Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Poststimulus undershoots in cerebral blood flow and BOLD fMRI responses are modulated by poststimulus neuronal activity

fMRI is the foremost technique for noninvasive measurement of human brain function. However, its utility is limited by an incomplete understanding of the relationship between neuronal activity and the hemodynamic response. Though the primary peak of the hemodynamic response is modulated by neuronal activity, the origin of the typically negative poststimulus signal is poorly understood and its amplitude assumed to covary with the primary response. We use simultaneous recordings of EEG with blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) fMRI during unilateral median nerve stimulation to show that the poststimulus fMRI signal is neuronally modulated. We observe high spatial agreement between concurrent BOLD and CBF responses to median nerve stimulation, with primary signal increases in contralateral sensorimotor cortex and primary signal decreases in ipsilateral sensorimotor cortex. During the poststimulus period, the amplitude and directionality (positive/negative) of the BOLD signal in both contralateral and ipsilateral sensorimotor cortex depends on the poststimulus synchrony of 8–13 Hz EEG neuronal activity, which is often considered to reflect cortical inhibition, along with concordant changes in CBF and metabolism. Therefore we present conclusive evidence that the fMRI time course represents a hemodynamic signature of at least two distinct temporal phases of neuronal activity, substantially improving understanding of the origin of the BOLD response and increasing the potential measurements of brain function provided by fMRI. We suggest that the poststimulus EEG and fMRI responses may be required for the resetting of the entire sensory network to enable a return to resting-state activity levels.
THE DYNAMICS OF U . S . GDP AND INVESTMENT SUB-COMPONENTS

This paper deepens our knowledge on the dynamics of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and investment in the United States by including the sub-components of residential and non-residential investment into a multivariate analysis. Vector errorcorrection methodology is used to estimate the parameters of the model and analyze the dynamics of GDP, investment on single-family housing, multifamily housing, otherresidential structures, residential equipment, non-residential structures and nonresidential equipment. Estimated parameters and estimated variance and covariance are used to compute impulse-response functions as well as variance decomposition of these series. Our results reaffirm the importance of single-family housing in the future dynamics of GDP growth. Moreover, we obtain some behavioral relationships between investment sub-components. In particular, shocks in non-residential structures have a negative impact on the growth rate of single-family housing, implying a degree of substitutability in these investment expenditures. Contrary to the dynamics of singlefamily growth, the growth rate of multifamily housing responds positively to a shock in non-residential structures since multifamily housing is largely comprised of investment property and bears some similarities to non-residential investment components. Finally, a gentrification process may explain the complementarity in expenditures between production of new units of housing and renovation and improvements to existing units.
Phrase-Based SMT for Finnish with More Data, Better Models and Alternative Alignment and Translation Tools

This paper summarises the contributions of the teams at the University of Helsinki, Uppsala University and the University of Turku to the news translation tasks for translating from and to Finnish. Our models address the problem of treating morphology and data coverage in various ways. We introduce a new efficient tool for word alignment and discuss factorisations, gappy language models and reinflection techniques for generating proper Finnish output. The results demonstrate once again that training data is the most effective way to increase translation performance.
Garbage Collection for Multiversion Index in Flash-Based Embedded Databases

Recently, flash-based embedded databases have gained their momentum in various control and monitoring systems, such as cyber-physical systems (CPSes). To support the functionality to access the historical data, a multiversion index is adopted to simultaneously maintain multiple versions of data items, as well as their index information. However, maintaining a multiversion index on flash memory incurs considerable performance overheads on garbage collection, which is to reclaim the spaces occupied by the outdated/invalid data items and their index information on flash memory. In this work, we propose an efficient garbage collection strategy to solve the garbage collection issues of flash-based multiversion databases. In particular, a version-tracking method is proposed to accelerate the performance on the process on identifying/reclaiming the space of invalid data and their indexes, and a pre-summary method is also designed to solve the cascading update problem that is caused by the write-once nature of flash memory and is worsened when more versions refer to the same data item. The capability of the proposed strategy is then verified by analytical and experimental studies.
Expansion of Non-Native Brown Trout in South Europe May Be Inadvertently Driven by Stocking: Molecular and Social Survey in the North Iberian Narcea River

