Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implicit learning of what comes when and where within a sequence: The time-course of acquiring serial position-item and item-item associations to represent serial order

Much research has been conducted aimed at the representations and mechanisms that enable learning of sequential structures. A central debate concerns the question whether item-item associations (i.e., in the sequence A-B-C-D, B comes after A) or associations of item and serial list position (i.e., B is the second item in the list) are used to represent serial order. Previously, we showed that in a variant of the implicit serial reaction time task, the sequence representation contains associations between serial position and item information (Schuck, Gaschler, Keisler, & Frensch, 2011). Here, we applied models and research methods from working memory research to implicit serial learning to replicate and extend our findings. The experiment involved three sessions of sequence learning. Results support the view that participants acquire knowledge about order structure (item-item associations) and about ordinal structure (serial position-item associations). Analyses suggest that only the simultaneous use of the two types of knowledge acquisition can explain learning-related performance increases. Additionally, our results indicate that serial list position information plays a role very early in learning and that inter-item associations increasingly control behavior in later stages.
Eye-Gesture Analysis for Driver Hazard Awareness

— Because road traffic accidents are a major source of death worldwide, attempts have been made to create Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) able to detect vehicle, driver and environmental conditions that are cues for possible potential accidents. This paper presents continued work on a novel Non-intrusive Intelligent Driver Assistance and Safety System (Ni-DASS) for assessing driver attention and hazard awareness. It uses two on-board CCD cameras – one observing the road and the other observing the driver’s face. The windscreen is divided into cells and analysis of the driver’s eye-gaze patterns allows Ni-DASS to determine the windscreen cell the driver is focusing on using eye-gesture templates. Intersecting the driver’s field of view through the observed windscreen cell with subsections of the camera’s field of view containing a potential hazard allows Ni-DASS to estimate the probability that the driver has actually observed the hazard. Results have shown that the proposed technique is an accurate enough measure of driver observation to be useful in ADAS systems.
Training Design for CFO Estimation in OFDM Over Correlated Multipath Fading Channels

Carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation is a key challenge in multicarrier systems such as OFDM. Often, this task is carried out using a preamble made of a number, say J, of repetitive-slots (RS). Here, we address the issue of optimal RS preamble design using the Cramer -Rao bound. We show that the optimal value of J is a trade-off between the multipath diversity gain and the number of unknowns to be estimated. In the case of correlated channel taps, we show that uniform power loading of the active subcarriers is not optimal (in contrast with the uncorrelated case) and a better power loading scheme is proposed. The theoretical results are supported by computer simulations.
Architecture and concepts of the ARGuE Guard

ARGuE (Advanced Research Guard for Experimentation) is a prototype guard being developed as a basis for experimentation. ARGuE is based on Network Associates' Gauntlet firewall. By integrating capabilities developed under several government programs, we were able to create a system which is easier to extend than other guards, provides significant new features (such as integration with an intrusion detection system), and yet has a reasonable degree of assurance.
Non-Invasive Techniques for Monitoring Human Fatigue

Abstract : In this report, we summarize our efforts in developing real time non-intrusive technology-for monitoring human fatigue. Through this research, we have developed state of the art technologies and a prototype fatigue monitor for real time non-intrusive human fatigue monitoring. Our contributions include: 1) the development of various computer vision techniques for real-time and non-intrusive extraction of multiple fatigue parameters related to eyelid movements, gaze, head movement, and facial expressions, 2) the development of a probabilistic framework based on the Bayesian networks to model and integrate contextual and visual cues information for robust and accurate fatigue detection, and 3) systematic and scientific validation of the fatigue monitor. Experimental validation of our techniques using human subjects demonstrates the good measurement accuracy of our techniques. In addition, the validation also verifies the validity of the proposed fatigue parameters as well as that of the composite fatigue index computed by our fatigue monitor.
A Monoclonal Antibody Based Capture ELISA for Botulinum Neurotoxin Serotype B: Toxin Detection in Food

Botulism is a serious foodborne neuroparalytic disease, caused by botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), produced by the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Seven toxin serotypes (A – H) have been described. The majority of human cases of botulism are caused by serotypes A and B followed by E and F. We report here a group of serotype B specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) capable of binding toxin under physiological conditions. Thus, they serve as capture antibodies for a sandwich (capture) ELISA. The antibodies were generated using recombinant peptide fragments corresponding to the receptor-binding domain of the toxin heavy chain as immunogen. Their binding properties suggest that they bind a complex epitope with dissociation constants (KD’s) for individual antibodies ranging from 10 to 48 × 10−11 M. Assay performance for all possible combinations of capture-detector antibody pairs was evaluated and the antibody pair resulting in the lowest level of detection (L.O.D.), ~20 pg/mL was determined. Toxin was detected in spiked dairy samples with good recoveries at concentrations as low as 0.5 pg/mL and in ground beef samples at levels as low as 2 ng/g. Thus, the sandwich ELISA described here uses mAb for both the capture and detector antibodies (binding different epitopes on the toxin molecule) and readily detects toxin in those food samples tested.
Cryopreservation and Long-Term Storage of Human Low Density Lipoproteins

