Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drinking to cope with negative affect and DSM-IV alcohol use disorders: a test of three alternative explanations.

OBJECTIVE Previous studies of drinking motives have demonstrated greater levels of drinking to cope with negative affect among problem drinkers relative to nonproblem drinkers. These findings suggest that the use of alcohol to cope with negative affect may place individuals at greater risk for the development of alcohol problems. However, several alternative explanations exist, each with different intervention implications. This study evaluated three alternative explanations or models: risk-factor, generalizing, and epiphenomena. A cross-sectional design was used to compare levels of self-reported drinking to cope with negative affect between individuals who had current DSM-IV alcohol use disorders and those who did not. METHOD Participants consisted of a sample of community residents (N = 777, 55% men). All participants completed an in-person structured psychiatric interview and a self-report questionnaire assessing alcohol use, drinking motives, depressive affect, and negative alcohol consequences. RESULTS Linear regression models yielded significant differences in mean drinking to cope with negative affect scores between participants with a DSM-IV alcohol dependence diagnosis and participants with no diagnosis. These differences remained after controlling for depressive affect and frequency of negative alcohol consequences in three of the four adjusted comparisons. No significant differences in adjusted mean drinking to cope with negative affect scores were demonstrated between subjects with a DSM-IV alcohol abuse diagnosis and those with no diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS The DSM-IV alcohol dependence and no-diagnosis comparisons were most consistent with the predictions of a risk-factor model. These results provide further evidence that drinking to cope with negative affect may have an etiological role in development of alcohol dependence.
Supporting sandtray therapy on an interactive tabletop

We present the iterative design of a virtual sandtray application for a tabletop display. The purpose of our prototype is to support sandtray therapy, a form of art therapy typically used for younger clients. A significant aspect of this therapy is the insight gained by the therapist as they observe the client interact with the figurines they use to create a scene in the sandtray. In this manner, the therapist can gain increased understanding of the client's psyche. We worked with three sandtray therapists throughout the evolution of our prototype. We describe the details of the three phases of this design process: initial face-to-face meetings, iterative design and development via distance collaboration, and a final face-to-face feedback session. This process revealed that our prototype was sufficient for therapists to gain insight about a person's psyche through their interactions with the virtual sandtray.
Memristive memory processing unit (MPU) controller for in-memory processing

Modern computers suffer from a growing disparity of speed between processor and memory which significantly limits their performance. Additionally, as the number of transistors per chip continues to increase, the operating frequency stabilizes due to the power considerations. One of the leading solutions to these issues is to reduce data transfer by adding processing capabilities into the memory itself. For data-intensive applications, this means a significant improvement in processing capabilities by saving a significant amount of time and energy. Although all the attempts to implement this solution so far were unsuccessful, emerging nonvolatile resistive memory technologies (namely, memristors) offer an opportunity for developing a Memory Processing Unit (MPU) based on a technique called `stateful logic'. The MPU allows adding processing capabilities to the memristive memory cells, thus enabling novel non-von Neumann architectures. The processing within the MPU relies on a sequence of logical operations. This paper presents the design of an MPU controller for executing in-memory computation. Different design techniques to execute processing and storing data within the MPU are described. The MPU controller has been designed and implemented in a VHDL environment and used to execute different operations within the MPU.
D2.2.5 MineSet TM

D2.2. 5.1 Abstract MineSet is a commercial data mining product from Silicon Graphics. It provides an interactive platform for data mining, integrating three powerful technologies: database and file access, analytical data mining engines, and data visualization. MineSet supports the knowledge discovery process from data access and preparation through iterative analysis and visualization to deployment. MineSet uses a clientserver architecture for scalability and support of large data. The data access component provides a rich set of transformations that can be used to process stored data into forms appropriate for visualization and analytical mining. MineSet’s 2D and 3D visualization capabilities allow direct data visualization for exploratory analysis. The analytical mining algorithms create models that can be viewed using visualization tools specialized for the learned models or deployed as part of a larger system. Third party vendors can interface to the MineSet tools for model deployment and for integration with other packages.
Zero-Temperature Limit of a Convergent Algorithm to Minimize the Bethe Free Energy

