Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-view Photometric Stereo with Spatially Varying Isotropic Materials

We present a method to capture both 3D shape and spatially varying reflectance with a multi-view photometric stereo technique that works for general isotropic materials. Our data capture setup is simple, which consists of only a digital camera and a handheld light source. From a single viewpoint, we use a set of photometric stereo images to identify surface points with the same distance to the camera. We collect this information from multiple viewpoints and combine it with structure-from-motion to obtain a precise reconstruction of the complete 3D shape. The spatially varying isotropic bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) is captured by simultaneously inferring a set of basis BRDFs and their mixing weights at each surface point. According to our experiments, the captured shapes are accurate to 0.3 millimeters. The captured reflectance has relative root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 9%.
Improving the speed of decimal division

The authors study previous major contributions to digit recurrence decimal division hardware and focus on techniques for improving the performance of quotient digit selection (QDS) as the most complex part. In particular, Design D1 uses the digit set [-5, 5] for quotient digits. Another design (D2) uses mixed binary/decimal carry-save manipulation of the few most significant digits of partial remainders. Motivated by successful combined arithmetic algorithms such as hybrid adders, the authors offer a decimal division scheme that takes advantage of the best design options of D1 and D2 with due modifications that significantly enhance the division speed. In particular, they configure the architectures of QDS and partial remainder computation paths in favour of reduced balanced latencies of both. Furthermore, they remove the rounding cycle by cost-free auto-rounding, which is an exclusive advantage of the digit set [-5, 5]. The authors of D1 and D2 have used logical effort (LE) and circuit synthesis to evaluate their dividers, respectively. Therefore for a fair comparison, the authors evaluate the proposed design (D3) with both methods. The LE-based D3/D1 comparison shows 21- more speed at the cost of 6- more area, whereas the synthesis-based D3/D2 comparison results in 46- less latency and 23- less area.
Visuomotor Crowding: The Resolution of Grasping in Cluttered Scenes

Reaching toward a cup of coffee while reading the newspaper becomes exceedingly difficult when other objects are nearby. Although much is known about the precision of visual perception in cluttered scenes, relatively little is understood about acting within these environments – the spatial resolution of visuomotor behavior. When the number and density of objects overwhelm visual processing, crowding results, which serves as a bottleneck for object recognition. Despite crowding, featural information of the ensemble persists, thereby supporting texture perception. While texture is beneficial for visual perception, it is relatively uninformative for guiding the metrics of grasping. Therefore, it would be adaptive if the visual and visuomotor systems utilized the clutter differently. Using an orientation task, we measured the effect of crowding on vision and visually guided grasping and found that the density of clutter similarly limited discrimination performance. However, while vision integrates the surround to compute a texture, action discounts this global information. We propose that this dissociation reflects an optimal use of information by each system.
Building student connections: A successful first-year experience course and community college retention

The purpose of this study was to examine and describe the extent to which student entry variables and student experiences influence student outcomes related to social and academic integration and student retention. A unique focus in this study centers around the development of a first-year experience course and its impact on student retention. Astin’s input–environment–output model was utilized to determine the effects of various input and environmental variables. This study was designed to contribute to the literature on developing a first-year experience course and the impact student variables and interactions can have on retention of community college students. Much of the research on the first-year experience course has come from 4-year colleges and universities. The setting for this study was a small, Midwestern community college with a population sample of 890 first-time full-time students. Data were gathered from electronic student records providing demographic, financial aid, academic, and enrollment information. In addition, data were collected from the Fall 2012 administration of the Survey of Entering Student Engagement to provide information about students’ level of academic and social integration in the early weeks of the semester. Findings revealed that students who enrolled in the first-year experience course, the College Experience, and attended the precollege orientation session persisted to the subsequent term at a higher rate than did those who attended only one or neither. Results showed that only the student’s fall grade point average is a significant predictor of retention. Students coded as Hispanic of any race had the highest odds of all variables of persisting to the spring term. Involvement in the TRIO program and enrollment in the College Experience
Saline Flush After Rocuronium Bolus Reduces Onset Time and Prolongs Duration of Effect: A Randomized Clinical Trial