A simple and effective technique of long-term storage of human low density lipoproteins (LDL) has been developed. The technique involves the addition of 1.4 mol/l (or 10% by volume) dimethyl sulphoxide directly to a solution of the freshly isolated LDL in high salt buffer, and subsequent freezing and storage for up to 2 years at -70 degrees C. We have shown that freshly isolated LDL, "preserved" as described above, are able to keep their native properties for a long period, i.e.: a) electrophoretic behaviour in non-denaturing (or with sodium dodecyl sulphate, 1 milligram) polyacrylamide 2-16% gradient gel electrophoresis; b) immunoreactivity of apolipoprotein B (analyzed by radial immunodiffusion, electroimmunoassay and immunoturbidimetric assay); c) immunogeneity of apolipoprotein B; d) an average size of LDL particles (analyzed by electron microscopy); e) ability to bind with B,E-receptors of human skin fibroblasts. The technique can also be applied to radiolabelled LDL samples. Taking into consideration the labour- and time-consuming procedure of obtaining and characterizing LDL, and the preferred use of single well-characterized LDL preparation, we recommend that the above technique of LDL long-term storage be applied in various clinical and biomedical studies.
IL-21 Augments Rapamycin in Expansion of Alpha Fetoprotein Antigen Specific Stem-Cell-like Memory T Cells in vitro

Introduction Alloreactive tumor specific T cells are important arsenals of the adaptive immune system in the fight against tumors. However, stem cell-like memory T cells (Tscm) provide the key to effective elimination of tumor cells. Methods for generating these T cell subsets already exist. However, they could be made more efficient. Further, they are expensive and unattainable to the resource poor laboratories. In this regard, we are hereby describing a novel in vitro allogeneic co-culture method for raising allo-restricted tumor specific Tscm cells that we developed. Methods We started by obtaining PBLs that screened negative for HLA-A2 molecules from healthy donors followed by co-culture with T2/AFP cells to generate AFP peptide specific tumor-reactive T cells. Controls, IL-21 and/or rapamycin were applied to samples in 24 well plates. Samples were harvested and stained with anti-human CD3, CD8, CD44, CD62L, and HLA-A2/AFP dimer followed by flow cytometry analysis. Cell viability was measured by Trypan blue exclusion assay. One Way ANOVA and independent t test were used to compare the mean differences among and between groups where P values less than 0.05 were considered significant. Results Our results show that rapamycin arrests the differentiation of, and expands AFP specific Tscm cells. Further, the expansion of Tscm cells is augmented in the presence of IL-21. Conclusion IL-21 and Rapamycin can be used concurrently to raise and maintain antigen specific Tscm cells in vitro for purposes of augmenting immunotherapy strategies against cancers.
Phyxel: Realistic Display of Shape and Appearance using Physical Objects with High-speed Pixelated Lighting

A computer display that is sufficiently realistic such that the difference between a presented image and a real object cannot be discerned is in high demand in a wide range of fields, such as entertainment, digital signage, and design industry. To achieve such a level of reality, it is essential to reproduce the three-dimensional (3D) shape and material appearances simultaneously; however, to date, developing a display that can satisfy both conditions has been difficult. To address this problem, we propose a system that places physical elements at desired locations to create a visual image that is perceivable by the naked eye. This configuration can be realized by exploiting characteristics of human visual perception. Humans perceive light modulation as perfectly steady light if the modulation rate is sufficiently high. Therefore, if high-speed spatially varying illumination is projected to the actuated physical elements possessing various appearances at the desired timing, a realistic visual image that can be transformed dynamically by simply modifying the lighting pattern can be obtained. We call the proposed display technology Phyxel. This paper describes the proposed configuration and required performance for Phyxel. We also demonstrate three applications: dynamic stop motion, a layered 3D display, and shape mixture.
Predicting intervention onset in the ICU with switching state space models

