation in a project examining the sexual cultures of two New Zealand secondary schools. The value of these methods lies in their ability to explore broader features of sexualities and schooling than the official curriculum, policy and classroom practices. These methods can reveal embodied and spatial dimensions of sexuality which inhere in the unofficial minutiae of everyday schooling experiences. The participant driven process of taking photos can facilitate access to what some researchers conceptualize as the ‘unknown, unknowns’. For those concerned with the educative potential of research, photo-diaries might also be helpful in generating participants’ critical reflection of an otherwise taken-for-granted lived reality.
‘You be the big sister’: Maternal-preschooler internal state discourse, perspective-taking, and sibling caretaking

Maternal–preschooler internal state discourse, preschooler perspective-taking, and sibling caretaking for 32 dyads (preschooler M age=46.4 months, toddlers=14 months) was examined across three contexts varying in emotional demands: (a) naturalistic home observations, (b) mother–preschooler book reading (Parent–Child Affect Communication Task; Zahn-Waxler, Ridgeway, Denham, Usher and Cole, 1993), and (c) a laboratory maternal separation session. Preschooler perspective-taking was positively associated with emotional understanding during book reading. However, mothers did not adjust their internal state discourse in any of the three contexts to reflect preschoolers' perspective-taking skills. Both preschooler internal state language during sibling conflict and maternal leave-taking discourse were associated with sibling caretaking. Findings are discussed in light of the role of family discourse and dynamics in the development of children's social understanding. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Metabolic effects of unilateral lesion of the substantia nigra

Regional brain glucose utilization following unilateral lesion of the substantia nigra in rat was studied by [14C]-2-deoxyglucose autoradiography. Substantia nigra lesions were performed by perinigral injections of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) . HBr, 6 microgram, in rats pretreated 30 min earlier with desmethylimipramine (DMI), 25 mg/kg, subcutaneously. The lesion produced extensive destruction of the ipsilateral substantia nigra pars compacta and a greater than 99% reduction in dopamine concentration in the ipsilateral striatum. Pretreatment with DMI prevented any reduction in the concentration of norepinephrine in ipsilateral forebrain structures. Glucose utilization was increased in the ipsilateral globus pallidus at 11, 21, 53, and 104 days after substantia nigra lesion with the largest increase (about 140% of control) occurring at 21 days post-lesion. In addition, glucose utilization in ipsilateral lateral habenular nucleus was increased at each of the above time points. No changes in glucose utilization were noted in frontal cortex, striatum, subthalamic nucleus, entopeduncularis, or ventral tier nuclei of the thalamus. These results suggest that lesion of the substantia nigra with depletion of striatal dopamine content results in disinhibition of some striatal, and perhaps olfactory cortical, efferents producing increased metabolism and glucose utilization in terminal fields within the globus pallidus and lateral habenular nucleus.
BSIFT: Boosting SIFT using principal component analysis

Feature descriptors usually have high dimensionality to efficiently represent key points. Finding matches between large sets of descriptors is a basic step in many applications in computer vision and image processing. When the number of descriptors is large, detection of corresponding points can be extremely time-consuming. The goal of this paper is reducing the computational cost in the matching stage especially for SIFT descriptor. We apply the principal components analysis (PCA) on two sets of SIFT features of images and find a coarse matching between points. Then, the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence similarity score is used to improve the matching accuracy. Experimental results show that our proposed technique can reduce the dimension of SIFT and the related matching cost with approximately the same average precision compared to the conventional approach.
A Default Pathway of Memory CD8 T Cell Differentiation after Dendritic Cell Immunization Is Deflected by Encounter with Inflammatory Cytokines during Antigen-Driven Proliferation1

Inflammatory cytokines induced by infection or vaccination with adjuvant act directly or indirectly on CD8 T cells to modulate their expansion, contraction, and acquisition of memory characteristics. Importantly, the initial exposure of naive T cells to inflammatory cytokines may occur before, during, or after their interaction with stimulating dendritic cells (DC) and it is unknown whether and how the timing of cytokine exposure impacts the CD8 T cell response. In this study, we use an immunization strategy with peptide-coated mature DC that, in the absence of inflammatory cytokines, results in a transient effector phase followed by the accelerated acquisition of memory characteristics by the responding CD8 T cells. Induction of inflammatory cytokines by TLR agonists, at the time of DC immunization or 2–4 days after DC immunization, prevented the early acquisition of memory characteristics by the responding CD8 T cells. Interestingly, although induction of inflammatory cytokines at the time of DC immunization increased the effector response, induction of inflammatory cytokines after DC immunization did not promote further expansion of the responding CD8 T cells but still prevented their early acquisition of memory characteristics. In contrast, induction of inflammatory cytokines 2 days before DC immunization did not prevent the CD8 T cells from early acquisition of memory characteristics. Furthermore, TLR ligand-induced inflammatory cytokines had the most significant impact on the phenotype and function of proliferating CD8 T cells. These data suggest that a default pathway of memory CD8 T cell differentiation is deflected toward sustained effector commitment by encounter with inflammatory cytokines during Ag-driven proliferation.
Multi-view gender classification based on local Gabor binary mapping pattern and support vector machines

