Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiplexed neural recording along a single optical fiber via optical reflectometry

Abstract. We introduce the design and theoretical analysis of a fiber-optic architecture for neural recording without contrast agents, which transduces neural electrical signals into a multiplexed optical readout. Our sensor design is inspired by electro-optic modulators, which modulate the refractive index of a waveguide by applying a voltage across an electro-optic core material. We estimate that this design would allow recording of the activities of individual neurons located at points along a 10-cm length of optical fiber with 40-μm axial resolution and sensitivity down to 100 μV using commercially available optical reflectometers as readout devices. Neural recording sites detect a potential difference against a reference and apply this potential to a capacitor. The waveguide serves as one of the plates of the capacitor, so charge accumulation across the capacitor results in an optical effect. A key concept of the design is that the sensitivity can be improved by increasing the capacitance. To maximize the capacitance, we utilize a microscopic layer of material with high relative permittivity. If suitable materials can be found—possessing high capacitance per unit area as well as favorable properties with respect to toxicity, optical attenuation, ohmic junctions, and surface capacitance—then such sensing fibers could, in principle, be scaled down to few-micron cross-sections for minimally invasive neural interfacing. We study these material requirements and propose potential material choices. Custom-designed multimaterial optical fibers, probed using a reflectometric readout, may, therefore, provide a powerful platform for neural sensing.
History assisted view authoring for 3D models

3D modelers often wish to showcase their models for sharing or review purposes. This may consist of generating static viewpoints of the model or authoring animated fly-throughs. Manually creating such views is often tedious and few automatic methods are designed to interactively assist the modelers with the view authoring process. We present a view authoring assistance system that supports the creation of informative view points, view paths, and view surfaces, allowing modelers to author the interactive navigation experience of a model. The key concept of our implementation is to analyze the model's workflow history, to infer important regions of the model and representative viewpoints of those areas. An evaluation indicated that the viewpoints generated by our algorithm are comparable to those manually selected by the modeler. In addition, participants of a user study found our system easy to use and effective for authoring viewpoint summaries.
Leave Blank the Last 2.5 Cm (1 " ) of the Left Column on the First Page for the Copyright Notice the Virtual Venue: User-computer Interaction in Information-rich Virtual Environments

We present a virtual reality application that allows users to access embedded information within an immersive virtual environment. Due to the richness and complexity of this environment, interaction between the user and the system requires efficient and easy-to-use techniques. We present tools for user control of the system, travel through the environment, and information retrieval. A usability study and its results are also presented and discussed. The study indicates that the use of symbolic information which is tightly coupled to the virtual environment can be quite successful in enhancing the relevance of both the environment and the information. Results also indicate that the set of well-constrained interaction techniques presented here are usable and efficient for information retrieval.
Improvement of Shape Distinction by Kinesthetic-Tactile Integration

The sensation of touch is divided into kinesthetic and tactile sensation. It is important for a touch sensation device to present both types of sensations. We mounted an electrotactile display on a kinesthetic display, and realized a compact display of touch sensation. This system can improve the ability to identify objects. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of integrating kinesthetic and electrotactile sensations for identifying the shape of an object
Online Feature Selection using Grafting

In the standard feature selection problem, we are given a fixed set of candidate features for use in a learning problem, and must select a subset that will be used to train a model that is "as good as possible" according to some criterion. In this paper, we present an interesting and useful variant, the online feature selection problem, in which, instead of all features being available from the start, features arrive one at a time. The learner's task is to select a subset of features and return a corresponding model at each time step which is as good as possible given the features seen so far. We argue that existing feature selection methods do not perform well in this scenario, and describe a promising alternative method, based on a stagewise gradient descent technique which we call grafting.
Unpopping : Solving the Image-Space Blend Problem

This paper presents a new method for smoothly blending levels of detail or other objects in image space, thereby avoiding annoying popping artifacts typically found when doing hard switching. The technique is based on a new interpretation of blending which always causes one of the two objects to be rendered opaquely, thus guaranteeing a valid z-buffer. We demonstrate visually pleasing blends between LODs, animated LODs, different types of objects like billboards and meshes, and even totally different objects (morphing).
Practical issues in the use of ABFT and a new failure model

We study the behavior of algorithm based fault tolerance (ABFT) techniques under faults injected according to a quite general fault model. Besides the problem of roundoff error in floating point arithmetic we identify two further weakpoints, namely lack of protection of data during input and output, and incorrect execution of the correctness checks. We propose the robust ABFT technique to handle those weakpoints. We then generalize it to programs that use assertions, where similar problems arise, leading to the technique of robust assertions, whose effectiveness is shown by fault injection experiments on a realistic control application. With this technique a system follows a new failure model, that we call fail-bounded, where with high probability all results produced are either correct or, if wrong, they are within a certain bound of the correct value, whose exact value depends on the output assertions used. We claim that this failure model is very useful to describe the behavior of many low redundancy systems.
Using Genetic Algorithms to Represent Higher-Level Planning in Simulation Models of Conflict

The focus of warfare has shifted from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, as encapsulated by the term Network Enabled Capability. This emphasises information sharing, command decision-making, and the resultant plans made by commanders on the basis of that information. Planning by a higher level military commander is, in most cases, regarded as such a difficult process to emulate, that it is performed by a real commander during wargaming or during an experimental session based on a Synthetic Environment. Such an approach gives a rich representation of a small number of data points. However, a more complete analysis should allow search across a wider set of alternatives. This requires a closed-form version of such a simulation. In this paper, we discuss an approach to this problem, based on emulating the higher command process using a combination of game theory and genetic algorithms. This process was initially implemented in an exploratory research initiative, described here, and now forms the basis of the development of a "Mission Planner," potentially applicable to all of our higher level closed-form simulation models.
Epigenetic Modifications of Nrf2 by 3,3′-diindolylmethane In Vitro in TRAMP C1 Cell Line and In Vivo TRAMP Prostate Tumors

