Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Notes : Social Networks : Models , Algorithms , and Applications Lecture

How big is the Web? In the past, this question could was ”easily answered” by counting the number of files in the servers; in 1997, Bharat and Broder estimated the size of the Web to be around 200 million. But the Web has grown considerably over the years and many web pages are generated dynamically today. For example, many pages are the result of sending a form or using [GET] parameters on links. So, how should we count these dynamically generated paged? One solution is to let the indexable Web be the Web we are talking about. The indexable Web is the Web reachable and stored by the web crawlers of the search engines. In 2005, Gulli and Signorini (U of Iowa) used the notion of indexable Web to estimate the size of the Web [1]. They compared the number of indexed pages reported by 4 search engines, Google, Yahoo! , Ask.com and MSN, and estimated how many pages were crawled by more than one search engine. The result was that the Web had a size of approximately 11.5 billion pages. Their methodology consisted in the following. Let A, B, etc, be search engines. Let s(A) be the number of pages indexed by search engine A. Now, let Pr(A&B|A) define the probability a web page is in indexed by search engines A and B, given that we know it is in A. Then,
A 4.8-GHz Dividerless Subharmonically Injection-Locked All-Digital PLL With a FOM of $-$252.5 dB

A subharmonically injection-locked all-digital phase-locked loop (ADPLL) is presented to achieve both low power and low phase noise simultaneously. This ADPLL uses a bang-bang phase detector to maintain the phase locking without a time-to-digital converter, and the dividers can be disabled to reduce the power. In addition, a subharmonically injection-locked technique is used to achieve a low phase noise. This ADPLL is fabricated in a 40-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology. Its power consumption is 3.661 mW for a supply voltage of 1.1 V. The measured phase noise is equal to -122.33 dBc/Hz at an offset frequency of 1 MHz. The integrated root-mean-square jitter is 123.4 fs for the offset frequency from 1 kHz to 100 MHz. The calculated figure of merit is equal to -252.5 dB.
Tickle me, I think I might be dreaming! Sensory attenuation, self-other distinction, and predictive processing in lucid dreams

The contrast between self- and other-produced tickles, as a special case of sensory attenuation for self-produced actions, has long been a target of empirical research. While in standard wake states it is nearly impossible to tickle oneself, there are interesting exceptions. Notably, participants awakened from REM (rapid eye movement-) sleep dreams are able to tickle themselves. So far, however, the question of whether it is possible to tickle oneself and be tickled by another in the dream state has not been investigated empirically or addressed from a theoretical perspective. Here, we report the results of an explorative web-based study in which participants were asked to rate their sensations during self-tickling and being tickled during wakefulness, imagination, and lucid dreaming. Our results, though highly preliminary, indicate that in the special case of lucid control dreams, the difference between self-tickling and being tickled by another is obliterated, with both self- and other produced tickles receiving similar ratings as self-tickling during wakefulness. This leads us to the speculative conclusion that in lucid control dreams, sensory attenuation for self-produced tickles spreads to those produced by non-self dream characters. These preliminary results provide the backdrop for a more general theoretical and metatheoretical discussion of tickling in lucid dreams in a predictive processing framework. We argue that the primary value of our study lies not so much in our results, which are subject to important limitations, but rather in the fact that they enable a new theoretical perspective on the relationship between sensory attenuation, the self-other distinction and agency, as well as suggest new questions for future research. In particular, the example of tickling during lucid dreaming raises the question of whether sensory attenuation and the self-other distinction can be simulated largely independently of external sensory input.
NCBI GEO: mining tens of millions of expression profiles—database and tools update

The Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) repository at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) archives and freely disseminates microarray and other forms of high-throughput data generated by the scientific community. The database has a minimum information about a microarray experiment (MIAME)-compliant infrastructure that captures fully annotated raw and processed data. Several data deposit options and formats are supported, including web forms, spreadsheets, XML and Simple Omnibus Format in Text (SOFT). In addition to data storage, a collection of user-friendly web-based interfaces and applications are available to help users effectively explore, visualize and download the thousands of experiments and tens of millions of gene expression patterns stored in GEO. This paper provides a summary of the GEO database structure and user facilities, and describes recent enhancements to database design, performance, submission format options, data query and retrieval utilities. GEO is accessible at
Constructing Force- Closure Grasps

This paper presents fast and simple algorithms for directly constructing force-closure grasps based on the shape of the grasped object. The synthesis of force-closure grasps finds in dependent regions of contact for the fingertips, such that the motion of the grasped object is totally constrained. A force- closure grasp implies equilibrium grasps exist. In the reverse direction, we show that most nonmarginal equilibrium grasps are force-closure grasps.
Weakly-supervised segmentation by combining CNN feature maps and object saliency maps

