Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ANALYSIS OF SENSORY TRANSFORMATIONS IN RESPONSE TO COMPLEX SENSORY STIMULI IN THE AUDITORY PATHWAY

We develop a computational modeling framework to study information processing in the auditory pathway. Complex sounds consisting of a series of frequency modulated sweeps were used as test stimuli for our system. Frequency modu lation is an important factor in sound recognition and speech perception. Human behavioral data demonstrated that perception of the direction modulation (UP or DOWN) could be easily controlled in the stimuli by manipulating a single parameter. In order to analyze the represent ations to these stimuli in the peripheral auditory system, a two-stage process was employed. First, the stimuli were decomposed by a well-accepted model of the auditory nerve to produc e simulated auditory nerve outputs. Next, a neural network was developed to classify whether a given stimulus was going UP or DOWN. These data were compared to human behavioral data and neural activity in the rat auditory cortex. Outputs from the neural network model demonstrated that neurons could classify frequency change properly for simple stimuli but introduce si gnificant bias errors in their classifications for more difficult stimuli. These results suggest ways by which pattern recognition techniques can be used to disambiguate neural responses that share so me common characteristics.
Pain Unheard? Postoperative Pain Assessment in Neonates and Infants

textabstractStudy aim: The study aimed at answering two questions: • How reliable. valid, and feasible is the multidimensional COMFORT scale to assess postoperative pain in infants and toddlers 0-3 years of age? • What is the difference between intermittent morphine administration and continuous intravenous morphine in terms of quality and effectiveness of analgesia for postoperative pain in infants and toddlers 0-3 years of age? The studies described in this thesis deal primarily with the first question. The differences between the two morphine conditions in relation to hormonal and metabolic plasma levels and morphine plasma levels will be reported elsewhere. During data collection a third research question came up, inspired by the eventful hospital history of some children combined with the individual differences in pain response and morphine requirement after surgery in our sample. This question was also justified by publications on subsequent and long-tenn consequences of neonatal pain. The third, additional question is: • Are the present postoperative pain and stress response related to past experiences with pain?
Mapping changes in forest cover using multi-scale MODIS imagery

* Corresponding author. This study was carried out in the framework of the project “Using satellite images for automatic mapping of forest clear cuts and new plantations” (Project number 130) funded by Programa AGRO, Medida 8 Desenvolvimento Tecnologico e Demonstracao, Accao 8.1 Desenvolvimento Experimental e Demonstracao (DE&D). Abstract – A simple change detection methodology based on Vegetation Indices (VI) is applied to MODIS images with different spatial resolutions (250, 500 and 1000 m), in view of detecting changes in forest cover caused by forest fires, clear cuts and new plantations. The study also includes an analysis of the effect of the minimum mapping unit and of the different spatial resolutions on the technical characteristics of the final maps of forest-cover changes. The study is carried out with data from the central region of Portugal.
ESTIMATION OF BACTERIAL RESPIRATION AND GROWTH EFFICIENCY IN THE ROSS SEA,ANTARCTICA

Seawater cultures were conducted in large volume (36 1) gas impermeable tri-laminate bags for the purpose of empirically deriving bacterial growth efficiency (BGE) and carbon conversion factors (CCF) in the south central Ross Sea. This experimental design allowed for concomitant measurements of metabolic reactants (loss of total and dissolved organic carbon [TOC and DOC]) and products (gain of total carbon dioxide [TCOz] and bacterial biomass) to be made from a single incubation vessel. Some previous studies have relied on proxy measurements (e.g. 02, 3H-thymidine incorporation and cell abundance) to determine BGE and CCF rather than direct carbon measurements. Our experimental design enabled a complete carbon budget to be constructed and eliminated variability associated with normally employed parallel bottle incubations. Uhlization of TOC was well balanced by the production of TC02, in 7 of 8 experiments, validating the use of tri-laminate bags for measuring microbial respiration. In 3 experiments, where TOC, DOC, TCOz and bacterial biovolume were directly measured, carbon mass balance yielded BGE estimates of 12, 32 and 38% and bacterial CCF of 77, 95 and 134 fg C pm-3. In experiments where independent DOC measurements were not made we used our empirically derived CCF values to determine bacterial carbon production and calculated DOC concentrations and BGE for these remaining experiments. The BGE derived from all the bag experiments conducted throughout the austral spring and summer 1995-1997 ranged from 9 to 38%. Our experimental design and carbon mass balance approach could be applied to other aquatic systems to empirically derive the BGE and CCF, factors essential for determining carbon flux through bacterioplankton.
Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Referee Self-Efficacy Scale (REFS)

