Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Generating sparse and selective third-order responses in the olfactory system of the fly

In the antennal lobe of Drosophila, information about odors is transferred from olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) to projection neurons (PNs), which then send axons to neurons in the lateral horn of the protocerebrum (LHNs) and to Kenyon cells (KCs) in the mushroom body. The transformation from ORN to PN responses can be described by a normalization model similar to what has been used in modeling visually responsive neurons. We study the implications of this transformation for the generation of LHN and KC responses under the hypothesis that LHN responses are highly selective and therefore suitable for driving innate behaviors, whereas KCs provide a more general sparse representation of odors suitable for forming learned behavioral associations. Our results indicate that the transformation from ORN to PN firing rates in the antennal lobe equalizes the magnitudes of and decorrelates responses to different odors through feedforward nonlinearities and lateral suppression within the circuitry of the antennal lobe, and we study how these two components affect LHN and KC responses.
Propensity Score Matched Comparison of Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy vs Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy for Localized Prostate Cancer: A Survival Analysis from the National Cancer Database

Purpose No direct comparisons between extreme hypofractionation and conventional fractionation have been reported in randomized trials for the treatment of localized prostate cancer. The goal of this study is to use a propensity score matched (PSM) analysis with the National Cancer Database (NCDB) for the comparison of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) and intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for organ confined prostate cancer. Methods Men with localized prostate cancer treated with radiation dose ≥72 Gy for IMRT and ≥35 Gy for SBRT to the prostate only were abstracted from the NCDB. Men treated with previous surgery, brachytherapy, or proton therapy were excluded. Matching was performed to eliminate confounding variables via PSM. Simple 1–1 nearest neighbor matching resulted in a matched sample of 5,430 (2,715 in each group). Subset analyses of men with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) > 10, GS = 7, and GS > 7 yielded matched samples of 1,020, 2,194, and 247, respectively. Results No difference in survival was noted between IMRT and SBRT at 8 years (p = 0.65). Subset analyses of higher risk men with PSA > 10 or GS = 7 histology or GS > 7 histology revealed no difference in survival between IMRT and SBRT (p = 0.58, p = 0.68, and p = 0.62, respectively). Variables significant for survival for the matched group included: age (p < 0.0001), primary payor (p = 0.0001), Charlson/Deyo Score (p = 0.0002), PSA (p = 0.0013), Gleason score (p < 0.0001), and use of hormone therapy (p = 0.02). Conclusion Utilizing the NCDB, there is no difference in survival at 8 years comparing IMRT to SBRT in the treatment of localized prostate cancer. Subset analysis confirmed no difference in survival even for intermediate- and high-risk patients based on Gleason Score and PSA.
Soft Updates Made Simple and Fast on Non-volatile Memory

Fast, byte-addressable NVM promises near cache latency and near memory bus throughput for file system operations. However, unanticipated cache line eviction may lead to disordered metadata update and thus existing NVM file systems (NVMFS) use synchronous cache flushes to ensure consistency, which extends critical path latency. In this paper, we revisit soft updates, an intriguing idea that eliminates most synchronous metadata updates through delayed writes and dependency tracking, in the context of NVMFS. We show that on one hand byteaddressability of NVM significantly simplifies dependency tracking and enforcement by allowing better directory organization and closely matching the per-pointer dependency tracking of soft updates. On the other hand, per-cache-line failure atomicity of NVM cannot ensure the correctness of soft updates, which relies on block write atomicity; page cache, which is necessary for dual views in soft updates, becomes inefficient due to double writes and duplicated metadata. To guarantee the correctness and consistency without synchronous cache flushes and page cache, we propose pointer-based dual views, which shares most data structures but uses different pointers in different views, to allow delayed persistency and eliminate file system checking after a crash. In this way, our system, namely SoupFS1, significantly shortens the critical path latency by delaying almost all synchronous cache flushes. We have implemented SoupFS as a POSIX-compliant file system for Linux and evaluated it against state-of-the-art NVMFS like PMFS and NOVA. Performance results show that SoupFS can have notably lower latency and modestly higher throughput compared to existing NVMFS.
Opening of the blood-brain barrier preceding cortical edema in a severe attack of FHM type II