The biological and anthropogenic (management) factors that may contribute to the expansion of non-native lineages in managed fish have been studied in this work taking brown trout (Salmo trutta) as a model species. The changes of users’ opinion about stocking was studied employing social science methodology (surveys). The evolution of hatchery stocks together with the outcome of stocking were analysed with two genetic tools: the LDH-C1* locus (marker of non-native stocks) and six microsatellite loci (for assignment of wild trout to the natural population or putative hatchery stocks). Consulted stakeholders were convinced of the correctness of releasing only native stocks, although in practice the hatcheries managed by them contained important proportions of non-native gene carriers. Our results suggest that allochthonous individuals perform better and grow faster in hatchery conditions than the native ones. We also find a dilution of the impact of this kind of suplementation in wild conditions. The use of only native individuals as hatchery breeders tested for the presence of non-native alleles previously to the artificial crosses must be a priority. Surveys can help steer policy making toward decisions that will be followed by the public, but they should not be used to justify science.
A Generalized Spatial Correlation Model for 3D MIMO Channels Based on the Fourier Coefficients of Power Spectrums

Previous studies have confirmed the adverse impact of fading correlation on the mutual information (MI) of two-dimensional (2D) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. More recently, the trend is to enhance the system performance by exploiting the channels degrees of freedom in the elevation, which necessitates the derivation and characterization of three-dimensional (3D) channels in the presence of spatial correlation. In this paper, an exact closed-form expression for the Spatial Correlation Function (SCF) is derived for 3D MIMO channels. The proposed method resorts to the spherical harmonic expansion (SHE) of plane waves and the trigonometric expansion of Legendre and associated Legendre polynomials. The resulting expression depends on the underlying arbitrary angular distributions and antenna patterns through the Fourier Series (FS) coefficients of power azimuth and elevation spectrums. The novelty of the proposed method lies in the SCF being valid for any 3D propagation environment. The developed SCF determines the covariance matrices at the transmitter and the receiver that form the Kronecker channel model. In order to quantify the effects of correlation on system performance, the information-theoretic deterministic equivalents of the MI for the Kronecker model are utilized in both mono-user and multi-user cases. Numerical results validate the proposed analytical expressions and elucidate the dependence of the system performance on azimuth and elevation angular spreads and antenna patterns. Some useful insights into the behavior of MI as a function of downtilt angles are provided. The derived model will help evaluate the performance of correlated 3D MIMO channels in the future.
Smart Cloud Seeding for BitTorrent in Datacenters

Cloud content providers must deliver vast amounts of data to an ever-growing number of users while maintaining responsive performance, thus increasing bandwidth-provisioning expenditures. To mitigate this problem, the authors transparently integrate BitTorrent into the cloud provider infrastructure and leverage users' upstream capacity to reduce bandwidth costs. They also allocate seeder bandwidth optimally among swarms to maximize throughput. Their system delivers higher performance when dealing with large volumes of data compared to the traditional client-server paradigm. The authors' solution has been integrated with OpenStack, a widely used open source platform for cloud services, to provide a personal cloud storage system.
Ranking Functions : Adaptation of PIR Models for Structured Data

We investigate the problem of ranking answers to a database query when many tuples are returned. We adapt and apply principles of probabilistic models from Information Retrieval for structured data. Our proposed solution is domain independent. It leverages data and workload statistics and correlations. Our ranking functions can be further customized for different applications. We present results of preliminary experiments which demonstrate the efficiency as well as the quality of our ranking system.
When entities meet query recommender systems: semantic search shortcuts

The Web of Data is growing in popularity and dimension, and entities are gaining importance in many research fields. In this paper, we explore the use of entities that can be extracted from a query log to enhance query recommendation. In particular, we use a large query log recorded by the Europeana portal, a central access point to the descriptions of more than 20 million cultural heritage objects, and we extend a state-of-the-art query recommendation algorithm to take into account the semantic information associated with the submitted queries. Our novel method generates highly related and diversified suggestions. We assess it by means of a new evaluation technique. The manually annotated dataset used for performance comparisons has been made available to the research community to favor the repeatability of the experiments.
C-Reactive Protein (CRP) Gene Polymorphisms, CRP Levels, and Risk of Incident Coronary Heart Disease in Two Nested Case-Control Studies

Background C-reactive protein (CRP), an acute phase reactant and marker of inflammation, has been shown to predict risk of incident cardiovascular events. However, few studies have comprehensively examined six common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the CRP gene, haplotypes, and plasma CRP levels with risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Methods and Findings We conducted parallel nested case-control studies within two ongoing, prospective cohort studies of U.S. women (Nurses' Health Study) and men (Health Professionals Follow-up Study). Blood samples were available in a subset of 32,826 women and 18,225 men for biomarker and DNA analyses. During 8 and 6 years of follow-up, 249 women and 266 men developed incident nonfatal myocardial infarction or fatal CHD, and controls (498 women, 531 men) were matched 2:1 on age, smoking, and date of blood draw from participants free of cardiovascular disease at the time the case was diagnosed. Among both women and men, minor alleles were significantly associated with higher CRP levels for SNPs 1919A>T and 4741G>C, but associated with lower CRP levels for SNPs 2667G>C and 3872C>T. SNP 2667G>C was individually associated with increased risk of CHD in both women [OR 1.57 (95% CI 1.01–2.44); p = 0.047] and men [1.93 (95% CI 1.30–2.88); p = 0.001]. Two of the five common haplotypes were associated with lower CRP levels, and Haplotype 4 which included minor alleles for 2667 and 3872 was associated with significantly lower CRP levels and an elevated risk of CHD. The remaining SNPs or haplotypes were not associated with CHD in both populations. Conclusions Common variation in the CRP gene was significantly associated with plasma CRP levels; however, the association between common SNPs and CRP levels did not correspond to a predicted change in CHD risk. The underlying inflammatory processes which predict coronary events cannot be captured solely by variation in the CRP gene.
Tiresias: the database oracle for how-to queries