After the discovery that fixed points of loopy belief propagation coincide with stationary points of the Bethe free energy, several researchers proposed provably convergent algorithms to directly minimize the Bethe free energy. These algorithms were formulated only for non-zero temperature (thus finding fixed points of the sum-product algorithm) and their possible extension to zero temperature is not obvious. We present the zero-temperature limit of the double-loop algorithm by Heskes, which converges a max-product fixed point. The inner loop of this algorithm is max-sum diffusion. Under certain conditions, the algorithm combines the complementary advantages of the max-product belief propagation and max-sum diffusion (LP relaxation): it yields good approximation of both ground states and max-marginals.
Brain-computer interface: Next generation thought controlled distributed video game development platform

In this paper we present a system that uses the human ability to control a video game on a mobile device using electroencephalographic (EEG) Mu rhythms. The signals were obtained using a specially designed electrode cap and equipment, and sent through a Bluetooth connection to a PC that processes it in real time. The signal was then mapped onto two control signals and sent through wireless connection to a mobile gaming device BreakOut. We have also investigated the human's ability to play the video game by manipulating neuronal motor cortex activity in the presence of a visual feedback environment. The participants played the video game by using their thoughts only with up to 80% accuracy over controlling the target.
Indirect immunofluorescence tests with sera from African children and cultured Burkitt lymphoma cells

In an earlier report (G. Henle and W. Henle, J. Bacteriol. 91:1248, 1966), results of immunofluorescence tests with cultured cells from Burkitt lymphomas were described, and evidence was presented that the small proportion of stainable cells might be those which harbor as yet unidentified herpeslike virus particles (M. A. Epstein et al., Wistar Inst. Symp. Monograph 4:69, 1965; S. E. Stewart et al., J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 34:319, 1965; A. S. Rabson et al., Intern. J. Cancer 1:89, 1966). All of 20 sera from patients with Burkitt tumors, and an additional 10 recently obtained, were found to elicit distinct, often very brilliant fluorescence in the indirect test. From 35 to >85% of sera from American individuals, regardless of their history, but dependent upon their ages, also stained the expected fraction of the cells, though mostly to a less intense degree. The significance of the finding that all Burkitt patients' sera gave strongly positive results could not be properly assessed earlier because of the unavailability of control sera from appropriate African children. Such sera have been obtained, and the results are presented below. The sera were collected by one of us (J. A. L.) for a survey of antibodies to reoviruses, to be recorded elsewhere. They were obtained in various sections of Uganda from a number of tribes, selected as to relatively high or low frequencies of Burkitt tumors. The children, 4 to 15 years of age, were observed actively at play in the school yards prior to bleeding, and appeared to be in good health on closer examination. An additional 17 sera from the Congo were also tested. All sera were used at a dilution of 1:10 for indirect immunofluorescence tests with cells of the EB3 line, containing between 3 and 5% stainable cells. The results (Table 1) revealed that 54% of the
Is Theta Burst Stimulation Applied to Visual Cortex Able to Modulate Peripheral Visual Acuity?

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is usually applied to visual cortex to explore the effects on cortical excitability. Most researchers therefore concentrate on changes of phosphene threshold, rarely on consequences for visual performance. Thus, we investigated peripheral visual acuity in the four quadrants of the visual field using Landolt C optotypes before and after repetitive stimulation of the visual cortex. We applied continuous and intermittend theta burst stimulation with various stimulation intensities (60%, 80%, 100%, 120% of individual phosphene threshold) as well as monophasic and biphasic 1 Hz stimulation, respectively. As an important result, no serious adverse effects were observed. In particular, no seizure was induced, even with theta burst stimulation applied with 120% of individual phosphene threshold. In only one case stimulation was ceased because the subject reported intolerable pain. Baseline visual acuity decreased over sessions, indicating a continuous training effect. Unexpectedly, none of the applied transcranial magnetic stimulation protocols had an effect on performance: no change in visual acuity was found in any of the four quadrants of the visual field. Binocular viewing as well as the use of peripheral instead of foveal presentation of the stimuli might have contributed to this result. Furthermore, intraindividual variability could have masked the TMS- induced effects on visual acuity.
Building Blocks Propagation in Quantum-Inspired Genetic Algorithm