This paper proposes a novel face representation approach, local Gabor binary mapping pattern (LGBMP), for multi-view gender classification. In this approach, a face image is first represented as a series of Gabor magnitude pictures (GMP) by applying multi-scale and multi-orientation Gabor filters. Each GMP is then encoded as a LGBP image where a uniform local binary pattern (LBP) operator is used. After that, each LGBP image is divided into non-overlapping rectangular regions, from which spatial histograms are extracted. Although an LGBP feature vector can be obtained by fitting together the regional histograms, it can not be employed in pattern classification due to its high dimension. We propose that each regional LGBP feature be mapped onto a one-dimensional subspace independently before they are concatenated as a whole feature vector. This is attractive since we reduce the feature dimension and also preserve the spatial information of LGBP image. Two ways have been proposed to map the regional LGBP feature in this paper. One is so-called LGBMP-LDA using linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for dimensionality reduction while the other is to project the regional LGBP feature onto the class center connecting line, namely, LGBMP-CCL. As a result, despite several decades of Gabor filters, the final feature dimension is even less than that of the feature extracted by using LBP directly on gray-scale images. The classification tasks in our work are performed by support vector machines (SVM). The experimental results on the CAS-PEAL face database indicate that the proposed approach achieves higher accuracy than the others such as SVMs+Gray-scale pixel, SVMs+Gabor and SVMs+LBP approach, more particularly, it has the lowest dimension of feature vector.
Programming environment based on distributed shared arrays for high-performance scientific computing

This paper describes the design and implementation of a parallel programming environment called "distributed shared array" (DSA), which provides a shared global array abstract across different machines connected by a network. In DSA, users can define and use global arrays that can be accessed uniformly from any machines in the network. Explicit management of array area allocation, replication, and migration is achieved by explicit calls for array manipulation: defining array regions, reading and writing array regions, synchronization, and control of replication and migration. The DSA is integrated with Grid (Globus) services. This paper also describes the use of our model for gene cluster analysis and molecular dynamics simulation. In these applications, global arrays are used for storing the distance matrix and atom coordinates. Large array areas, which cannot be stored in the memory of individual machines, are made available by the DSA. Scalable performance of DSA was obtained compared to that of conventional parallel programs written in MPI.
Dialogue Generation in Character-based Interactive Storytelling

In recent years, there has been significant progress in developing Interactive Storytelling systems, in particular in terms of the underlying AI techniques. There has been an emerging consensus on the AI approach, in particular the use of planning systems. However, these have concentrated on the generation of a sequence of narrative actions, staged through the behaviour of virtual actors. In order to achieve the long-term objective of implementing interactive media that would reproduce the aesthetic qualities of traditional films, most interactive storytelling systems are still missing the ability to generate dialogues between characters. We describe an extension of our Interactive Storytelling approach which integrates dialogue generation within narrative situations. Our unit of generation is the dialogue act (pair of utterances) and one main objective is to reproduce realistic dialogue phenomena based on implicit forms of expression. The emphasis is also on adopting a unified approach relating narrative representations to the linguistic form of the generated utterances. From a representation of active narrative goals and the emotional affinity between characters, our system is able to derive a set of parameters governing various aspects of the linguistic form to be generated. We illustrate this approach on several implemented examples.
Automated Testing of Definition-Use Data Flow for Multithreaded Programs

With the advent of multicore processors, there is a trend towards multithreading to take advantage of parallel computing resources. Due to greatly increased complexity, programmers need effective testing methodology that can thoroughly test multithreaded programs. There has been significant progress based on symbolic execution that attempts to exhaustively explore all the intra-thread paths and inter-thread interleavings. However, such testing approach faces two insuperable challenges. Firstly, exploring an astronomically large number of paths and interleavings limits its scalability. Secondly, a path itself does not directly help programmers understand program behavior. In this paper, we propose an alternate testing methodology that focuses on definition-use data flow instead of paths/interleavings. Such approach not only leads to orders of magnitude reduction in testing complexity, but also gives programmers direct help on examining the shared variable usage in a multithreaded program.