Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Resting-State Functional Connectivity Emerges from Structurally and Dynamically Shaped Slow Linear Fluctuations

Brain fluctuations at rest are not random but are structured in spatial patterns of correlated activity across different brain areas. The question of how resting-state functional connectivity (FC) emerges from the brain's anatomical connections has motivated several experimental and computational studies to understand structure–function relationships. However, the mechanistic origin of resting state is obscured by large-scale models' complexity, and a close structure–function relation is still an open problem. Thus, a realistic but simple enough description of relevant brain dynamics is needed. Here, we derived a dynamic mean field model that consistently summarizes the realistic dynamics of a detailed spiking and conductance-based synaptic large-scale network, in which connectivity is constrained by diffusion imaging data from human subjects. The dynamic mean field approximates the ensemble dynamics, whose temporal evolution is dominated by the longest time scale of the system. With this reduction, we demonstrated that FC emerges as structured linear fluctuations around a stable low firing activity state close to destabilization. Moreover, the model can be further and crucially simplified into a set of motion equations for statistical moments, providing a direct analytical link between anatomical structure, neural network dynamics, and FC. Our study suggests that FC arises from noise propagation and dynamical slowing down of fluctuations in an anatomically constrained dynamical system. Altogether, the reduction from spiking models to statistical moments presented here provides a new framework to explicitly understand the building up of FC through neuronal dynamics underpinned by anatomical connections and to drive hypotheses in task-evoked studies and for clinical applications.
Mycorrhizal Response to Experimental pH and P Manipulation in Acidic Hardwood Forests

Many temperate forests of the Northeastern United States and Europe have received significant anthropogenic acid and nitrogen (N) deposition over the last century. Although temperate hardwood forests are generally thought to be N-limited, anthropogenic deposition increases the possibility of phosphorus (P) limiting productivity in these forest ecosystems. Moreover, inorganic P availability is largely controlled by soil pH and biogeochemical theory suggests that forests with acidic soils (i.e., <pH 5) are particularly vulnerable to P limitation. Results from previous studies in these systems are mixed with evidence both for and against P limitation. We hypothesized that shifts in mycorrhizal colonization and community structure help temperate forest ecosystems overcome an underlying P limitation by accessing mineral and organic P sources that are otherwise unavailable for direct plant uptake. We examined arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and ectomycorrhizal (EcM) communities and soil microbial activity in an ecosystem-level experiment where soil pH and P availability were manipulated in mixed deciduous forests across eastern Ohio, USA. One year after treatment initiation, AM root biomass was positively correlated with the most available P pool, resin P, while AM colonization was negatively correlated. In total, 15,876 EcM root tips were identified and assigned to 26 genera and 219 operational taxonomic units (97% similarity). Ectomycorrhizal richness and root tip abundance were negatively correlated with the moderately available P pools, while the relative percent of tips colonized by Ascomycetes was positively correlated with soil pH. Canonical correspondence analysis revealed regional, but not treatment, differences in AM communities, while EcM communities had both treatment and regional differences. Our findings highlight the complex interactions between mycorrhizae and the soil environment and further underscore the fact that mycorrhizal communities do not merely reflect the host plant community.
From Situation Calculus to Dynamic Epistemic Logic

We start from Reiter’s solution to the frame problem in terms of successor state axioms and Scherl and Levesque’s extension to knowledge, as formulated by Lakemeyer and Levesque in their logic ES.While it was believed up to now that quantification over actions is a characteristic feature of Reiter’s solution, we here show that for a reasonably large subset of Reiter’s basic action theories one can do without.We do so by recasting restricted basic action theories in a propositional modal logic, viz. dynamic epistemic logic with public announcements and public assignments.
Reduce complexity computation of MIMO decomposition based on single RF using Kalman filter

Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems based on single radio frequency (RF) receiver have been shown to achieve high data rates due to the exploitation of spatial diversity with the use of multiple antennas at the transmitters and/or receivers. However, exploiting the full multiplexing gain of the MIMO channel requires a RF front end and analog to digital converters for each antenna to process each data stream at baseband, which implies an increase in hardware size, cost computation, and power consumption with respect to single-input-single-output (SISO) systems. This technique can be great, which we can not get the additional diversity gain using the linear MIMO decomposition method. The resulting performance trends showed a significant increase when compared to MIMO-OFDM schemes using conventional antenna. But the complexity of computational cost is high, especially for the larger antenna size. For that we propose to reduce the complexity of computation cost hence technology of a RF signal processing for MIMO-OFDM can reliable applied. In this research we proposes a technique to reduce complexity of computational cost using Kalman filter as MIMO equalizer. In this technique we perform the reduction of the larger matrix size into lower matrix size. In additional part we use an error correction coding (ECC) technique using convolution code and Viterbi algorithm decoding applied at receiver side. Computer simulation result showed that our proposed scheme give low computation.
4 A Multi-start Local Search Approach to the Multiple Container Loading Problem Shigeyuki Takahara Kagawa