The authors report a patient with familial hemiplegic migraine type II who developed a long-lasting attack including fever, right-sided hemiplegia, aphasia, and coma. Quantitative analysis of early gadolinium-enhanced MRI revealed a mild but significant left-hemispheric blood-brain barrier (BBB) opening limited to the cortex and preceding cortical edema. The findings suggest that the delayed cortical edema was vasogenic in the severe migraine aura variant of this ATP1A2 mutation carrier.
Exploiting history to reduce interaction costs in collaborative analysis

When analysts work in a distributed fashion, they need to understand what their collaborators have done and what avenues of analysis remain uninvestigated. Although visualization history has the potential to communicate such information, the common representations are often limited to sequential lists of past work. Such representations do not make it easy to understand the analytic coverage of the dimension space (i.e. which dimensions have been investigated and which have not). This makes it difficult for an analyst to plan their next steps, particularly when the number of dimensions is large. In this paper, we propose representing the prior analysis from a dimension coverage perspective. Dimension view provides a unique perspective that can facilitate exploratory analysis by enabling analysts to easily identify what dimensions have been examined and in what combinations. We hypothesize that addition of this view to common representations of visualization history will reduce cognitive and interaction costs by helping the analyst to discover data subsets to explore. We studied the effects of this view on a distributed collaborative visualization process. Our findings show that providing views of the dimension and data space reduces time required for identifying and investigating unexplored regions and increases the accuracy of this understanding. In addition, providing these views results in a larger coverage of entire dimension space.
A Bayesian Rule for Adaptive Control based on Causal Interventions

Explaining adaptive behavior is a central problem in artificial intelligence research. Here we formalize adaptive agents as mixture distributions over sequences of inputs and outputs (I/O). Each distribution of the mixture constitutes a ‘possible world’, but the agent does not know which of the possible worlds it is actually facing. The problem is to adapt the I/O stream in a way that is compatible with the true world. A natural measure of adaptation can be obtained by the KullbackLeibler (KL) divergence between the I/O distribution of the true world and the I/O distribution expected by the agent that is uncertain about possible worlds. In the case of pure input streams, the Bayesian mixture provides a well-known solution for this problem. We show, however, that in the case of I/O streams this solution breaks down, because outputs are issued by the agent itself and require a different probabilistic syntax as provided by intervention calculus. Based on this calculus, we obtain a Bayesian control rule that allows modeling adaptive behavior with mixture distributions over I/O streams. This rule might allow for a novel approach to adaptive control based on a minimum KLprinciple.
Structure Monitoring using Wireless Sensor Networks CS 294-1 Deeply Embedded Network Systems

Structure monitoring brings new challenges to wireless sensor network: high-fidelity sampling, collecting large volume of data, and sophisticated signal processing. New accelerometer board measures tens of μG acceleration. High frequency sampling is enabled by new component of David Gay. With new component, up to 6.67KHz sampling is possible with jitter less than 10μs. Large-scale Reliable Transfer (LRX) component collects data at the expense of 15% penalty of channel utilization for no data loss. To overcome low signal-to-noise ratio, analog low-pass filter is used, and multiple digital data are averaged. Structure monitoring is a driving force for extending capability of wireless sensor networks system.
The confluent balloon technique for retrograde therapy of chronic total occlusion

Coronary chronic total occlusions (CTO) remain one of the most challenging lesions in percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Retrograde approach is an advanced PCI technique and can improve success rate in CTO intervention. Although success rate of this technique is high in experienced hands, there are still limitations in this approach, e.g., failure of wire to cross lesions. We report an easy and reliable new method of wire crossing in CTO lesions. In this technique, when both the antegrade and retrograde wires are in the subintimal space, balloons catheters are delivered in both directions to the site of the CTO. The balloons are then inflated simultaneously to create a common subintimal space (the confluent of subintimal space) which will allow crossing of wire to true lumen, either antegradely or retrogradely. This technique may improve the success rate of wire crossing and successful CTO intervention. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Microsomal heme oxygenase. Characterization of the enzyme.