In general, CNN based semantic segmentation methods assume pixel-wise annotation is available, which is costly to obtain in general. On the other hand, image-level annotations is much easier to obtain than pixel-level annotation. Then, in this work, we focus on weakly-supervised semantic segmentation which is known as task of using training data with only image-level annotations. In this paper, we propose a new CNN-based semantic segmentation method which uses both activation features calculated by feed-forwarding and object saliency maps obtained by back-propagation. As a CNN, we use the VGG-16 pre-trained with 1000-class ILSVRC datasets and fine-tuned it with multi-label training using only image-level labeled dataset. By the experiments, we show that the proposed method achieved state-of-the-art results with the PASCAL VOC 2012 dataset.
Putting reward in art: A tentative prediction error account of visual art

The predictive coding model is increasingly and fruitfully used to explain a wide range of findings in perception. Here we discuss the potential of this model in explaining the mechanisms underlying aesthetic experiences. Traditionally art appreciation has been associated with concepts such as harmony, perceptual fluency, and the so-called good Gestalt. We observe that more often than not great artworks blatantly violate these characteristics. Using the concept of prediction error from the predictive coding approach, we attempt to resolve this contradiction. We argue that artists often destroy predictions that they have first carefully built up in their viewers, and thus highlight the importance of negative affect in aesthetic experience. However, the viewer often succeeds in recovering the predictable pattern, sometimes on a different level. The ensuing rewarding effect is derived from this transition from a state of uncertainty to a state of increased predictability. We illustrate our account with several example paintings and with a discussion of art movements and individual differences in preference. On a more fundamental level, our theorizing leads us to consider the affective implications of prediction confirmation and violation. We compare our proposal to other influential theories on aesthetics and explore its advantages and limitations.
[Levels of physical activity in an urban population from Temuco, Chile].

BACKGROUND Physical activity plays a crucial role in the protection against cardiovascular diseases. AIM To assess the level of physical activity in a group of subjects living in urban Temuco. MATERIAL AND METHODS Cross sectional study in a random sample of 1091 women aged 52 ± 10 years and 444 men aged 54 ± 10 years , living in Temuco, Chile. The level of physical activity was measured using the long form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). Age, gender, educational and socioeconomic level were also determined in study subjects. RESULTS Median energy expenditure was 2150 and 1600 MET-minute/ week in men and women, respectively (p = 0,001). It decreased with age from a median of 1965 MET-minute/ week in those younger than 50 years old to 1647 MET-minute/ week among subjects aged between 51 and 60 years old and to 1485 MET-minute/ week among those older than 60 years. (p = 0,001). The frequency of high, moderate and low physical activity levels were 15.6, 66 and 18.4 % respectively. These levels were associated with gender, age, educational and socioeconomic level. CONCLUSIONS There was a high frequency of low and moderate levels of physical activity in the urban population of Temuco, associated with female gender, advanced age and middle socioeconomic level.
Response to Letter Regarding Article, "A Novel Method of Expressing Left Ventricular Mass Relative to Body Size in Children"

We thank Bocelli et al for their thoughtful comments on our article in which we proposed a new method of normalizing left ventricular (LV) mass for body size in children.1 They suggest that the inappropriate use of LV mass index (LVMI; in g/m 2.7 ) in children 2 years of age was responsible for the flaws that we demonstrated with the LVMI. We agree that the younger the child is, the more problematic the LVMI is. However, residual dependence of LVMI on height extended beyond infancy, up to a height of 140 cm (the average height for a 10-year-old boy), indicating its limitations even in older children. Bocelli et al propose raising height to the power of 2, rather than 2.7, in the calculation of LVMI in children and demonstrate that doing so improves the performance of the allometric scaling method. We agree that it may be possible to acceptably normalize LV mass to body size using allometric scaling, provided that the appropriate exponents are chosen. However, it is likely that the value of the exponent increases gradually with age, from a value 2.0 in neonates to 2.7 in taller children and adults. A small but significant residual dependence of LVMI on height remains in children 140 cm tall (R 2 0.12,
Context-Aware Verifiable Cloud Computing

Internet of Things (IoTs) has emerged to motivate various intelligent applications based on the data collected by various “things. ” Cloud computing plays an important role for big data processing by providing data computing and processing services. However, cloud service providers may invade data privacy and provide inaccurate data processing results to users, and thus cannot be fully trusted. On the other hand, limited by computation resources and capabilities, cloud users mostly cannot independently process big data and perform verification on the correctness of data processing. This raises a special challenge on cloud computing verification, especially when user data are stored at the cloud in an encrypted form and processed for satisfying the requests raised in different contexts. But the current literature still lacks serious studies on this research issue. In this paper, we propose a context-aware verifiable computing scheme based on full homomorphic encryption by deploying an auditing protocol to verify the correctness of the encrypted data processing result. We design four optional auditing protocols to satisfy different security requirements. Their performance is evaluated and compared through performance analysis, algorithm implementation, and system simulation. The results show the effectiveness and efficiency of our designs. The pros and cons of all protocols are also analyzed and discussed based on rigorous comparison.
Simulative study of target tracking accuracy based on time synchronization error in wireless sensor networks