This paper is concerned with the multiple container loading problem with rectangular boxes of different sizes and one or more containers, which means that the boxes should be loaded into the containers so that the waste space in the containers are minimized or the total value of the boxes loaded into the containers is maximized. Several approaches have been taken to solve this problem (Ivancic et al., 1989; Mohanty et al., 1994; George, 1996; Bortfeldt, 2000; Eley, 2002; Eley, 2003; Takahara, 2005; Takahara, 2006). The aim of this paper is to propose an efficient greedy approach for the multiple container loading problem and to contribute to develop a load planning software and applications. The problem considered in this paper is the three-dimensional packing problem, therefore it is known to NP-hard. This implies that no simple algorithm has been found so far. In this paper this problem is solved by a relatively simple method using a two-stage strategy. Namely, all boxes are numbered and for the sequence of the numbers a greedy algorithm of loading boxes into containers is considered. This greedy algorithm is based on first-fit concept (Johnson et al., 1974) and determines the arrangement of each box. This algorith try to load the boxes all kind of containers and select the best arrangement result. It’s requires a box loading sequence and a set of orientation orders of each box type for each container type. Each box is tried to load according to these dynamic parameters. Moreover, a static parameter overhang ratio is introduced here. This is a percentage of the bottom face area of the loading box that isn’t supported with other boxes that are below. As shown by Takahara (Takahara, 2006), if this parameter is different, the arrangement given this algorithm is different in spite of using a same pair of the loading sequence and the orientation orders. Some initial pairs of solution, that is a box loading sequence and a set of orientation orders of each box type, are selected among some rules, which are given beforehand. This solution is altered by using a multi-start local search approach. The local search approach is used to find a good pair of solutions that is brought an efficient arrangement by the greedy loading algorithm. The arrangement obtained in the iterations is estimated by volume utilization or total value of the loaded boxes. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is shown by comparing the results obtained with the approaches presented by using benchmark problems from the literature. Finally, the layout examples by the application using the proposed approach for container loading are illustrated. O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w . in te ch w eb . o rg
Listening to Unfamiliar Voices in Spatial Audio : Does Visualization of Spatial Position Enhance Voice Identification ?

The use of spatial audio to present voices from unique locations around a listener's head has been demonstrated to enhance the perception and cognition of auditory events for a variety of listening tasks. This paper describes experimental research to determine whether a combination of spatialization and simple visual representation of voice locations further builds upon the known benefits of spatial audio by aiding listeners in learning to recognize completely unfamiliar voices. A combined spatial audio and visual display format resulted in significantly stronger learning of unfamiliar voices than either mono audio or spatial audio displays with no visual depictions of voice locations. This benefit, however, was only present when the audio space contained a large number of voices. Insight from this research will be useful in informing the design of future multi-modal interfaces for collaborative environments and in developing methodologies for experimentally evaluating potential interfaces for such applications.
EFL Teachers’ Perspectives on the Role of English in Two Mexican Private Universities

In Mexican higher education, the spread of English has become a tool in the internationalization process of universities. However, language has been sidelined in the discourses of globalization and internationalization. Hence, this ethnographic case study aims to look at the spread of English in Mexican higher education through two private universities. It focuses on the universities’ internationalization process, and how English as a foreign language teachers perceive the role of English in this process. Findings show that while English as a foreign language teachers support linguistic ideologies that promote the spread of English as a natural and apolitical phenomenon, at the same time they also warn of ideological implications such as language hierarchies, cultural homogenization, and English linguistic discrimination.
Towards hardware accelerated software routers

We propose an alternative router design to fill the gap between PC-based open source software routers and commercial high-end routers. Our hardware accelerated software router uses commodity PC hardware running an open source software router for the control path, and couples it with programmable switching hardware by delegating most of the packet forwarding to the switch. We describe a prototype implementation and show that it is capable of handling the traffic requirements of an existing carrier aggregation network.
The IUB Rugbot: an intelligent, rugged mobile robot for search and rescue operations