Abstract This study characterizes microsomal heme oxygenase, a previously undescribed enzyme which catalyzes the oxidation of heme at the α-methene bridge to form biliverdin. This step is then coupled with soluble NADPH-dependent biliverdin reductase to form bilirubin; microsomal heme oxygenase is rate-limiting in this pathway. By all analytical criteria, the product of this reaction is bilirubin. Most, if not all, of the bilirubin is of the IX α configuration, which is the sole isomeric form of bilirubin occurring physiologically. Heme oxygenase is localized specifically to the microsomal fraction, has an absolute and stoichiometric requirement for NADPH and molecular oxygen, generates carbon monoxide in amounts equimolar to bilirubin, and is inhibited by carbon monoxide. These and other data suggest that this enzyme is a mixed function oxygenase. The enzyme is most active with protohemin IX or methemalbumin; substrates with less activity are methemoglobin, the α and β chains of hemoglobin, deuterohemin IX, coprohemin I, and the hemoglobin-haptoglobin complex, in this order. Oxyhemoglobin, carboxyhemoglobin, myoglobin, and free porphyrins are not acted upon by the enzyme. The apparent Km for protohemin IX is 5.0 µm, and for the other substrates ranges from 4.5 to 5.1 µm. Sodium dodecyl sulfate, lipase, phospholipase, trypsin, potassium cyanide, sodium azide, and p-hydroxymercuribenzoate inhibit the enzyme. The kinetics and tissue distribution of this enzyme suggest that it is of major importance in the physiological degradation of hemoglobin and other hemoproteins to bile pigment.
Differential patterns of glial fibrillary acidic protein‐immunolabeling in the brain of adult lizards

The present study describes by means of immunohistochemistry the comparative distribution of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)‐positive cells in the forebrain and midbrain of three species of lizards: Eumeces algeriensis, Scincoidae; Agama impalearis, Agamidae; Tarentola mauritanica, Gekkonidae. In the species studied, the different types and proportions of glial cells expressing GFAP showed considerable variation. These cells include radial glia, oval cells, tanycytes, ependymocytes, glia limitans, and astrocytes. In Eumeces, astrocytes are particularly abundant and their processes form numerous perivascular end‐feet; in addition well‐differentiated ependymal cells and glia limitans express GFAP. These mature glial features are concordant with the relatively advanced phylogenetic level of Eumeces. In Tarentola, relatively few GFAP‐expressing glial cells are observed, consisting mainly of radial glia and tanycytes. These features indicate a relatively immature state of the glial cell populations in this species. In Agama, GFAP‐immunostained cells are confined to the periventricular and subpial brain areas; the ventricular lining contains numerous GFAP‐immunopositive tanycytes and well‐differentiated glia limitans. This pattern indicates that the glial cell profile in Agama exhibits characteristics intermediate between Eumeces and Tarentola, a feature which is discordant with the relatively primitive phylogenetic level of Agamidae compared to Gekkonidae. Together, the results of the present study provide novel data on the characterization of GFAP‐expressing cell populations in different species of lizards. We suggest that the different glial patterns observed in the lizard brain correlates with developmental and functional aspects. J. Comp. Neurol. 464:159–171, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Design of thin-film polyvinylidene fluoride sensor rosettes for isolation of various strain components