How-To queries answer fundamental data analysis questions of the form: "How should the input change in order to achieve the desired output". As a Reverse Data Management problem, the evaluation of how-to queries is harder than their "forward" counterpart: hypothetical, or what-if queries. In this paper, we present Tiresias, the first system that provides support for how-to queries, allowing the definition and integrated evaluation of a large set of constrained optimization problems, specifically Mixed Integer Programming problems, on top of a relational database system. Tiresias generates the problem variables, constraints and objectives by issuing standard SQL statements, allowing for its integration with any RDBMS. The contributions of this work are the following: (a) we define how-to queries using possible world semantics, and propose the specification language TiQL (for Tiresias Query Language) based on simple extensions to standard Datalog. (b) We define translation rules that generate a Mixed Integer Program (MIP) from TiQL specifications, which can be solved using existing tools. (c) Tiresias implements powerful "data-aware" optimizations that are beyond the capabilities of modern MIP solvers, dramatically improving the system performance. (d) Finally, an extensive performance evaluation on the TPC-H dataset demonstrates the effectiveness of these optimizations, particularly highlighting the ability to apply divide-and-conquer methods to break MIP problems into smaller instances.
Reliable implicit surface polygonization using visibility mapping

We present a new algorithm to compute a topologically and geometrically accurate triangulation of an implicit surface. Our approach uses spatial subdivision techniques to decompose a manifold implicit surface into star-shaped patches and computes a visibilty map for each patch. Based on these maps, we compute a homeomorphic and watertight triangulation as well as a parameterization of the implicit surface. Our algorithm is general and makes no assumption about the smoothness of the implicit surface. It can be easily implemented using linear programming, interval arithmetic, and ray shooting techniques. We highlight its application to many complex implicit models and boundary evaluation of CSG primitives.
A robust privacy preserving model for data publishing

Data publishing for analysis by maintaining individual privacy when it contains sensitive attributes is a problem of increasing significance today. So, preserving sensitive data without experiencing serious attacks is the greatest challenge in the field of privacy preserving data publishing. The existing privacy models are experiencing one or the other type of attacks which leads to privacy breach. In this paper, we are proposing a new privacy preserving model, which minimizes attacks and overcomes drawbacks experienced by existing popular anonymizing approaches. Our technique is inspired from two of the popular techniques such as primarily, Closeness approach which was proposed by Ninghui in 2012. t-closeness requires that the distribution of a sensitive attribute in any equivalence class is close to the distribution of that attribute in the overall table i.e., the distance between the two distributions should be no more than a threshold t. But it was subjected its own limitations. And the second technique, “p-sensitive, k- anonymity” proposed by Truta and Vinay in 2006, which reduces information loss by increasing utility. Our technique includes features combining these two techniques which lead to an efficient model. Experimental results show that our privacy measure runs faster and significantly reduce the privacy breach by overcoming many of the attacks faced by existing models in the literature.
Approximate polynomial Gcds, Padé approximation, polynomial zeros and bipartite graphs

Computation of approximate polynomial gcds exemplifies numerical approach to algebraic computing and is important both theoretically and due to applications, in particular to network theory and linear control systems. We study two methods unexplored so far, in spite of intensive recent work in this area. Correlation to numerical Pride approximation enables us to improve computations for both problems (gcds and Pade). Reduction to approximating polynomial zeros enables us to obtain a new insight into the gcd problem and to devise effective solution algorithms. Unlike the known algorithms, we bound the degree of approximate gcds at a low computational cost and certify the correctness of the solution for a large class of inputs. We also restate the problem in terms of the perturbation of te zeros (rather than coefficients) of the input polynomials, which always leads us to certified solution via the computation of maximum matchings or connected components in the associated bipartite
What Should a Connectionist Philosophy of Science Look Like