The impact of many intensive care unit interventions has not been fully quantified, especially in heterogeneous patient populations. We train unsupervised switching state autoregressive models on vital signs from the public MIMIC-III database to capture patient movement between physiological states. We compare our learned states to static demographics and raw vital signs in the prediction of five ICU treatments: ventilation, vasopressor administra tion, and three transfusions. We show that our learned states, when combined with demographics and raw vital signs, improve prediction for most interventions even 4 or 8 hours ahead of onset. Our results are competitive with existing work while using a substantially larger and more diverse cohort of 36,050 patients. While custom classifiers can only target a specific clinical event, our model learns physiological states which can help with many interventions. Our robust patient state representations provide a path towards evidence-driven administration of clinical interventions.
The semiclassical propagator in Fock space: dynamical echo and many-body interference

We present a semiclassical approach to many-body quantum propagation in terms of coherent sums over quantum amplitudes associated with the solutions of corresponding classical nonlinear wave equations. This approach adequately describes interference effects in the many-body space of interacting bosonic systems. The main quantity of interest, the transition amplitude between Fock states when the dynamics is driven by both single-particle contributions and many-body interactions of similar magnitude, is non-perturbatively constructed in the spirit of Gutzwiller’s derivation of the van Vleck propagator from the path integral representation of the time evolution operator, but lifted to the space of symmetrized many-body states. Effects beyond mean-field, here representing the classical limit of the theory, are semiclassically described by means of interfering amplitudes where the action and stability of the classical solutions enter. In this way, a genuinely many-body echo phenomenon, coherent backscattering in Fock space, is presented arising due to coherent quantum interference between classical solutions related by time reversal.
Topology Optimization of Metallic Antennas

We introduce an approach to carry out layout optimization of metallic antenna parts. An optimization technique first developed for the optimization of load-bearing elastic structures is adapted for the purpose of metallic antenna design. The local conductivity values in a given region are used as design variables and are iteratively updated by a gradient-based optimization algorithm. Given a set of time-domain signals from exterior sources, the design objective is here to maximize the energy received by the antenna and transmitted to a coaxial cable. The optimization proceeds through a sequence of coarsely-defined lossy designs with successively increasing details and less losses as the iterations proceed. The objective function gradient is derived based on the FDTD discretization of Maxwell's equations and is expressed in terms of field solutions of the original antenna problem and an adjoint field problem. The same FDTD code, but with different wave sources, is used for both the original antenna problem and the adjoint problem. For any number of design variables, the gradient is evaluated on the basis of only two FDTD simulations, one for the original antenna problem and another for the adjoint field problem. We demonstrate the capability of the method by optimizing the radiating patch of both UWB monopole and microstrip antennas. The UWB monopole is designed to radiate over a wide frequency band 1-10 GHz, while the microstrip patch is designed for single and dual frequency band operation. In these examples, there are more than 20,000 design variables, and the algorithm typically converges in less than 150 iterations. The optimization results show a promising use of the proposed approach as a general method for conceptual design of near-resonance metallic antennas.
Evidence for an accretion stream in 4U 1907+09

The X-ray binary system 4U 1907+09 contains an accretion-powered X-ray pulsar in an eccentric orbit around a massive early-type companion star. It has been previously suggested that a trailing gas stream along with strong stellar winds could describe the orbital variations in X-ray flux. In this work, 12 yr of X-ray observations from the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer/ All-Sky Monitor are analysed. We study both the X-ray flux and column density dependence on the orbital phase. The dynamics of the wind and stream are calculated for various companion star radii, system inclinations and eccentricities; the wind and stream model is parametrized by companion star rotation, stellar wind velocity, stream width and density. These parameters are taken as inputs to compute the expected accretion luminosity which is then compared to the observed flux versus the orbital phase. The column density along the line of sight to the neutron star is calculated using the best-fitting results from the flux analysis and verifies the high extinction in the direction of 4U 1907+09. We find that the stream component of accretion contributes significantly to describing the orbital variations in X-ray flux observed in 4U 1907+09. The best-fitting free parameters of our wind and stream model such as mass-loss rate, terminal wind velocity, companion star rotation speed and interstellar extinction are found to be consistent with literature values for 4U 1907+09. The best fit to the data was found at higher values of eccentricity (e = 0.31) and lower companion star radii (R c = 16-21 R ⊙ ).
A Target-Oriented Text Scanning Mechanism

One important human reading style is target-oriented, which only focuses on target-related contents. This paper reports the realization of a text scanning mechanism that simulates human target reading process. The reading process is simulated by identifying target reading scope and modeling memory operations such as recall, association and forget. The impressions of words change during reading. Experiments show that: (1) the mechanism is in line with human target reading process, (2) the mechanism can extract the target-related content from text, and (3) the mechanism can measure target-oriented text similarity.
Improved Seq SLAM for Real-Time Place Recognition and Navigation Error Correction