The purpose of the present study was to translate into Spanish and analyze the reliability and validity of the Referee Self-Efficacy Scale (REFS). The English version of the 13-item REFS, which was created by Myers, Feltz, Guillen and Dithurbide (2012), was analyzed with data obtained from a sample of 490 Spanish referees representing three different team sports. The reliability was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha and test-retest. The validity was assessed through Conrmatory Factor Analyses and the correlations between the REFS subscales. The reliability estimated with Cronbach’s alpha was (alpha = .85) which was acceptable for the 13-item REFS as well as its subscales ranged . 72 to . 80. The Conrmatory Factor Analyses were performed which supported a 13-item REFS, assessing the four hypothesized dimensions of self-efficacy: game knowledge, decision-making, pressure, and communication. The overall fit of the model was good showing value of . 95 for AGFI, . 97 for GFI and NNFI, . 98 for CFI, and . 04 for RMSEA. In conclusion, this version shows good properties in terms of its dimensionality and internal consistency. Guidelines are also provided for future research on its validity as a measure of self-efficacy in a sample of Spanish officials.
The ventilatory response to hypoxia and hypercapnia is absent in the neonatal fat-tailed dunnart

SUMMARY At birth, the newborn fat-tailed dunnart relies on cutaneous gas exchange to meet metabolic demands, with continuous lung ventilation emerging several days later. We hypothesised that the delayed expression of lung ventilation (VE) in these animals is in part due to a low responsiveness of the respiratory control system to blood gas perturbations. To address this hypothesis, we assessed the ventilatory and metabolic response to hypoxia (10% O2) and hypercapnia (5% CO2) using closed-system respirometry from birth to 23 days postpartum (P). Neonatal fat-tailed dunnarts displayed no significant hypoxic or hypercapnic ventilatory responses at any age. Regardless, significant hyperventilation through a suppression of metabolic rate (VO2) was observed at birth in response to hypercapnia and in response to hypoxia at all ages, except P12. Therefore, reliance on cutaneous gas exchange during early life may be partially attributed to reduced chemosensitivity or a lack of central integration of chemosensitive afferent information. This may be in part due to the relative immaturity of this species at birth, compared with other mammals.
Robust optical flow estimation for continuous blurred scenes using RGB-motion imaging and directional filtering

Optical flow estimation is a difficult task given real-world video footage with camera and object blur. In this paper, we combine a 3D pose&position tracker with an RGB sensor allowing us to capture video footage together with 3D camera motion. We show that the additional camera motion information can be embedded into a hybrid optical flow framework by interleaving an iterative blind deconvolution and warping based minimization scheme. Such a hybrid framework significantly improves the accuracy of optical flow estimation in scenes with strong blur. Our approach yields improved overall performance against three state-of-the-art baseline methods applied to our proposed ground truth sequences, as well as in several other real-world sequences captured by our novel imaging system.
Analysis and Test Correlation of Proof of Concept Box for Blended Wing Body-Low Speed Vehicle

The Low Speed Vehicle (LSV) is a 14.2% scale remotely piloted vehicle of the revolutionary Blended Wing Body concept. The design of the LSV includes an all composite airframe. Due to internal manufacturing capability restrictions, room temperature layups were necessary. An extensive materials testing and manufacturing process development effort was underwent to establish a process that would achieve the high modulus/low weight properties required to meet the design requirements. The analysis process involved a loads development effort that incorporated aero loads to determine internal forces that could be applied to a traditional FEM of the vehicle and to conduct detailed component analyses. A new tool, Hypersizer, was added to the design process to address various composite failure modes and to optimize the skin panel thickness of the upper and lower skins for the vehicle. The analysis required an iterative approach as material properties were continually changing. As a part of the material characterization effort, test articles, including a proof of concept wing box and a full-scale wing, were fabricated. The proof of concept box was fabricated based on very preliminary material studies and tested in bending, torsion, and shear. The box was then tested to failure under shear. The proof of concept box was also analyzed using Nastran and Hypersizer. The results of both analyses were scaled to determine the predicted failure load. The test results were compared to both the Nastran and Hypersizer analytical predictions. The actual failure occurred at 899 lbs. The failure was predicted at 1167 lbs based on the Nastran analysis. The Hypersizer analysis predicted a lower failure load of 960 lbs. The Nastran analysis alone was not sufficient to predict the failure load because it does not identify local composite failure modes. This analysis has traditionally been done using closed form solutions. Although Hypersizer is typically used as an optimizer for the design process, the failure prediction was used to help gain acceptance and confidence in this new tool. The correlated models and process were to be used to analyze the full BWB-LSV airframe design. The analysis and correlation with test results of the proof of concept box is presented here, including the comparison of the Nastran and Hypersizer results.
Anti-Oxidative, Anti-Hyperglycemic and Lipid-Lowering Effects of Aqueous Extracts of Ocimum sanctum L. Leaves in Diabetic Rats