The paper describes the IUB Rugbot, a rugged mobile robot that features quite some on-board intelligence. The robot and its software is the latest development of the IUB rescue robot team, which is active since 2001 in this research area. IUB robotics takes an integrated approach to rescue robots. This means that the development of the according systems ranges from the basic mechatronics to the high-level functionalities for intelligent behavior.
A bidirectional explanation of the pronoun interpretation problem

1 Acquisition of binding phenomena There is a well-known asymmetry in children's pattern of acquisition of the binding principles A and B. Children correctly interpret reflexives like adults from the age of 3;0 but they continue to perform poorly on the interpretation of intrasentential pronouns even up to the age of 6;6 ([13], [6]). For example, sentences like (1) are correctly understood from a young age (95% of the time according to some studies), but the him in (2) is misinterpreted as coreferring with the subject about half the time, which seems to be the result of chance performance. During the same period, children’s interpretation of reflexives is adult-like.
Named Entity Extraction from Broadcast News

In this paper, we contrast the two tasks of named entity extraction from speech and text both qualitatively and quantitatively in the context of the DARPA 1998 Hub4e-IE evaluation. We will present some top level observations and a detailed engineering analysis of our system’s failures and successes. We explore the effects of word error rate, loss of textual clues, amount of training data, changes in guidelines, and out-of-vocabulary errors.
Mining Nonambiguous Temporal Patterns for Interval-Based Events

Previous research on mining sequential patterns mainly focused on discovering patterns from point-based event data. Little effort has been put toward mining patterns from interval-based event data, where a pair of time values is associated with each event. Kam and Fu's work in 2000 identified 13 temporal relationships between two intervals. According to these temporal relationships, a new variant of temporal patterns was defined for interval-based event data. Unfortunately, the patterns defined in this manner are ambiguous, which means that the temporal relationships among events cannot be correctly represented in temporal patterns. To resolve this problem, we first define a new kind of nonambiguous temporal pattern for interval-based event data. Then, the TPrefixSpan algorithm is developed to mine the new temporal patterns from interval-based events. The completeness and accuracy of the results are also proven. The experimental results show that the efficiency and scalability of the TPrefixSpan algorithm are satisfactory. Furthermore, to show the applicability and effectiveness of temporal pattern mining, we execute experiments to discover temporal patterns from historical Nasdaq data
An Object Detection Method based on the Separability Measure using an Optimization Approach

The detection of an object in an image can be set up as a maximization problem using separability measure as the objective function. The parameters of this objective function are the parameters used to define two regions in a mask. This mask has the same dimension as the image being considered. The two regions in the mask correspond to two regions in the image under investigation. The pixel value information in these two regions in the image would be used for the calculation of the separability measure. An optimization method would then be used to solve this maximization problem. This study demonstrated that the proposed method could detect the rectangle in the test image successfully. It showed that object detection and detailed segmentation could be carried out at the same time if the geometry of an object could be described mathematically.
Recent developments in voice biometrics: Robustness and high accuracy

Recently, researchers have tackled difficult voice biometrics problems that resonate with the defense and research communities. These problems include non-ideal recording conditions that are frequently found in operational scenarios, such as noise, reverberation, degraded channels, and compressed audio. In this article, we highlight SRI's innovations that resulted from the IARPA Biometrics Exploitation Science & Technology (BEST) and the DARPA Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech (RATS) programs, as well as SRI's approach for codec-degraded speech. We show how these advancements support the case for the biometrics community adopting the use of speaker recognition.
Efficient Answering of Why-Not Questions in Similar Graph Matching

Answering why-not questions in databases is promised to have wide application prospect in many areas and thereby, has attracted recent attention in the database research community. This paper addresses the problem of answering these so-called why-not questions in similar graph matching for graph databases. Given a set of answer graphs of an initial query graph q and a set of missing (why-not) graphs, we aim to modify q into a new query graph q* such that the missing graphs are included in the new answer set of q*. We present an approximate solution to address the above as the optimal solution is NP-hard to compute. In our approach, we first compute the bounded search space and the distance to be minimized for q*. Then, we present a two-phase algorithm to find the new query q*. In the first phase, we generate a set of candidate edges to be added/deleted into/from the initial query q within the bounded search space and in the second phase, we select a subset of candidate edges generated in the first phase to minimize the distance for q*. We also demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach by conducting extensive experiments on two real datasets.
Feral, emancipated: J.G. Ballard’s time-suffused nature. A comparative study of ‘The Volcano Dances’ and ‘Myths of the Near Future’