Place recognition plays an important role in long term navigation in challenging environment and Seq SLAM has achieved quite remarkable results. In this paper, we mainly adopt three strategies to improve the original Seq SLAM algorithm: integrating Seq SLAM with odometry, optimizing sequence searching strategy and multi-scale sequence matching. The improved algorithm is evaluated using the KITTI dataset. The template library is created online using navigation information from the sliding-window visual-inertial odometer. When a place is recognized, the corresponding information is used as observation of the filter. The result shows the superiority of the proposed method in real-time place recognition. The optimized sequence searching strategy performs much better in minor deviations. Meanwhile, the advantages of longer sequence match (higher recall rate) and short sequence match (precise location) are combined together. At last, the navigation errors are greatly reduced by close-loop detection. The overall position error of odometer with Seq SLAM is 20.3m (0.55% of the trajectory), which is much smaller than the navigation errors of the single odometer (32.0m, 0.86%).
Dealing with problem behaviors in early learning and elementary classrooms: training teachers in function-based interventions

One of the biggest challenges for early learning and elementary teachers today is the presence of an increasing amount of student behavior to manage in the classroom. University education programs lack the training that teachers require to identify the functions of and successfully modify student problem behavior. The lack of teacher expertise in dealing with the emotional and behavioral needs of children is to the detriment of our students and their overall functioning within a classroom setting. This project outlines the necessary components and content to create a resource that could be used by educators or administrators to facilitate the development of teacher skills in function-based interventions. It examines the four functions of behavior, function-based assessments, behavior intervention plans, function-based intervention strategies, and successful strategies for classroom implementation, including modeling and teacher coaching. Supervisory Committee Dr. Todd Milford (Department of Curriculum and Instruction) Dr. Chris Filler (Department of Curriculum and Instruction) TRAINING TEACHERS IN FUNCTION-­‐BASED INTERVENTIONS
Association between Empirically Estimated Monsoon Dynamics and Other Weather Factors and Historical Tea Yields in China: Results from a Yield Response Model

Farmers in China’s tea-growing regions report that monsoon dynamics and other weather factors are changing and that this is affecting tea harvest decisions. To assess the effect of climate change on tea production in China, this study uses historical weather and production data from 1980 to 2011 to construct a yield response model that estimates the partial effect of weather factors on tea yields in China, with a specific focus on East Asian Monsoon dynamics. Tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) Kunze) has not been studied using these methods even though it is an important crop for human nutrition and the economic well-being of rural communities in many countries. Previous studies have approximated the monsoon period using historical average onset and retreat dates, which we believe limits our understanding of how changing monsoon patterns affect crop productivity. In our analysis, we instead estimate the monsoon season across China’s tea growing regions empirically by identifying the unknown breakpoints in the year-by-province cumulative precipitation. We find that a 1% increase in the monsoon retreat date is associated with 0.481%–0.535% reduction in tea yield. In the previous year, we also find that a 1% increase in the date of the monsoon retreat is associated with a 0.604% decrease in tea yields. For precipitation, we find that a 1% increase in average daily precipitation occurring during the monsoon period is associated with a 0.184%–0.262% reduction in tea yields. In addition, our models show that 1% increase in the average daily monsoon precipitation from the previous growing season is associated with 0.258%–0.327% decline in yields. We also find that a 1% decrease in solar radiation in the previous growing season is associated with 0.554%-0.864% decrease in tea yields. These findings suggest the need for adaptive management and harvesting strategies given climate change projections and the known negative association between excess rainfall and delayed monsoon retreat on tea quality and yield.
Uneven accountability in the wake of political violence

The government faces a principal–agent problem with lower-level state officers. Officers are often expected to use the state coercive capacity endowed to them to politically benefit the government. But officers can shirk from the government’s demands. An officer’s actions during bouts of large-scale and highly visible electoral violence reveal the officer’s type, thereby providing the government with the information necessary to solve its principal–agent problem for the future. The government holds officers who used their authority to perpetuate incumbent-instigated violence accountable through positive rewards, while holding officers who used their authority to perpetuate opposition-instigated violence accountable through negative sanctions. We find evidence in support of the theory using micro-level archival data on 2,500 local officer appointments and fine-grained satellite data on the locations of violence in the aftermath of Kenya’s 2007 election. The Kenyan government was more likely to fire officials whose jurisdictions saw opposition-instigated violence that targeted government supporters. But we find the opposite result where violence was instigated by incumbent supporters: there, officers were less likely to be fired if violence occurred in their jurisdiction. Our results indicate that leaders can manipulate accountability processes after political violence to further politicize the state.