Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Saliency on a chip

Selective-visual-attention algorithms have been successfully implemented in analog VLSI circuits.1 However, in addition to the usual issues of analog VLSI—such as the need to fine-tune a large number of biases—these implementations lack the spatial resolution and pre-processing capabilities to be truly useful for image-processing applications. Here we take an alternative approach and implement a neuro-mimetic algorithm for selective visual attention in digital hardware. The overarching aim of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of using programmable logic for aiding the development and acceleration of image and video processing applications in vision. Saliency was picked as a design driver for this purpose so that the design flow could be understood and added to the neuromorphic engineer’s bag of tricks. The data-intensive and computationally challenging nature of the human visual attention system makes it an interesting algorithm for this study. Itti, Koch, and Niebur2 have suggested an influential model for saliency-based bottom-up visual attention and applied it successfully to a variety of visual tasks. The model attempts to represent visual attention in a computationally-efficient manner. The existing software implementation of this model, on a personal computer, runs at 30 frames per second (fps) at quarterVGA (320×240) resolution.3 Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), on the other hand, offer an elegant solution to implementing the saliency computation in hardware, taking full advantage of the data parallelism available in the image processing operations.4 The reprogrammable nature of the FPGAs provides for a quick, cheap platform for prototyping and debugging, and greatly simplifies development. We wanted to be able to process a video stream at 30fps and at VGA resolution of 640×480 pixels (R, G, and B colors at 8bits/color/pixel), outputting the coordinates of the most salient pixel. Our current design exceeds that specification by processing composite video at 720×525 pixels and 30fps. The hardware was composed using modular elements that implement colorspace conversion, Gaussian filtering, interpolation, decimation, Figure 1. Block diagram of the FPGA saliency implementation.
Adaptive distributed computing through competition

A framework for supporting adaptive execution of parallel applications on networks of workstations is presented. The framework is comprised of two levels of competition. At the first level, the tasks of each application are partitioned into grains. The grains race one another until all their tasks are finished. The turn-around time of an application can be shortened by sharing the tasks of the heavily loaded grains with the neighboring grains. At the second level, a prototype system called Comedians has been developed, which enables competition among applications for workstations by mechanisms of auction and bidding. The objectives of the Comedians system are to maximize the speedup of individual parallel applications and, at the same time, to allocate workstations efficiently and fairly to the applications. Unlike related work, the paper suggests an integrated solution to both the issues of adaptive parallelism and parallel application scheduling in a multi-user environment. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the support for adaptive parallelism and the dynamics of competition among parallel applications.
Reverse engineering an amyloid aggregation pathway with dimensional analysis and scaling

Human islet amyloid polypeptide (hIAPP) is a cytotoxic protein that aggregates into oligomers and fibrils that kill pancreatic β-cells. Here we analyze hIAPP aggregation in vitro, measured via thioflavin-T fluorescence. We use mass-action kinetics and scaling analysis to reconstruct the aggregation pathway, and find that the initiation step requires four hIAPP monomers. After this step, monomers join the nucleus in pairs, until the first stable nucleus (of size approximately 20 monomers) is formed. This nucleus then elongates by successive addition of single monomers. We find that the best-fit of our data is achieved when we include a secondary fibril-dependent nucleation pathway in the reaction scheme. We predict how interventions that change rates of fibril elongation or nucleation rates affect the accumulation of potentially cytotoxic oligomer species. Our results demonstrate the power of scaling analysis in reverse engineering biochemical aggregation pathways.
Research Statement Recent Work

Developing correct and secure software is increasingly important, as digital systems are becoming ubiquitous and pervade many different aspects of our lives, from finance to health care. Yet the software produced today often contains errors which pose problems for its reliability and security. Software errors cost annually more than one half of one percent of the United States GDP. Programs are among the most complex artifacts made today. Thus it is not surprising that they are difficult to design and analyze. Nevertheless, research in this area has made significant progress. Many programs are now written in strongly-typed languages such as Java, and checked in all stages of development using static analysis tools such as Spec#, and state-space exploration tools such as Microsoft’s Static Driver Verifier. The underlying theoretical framework for these and similar tools is logic, both its proofand model-theoretic branches. For example, advances in the theory of temporal logics and model checking, coupled with progress on symbolic search and abstraction techniques, have led to model checking tools widely used in industry both for verification of hardware designs and of specific classes of programs, such as device drivers. The field of software analysis is a young, rapidly developing field, which in my view is waiting for new foundational theories, and where research can make a significant impact on current practice in industry. The progress that has been achieved certainly supports this view. The challenges stem from the fact that current technology is focused either on a set of fixed simple properties, or on a small, niche class of programs. There are several areas in which progress should and will be made. I will describe my work, as well as plans for future work in three areas which I believe are important if the next generation of techniques and tools is to be applied more generally, either in order to find errors or to prove correctness of programs. First, there is a need for analysis of programs for security properties such as confidentiality. Second, progress in terms of specification frameworks, algorithms and tools is needed in analysis of programs that access data structures and the heap. Third, the analysis of shared-memory concurrent programs is a notoriously difficult problem. I believe that considering spatial locality as a first principle would enable more effective design and analysis of such programs.
Effectiveness of Physical Therapy and rehabilitation Programs Starting Immediately After l umbar Disc Surgery Lomber Disk Cerrahisi Sonrasi Erken Dönem Fizik Tedavi ve Rehabilitasyon Programinin Etkinliği