Thin-film polyvinylidene fluoride piezoelectric sensors have long been recognized as a promising alternative to traditional metal foil strain gauges in applications where only dynamic or quasistatic signals are of interest. Compared to metal foil strain gauges, polyvinylidene fluoride sensors feature high sensitivity, high dynamic range, and broad frequency bandwidth. However, transverse sensitivity of the polyvinylidene fluoride sensor is higher than that of a metal foil strain gauge, making it more difficult to isolate a particular strain component or a deformation mode when the host structure is under complex loading. In addition, polyvinylidene fluoride films are sensitive to changes in ambient temperature due to the pyroelectric effect. In this article, three temperature-compensated polyvinylidene fluoride sensor rosette designs are proposed for isolating specific strain component(s) and deformation mode(s) of interest. First-principles based models are derived to relate the polyvinylidene fluoride sensor rosette output to the actual elastic strain component of interest. Experimental validation is conducted to verify the proposed models and to compare the performance of the polyvinylidene fluoride sensor rosettes with their metal foil strain gauge counterparts.
Two Easy Improvements to Lexical Weighting

We introduce two simple improvements to the lexical weighting features of Koehn, Och, and Marcu (2003) for machine translation: one which smooths the probability of translating word f to word e by simplifying English morphology, and one which conditions it on the kind of training data that f and e co-occurred in. These new variations lead to improvements of up to +0.8 BLEU, with an average improvement of +0.6 BLEU across two language pairs, two genres, and two translation systems.
Elliptic curves and rank-2 vector bundles on the prime Fano threefold of genus 7

According to Mukai, any prime Fano threefold X of genus 7 is a linear section of the spinor tenfold in the projectivized half-spinor space of Spinð10Þ. It is proven that the moduli space of stable rank-2 vector bundles with Chern classes c1 ¼ 1, c2 ¼ 5 on a generic X is isomorphic to the curve of genus 7 obtained by taking an orthogonal linear section of the spinor tenfold. This is an inverse of Mukai's result on the isomorphism of a non-abelian Brill- Noether locus on a curve of genus 7 to a Fano threefold of genus 7. An explicit geometric construction of both isomorphisms and a similar result for K3 surfaces of genus 7 are given.
Suboptimal space-frequency waveform design for MIMO-OFDM systems

In this paper, a new transmit waveform design algorithm for MIMO-OFDM systems is proposed. The algorithm is based on a geometric channel model consisting of different paths, where the geometric channel parameters are assumed to be known. Using the spatial channel information at the transmitter, the frequency selectiveMIMO channel is transformed into a number of uncoupled flat-fading SISO channels. This suboptimal algorithm significantly simplifies the computational complexity of the optimal joint space-frequency water-filling (JSF-WF) algorithm. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated and compared to the JSF-WF algorithm via simulations in terms of bit-error-rate and bit-rate, and it is shown to be low complex with suboptimal performance.
Failure-Aware Kidney Exchange ( Extended version of an EC-13 paper )

Algorithmic matches in fielded kidney exchanges do not typically result in an actual transplant. We address the problem of cycles and chains in proposed matches failing after the matching algorithm has committed to them. We show that failure-aware kidney exchange can significantly increase the expected number of lives saved (i) in theory, on random graph models; (ii) on real data from kidney exchange match runs between 2010 and 2014; (iii) on synthetic data generated via a model of dynamic kidney exchange. We design a branchand-price-based optimal clearing algorithm specifically for the probabilistic exchange clearing problem and show that this new solver scales well on large simulated data, unlike prior clearing algorithms. We show experimentally that taking failed parts from an initial match and instantaneously rematching them with other vertices still in the waiting pool can result in significant gains. Finally, we show that failure-aware matching can increase overall system efficiency and simultaneously increase the expected number of transplants to highly-sensitized patients, in both static and dynamic models.
Batch transfer of LIGA microstructures by selective electroplating and bonding

A flip-chip, batch tranfer process for LIGA microstructures has been demonstrated be selected electroplating and bonding. The bonding process is achieved by filling electroplated nickel in the gap of two bonding substrates, a LIGA and an IC (Integrated Circuit) chip. The electroplating solution is set at a temperature of 50/spl deg/C and with current density of 68.3 A/m/sup 2/. It is found that a total electroplating time of 80 minutes is required for the completion of the bonding process and that all the targeted LIGA microstructures are bonded and transferred to the IC substrate. Experimentally, a LIGA gripper based on the principle of self-heating and thermal expansion is successfully transferred and operated. When a maximum input current of 1.6 A is applied, a displacement of 90 /spl mu/m is observed. This flip-chip assembly process enables a new class of integrated electro-mechanical manufacturing for microelectromechanical devices.
Lazy Systematic Unit Testing: JWalk versus JUnit