ABSTRACT In this article, I compare two short stories by J.G. Ballard: ‘The Volcano Dances’ and ‘Myths of the Near Future’. As they share many similarities, the former is used as an interpretive tool to analyse the latter. I focus on the way nature is depicted and the feral temptation it incites. The main theme of both stories is time and nature as cultural constructs. In order to discuss in detail the connection between the protagonists and their environment, I provide a semiotic theoretical framework. As mind mingles with matter, nature is transformed into an artefactual sphere, thus creating a hybrid environment. As a result, not only do the events portrayed in Ballard’s fictions have an uncertain ontological status, but nature itself becomes ontologically unstable. From this premise, I assess possible connections between nature’s representations in Ballard’s writing and the Anthropocene as an extreme metaphor for a new epochal consciousness.
Finding Jobs, Forming Families, and Stressing Out? Work, Family, and Stress among Young Adult Women in the United States

Abstract:The transition to adulthood is increasingly characterized by complex paths into the world of work and family, especially for young women. Yet how work and family combine to influence stress among young adult women is not well understood. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we leverage new extensions to latent class analysis (LCA) to identify common combinatios of work and family circumstances among young adult women, their earlier life and contemporaneous correlates, and associations with two stress measures: a multi-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and Epstein–Barr Viral (EBV) antibody titers, a well-validated biomarker of stress-related immunity impairments. We identify seven different common combinations of latent work–family combinations among young adult women ranging from well-compensated professional workers with and without children, mothers without paid employment, and delayed transitions to work and family. Completing a college degree was associated with a higher likelihood of membership in classes marked by professional work irrespective of motherhood, while being raised in a community with greater female labor opportunities was generally associated with membership in child-free classes. Mothers and child-free women in "pink-collar" work with low wages and decision-marking freedom reported higher stress compared to women in "white-collar" work with higher wages and decision-making freedom. These differences are mostly attenuated following adjustments for poverty-related stressors and work–family conflict. While prior work has emphasized the health benefits for women of combining work and family, our research suggests these benefits may be limited to women of higher socioeconomic status with flexible, wellcompensated jobs.
Universe-Type-Based Verification Techniques for Mutable Static Fields and Methods

We present three novel techniques for the verification of invariants in the setting of Java-like languages including static fields and methods. Our techniques structure the heap through universe types, and extend the Visibility Technique of Müller et al. In order to cater for mutable static fields, we extend the classical universe types heap topology with multiple trees, where each tree is rooted in a class. Thus classes may naturally own objects as static fields. We present a basic version of our approach, which allows trees to be visited at the top and then navigated " downwards " , and which avoids dangerous call-backs through effects which track static method calls. As well as the usual kinds of proof obligations defining that certain invariants must hold at a given state, we employ a second kind of obligation to show that certain other invariants are preserved between two states (i.e., if they hold in the former state then they will still hold in the latter). This allows us to deal with invariants whose expected truth-value cannot always be determined statically in a modular way. We then present two extensions of our basic technique, aimed at improving usability. Firstly, we introduce a new universe annotation to allow safe callbacks between trees, whereby trees may be visited not at the top, but at the point where a previous visit " had left off ". Secondly, we refine our heap topology with a notion of 'levels', which stratify the heap and provide modularity with regard to library classes and the required effects annotations.
A Ciesielski–Taylor type identity for positive self-similar Markov processes

The aim of this note is to give a straightforward proof of a general version of the Ciesielski-Taylor identity for positive self-similar Markov processes of the spectrally negative type which umbrellas all previously known Ciesielski-Taylor identities within the latter class. The approach makes use of three fundamental features. Firstly, a new transformation which maps a subset of the family of Laplace exponents of spectrally negative Levy processes into itself. Secondly, some classical features of fluctuation theory for spectrally negative Levy processes (see, e.g., [In Seminaire de Probabalites XXXVIII (2005) 16-29 Springer]) as well as more recent fluctuation identities for positive self-similar Markov processes found in [Ann. Inst. H. Poincare Probab. Statist. 45 (2009) 667-684]. © Association des Publications de l'Institut Henri Poincare, 2011.