Target tracking is one of the popular applications of wireless sensor networks (WSN). Randomly distributed sensor nodes(motes) in environment gather spatio-temporal information about target(s) and send them to a sink node for further processing. Motes like personal computers use low cost crystal based clocks. In order to maintain synchronization accuracy to acceptable levels, we shall need to synchronize them quite often. Time synchronization tries to control the time accuracy in WSN but it still has a specific limited accuracy. Motes partly process their sensed data using local fusion before sending them to the sink. Target tracking has two major error sources, first of all is that the equation system most of times gives two different answers which target can be placed in one of them. Second factor is that low time accuracy causes the great amounts of errors in results. Choosing proper fusion methods and sensing coverage degree helps us to increase the accuracy of target tracking results.
Project “Positive Attitude”: Promoting school success through social and emotional abilities development. Design for elementary and middle school students, in Portugal

This article aims to analyze and explore the development of the Project “Positive Attitude” during the first three years of functioning. This project’s main objective is the promotion of social skills, self-esteem and the social and emotional self-concept of elementary and middle school students. For doing so, the project involves all the school community.
HaploBuild: an algorithm to construct non-contiguous associated haplotypes in family based genetic studies

UNLABELLED We have created a program that searches densely genotyped regions for associated non-contiguous haplotypes using a standard family based haplotype association test. This program was designed to expand upon the 'sliding window' methodologies commonly used for haplotype construction by allowing the association of subsets of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to drive the construction of the haplotype. This strategy permits HaploBuild to construct more biologically relevant haplotypes that are not constrained by arbitrary length and contiguous orientation. AVAILABILITY http://snp.bumc. bu.edu.
Hybrid Mappings of Complex Questions over an Integrated Semantic Space

We address the issue of measuring semantic similarity between ontologies and text by means of applying latent semantic analysis. This method allows ranking of vector representations describing semantic relations according to their cosine similarity with a particular query. Our work is expected to make contributions including the introduction of reasoning about uncertainty when mapping between ontologies, an algorithm that can perform automatic mapping between concepts or relations derived from text and concepts or relations belonging to different ontologies, and the capability to infer implicit similarity between concepts or relations
Cooperative micromanipulation using optically controlled bubble microrobots

Optically actuated bubbles in oil were used as microrobots. Simulations of the thermocapillary fluid flow within the oil phase are used to illustrate the mechanisms driving the bubble actuation. Parallel manipulation of sub-millimeter objects including glass beads and hydrogel beads was demonstrated. These capabilities show the potential for using the bubble microrobots in biomedical or other microassembly applications.
Hierarchical Probabilistic Interaction Modeling for Multiple Gene Expression Replicates

Microarray technology allows for the collection of multiple replicates of gene expression time course data for hundreds of genes at a handful of time points. Developing hypotheses about a gene transcriptional network, based on time course gene expression data is an important and very challenging problem. In many situations there are similarities which suggest a hierarchical structure between the replicates. This paper develops posterior probabilities for network features based on multiple hierarchical replications. Through Bayesian inference, in conjunction with the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and model averaging, a hierarchical multiple replicate algorithm is applied to seven sets of simulated data and to a set of Arabidopsis thaliana gene expression data. The models of the simulated data suggest high posterior probabilities for pairs of genes which have at least moderate signal partial correlation. For the Arabidopsis model, many of the highest posterior probability edges agree with the literature.
Cell proliferation in the forebrain and midbrain of the sea lamprey

Cell proliferation in the forebrain and midbrain of the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus L.) was investigated by proliferation cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) immunocytochemistry, with BrdU labeling as a complementary technique. Correspondence between proliferation regions and areas of early neuronal differentiation was also assessed using antibodies against HNK‐1 early differentiation marker. The brain of late embryos shows a homogeneously thick ventricular zone (VZ) containing PCNA‐immunoreactive (PCNA‐ir) nuclei. In early prolarvae, several discontinuities formed by PCNA‐negative cells, and differences among regions in VZ thickness, become apparent. In late prolarvae and early larvae, these differences in VZ thickness and appearance, as well as the presence of PCNA‐negative discontinuities, allowed us to correlate proliferation domains and neuroanatomical regions. In larvae, the number of PCNA‐ir cells in the VZs diminish gradually, although a few PCNA‐ir cells are present in the ependyma of most regions. In late larvae, proliferation becomes confined to a few ventricular areas (medial pallium, caudal habenula, ventral preoptic recess near the optic nerve, and tuberal portion of the posterior hypothalamic recess). During metamorphosis there appears to be no proliferation, but in upstream adults a few PCNA‐ir cells are observed in the most caudal habenula. The characteristics of the proliferative regions revealed in lamprey with PCNA immunocytochemistry show notable differences from those observed in other vertebrates, and these differences may be related to the peculiar life cycle of lampreys. J. Comp. Neurol. 494:986–1006, 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A 0.9V 10-bit 100 MS/s switched-RC pipelined ADC without using a front-end S/H in 90nm CMOS

