Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential Roles of Frequency-following and Frequency-doubling Visual Responses Revealed by Evoked Neural Harmonics

Frequency-following and frequency-doubling neurons are ubiquitous in both striate and extrastriate visual areas. However, responses from these two types of neural populations have not been effectively compared in humans because previous EEG studies have not successfully dissociated responses from these populations. We devised a light–dark flicker stimulus that unambiguously distinguished these responses as reflected in the first and second harmonics in the steady-state visual evoked potentials. These harmonics revealed the spatial and functional segregation of frequency-following (the first harmonic) and frequency-doubling (the second harmonic) neural populations. Spatially, the first and second harmonics in steady-state visual evoked potentials exhibited divergent posterior scalp topographies for a broad range of EEG frequencies. The scalp maximum was medial for the first harmonic and contralateral for the second harmonic, a divergence not attributable to absolute response frequency. Functionally, voluntary visual–spatial attention strongly modulated the second harmonic but had negligible effects on the simultaneously elicited first harmonic. These dissociations suggest an intriguing possibility that frequency-following and frequency-doubling neural populations may contribute complementary functions to resolve the conflicting demands of attentional enhancement and signal fidelity—the frequency-doubling population may mediate substantial top–down signal modulation for attentional selection, whereas the frequency-following population may simultaneously preserve relatively undistorted sensory qualities regardless of the observer's cognitive state.
Obstacles and Enablers on the Way towards Integrated Physical Activity Policies for Childhood Obesity Prevention: An Exploration of Local Policy Officials' Views

Background. Limited physical activity (PA) is a risk factor for childhood obesity. In Netherlands, as in many other countries worldwide, local policy officials bear responsibility for integrated PA policies, involving both health and nonhealth domains. In practice, its development seems hampered. We explore which obstacles local policy officials perceive in their effort. Methods. Fifteen semistructured interviews were held with policy officials from health and nonhealth policy domains, working at strategic, tactic, and operational level, in three relatively large municipalities. Questions focused on exploring perceived barriers for integrated PA policies. The interviews were deductively coded by applying the Behavior Change Ball framework. Findings. Childhood obesity prevention appeared on the governmental agenda and all officials understood the multicausal nature. However, operational officials had not yet developed a tradition to develop integrated PA policies due to insufficient boundary-spanning skills and structural and cultural differences between the domains. Tactical level officials did not sufficiently support intersectoral collaboration and strategic level officials mainly focused on public-private partnerships. Conclusion. Developing integrated PA policies is a bottom-up innovation process that needs to be supported by governmental leaders through better guiding organizational processes leading to such policies. Operational level officials can assist in this by making progress in intersectoral collaboration visible.
An ultrasonic based indoor positioning system

Localization is an important problem for robotics and mobile platforms. Although there is some globally accepted positioning systems (e.g., GPS, GLONASS) for outdoor environments, there is not such a system for indoor. In this study, an ultrasonic based positioning system (SESKON) is developed especially for indoor robotic applications. The SESKON uses only ultrasonic signals, so it differs from other positioning systems that are developed for indoor. The SESKON uses Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) technique for position calculation. TDOA is preferred since it does not require clock synchronization between receiver and transmitters. Tests are conducted to show the effectiveness of the developed SESKON system.
Shaped Gaussian Dictionaries for Quantized Networked Control Systems With Correlated Dropouts

This paper studies fixed rate vector quantisation for noisy networked control systems (NCSs) with correlated packet dropouts. In particular, a discrete-time linear time invariant system is to be controlled over an error-prone digital channel. The controller uses (quantized) packetized predictive control to reduce the impact of packet losses. The proposed vector quantizer is based on sparse regression codes (SPARC), which have recently been shown to be efficient in open-loop systems when coding white Gaussian sources. The dictionaries in existing design of SPARCs consist of independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Gaussian entries. However, we show that a significant gain can be achieved by using Gaussian dictionaries that are shaped according to the second-order statistics of the NCS in question. Furthermore, to avoid training of the dictionaries, we provide closed-form expressions for the required second-order statistics in the absence of quantization.
VHDL Based FPGA Implementation of 256-ary PPM for Free Space Optical Links

As the interest in the deployment of Free Space Optical (FSO) links gains momentum, its becoming important to investigate the implementation of proposed higher state modulation schemes. M-ary PPM promises significant performance enhancement and this paper gives results about an experimental VHDL based FPGA implementation of a 256-ary PPM modem. The discussed chip design proves the capability of M-ary PPM as an implementable solution for future FSO systems. This preliminary design provides a suitable starting point for an integrated solution in the next generation FSO systems.
CICPV: A New Academic Expert Search Model