BACKGROUND:Circulatory factors modify the onset time of neuromuscular-blocking drugs. Therefore, we hypothesized that infusion of a saline flush immediately after rocuronium administration would shorten the onset time without influencing the duration of the rocuronium effect. METHODS:Forty-eight patients were randomly allocated to the control or saline flush group. Anesthesia was induced and maintained with propofol and remifentanil, and all patients received 0.6 mg/kg rocuronium in 10 mL of normal saline. In the saline flush group, 20 mL normal saline was immediately infused after rocuronium administration. Neuromuscular blockade was assessed using acceleromyography at the adductor pollicis muscle with train-of-four (TOF) stimulation. The neuromuscular indices for rocuronium were calculated as follows: the latent onset time, defined as the time from the start of rocuronium infusion until first occurrence of depression of the first twitch of the TOF (T1) ≥5%; onset time, defined as the time from the start of rocuronium infusion until first occurrence of depression of the T1 ≥95%; clinical duration, defined as the time from the start of rocuronium administration until T1 recovered to 25% of the final T1 value; recovery index, defined as the time for recovery of T1 from 25% to 75% of the final T1 value; and the total recovery time, defined as the time from the start of rocuronium administration until reaching a TOF ratio of 0.9. Significance was designated at P <0.05. RESULTS:The measured latent onset time and onset time were significantly shorter in the saline flush group than the control group by 15 seconds (95.2% confidence interval, 0–15, P = 0.007) and 15 seconds (0–30, P = 0.018), respectively. Saline flush significantly depressed the T1 height at 30, 45, and 60 seconds after the rocuronium bolus by 17%, 24%, and 14%, respectively. In addition, the recovery phase was significantly prolonged in the saline flush group. The mean clinical duration (5th–95th percentile range) in the saline flush group and control group was 35 minutes (27–63 minutes) and 31 minutes (19–48 minutes; P = 0.032), respectively; the recovery index was 13 minutes (8–25 minutes) and 10 minutes (7–19 minutes; P = 0.019), respectively; and the total recovery time was 61 minutes (44–108 minutes) and 50 minutes (35–93 minutes; P = 0.048), respectively. CONCLUSIONS:Administering a 20-mL saline flush immediately after infusion of 0.6 mg/kg rocuronium in 10 mL normal saline shortened the onset time and prolonged the recovery phase of neuromuscular blockade.
Phylogenetic patterns and the adaptive evolution of osmoregulation in fiddler crabs (Brachyura, Uca)

Salinity is the primary driver of osmoregulatory evolution in decapods, and may have influenced their diversification into different osmotic niches. In semi-terrestrial crabs, hyper-osmoregulatory ability favors sojourns into burrows and dilute media, and provides a safeguard against hemolymph dilution; hypo-osmoregulatory ability underlies emersion capability and a life more removed from water sources. However, most comparative studies have neglected the roles of the phylogenetic and environmental components of inter-specific physiological variation, hindering evaluation of phylogenetic patterns and the adaptive nature of osmoregulatory evolution. Semi-terrestrial fiddler crabs (Uca) inhabit fresh to hyper-saline waters, with species from the Americas occupying higher intertidal habitats than Indo-west Pacific species mainly found in the low intertidal zone. Here, we characterize numerous osmoregulatory traits in all ten fiddler crabs found along the Atlantic coast of Brazil, and we employ phylogenetic comparative methods using 24 species to test for: (i) similarities of osmoregulatory ability among closely related species; (ii) salinity as a driver of osmoregulatory evolution; (iii) correlation between salt uptake and secretion; and (iv) adaptive peaks in osmoregulatory ability in the high intertidal American lineages. Our findings reveal that osmoregulation in Uca exhibits strong phylogenetic patterns in salt uptake traits. Salinity does not correlate with hyper/hypo-regulatory abilities, but drives hemolymph osmolality at ambient salinities. Osmoregulatory traits have evolved towards three adaptive peaks, revealing a significant contribution of hyper/hypo-regulatory ability in the American clades. Thus, during the evolutionary history of fiddler crabs, salinity has driven some of the osmoregulatory transformations that underpin habitat diversification, although others are apparently constrained phylogenetically.
Asymptotic Variance and Convergence Rates of Nearly-Periodic MCMC Algorithms

We consider nearly-periodic Markov chains, which may have excellent functional-estimation properties but poor distributional con- vergence rate. We show how simple modifications of the chain (involving using a random number of iterations) can greatly improve the distribu- tional convergence of the chain. We prove various theoretical results about convergence rates of the modified chains. We also consider a number of examples.
HTTP State Management Mechanism

This document specifies a way to create a stateful session with Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests and responses. It describes three new headers, Cookie, Cookie2, and Set-Cookie2, which carry state information between participating origin servers and user agents. The method described here differs from Netscape's Cookie proposal [Netscape], but it can interoperate with HTTP/1.0 user agents that use Netscape's method. (See the HISTORICAL section.)
Putting Language Back in the Body: Speech and Gesture on Three Time Frames

This article investigates the role that nonverbal actions play in language processing over 3 different time frames. First, we speculate that nonverbal actions played a role in how formal language systems emerged from our primate ancestors over evolutionary time. Next, we hypothesize that if nonverbal behaviors played a foundational role in the emergence of language over evolution, these actions should influence how children learn language in the present. Finally, we argue that nonverbal actions continue to play a role for adults in the moment-to-moment processing of language. Throughout, we take an embodied view of language and argue that the neural, cognitive, and social components of language processing are firmly grounded in bodily action.
SMM: A data stream management system for knowledge discovery