This paper presents a very low-voltage low-power pipelined ADC with 0.9-V supply voltage in a 90 nm CMOS process. A novel switched-RC sampling MDAC is proposed to obtain high linearity under very low-voltage and low-power conditions without significant degradation in speed or causing any reliability problem. Moreover, by eliminating S/H stage, power consumption is reduced considerably. Pipelined stage scaling, dynamic comparator, and amplifier sharing are also utilized to reduce power more significantly. According to HSPICE simulation results, the 10-bit 100MSample/s ADC with 1-Vp-p,diff input signal in a 90 nm CMOS process and 0.9-V supply voltage achieves an SNDR of 59 dB and consumes 15.5 mW power.
Effective service capacity analysis of opportunistic multi-carrier OFDMA systems

Exact queuing-theoretic modeling of wireless systems is tough due to the complex service processes that arise from the interaction of the wireless channel with state-of-the-art signal processing algorithms. Nevertheless, with the rise of video applications like streaming and telephony in upcoming fourth generation cellular networks, such analysis is important for devising admission control strategies. In this paper we apply recent insights into approximation approaches for queuing systems to opportunistic OFDMA systems and study different approaches for applying the modulation type to OFDM subcarriers. In particular, we provide analytical closed-form expressions for the delay distribution of three opportunistically scheduling OFDMA systems (adaptive modulation, link adaptation per terminal, link adaptation over all subcarriers). After validating these expressions, we evaluate the different system designs numerically. We find that although adaptive modulation systems have a higher complexity, their queuing performance is only slightly superior to systems with link adaptation per terminal. Furthermore, the systems feature in general an optimal number of terminals that can be supported in the cell, leveraging multi-user diversity with limited available resources. Nevertheless, these optima change from scheme to scheme.
Aligned fibers direct collective cell migration to engineer closing and nonclosing wound gaps

Aligned and suspended fibers allow study of cell emergence, collective migration, and wound gap closure. Emergent leader and follower cells collectively migrate in streams and sheets. A physical fiber spacing of 375 μm, beyond which sheet advancement is hindered, is identified, thus enabling the engineering of closing and nonclosing gaps.
Secretory dynamics of bioactive and immunoactive LH during the oestrous cycle of the sheep.

Blood samples were collected every 15 min for 6 h during the follicular (1 day before oestrus), and early (Days +1 to +3), mid- (Days +4 to +8), and full (Days +9 to +14) luteal phases of the oestrous cycle. Serum concentrations of immunoactive LH were measured by radioimmunoassay. The biological activity of serum LH was determined by an in-vitro bioassay that uses LH-induced testosterone production from mouse interstitial cells as an endpoint. Only ovine and bovine LH and hCG had appreciable activity in this bioassay. The temporal pattern of secretion of bioactive LH paralleled the secretory pattern of immunoactive LH at all stages of the ovine oestrous cycle. However, the secretory pattern itself varied regularly through the oestrous cycle. The frequency of secretory excursions of LH was highest during the follicular phase (6.2 +/- 0.9 pulses/6 h) and was progressively reduced through the luteal phase (1.1 +/- 0.1 pulses/6 h during full luteal phase). Conversely, amplitude of secretory excursions of immunoactive LH was low during the follicular phase (0.79 +/- 0.08 ng/ml) and significantly (P less than 0.05) increased during the mid- and full luteal phases (1.49 +/- 0.10 and 2.37 +/- 0.20 ng/ml, respectively). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Low-complexity energy-efficient resource allocation in OFDMA networks

Energy efficiency (EE) is one fundamental performance metric for design of orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) networks besides spectral efficiency (SE). The conventional resource allocation is to maximize data throughput without consideration of EE. In this paper, we propose a new low-complexity resource allocation algorithm to maximize EE, which first meet the quality-of-services (QoS) demand of every user and then assign the rest of subcarriers with criterion of energy efficiency. We also compare this new algorithm with the near-optimal EE algorithm, maximum-power-decrease-first (MPDF), which is proposed in [9]. The proposed algorithm differs from the MPDF algorithm in terms of the number of waterfilling for subcarrier allocation. The waterfilling operation in our proposed algorithm is not related to the number of users so that it reduces the computational complexity significantly. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed algorithm approach the EE performance of the MPDF algorithm with lower complexity.