AIM: The aim of this randomized study was to compare exercise program to control group regarding pain, back disability, behavioural outcomes, global health measures and back mobility who underwent microdiscectomy operation. MATErIAL and METHods: Thirty patients who underwent lumbar microdiscectomy were randomized into exercise and control groups. After surgery, patients in the exercise group undertook a 12-week home based exercise program, started immediately postsurgery and concentrated on improving strength and endurance of the back, abdominal muscles, lower extremities and mobility of the spine and hips. Outcome measures were: Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), Beck Depression scale, lumbar schober, Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), return to work (return-to-work status), generic functional status (SF-36). rEsuLTs: Treatment compliance was high in both groups. Surgery improved pain, disability, general health status, lumbar mobility and behavioural status. After the exercise program, the exercise group showed further improvements in these measures at 12 week after surgery. CoNCLusIoN: A 12-week postoperative exercise program starting immediately after surgery can improve pain, disability, and spinal function in patients who have undergone microdiscectomy.
Ze współpracy z zagranicą / International cooperation Compliance with the German Corporate Governance Code : Can the heterogeneous implementation be explained ?

Starting with the Cadbury code in 1992, various national and international Corporate Governance (CG) codes have been issued all over the world. So far, empirical studies have revealed mixed results concerning the effects and outcomes of code implementation and thus supported the hypothesis of a ‘one system does not fit all’ approach in CG. Therefore, this paper empirically analyses influence factors on compliance with the German Corporate Governance Code for a large sample of 306 listed firms in 2015. We chose German companies because of the specific institutional settings in Germany, e.g., the strong influence of founder families on a firm’s management or the relevance of debt financing. It is assumed that the country-specific institutional setting limits the transferability of results of US and UK studies. Thus, we used the German setting to derive relevant influence factors on Code compliance. In addition, we applied a more sophisticated measure of Code implementation than previous studies. Overall, we find a significant positive effect of ownership dispersion and firm size on Code compliance, whereas the other influence factors, e.g., family influence or the supervisory board’s size, reveal the right direction of impact but not the required level of statistically significance. In contrast to institutional theory, we find a negative although statistically insignificant impact of the strength of foreign investors’ influence on Code compliance. Overall, our results indicate that the institutional setting is not decisive for Code compliance. Instead, we assume that the main rationale for Code compliance is not the reduction of agency conflicts but the alignment with peer group practices as indicated by the variable company size. Future research should investigate the peer effects on the level of Code compliance in detail.
An Efficient Construction and Low Complexity Collaborative Decoding of Reed-Solomon Concatenated with Modified Polar Codes

Polar codes are the first explicit code sequences that provably achieve capacity for discrete memory-less channels. However, their performance with successive cancellation (SC) decoding is unimpressive at practical block-lengths. In this paper, we propose a scheme of concatenating Reed-Solomon (RS) with modified polar codes to improve the performance of SC. Firstly, short repetition block codes are used as outer block codes to modify the construction of polar codes. This step can improve the performance of SC with a lower complexity compared with the other schemes. And secondly, to reduce the probability of the error propagation of SC, the modified polar codes are concatenated with RS codes. We divide the decoding process of the polar codes into several pieces. After one piece is decoded, the RS decoder is used to correct the residual errors from polar codes in this piece. By this collaborative method, the number of the error propagation can be reduced obviously. Simulation shows that the proposed scheme can obtain a good error-rate performance at finite block lengths and have a significantly better error-decay rate with a lower complexity.
Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication Principles Analysis of cerebral blood flow imaging by registered laser speckle contrast analysis (rLASCA)