The problem of supporting data mining applications proved to be difficult for database management systems and it is now proving to be very challenging for data stream management systems (DSMSs), where the limitations of SQL are made even more severe by the requirements of continuous queries. The major technical advances that achieved separately on DSMSs and on data stream mining algorithms have failed to converge and produce powerful data stream mining systems. Such systems, however, are essential since the traditional pull-based approach of cache mining is no longer applicable, and the push-based computing mode of data streams and their bursty traffic complicate application development. For instance, to write mining applications with quality of service (QoS) levels approaching those of DSMSs, a mining analyst would have to contend with many arduous tasks, such as support for data buffering, complex storage and retrieval methods, scheduling, fault-tolerance, synopsis-management, load shedding, and query optimization. Our Stream Mill Miner (SMM) system solves these problems by providing a data stream mining workbench that combines the ease of specifying high-level mining tasks, as in Weka, with the performance and QoS guarantees of a DSMS. This is accomplished in three main steps. The first is an open and extensible DSMS architecture where KDD queries can be easily expressed as user-defined aggregates (UDAs)—our system combines that with the efficiency of synoptic data structures and mining-aware load shedding and optimizations. The second key component of SMM is its integrated library of fast mining algorithms that are light enough to be effective on data streams. The third advanced feature of SMM is a Mining Model Definition Language (MMDL) that allows users to define the flow of mining tasks, integrated with a simple box&arrow GUI, to shield the mining analyst from the complexities of lower-level queries. SMM is the first DSMS capable of online mining and this paper describes its architecture, design, and performance on mining queries.
TP53 Mutation Spectrum in Smokers and Never Smoking Lung Cancer Patients

Background: TP53 mutations are among the most common mutations found in lung cancers, identified as an independent prognostic factor in many types of cancers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the frequency and prognostic impact of TP53 mutations in never-smokers and in different histological subtypes of lung cancer. Methods: We analyzed tumor tissue from 394 non-small cell carcinomas including adenocarcinomas (n = 229), squamous cell carcinomas (n = 112), large cell carcinomas (n = 30), and others (n = 23) for mutations in TP53 by the use of Sanger sequencing (n = 394) and next generation sequencing (n = 100). Results: TP53 mutations were identified in 47.2% of the samples, with the highest frequency (65%) of mutations among squamous cell carcinomas. Among never-smokers, 36% carried a TP53 mutation, identified as a significant independent negative prognostic factor in this subgroup. For large cell carcinomas, a significantly prolonged progression free survival was found for those carrying a TP53 mutation. In addition, the frequency of frameshift mutations was doubled in squamous cell carcinomas (20.3%) compared to adenocarcinomas (9.1%). Conclusion: TP53 mutation patterns differ between the histological subgroups of lung cancers, and are also influenced by smoking history. This indicates that the histological subtypes in lung cancer are genetically different, and that smoking-induced TP53 mutations may have a different biological impact than TP53 mutations occurring in never-smokers.
Stateless multicast switching in software defined networks

Multicast data delivery can significantly reduce traffic in operators' networks, but has been limited in deployment due to concerns such as the scalability of state management. This paper shows how multicast can be implemented in contemporary software defined networking (SDN) switches, with less state than existing unicast switching strategies, by utilising a Bloom Filter (BF) based switching technique. Furthermore, the proposed mechanism uses only proactive rule insertion, and thus, is not limited by congestion or delay incurred by reactive controller-aided rule insertion. We compare our solution against common switching mechanisms such as layer-2 switching and MPLS in realistic network topologies by modelling the TCAM state sizes in SDN switches. The results demonstrate that our approach has significantly smaller state size compared to existing mechanisms and thus is a multicast switching solution for next generation networks.
A novel muscle LIM‐only protein is generated from the paxillin gene locus in Drosophila

Paxillin is a protein containing four LIM domains, and functions in integrin signaling. We report here that two transcripts are generated from the paxillin gene locus in Drosophila; one encodes a protein homolog of the vertebrate Paxillin (DPxn37), and the other a protein with only three LIM domains, partly encoded by its own specific exon (PDLP). At the myotendinous junctions of Drosophila embryos where integrins play important roles, both DPxn37 and PDLP are highly expressed with different patterns; DPxn37 is predominantly concentrated at the center of the junctions, whereas PDLP is highly enriched at neighboring sides of the junction centers, primarily expressed in the mesodermal myotubes. Northern blot analysis revealed that DPxn37 is ubiquitously expressed throughout the life cycle, whereas PDLP expression exhibits a biphasic pattern during development, largely concomitant with muscle generation and remodeling. Our results collectively reveal that a unique system exists in Drosophila for the generation of a novel type of LIM‐only protein, highly expressed in the embryonic musclature, largely utilizing the Paxillin LIM domains.
High Dimensional Clustering Using ParallelCoordinates and the Grand