This paper presents an analysis of building blocks propagation in Quantum-Inspired Genetic Algorithm, which belongs to a new class of metaheuristics drawing their inspiration from both biological evolution and unitary evolution of quantum systems. The expected number of quantum chromosomes matching a schema has been analyzed and a random variable corresponding to this issue has been introduced. The results have been compared with Simple Genetic Algorithm. Also, it has been presented how selected binary quantum chromosomes cover a domain of one-dimensional fitness function.
Improved bounds for the symmetric rendezvous value on the line

A notorious open problem in the field of rendezvous search is to decide the rendezvous value of the symmetric rendezvous search problem on the line, when the initial distance apart between the two players is 2. We show that the symmetric rendezvous value is within the interval (4.1520, 4.2574), which considerably improves the previous best known result (3.9546, 4.3931). To achieve the improved bounds, we call upon results from absorbing markov chain theory and mathematical programming theory---particularly fractional quadratic programming and semidefinite programming. Moreover, we also establish some important properties of this problem, which may be of independent interest and useful for resolving this problem completely. Finally, we conjecture that the symmetric rendezvous value is asymptotically equal to 4.25 based on our numerical calculations.
SDHT for Fast Detection of Weak GNSS Signals

Successful and fast Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning in indoor environments can enable many location based services (LBS). However, fast indoor GNSS positioning has been one of the biggest challenges for GNSS receivers due to the huge computational cost. To detect weak GNSS signals in indoor environments, a GNSS receiver should perform numerous correlations with a longer coherent integration interval for a denser Doppler frequency search, which is computationally too expensive. For a fast and low computational weak GNSS signal detection, we propose the synthesized Doppler frequency hypothesis testing (SDHT) technique that, utilizing the test results of only sparse Doppler frequency hypotheses, can estimate the test results of entire Doppler frequency hypotheses with small computations. We provide theoretical performance analysis of the proposed technique and demonstrate that the proposed technique reduces the computational cost for weak GNSS signal acquisition significantly and achieves faster signal acquisition than conventional techniques.
Low-Volume High-Intensity Interval Training Is Sufficient to Ameliorate the Severity of Metabolic Syndrome.

BACKGROUND High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is superior to moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT) at improving cardiometabolic risk. However, the optimal volume of HIIT to reduce the severity of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) has yet to be investigated. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of different volumes of HIIT and MICT on MetS severity (MetS z-score). METHODS This was a substudy of the "Exercise in prevention of Metabolic Syndrome" (EX-MET) multicenter trial, reporting data collected at the Brisbane site. Ninety-nine adults diagnosed with MetS were randomized to one of the following 16-week interventions: (1) MICT [n = 34, 30 min at 60%-70% heart rate (HR) peak/session, 150 min/week]; (2) 4HIIT (n = 34, 4 × 4 min bouts at 85%-95% HR peak, interspersed with 3 min active recovery at 50%-70% HR peak, 114 min/week); or (3) 1HIIT (n = 31, 1 × 4 min bout at 85%-95% HR peak, 51 min/week). Z-scores were derived from levels of MetS risk factors before and after the intervention. RESULTS Eighty-one participants completed post-testing (MICT, n = 26; 4HIIT, n = 28, 1HIIT, n = 27). After excluding 16 participants who had a change in medication dosage or type during the intervention, a total of 65 participants were included in the analysis [MICT, n = 22, age 55 ± 10 years, body mass index (BMI) 32 ± 6 kg/m; 4HIIT, n = 22, 56 ± 10 years, 35 ± 9 kg/m2; 1HIIT, n = 21, 57 ± 8 years, 32 ± 5 kg/m). MetS severity reduced following all interventions (pre- to post-MetS z-score: MICT, 1.80 ± 1.93 to 0.90 ± 1.93; 4HIIT, 2.75 ± 2.56 to 2.17 ± 2.71; 1HIIT, 2.48 ± 3.38 to 0.84 ± 2.98), with no significant differences between groups. There were no reported adverse events that were directly related to the exercise interventions. CONCLUSIONS Low-volume HIIT (51 min/week) was as effective as high-volume HIIT (114 min/week) and MICT (150 min/week) in ameliorating MetS severity.
Enhancing Driving Direction Time based on Speed Fluctuation and Vehicle Type Identification