Academic expert search is one of the most important issues for mining academic networks. There exist the different types of information (e.g. papers, authors and citations) in an academic network. Different from the traditional academic expert search models, this paper makes good use of the important data from the citation network, the coauthor network and the papers' content by introducing social network analysis method. Our model can measure an expert's citation influence using the citation ratio, co-citation ratio and authority value of his papers in the citation network. It analyses an expert's centrality from the global and local aspects of the coauthor network, also combining the text mining method to calculate the similarity between the users' query and papers' contents. In order to accurately express a paper, we improve the VSM model by adding the location weights. Moreover, our model uses the BP neural network to decide the ranking of each expert. Experimental results show that our method can improve the performance of academic expert search.
Limited Contract Enforcement and Strategic Renegotiation

This paper presents a strategic theory of contract renegotiation. In this theory, suboptimal contracts are put in place initially to protect one party against undesirable a ctions by another party and are renegotiated once the danger is past. The authors develop a model to establish the cases in which simple contracts cannot achieve desirable outcomes, so that only a complicated contract or renegotiation will serve. Unlike most previous accounts of contract renegotiation, this theory does not rely on exogenous uncertainty to motivate renegotiation. Copyright 1988 by American Economic Association.
The trend of green supply chain management research(2000–2010): A text mining analysis

In recent years, much research has been devoted to the exploration of the green supply chain management(GSCM); however, few have deployed the study of the trend of green supply chain management research. In fact, grasping the trend of the green supply chain management is imperative for enterprises and researchers. The study aims at analyzing the trend change of the green supply chain management from 2000 to 2010. The contribution of the study includes the following two points. First, the study has found the shift of the green supply chain research from the environmental focus to the topics of sustained development and manufacturing. Second, the study finds a new way of literature survey by using the text mining method in order to explore the trend change.
Nuclear Distributions of NUP62 and NUP214 Suggest Architectural Diversity and Spatial Patterning among Nuclear Pore Complexes

The shape of nuclei in many adherent cultured cells approximates an oblate ellipsoid, with contralateral flattened surfaces facing the culture plate or the medium. Observations of cultured cell nuclei from orthogonal perspectives revealed that nucleoporin p62 (NUP62) and nucleoporin 214 (NUP214) are differentially distributed between nuclear pore complexes on the flattened surfaces and peripheral rim of the nucleus. High resolution stimulated emission depletion (STED) immunofluorescence microscopy resolved individual NPCs, and suggested both heterogeneity and microheterogeneity in NUP62 and NUP214 immunolabeling among in NPC populations. Similar to nuclear domains and interphase chromosome territories, architectural diversity and spatial patterning of NPCs may be an intrinsic property of the nucleus that is linked to the functions and organization of underlying chromatin.
Urine Glycoprotein Profile Reveals Novel Markers for Chronic Kidney Disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a significant public health problem, and progression to end-stage renal disease leads to dramatic increases in morbidity and mortality. The mechanisms underlying progression of disease are poorly defined, and current noninvasive markers incompletely correlate with disease progression. Therefore, there is a great need for discovering novel markers for CKD. We utilized a glycoproteomic profiling approach to test the hypothesis that the urinary glycoproteome profile from subjects with CKD would be distinct from healthy controls. N-linked glycoproteins were isolated and enriched from the urine of healthy controls and subjects with CKD. This strategy identified several differentially expressed proteins in CKD, including a diverse array of proteins with endopeptidase inhibitor activity, protein binding functions, and acute-phase/immune-stress response activity supporting the proposal that inflammation may play a central role in CKD. Additionally, several of these proteins have been previously linked to kidney disease implicating a mechanistic role in disease pathogenesis. Collectively, our observations suggest that the human urinary glycoproteome may serve as a discovery source for novel mechanism-based biomarkers of CKD.
Online Handwriting Thai Character Recognition

This research is a study of structure and method in handwriting Thai characters for conversion and computer use. This paper covers the creation of an online handwriting recognition system through the use of linear interpolation approach. The character sampling is done with 10 significant points for the vector creations of angles and rotation directions. The linear-interpolated characters will then be compared with an XML database in which contains predefined character information. The best matched character is then further analyzed for character uniqueness such as tail and size before concluding the found character(s). This system supports the writing of different character styles including slanted, scaled and rotated characters. The average recognition rates are of 90.88% correctness for matched character and 98.75% correctness for a candidate group of found characters in which is satisfactory and effective for Thai handwriting character recognition.
Putting the Brain to Work: Neuroergonomics Past, Present, and Future