The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of aqueous extracts of Ocimum sanctum L. leaves on blood glucose, serum lipid profile and anti-oxidative activity to protect various risk organs in DM rats. Ocimum sanctum L. leaves were extracted using water, then the total phenolic content was determined. Three groups of male Wistar rats were used including normal control rats, DM rats and DM rats daily fed with aqueous extracts of Ocimum sanctum L. leaves (AQOS) for three weeks. DM rats were induced by intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (65 mg/kgbw). The results show that three weeks of diabetic induction increased blood glucose, serum lipid profile and serum levels of AST, ALT, ALP, LDH, CK-MB, creatinine and BUN. AQOS significantly decreased blood glucose, serum lipid profile and serum levels of AST, ALT, ALP, LDH, CK-MB, creatinine and BUN. The low level of serum insulin was also raised by AQOS. AQOS suppressed high TBARS level and raised the activities of antioxidant enzymes in the liver, kidney and cardiac tis- sues. Histopathological results show that AQOS preserved the liver, kidney and myocardial tissues. It can be concluded that AQOS had anti-hyperglycemic, anti-hyperlipidemic, and free radical sca- venging effects providing organ protection from diabetes. The phenolic compounds contained in AQOS might be responsible for these activities.
Opinion Mining of M Learning Reviews using Soft Computing Techniques

Internet has increasingly become the place for online learning, and exchange of ideas. The rapid development in wireless technology offering fast data transfer has lead to mobile device revolution. With the ease of access of mobile devices like mobile phones, PDAs, tablet PCs and high bandwidth through wireless, there is an upsurge of mobile learning or Mlearning. It is important to know the opinion of users using mlearning platforms for developing and fine tuning of Mlearning systems. The sheer volume of reviews found in the internet blog spot, bulletin board makes it difficult to track and understand customer opinions. Opinion mining also known as sentiment mining is an area of research which attempts at determining the opinion underlying a text written in natural language which summarizes the customer reviews and express whether the opinions are positive or negative. In this paper, we investigate the classification accuracy of machine learning algorithms for opinion mining of Mlearning system review.
Implementing Row Version Verification for Persistence Middleware using SQL Access Patterns

Modern web-based applications are often built as multi-tier architecture using persistence middleware. Middleware technology providers recommend the use of Optimistic Concurrency Control (OCC) mechanism to avoid the risk of blocked resources. However, most vendors of relational database management systems implement only locking schemes for concurrency control. As a consequence a kind of OCC has to be implemented at client or middleware side. The aim of this paper is to recommend Row Version Verification (RVV) as a mean to realize an OCC at the middleware level. To help the developers with the implementation of RVV we propose to use SQL access patterns. For performance reasons the middleware uses buffers (cache) of its own to avoid network traffic and to reduce disk I/O. This caching, however, complicates the use of RVV because the data in the middleware cache may be stale (outdated). We investigate various data access technologies, including the Java Persistence API and Microsoft’s LINQ technologies in combination with commercial database systems for their ability to use the RVV programming discipline. The use of persistence middleware that tries to relieve the programmer from the low level transaction programming turns out to even complicate the situation in some cases. The contribution of this paper are patterns and guidelines for an implementation of OCC at the middleware layer using RVV. Our approach prevents from inconsistencies, reduces locking to a minimum, considers a couple of mainstream technologies, and copes with the effects of concurrency protocols, data access technologies, and caching mechanisms. Keywords-persistence middleware, caching, data access pattern, row version verification.
The Flow Simulation in the Fluidic Amplifier

The viscous flow in the fluidic amplifier is simulated numerically based on CFD technology, and many tests have been done to verify the numerical precision. The results show that the calculated data are good agreement with the experimental data. So the numerical simulation of the viscous flow in the fluidic amplifier is accurate and reliable, and it can be applied to investigate the steady flow and unsteady flow in the fluidic amplifier.
Efficient Processing of KNN Queries in Wireless Sensor Networks