This is not the place to present an introduction to connectionism, an approach to modeling cognitive phenomena that was first developed in the 1950s and once again gained prominence in the 1980s, in part with the publication of Rumelhart, McClelland, and the PDP Research Group (1986). Both Paul and Patricia Churchland have presented introductions to connectionism in various of their writings. See also Bechtel and Abrahamsen (1991) for an introduction. The understanding of connectionism varies significantly among authors. For both of the Churchlands the importance of connectionism seems to be that the parallels between connectionist networks and real neural networks allows our emerging understanding of brain function to inform cognitive modeling. For many others the importance lies not so much in the similarity of connectionist networks to neural architecture as in the fact that connectionist models seem to exhibit features of cognition lacking in other approaches to cognitive modeling.
A NOVEL MODEL FOR THE TECHNICAL INNOVATION FACTORS EVOLUTION

In recent years, evaluating the technical innovatio n activity has gained a renewed interest in both gr owth economists and trade economists. An evolution model of the technical innovation activity is proposed b y applying Kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) and the grey model in this paper. The KPCA is used to features selection and grey model is used to evo lution. The proposed method is feasible and effecti ve by the results, and it provides a better forecast and estimate tool for the technical innovation activity . It also provides a novel way for the evolution design of th e other engineering.
Some Undecidable Problems Related to the Herbrand Theorem

March 1997 (revised July 1997) ISSN 1100{0686 Some Undecidable Problems Related to the Herbrand Theorem Yuri Gurevich Margus Veanes EECS Department Computing Science Department University of Michigan Uppsala University Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2122 Box 311, S-751 05 Uppsala USA Sweden gurevich@umich.edu margus@csd.uu. se Abstract We improve upon a number of recent undecidability results related to the so-called Herbrand Skeleton Problem, the Simultaneous Rigid E-Uni cation Problem and the prenex fragment of intuitionistic logic with equality.
FLUCTUATIONS OF THE QUENCHED MEAN OF A PLANAR RANDOM WALK IN AN

We consider an i.i. d. random environment with a strong form of transience on the two dimensional integer lattice. Namely, the walk always moves forward in the y-direction. We prove an invariance principle for the quenched expected position of the random walk indexed by its level crossing times. We begin with a variation of the Martingale Central Limit Theorem. The main part of the paper checks the conditions of the theorem for our problem.
Classification of methods

The main goal of computer animation is to synthesize the desired motion effect which is a mixing of natural phenomena, perception and imagination. The animator designs the object's dynamic behavior with his mental representation of causality. He/she imagines how it moves, gets out of shape or reacts when it is pushed, pressed, pulled, or twisted. So, the animation system has to provide the user with motion control tools able to translate his/her wishes from his/her own language. Computer animation methods may also help to understand physical laws by adding motion control to data in order to show their evolution over time. Visualization has become an important way of validating new models created by scientists. When the model evolves over time, computer simulation is generally used to obtain the evolution of time, and computer animation is a natural way of visualizing the results obtained from the simulation.
Early Language and Communication Development of Infants Later Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder

ABSTRACT. It is well recognized that delayed "first words" is among the most common presenting symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). However, data on earlier language and communication development in children with ASD are limited to retrospective reports from parents and from home videos. In this study, we prospectively collected parent report data on early communication and language development in 97 infant siblings of children with ASD and 49 low-risk controls. Parents completed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory-Infant Form at 12 and 18 months. Analysis compared 3 groups defined on the basis of diagnostic assessment at 24 months: (1) siblings with ASD (n = 15), (2) siblings not meeting diagnostic criteria for ASD (n = 82), and (3) low-risk controls, none of whom had ASD (n = 49). Children with ASD showed delays in early language and communication compared with non-ASD siblings and controls. At 12 months, the ASD group was reported to understand significantly fewer phrases and to produce fewer gestures. At 18 months, they showed delays in their understanding of phrases, comprehension and production of single words, and use of gestures. Siblings not diagnosed with ASD also used fewer play-related gestures at 18 months than low-risk controls, even when children with identified language delays were excluded. Overall, this prospective study confirms that delays in communication and language development are apparent early in life in children with ASD, and emphasizes that developmental surveillance should include monitoring for delays in gesture, which may be among the earliest signs of ASD.
A New Factoring Attack on Multi-Prime RSA with Small Prime Difference

In this paper, we study the security of multi-prime RSA whose modulus is N = p1p2 · · · pr for r ≥ 3 with small prime difference of size N . In ACISP 2013, Zhang and Takagi showed a Fermat-like factoring attack, which can directly factor N for γ < 1 r2 . We improve this bound to theoretically achieve γ < 2 r(r+2) by a new factoring attack. Furthermore, we also analyse specific MPRSA with imbalanced prime factors. Experimental results are provided to show the efficiency of our attack.