Lazy systematic unit testing with JWalk is compared against regression testing with JUnit, the leading agile testing tool. JWalk produced exhaustive test sets more quickly and recalculated full state and transition coverage, when testing modified or extended classes. For the same time and effort invested, JWalk tested up to two orders of magnitude more paths than manual tests created for JUnit by an expert tester.
Abundances of planetary nebulae NGC 3242 and NGC 6369

The spectra of the planetary nebulae NGC 3242 and NGC 6369 are reanalysed using spectral measurements made in the mid-infrared with the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). The aim is to determine the chemical composition of these objects. We also make use of International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) and ground based spectra. These elliptical PNe are interesting because they are well-studied, nearby, bright objects and therefore allow a reasonably complete comparison of this type of nebulae. Abundances determined from the mid-infrared lines, which are insensitive to electron temperature, are used as the basis for the determination of the composition, which are found to differ somewhat from earlier results. The abundances found, especially the low value of helium and oxygen, indicate that the central star was originally of rather low mass. The abundance of phosphorus has been determined for the first time in NGC 3242. The electron temperature in both of these nebulae is roughly constant unlike NGC 6302 and NGC 2392 where a strong temperature gradient is found. The temperature of the central star is discussed for both nebulae. Finally a comparison of the element abundances in these nebulae with the solar abundance is made. The low abundance of Fe and P is noted and it is suggested that these elements are an important constituent of the nebular dust.
Mycoplasma pneumoniae Cytoskeletal Protein HMW2 and the Architecture of the Terminal Organelle

ABSTRACT The terminal organelle of Mycoplasma pneumoniae mediates cytadherence and gliding motility and functions in cell division. The defining feature of this complex membrane-bound cell extension is an electron-dense core of two segmented rods oriented longitudinally and enlarging to form a bulb at the distal end. While the components of the core have not been comprehensively identified, previous evidence suggested that the cytoskeletal protein HMW2 forms parallel bundles oriented lengthwise to yield the major rod of the core. In the present study, we tested predictions emerging from that model by ultrastructural and immunoelectron microscopy analyses of cores from wild-type M. pneumoniae and mutants producing HMW2 derivatives. Antibodies specific for the N or C terminus of HMW2 labeled primarily peripheral to the core along its entire length. Furthermore, truncation of HMW2 did not correlate specifically with core length. However, mutant analysis correlated specific HMW2 domains with core assembly, and examination of core-enriched preparations confirmed that HMW2 was a major component of these fractions. Taken together, these findings yielded a revised model for HMW2 in terminal organelle architecture.
"Burn-in, bias, and the rationality of anchoring"

Bayesian inference provides a unifying framework for addressing problems in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotics, as well as the problems facing the human mind. Unfortunately, exact Bayesian inference is intractable in all but the simplest models. Therefore minds and machines have to approximate Bayesian inference. Approximate inference algorithms can achieve a wide range of time-accuracy tradeoffs, but what is the optimal tradeoff? We investigate time-accuracy tradeoffs using the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm as a metaphor for the mind's inference algorithm(s). We find that reasonably accurate decisions are possible long before the Markov chain has converged to the posterior distribution, i.e. during the period known as burn-in. Therefore the strategy that is optimal subject to the mind's bounded processing speed and opportunity costs may perform so few iterations that the resulting samples are biased towards the initial value. The resulting cognitive process model provides a rational basis for the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic. The model's quantitative predictions are tested against published data on anchoring in numerical estimation tasks. Our theoretical and empirical results suggest that the anchoring bias is consistent with approximate Bayesian inference.