efficient driving directions has become a daily activity and been implemented as a key feature in many map services like WMS, Google and Bing Maps. A fast driving route saves the time of a driver and also energy consumption (as most gas is wasted in traffic jams). GPS-equipped taxis can be regarded as mobile sensors probing traffic flows on road surfaces and taxi drivers are usually experienced in finding the fastest (quickest) route to a destination based on their knowledge. We mine the smart driving directions from the historical GPS trajectories of a large number of taxis and provide a user with the practically fastest route to a given destination at a given departure time. In our approach, we propose a time-dependent landmark graph, where a node (landmark) is a road segment frequently traversed by taxis, to model the intelligence of taxi drivers and the properties of dynamic road networks. 1) Vehicle detection, and tracking (2) Feature extraction and classification (3) Database storage and retrieval. Driver behavior based on surrounding vehicles, as well as surveillance from mobile platform.Then, a Variance-Entropy-Based Clustering approach is devised to estimate the distribution of travel time between two landmarks in different time slots. Based on this graph, we design a two-stage routing algorithm to compute the practically fastest route. We build our system based on a real world trajectory simulation dataset and stored in MOD.
Intractable diseases treated with intra-bone marrow-bone marrow transplantation

Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is used to treat hematological disorders, autoimmune diseases (ADs) and lymphoid cancers. Intra bone marrow-BMT (IBM-BMT) has been proven to be a powerful strategy for allogeneic BMT due to the rapid hematopoietic recovery and the complete restoration of T cell functions. IBM-BMT not only replaces hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) but also mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). MSCs are multi-potent stem cells that can be isolated from bone marrow (BM), umbilical cord blood (UCB), and adipose tissue. MSCs play an important role in the support of hematopoiesis, and modify and influence the innate and adaptive immune systems. MSCs also differentiate into mesodermal, endodermal and ectodermal lineage cells to repair tissues. This review aims to summarize the functions of BM-derived-MSCs, and the treatment of intractable diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and malignant tumors with IBM-BMT.
Foreground object features extraction with GLCM texture descriptor in FPGA

Texture descriptors are a powerful tool for 2D scene features extraction. They can be computed for whole image or for regions of interests obtained from various object detection methods. In case when foreground objects mask obtained from background subtraction or optical-flow thresholding is to be used, the connected components analysis is needed first. The texture descriptor is then computed for each labeled segment in the second stage. This pipelined approach requires access to external memory to save the intermediate results and introduces high latency. In the article an FPGA based system is presented which is using a close integration of single pass connected components analysis module and GLCM (gray level co-occurrence matrix) texture descriptor computation block to obtain low latency, high speed foreground object feature extraction subsystem which is not requiring an external memory access.
Match memory recurrent networks