Laser speckle imaging (LSI) has been widely used for in vivo detecting cerebral blood flow (CBF) under various physiological and pathological conditions. So far, nearly all literature on in vivo LSI does not consider the influence of disturbances due to respiration and/or heart beating of animals. In this paper, we analyze how such physiologic motions affect the spatial resolution of the conventional laser speckle contrast analysis (LASCA). We propose a registered laser speckle contrast analysis (rLASCA) method which first registers raw speckle images with a 3×3 convolution kernel, normalized correlation metric and cubic B-spline interpolator, and then constructs the contrast image for CBF. rLASCA not only significantly improves the distinguishability of small vessels, but also efficiently suppresses the noises induced by respiration and/or heart beating. In an application of imaging the angiogenesis of rat's brain tumor, rLASCA outperformed the conventional LASCA in providing a much higher resolution for new small vessels. As a processing method for LSI, rLASCA can be directly applied to other LSI experiments where the disturbances from different sources (like respiration, heart beating) exist.
Metabolomics of the Tumor Microenvironment in Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

The tumor microenvironment is emerging as an important therapeutic target. Most studies, however, are focused on the protein components, and relatively little is known of how the microenvironmental metabolome might influence tumor survival. In this study, we examined the metabolic profiles of paired bone marrow (BM) and peripheral blood (PB) samples from 10 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). BM and PB samples from the same patient were collected at the time of diagnosis and after 29 days of induction therapy, at which point all patients were in remission. We employed two analytical platforms, high-resolution magnetic resonance spectroscopy and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, to identify and quantify 102 metabolites in the BM and PB. Standard ALL therapy, which includes l-asparaginase, completely removed circulating asparagine, but not glutamine. Statistical analyses of metabolite correlations and network reconstructions showed that the untreated BM microenvironment was characterized by a significant network-level signature: a cluster of highly correlated lipids and metabolites involved in lipid metabolism (p<0.006). In contrast, the strongest correlations in the BM upon remission were observed among amino acid metabolites and derivatives (p<9.2×10-10). This study provides evidence that metabolic characterization of the cancer niche could generate new hypotheses for the development of cancer therapies.
Effect of n-3 fatty acids on metabolism of apoB100-containing lipoprotein in type 2 diabetic subjects

The effect of long-chain n-3 PUFA on the metabolism of apoB100-containing lipoprotein in diabetic subjects is not fully understood. The objective of the present study was to determine the effect of a daily intake of 1080mg EPA and 720mg DHA for diabetic subjects on the kinetics of apoB100-containing lipoprotein in the fasting state. A kinetic study was undertaken to determine the mechanisms involved in the effects of n-3 fatty acids in terms of a decrease in triacylglycerol level in type 2 diabetic patients. We have studied the effect of fish oils on the metabolism of apoB100 endogenously labelled by [5,5,5–2H3]-leucine in type 2 diabetic patients in the fasting state. The kinetic parameters of apoB100 in VLDL, intermediate-density lipoprotein and LDL were determined by compartmental modelling in five diabetic subjects before and 8 weeks aftern-3 fatty acid treatment. Treatment did not change the plasma cholesterol level (0·801 (sd 0·120)v. 0·793 (sd 0·163) mmol/l) but lowered the plasma triacylglycerol level (1·776 (sd 0·280) v.1·356 (sd 0·595) mmol/l; p<0·05). Treated patients showed a decrease in VLDL apoB100 concentration (0·366 (sd 0·030) v.0·174 (sd 0·036) g/l; v<0·05) related to a decrease in VLDL 1 production (1·49 (sd 0·23) v.0·44 (sd 0·19) mg/kg per h; p<0·05) and an increase in the VLDL conversion rate (0·031 (sd 0·024)v.0·052 (sd 0·040) per h; p<0·05), with no change in fractional catabolic rates. Treatment led to a higher direct production of intermediate-density lipoprotein (0·02 (sd 0·01) v 0·24 (sd 0·12) mg/kg per h; p<0·05). In conclusion, the present study, conducted in the fasting state, showed that supplementation with n-3 fatty acids in type 2 diabetic patients induced beneficial changes in the metabolism of apoB100-containing lipoprotein.
HDAC1 controls CIP2A transcription in human colorectal cancer cells

This work describes the effectiveness of HDAC-inhibitor (S)-2 towards colorectal cancer (CRC) HCT116 cells in vitro by inducing cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, and in vivo by contrasting tumour growth in mice xenografts. Among the multifaceted drug-induced events described herein, an interesting link has emerged between the oncoprotein histone deacetylase HDAC1 and the oncogenic Cancerous Inhibitor of Protein Phosphatase 2A (CIP2A) which is overexpressed in several cancers including CRCs. HDAC1 inhibition by (S)-2 or specific siRNAs downregulates CIP2A transcription in three different CRC cell lines, thus restoring the oncosuppressor phosphatase PP2A activity that is reduced in most cancers. Once re-activated, PP2A dephosphorylates pGSK-3β(ser9) which phosphorylates β-catenin that remains within the cytosol where it undergoes degradation. The decreased amount/activity of β-catenin transcription factor prompts cell growth arrest by diminishing c-Myc and cyclin D1 expression and abrogating the prosurvival Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. These results are the first evidence that the inhibition of HDAC1 by (S)-2 downregulates CIP2A transcription and unleashes PP2A activity, thus inducing growth arrest and apoptosis in CRC cells.
Energy-Efficient Tree Routing Algorithm-Based Destination Family Group in ZigBee Networks