Objective: The authors describe research and applications in prominent areas of neuroergonomics. Background: Because human factors/ergonomics examines behavior and mind at work, it should include the study of brain mechanisms underlying human performance. Methods: Neuroergonomic studies are reviewed in four areas: workload and vigilance, adaptive automation, neuroengineering, and molecular genetics and individual differences. Results: Neuroimaging studies have helped identify the components of mental workload, workload assessment in complex tasks, and resource depletion in vigilance. Furthermore, real-time neurocognitive assessment of workload can trigger adaptive automation. Neural measures can also drive brain-computer interfaces to provide disabled users new communication channels. Finally, variants of particular genes can be associated with individual differences in specific cognitive functions. Conclusions: Neuroergonomics shows that considering what makes work possible — the human brain — can enrich understanding of the use of technology by humans and can inform technological design. Application: Applications of neuroergonomics include the assessment of operator workload and vigilance, implementation of real-time adaptive automation, neuroengineering for people with disabilities, and design of selection and training methods.
Spoken emotion recognition using local Fisher discriminant analysis

Spoken emotion recognition is an interesting and challenging subject. In this paper, a new feature extraction method based on local Fisher discriminant analysis (LFDA) is proposed for spoken emotion recognition. LFDA is used to extract the low-dimensional discriminant embedded feature data from high-dimensional emotional speech features on spoken emotion recognition tasks. The performance of LFDA is compared with principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Experimental results on the emotional Chinese speech database demonstrate the promising performance of the proposed method.
Architectural Enhancements to Support Digital Signal Processing and Public-Key Cryptography

In recent years, every major micro-processor architecture was extended by a number of special instructions to accelerate the processing of DSP or multimedia workloads. Even simple processors developed for the embedded systems field are nowadays equipped with fast multiply/accumulate (MAC) units to provide greater performance in processing DSP/multimedia kernels. In the present paper, we investigate the suitability of these architectural enhancements to speed up arithmetic operations used in public-key cryptography, most notably multiple-precision modular multiplication. We analyze different algorithms for modular arithmetic and discuss how these algorithms can take advantage of the fast MAC units that are present in various RISC cores based on the MIPS32 and ARMv5TE architecture, respectively. Furthermore, we compare architectural enhancements and instruction set extensions specifically designed to accelerate long integer arithmetic. Our analysis shows that the MIPS32 architecture can be easily extended for efficient cryptography processing and offers some advantages compared to the ARMv5TE architecture.
Of Marriage and the Market: Women's Subordination in International Perspective

Perhaps the most awkward problem facing any feminist analysis of gender relations arises from the fact that while sexual inequality is demonstrably not an inevitable fact of life, women's subordination to men has proved remarkably persistent, transcending the boundaries of societies which have quite distinct social and economic histories and cultural traditions. Many people have therefore assumed that male authority was in the natural order of things; and radical feminists have felt justified in seeking 'explanations' that are couched in terms of some basic and universal patriarchal order. The common underpinning of the ten essays in this collection, however, is a determined rejection of such easy solutions. They insist firmly that 'relations between men and women are social relations' and are therefore neither universal nor immutable. They concentrate instead on developing systematic historical accounts of gender relations in a wide variety of social contexts: several countries situated in the capitalist 'periphery' of Africa and South East Asia; socialist states in the Soviet Bloc and the Third World; England; European migrant labour, etc. There are no quick and easy answers by this route, but at least I felt after reading these essays that I had been helped towards a clearer and deeper understanding of the issues.
A combinational therapy of EGFR-CAR NK cells and oncolytic herpes simplex virus 1 for breast cancer brain metastases

Breast cancer brain metastases (BCBMs) are common in patients with metastatic breast cancer and indicate a poor prognosis. These tumors are especially resistant to currently available treatments due to multiple factors. However, the combination of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified immune cells and oncolytic herpes simplex virus (oHSV) has not yet been explored in this context. In this study, NK-92 cells and primary NK cells were engineered to express the second generation of EGFR-CAR. The efficacies of anti-BCBMs of EGFR-CAR NK cells, oHSV-1, and their combination were tested in vitro and in a breast cancer intracranial mouse model. In vitro, compared with mock-transduced NK-92 cells or primary NK cells, EGFR-CAR-engineered NK-92 cells and primary NK cells displayed enhanced cytotoxicity and IFN-γ production when co-cultured with breast cancer cell lines MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-468, and MCF-7. oHSV-1 alone was also capable of lysing and destroying these cells. However, a higher cytolytic effect of EGFR-CAR NK-92 cells was observed when combined with oHSV-1 compared to the monotherapies. In the mice intracranially pre-inoculated with EGFR-expressing MDA-MB-231 cells, intratumoral administration of either EGFR-CAR-transduced NK-92 cells or oHSV-1 mitigated tumor growth. Notably, the combination of EGFR-CAR NK-92 cells with oHSV-1 resulted in more efficient killing of MDA-MB-231 tumor cells and significantly longer survival of tumor-bearing mice when compared to monotherapies. These results demonstrate that regional administration of EGFR-CAR NK-92 cells combined with oHSV-1 therapy is a potentially promising strategy to treat BCBMs.
Reading companion: the technical and social design of an automated reading tutor