In this paper, we present some graphical techniques for cluster analysis of high-dimensional data. Parallel coordinate plots and parallel coordinate density plots are graphical techniques which map multivariate data into a two-dimensional display. The method has some elegant duality properties with ordinary Cartesian plots so that higher-dimensional mathematical structures can be analyzed. Our high interaction software allows for rapid editing of data to remove outliers and isolate clusters by brushing. Our brushing techniques allow not only for hue adjustment, but also for saturation adjustment. Saturation adjustment allows for the handling of comparatively massive data sets by using the-channel of the Silicon Graphics workstation to compensate for heavy overplotting. The grand tour is a generalized rotation of coordinate axes in a high-dimensional space. Coupled with the full-dimensional plots allowed by the parallel coordinate display, these techniques allow the data analyst to explore data which is both high-dimensional and massive in size. In this paper we give a description of both techniques and illustrate their use to do inverse regression and clustering. We have used these techniques to analyze data on the order of 250,000 observations in 8 dimensions. Because the analysis requires the use of color graphics, in the present paper we illustrate the methods with a more modest data set of 3848 observations. Other illustrations are available on our web page.
Alcohol self‐administration acutely stimulates the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal axis, but alcohol dependence leads to a dampened neuroendocrine state

Clinical studies link disruption of the neuroendocrine stress system with alcoholism, but remaining unknown is whether functional differences in the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal (HPA) axis precede alcohol abuse and dependence or result from chronic exposure to this drug. Using an operant self‐administration animal model of alcohol dependence and serial blood sampling, we show that long‐term exposure to alcohol causes significant impairment of HPA function in adult male Wistar rats. Acute alcohol (voluntary self‐administration or experimenter‐administered) stimulated the release of corticosterone and its upstream regulator, adrenocorticotropic hormone, but chronic exposure sufficient to produce dependence led to a dampened neuroendocrine state. HPA responses to alcohol were most robust in ‘low‐responding’ non‐dependent animals (averaging < 0.2 mg/kg/session), intermediate in non‐dependent animals (averaging ∼0.4 mg/kg/session), and most blunted in dependent animals (averaging ∼1.0 mg/kg/session) following several weeks of daily 30‐min self‐administration sessions, suggesting that neuroendocrine tolerance can be initiated prior to dependence and relates to the amount of alcohol consumed. Decreased expression of corticotropin‐releasing factor (CRF) mRNA expression in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus and reduced sensitivity of the pituitary to CRF may contribute to, but do not completely explain, neuroendocrine tolerance. The present results, combined with previous studies, suggest that multiple adaptations to stress regulatory systems may be brought about by excessive drinking, including a compromised hormonal response and a sensitized brain stress response that together contribute to dependence.
A link-based ranking scheme for focused search

This paper introduces a novel link-based ranking algorithm based on a model of focused Web surfers. FocusedRank is described and compared to implementations of PageRank and Topic-Sensitive PageRank. We report a user study that measures the relevance and precision of each approach. FocusedRank gives superior relevancy over PageRank, while significantly reducing the computational complexity compared to the Topic-Senstivice PageRank.
Two-dimensional amorphous nanomaterials: synthesis and applications

Two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials (sheet-like materials with few-atoms thickness and lateral size above 100 nm) have always aroused scientists’ interests since 2004 when Novoselov et al successfully exfoliated graphene from graphite using Scotch tape. It is some unique characters of 2D nanomaterials such as the confinement of electrons in two dimensions in the ultrathin region, strong in-plane covalent bond and atomic thickness, ultra-high specific surface area and exposed atoms that enable 2D nanomaterials to show excellent properties in electrics, catalysis and mechanics. Recently, amorphous materials (varied from crystal materials by atomic arrangement) have demonstrated high performance in mechanics, catalysis and magnetic owing to their unique long-range atomic disorder arrangements. Thus, the 2D amorphous nanomaterials inspire a new path to the study of high performance 2D materials. Herein, we summarize the recent progress in 2D amorphous nanomaterials, whose synthetic methods and potential applications in fields of catalysis, energy storage and mechanics discussed in details. The vital blocking mechanisms for synthesis of 2D amorphous nanomaterials and their performance-structure relationship are focused on. Finally, we conclude the review with our personal insights and provide a critical outlook for the development of 2D amorphous nanomaterials.