This paper solves the hierarchical tree routing’s inefficiency problem by using a neighbor node table, defined by the Zigbee standard, the Zigbee tree architecture, and an address allocation mechanism. This method selects a relay node through hierarchical tree routing, but if it finds a neighbor node, one of the destination family group, which reduces the expense of routing; then, this method selects the neighbor node as a relay node, and so reduces the expense of routing to the destination node.
The ROSAT Deep Survey: III. Optical spectral properties of X-ray sources in the Lockman Hole

The ROSAT Deep Survey in the Lockman Hole contains a complete sample of 50 X-ray sources with fluxes in the 0.5-2.0 keV band larger than 5.5E-15 erg/cm2/s. Previous work has provided optical identification of 46 of the 50 X-ray sources; over 75% of the sources are AGNs (Schmidt et al. 1998). We present now the atlas of optical finding charts and the full description of the spectra, including emission line properties of the optical counterparts, which are important for the object classification. New optical/infrared observations of three of the four unidentified sources show that one source is an AGN and two sources with an unusually large ratio of X-ray to optical flux have counterparts in the K'-band suggesting that they are obscured AGNs. Furthermore, we found evidence from radio emission that the remaining unidentified source is a powerful radio galaxy (AGN). We thus obtain a 100% completeness. During the course of our optical identification work, we obtained optical spectr a of 83 field galaxies, of which 67 were narrow-emission line galaxies (NELG). We demonstrate that it is highly unlikely that a significant number of NELG are physically associated with X-ray sources.
An enhanced security scheme for query state inference in EPCglobal discovery services

The EPCglobal Network is a global network that provides trade partners with real-time and accurate data sharing capabilities. Discovery Services refer to a suite of network services performing the critical lookup function, which consists of querying a common repository in order to localize all information sources with relevant data. Given the high sensitivity of the exchanged data in the EPCglobal Network, it becomes crucial to secure Discovery Services. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic security scheme capable of detecting suspicious Discovery Services queries during transaction. The query is first converted into a vector of observed real values. These observed values are assumed to follow a Gaussian distribution both for safe and suspicious queries. Then, a classification algorithm computes a score for each state; i.e. safe and suspicious, and infers the state of the query. We conducted extensive experiments. The results show that, compared to a simple Gaussian model, our proposed scheme improves both the detection rate and the false alarm rate.
Parsing TCT with a Coarse-to-fine Approach

A key observation is that concept compound constituent labels are detrimental to parsing performance. We use a PCFG parsing algorithm that uses a multilevel coarse-to-fine scheme. Our approach requires a sequence of nested partitions or equivalence classes of the PCFG nonterminals, where the nonterminals of each PCFG are clusters of nonterminals of the finer PCFG. We use the results of parsing at a coarser level to prune the next finer level. The coarse-to-fine method use hierarchical projections for incremental pruning. We present experiments which show that parsing with hierarchical state-splitting is fast and accurate on Tsinghua Chinese Treebank. In addition, we propose a multiple-model method that adds concept compound labels to the output of the simple PCFG model and gains higher bracketing recall from the simple model. This scheme can be implemented by training two models on different labeling styles.
Transforming Evolutionary Search into Higher-Level Evolutionary Search by Capturing Problem Structure

The intuitive idea that good solutions to small problems can be reassembled into good solutions to larger problems is widely familiar in many fields including evolutionary computation. This idea has motivated the building-block hypothesis and model-building optimization methods that aim to identify and exploit problem structure automatically. Recently, a small number of works make use of such ideas by learning problem structure and using this information in a particular manner: these works use the results of a simple search process in primitive units to identify structural correlations (such as modularity) in the problem that are then used to redefine the variational operators of the search process. This process is applied recursively such that search operates at successively higher scales of organization, hence multi-scale search. Here, we show for the first time that there is a simple class of (modular) problems that a multi-scale search algorithm can solve in polynomial time that requires super-polynomial time for other methods. We discuss strengths and limitations of the multi-scale search approach and note how it can be developed further.
Enhanced Traveling Salesman Problem Solving by Genetic Algorithm Technique (TSPGA)

— The well known NP-complete problem of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is coded in genetic form. A software system is proposed to determine the optimum route for a Traveling Salesman Problem using Genetic Algorithm technique. The system starts from a matrix of the calculated Euclidean distances between the cities to be visited by the traveling salesman and a randomly chosen city order as the initial population. Then new generations are then created repeatedly until the proper path is reached upon reaching a stopping criterion. This search is guided by a solution evaluation function.