This paper describes IBM’s automatic reading tutor system, the Reading Companion. The reading tutor aims to improve the literacy skills of beginning readers, both children and adults, and help adults who are non-native speakers of English to learn the language. We describe Reading Companion’s architecture, which allows a large, globally distributed reading companion community to create and share new reading material. We also report substantial accuracy improvements in recognizing children’s speech gained by training the recognizer on the IBM Kidspeak corpus, a newly developed corpus of children’s speech.
Multiframe detector/tracker: optimal performance

We develop the optimal Bayes multiframe detector/tracker for rigid extended targets that move randomly in clutter. The performance of this optimal algorithm provides a bound on the performance of any other suboptimal detector/tracker. We determine by Monte Carlo simulations the optimal performance under a variety of scenarios including spatially correlated Gaussian clutter and non-Gaussian (K and Weibull) clutter. We show that, for similar tracking performance, the optimal Bayes tracker can achieve peak signal-to-noise ratio gains possibly larger than 10 dB over the commonly used combination of a spatial matched filter (spatial correlator) and a linearized Kalman-Bucy tracker. Simulations using real clutter data with a simulated target suggest similar performance gains when the clutter model parameters are unknown and estimated from the measurements.
An Endangered Arboreal Specialist, the Western Ringtail Possum (Pseudocheirus occidentalis), Shows a Greater Genetic Divergence across a Narrow Artificial Waterway than a Major Road

The fragmentation of habitats by roads and other artificial linear structures can have a profound effect on the movement of arboreal species due to their strong fidelity to canopies. Here, we used 12 microsatellite DNA loci to investigate the fine-scale spatial genetic structure and the effects of a major road and a narrow artificial waterway on a population of the endangered western ringtail possum (Pseudocheirus occidentalis) in Busselton, Western Australia. Using spatial autocorrelation analysis, we found positive genetic structure in continuous habitat over distances up to 600 m. These patterns are consistent with the sedentary nature of P. occidentalis and highlight their vulnerability to the effects of habitat fragmentation. Pairwise relatedness values and Bayesian cluster analysis also revealed significant genetic divergences across an artificial waterway, suggesting that it was a barrier to gene flow. By contrast, no genetic divergences were detected across the major road. While studies often focus on roads when assessing the effects of artificial linear structures on wildlife, this study provides an example of an often overlooked artificial linear structure other than a road that has a significant impact on wildlife dispersal leading to genetic subdivision.
Program Evaluation: Principles, Procedures, and Practices

This chapter provides a review of the current state of the principles, procedures, and practices within program evaluation. We address a few incisive and difficult questions about the current state of the field: (1) What are the kinds of program evaluations? (2) Why do program evaluation results often have so little impact on social policy? (3) Does program evaluation suffer from a counterproductive system of incentives? and (4) What do program evaluators actually do? We compare and contrast the merits and limitations, strengths and weaknesses, and relative progress of the two primary contemporary movements within program evaluation, Quantitative Methods and Qualitative Methods, and we propose an epistemological framework for integrating the two movements as complementary forms of investigation, each contributing to different stages in the scientific process. In the final section, we provide recommendations for systemic institutional reforms addressing identified structural problems within the real-world practice of program evaluation.
Overcoming melanoma resistance to vemurafenib by targeting CCL2-induced miR-34a, miR-100 and miR-125b

In melanoma, the adaptative cell response to BRAF inhibitors includes altered patterns of cytokine production contributing to tumor progression and drug resistance. Among the factors produced by PLX4032-resistant melanoma cell lines, CCL2 was higher compared to the sensitive parental cell lines and increased upon drug treatment. CCL2 acted as an autocrine growth factor for melanoma cells, stimulating the proliferation and resistance to apoptosis. In patients, CCL2 is detected in melanoma cells in tumors and in plasma at levels that correlate with tumor burden and lactate dehydrogenase. Vemurafenib treatment increased the CCL2 levels in plasma, whereas the long-term clinical response was associated with low CCL2 levels. Increased CCL2 production was associated with miRNA deregulation in the resistant cells. miR-34a, miR-100 and miR-125b showed high expression in both resistant cells and in tumor biopsies that were obtained from treated patients, and they were involved in the control of cell proliferation and apoptosis. Inhibition of CCL2 and of the selected miRNAs restored both the cell apoptosis and the drug efficacy in resistant melanoma cells. Therefore, CCL2 and miRNAs are potential prognostic factors and attractive targets for counteracting treatment resistance in metastatic melanoma.