Recently, research on techniques of processing of KNN (K Nearest Neighbor) queries in order to find the nearest neighbor in wireless sensor networks is actively in progress. The existing representative techniques of processing of KNN queries suggest the structure-based routing technique and the non-structure-based routing technique. However, the existing representative techniques of processing of KNN queries have problems of the consumption of high energy by sensor nodes or much time spending in query processing. This paper comes up with QKNN (Quad-tree based KNN) in order to solve such problems with existing KNN query processing techniques and more efficiently process KNN queries. QKNN searches for the sensor node nearest to the query by the means of GPSR, and then composes an R-tree in order to set up the KNN Boundary with the searched node as the reference. Then, based on the R-tree, it performs parallel queries by structuring the query area in a Quad-tree in accordance with the distribution of nodes, and in each cell within the Quad-tree it processes queries by means of the non-structure based itinerary routing technique. Lastly, via various experiments using sensor data, this paper proves the excellence of the proposed technique of processing of the nearest neighbor queries.
Segment Realization , and Locality in Spreading *

An important goal of phonological theory has been the elucidation of "action at a distance. " This term refers to processes, such as assimilations or dissimilations, in which the trigger segment and affected segment are not string-adjacent; there are segments that intervene, yet seem not to participate in the process. Transparency of this sort raises questions. How and why does it occur? What determines which segments, if any, will be transparent for a given process? The search for answers to such questions has been one of the important forces driving the elaboration of metrical and autosegmental representations. Consider the case of long-distance feature spreading, or harmony. It is well known that segments within a spreading domain may appear to be non-participants, transparent to the harmony process. Various strategies have been proposed to account for such cases of transparency. Within non-linear phonological frameworks, a property many approaches have in common is the preservation of locality by relativizing it to what might very generally be called a legitimate target: some notion "anchor," "projection," or "feature-bearing unit. " Locality is obeyed so long as spreading does not skip such a legitimate target. Notable examples of this line of thinking include Goldsmith (1976[79]) and Clements (1980) on the notion "feature-bearing unit," Halle and Vergnaud (1978) on "projections" of features, Kiparsky (1981) on the notion "harmonic vowel," and Archangeli and Pulleyblank (1987; 1994) and Anderson and Ewen (1987) on the relativization of adjacency to prosodically or geometrically defined anchors. The basic idea is depicted in (1), where a feature F is linked to the elements T1 and T2, legitimate targets in some respect. Locality is not violated by the skipping of intervening , since lacks whatever property it is that grants legitimacy (e.g. it is not F-bearing, has the wrong prosodic status, or lacks a certain feature geometric node, see the references cited above). Equivalently, the elements T1 and T2 are adjacent for the purposes of F-spreading.
Dynamic pitching of an elastic rectangular wing in hovering motion

Abstract In order to study the role of the passive deformation in the aerodynamics of insect wings, we computationally model the three-dimensional fluid–structure interaction of an elastic rectangular wing at a low aspect ratio during hovering flight. The code couples a viscous incompressible flow solver based on the immersed-boundary method and a nonlinear finite-element solver for thin-walled structures. During a flapping stroke, the wing surface is dominated by non-uniform chordwise deformations. The effects of the wing stiffness, mass ratio, phase angle of active pitching, and Reynolds number are investigated. The results show that both the phase and the rate of passive pitching due to the wing flexibility can significantly modify the aerodynamics of the wing. The dynamic pitching depends not only on the specified kinematics at the wing root and the stiffness of the wing, but also greatly on the mass ratio, which represents the relative importance of the wing inertia and aerodynamic forces in the wing deformation. We use the ratio between the flapping frequency, $\omega $, and natural frequency of the wing, ${\omega }_{n} $, as the non-dimensional stiffness. In general, when $\omega / {\omega }_{n} \leq 0. 3$, the deformation significantly enhances the lift and also improves the lift efficiency despite a disadvantageous camber. In particular, when the inertial pitching torque is assisted by an aerodynamic torque of comparable magnitude, the lift efficiency can be markedly improved.
Application of neural networks in spatial signal processing (invited paper)

Neural networks (NNs) have proven to be a very powerful tool both for one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) direction of arrival (DOA) estimation. By avoiding complex and time-consuming mathematical calculations, NNs estimate DOAs almost instantaneously. This feature makes them very convenient for real-time applications. Further, unlike the well known MUSIC algorithm, neural network-based models provide accurate directions without additional calibration procedure of antenna array and a priori knowledge of the number of sources. In this review paper, the results achieved by the research group at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering in Nis are presented. The problem of DOA estimation of narrowband signals impinging upon different configurations of antenna arrays is addressed. Both Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) and Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural networks are considered, and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. To improve the resolution of DOA estimates, sectorization model is introduced. As shown in this work, neural network-based models demonstrate high-resolution localization capabilities and much better efficiency than the MUSIC.