Imbuing neural networks with memory and attention mechanisms allows for better generalisation with fewer data samples. By focusing only on the relevant parts of data, which is encoded in an internal “memory” format, the network is able to infer better and more reliable patterns. Most neuronal attention mechanisms are based on internal networks structures that impose a similarity metric (e.g., dot-product), followed by some (soft-)max operator. In this paper, we propose a novel attention method based on a function between neuron activities, which we term a “match function”, which is augmented by a recursive softmax function. We evaluate the algorithm on the bAbI question answering dataset and show that it has stronger performance when only one memory hop is used in both terms of average score and in terms the number of solved questions. Furthermore, with three memory hops, our algorithm can solve 12/20 benchmark questions using 1000 training samples per task. This is an improvement on the previous state of the art of 9/20 solved questions, which was held by end-to-end memory networks.
Multiagent-based decentralized operation of microgrids considering data interoperability

Transition from conventional power distribution to active distribution networks requires extensive integration of decentralized microgrid control capabilities with on-demand industrial data interoperability. This paper presents a decentralized hierarchical microgrid operation scheme with a multiagent framework using IEC 61850 and the foundation for intelligent physical agents (FIPA) standards. The conducted studies are mainly focused on secondary and tertiary control levels. Secondary control deals with the operational reliability of the microgrid with a decentralized remote interaction between distributed energy resources (DER) and microgrid operator. Tertiary level " presents the aggregated operation of multiple microgrids aiming to enhance the reliability of the host grid with ancillary services. Experimental results are presented in a laboratory based test bed involving actual intelligent electronic devices (IED) and multiple microgrids.
Multichannel Source Separation and Tracking With RANSAC and Directional Statistics

We describe multichannel blind source separation and tracking algorithms based on clustering wrapped interchannel phase difference (IPD) features. We pose the clustering problem as one of multimodal circular-linear regression and present its probabilistic formulation. Phase wrapping due to spatial aliasing is explicitly incorporated by modeling the IPD features as circular variables. We present two methods based on Expectation-Maximization (EM) and a sequential variant of RANdom SAmple Consensus (RANSAC). We show that their strengths can be combined by using RANSAC to initialize EM. The IPD clustering algorithm is applied to separate stationary speakers from a multichannel mixture. We then extend it to the case of moving speakers by tracking their directions-of-arrival with the Factorial Wrapped Kalman Filter (FWKF) using RANSAC as a data preprocessor. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methods perform well in the presence of reverberant babble noise and spatial aliasing. The FWKF successfully tracks and separates moving speakers with separation quality comparable to that for stationary speakers.
A Functional Canonical Form

In the field of switching theory the important problem of designing switching circmts economically has been attacked from many different points of view. Thus far, no solution has been completely satisfactory. These solutions have been effected primarily by the use of properties of Boolean algebra or of switching elements. In the opinion of this author the probability of achieving a satisfactory solution would be increased by an approach which rches on more fundamental and intrinsic properties, the structural properties of the switching functions representing the final networks desired. Except for references [ll and [2] in which it is shown that economical switching networks exist when the associated switching function possesses the structural property of decomposability, this viewpoint has been overlooked. In this paper, this viewpoint is investigated further, and as a result a functional canonical form is established. The utility of this canonical form in practice and theory should be comparable to that of the tree or pyramid circuit.
Simultaneously optimizing DRAM cache hit latency and miss rate via novel set mapping policies

Two key parameters that determine the performance of a DRAM cache based multi-core system are DRAM cache hit latency (HL) and DRAM cache miss rate (MR), as they strongly influence the average DRAM cache access latency. Recently proposed DRAM set mapping policies are either optimized for HL or for MR. None of these policies provides a good HL and MR at the same time. This paper presents a novel DRAM set mapping policy that simultaneously targets both parameters with the goal of achieving the best of both to reduce the overall DRAM cache access latency. For a 16-core system, our proposed set mapping policy reduces the average DRAM cache access latency (depends upon HL and MR) compared to state-of-the-art DRAM set mapping policies that are optimized for either HL or MR by 29.3% and 12.1%, respectively.