3,3′-diindolylmethane (DIM) is currently being investigated in many clinical trials including prostate, breast, and cervical cancers and has been shown to possess anticancer effects in several in vivo and in vitro models. Previously, DIM has been reported to possess cancer chemopreventive effects in prostate carcinogenesis in TRAMP mice; however, the in vivo mechanism is unclear. The present study aims to investigate the in vitro and in vivo epigenetics modulation of DIM in TRAMP-C1 cells and in TRAMP mouse model. In vitro study utilizing TRAMP-C1 cells showed that DIM suppressed DNMT expression and reversed CpG methylation status of Nrf2 resulting in enhanced expression of Nrf2 and Nrf2-target gene NQO1. In vivo study, TRAMP mice fed with DIM-supplemented diet showed much lower incidence of tumorigenesis and metastasis than the untreated control group similar to what was reported previously. DIM increased apoptosis, decreased cell proliferation and enhanced Nrf2 and Nrf2-target gene NQO1 expression in prostate tissues. Importantly, immunohistochemical analysis showed that DIM reduced the global CpG 5-methylcytosine methylation. Focusing on one of the early cancer chemopreventive target gene Nrf2, bisulfite genomic sequencing showed that DIM decreased the methylation status of the first five CpGs of the Nrf2 promoter region, corroborating with the results of in vitro TRAMP-C1 cells. In summary, our current study shows that DIM is a potent cancer chemopreventive agent for prostate cancer and epigenetic modifications of the CpG including Nrf2 could be a potential mechanism by which DIM exerts its chemopreventive effects.
A Scalable graph-cut algorithm for N-D grids

Global optimisation via s-t graph cuts is widely used in computer vision and graphics. To obtain high-resolution output, graph cut methods must construct massive N-D grid-graphs containing billions of vertices. We show that when these graphs do not fit into physical memory, current max-flow/min-cut algorithms-the workhorse of graph cut methods-are totally impractical. Others have resorted to banded or hierarchical approximation methods that get trapped in local minima, which loses the main benefit of global optimisation. We enhance the push-relabel algorithm for maximum flow [14] with two practical contributions. First, true global minima can now be computed on immense grid-like graphs too large for physical memory. These graphs are ubiquitous in computer vision, medical imaging and graphics. Second, for commodity multi-core platforms our algorithm attains near-linear speedup with respect to number of processors. To achieve these goals, we generalised the standard relabeling operations associated with push-relabel.
Eradication and Sensitization of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus to Methicillin with Bioactive Extracts of Berry Pomace

The therapeutic roles of phenolic blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) and blackberry (Rubus fruticosus) pomace (commercial byproduct) extracts (BPE) and their mechanism of actions were evaluated against methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Five major phenolic acids of BPE, e.g., protocatechuic, p. coumaric, vanillic, caffeic, and gallic acids, as well as crude BPE completely inhibited the growth of vegetative MRSA in vitro while BPE+methicillin significantly reduced MRSA biofilm formation on plastic surface. In addition, BPE restored the effectiveness of methicillin against MRSA by down-regulating the expression of methicillin resistance (mecA) and efflux pump (norA, norB, norC, mdeA, sdrM, and sepA) genes. Antibiogram with broth microdilution method showed that MIC of methicillin reduced from 512 μg/mL to 4 μg/mL when combined with only 200 μg Gallic Acid Equivalent (GAE)/mL of BPE. Significant reduction in MRSA adherence to and invasion into human skin keratinocyte Hek001 cells were also noticed in the presence of BPE. BPE induced anti-apoptosis and anti-autophagy pathways through overexpression of Bcl-2 gene and down-regulation of TRADD and Bax genes (inducers of apoptosis pathway) in Hek001 cells. In summary, novel and sustainable prophylactic therapy can be developed with BPE in combination with currently available antibiotics, especially methicillin, against skin and soft tissue infections with MRSA.
Variability Analysis for Multi-programmed Multimedia Applications CS497JT-Spring 2001

Multimedia applications are expected to form a large part of the workload on a growing number of systems, including future handheld computers, wireless telephones , laptop computers, and desktop systems [8, 9, 16, 17]. General-purpose processors (vs. specialized DSP proc ess rs or ASICs) are expected to be increasingly employed for such workloads [11, 8, 9]. Our previous work ana lyzed the variability in the execution time of several multimedia applications at the frame granularity o n general-purpose architectures. Two broad sets of implications motivated such an analysis. First, several articles have conjectured that current comp lex general-purpose architectural features such as out-of-order issue, branch prediction, and caches induc e significant unpredictability in execution time, making them undesirable for multimedia applications [11, 8 , 9, 16]. Typical multimedia applications periodically process a set of data, commonly called a frame, and e ch frame must be completed in a certain amount of time. This real-time nature makes it important to b e a le to predict the execution time for multimedia applications. If execution time is unpredictable, then it is difficult to know how much processing power to schedule to guarantee a desired frame rate, or, conv ersely, what frame rate is sustainable with a given amount of processing power. We used frame-granularit y execution time variability to quantify predictability and found that while execution time varies from frame to frame for many multimedia applications, the variability is mostly caused by the application algorit hm and the media input. Aggressive architectural features induce little additional variability (and unpred ictability) in execution time, in contrast to conventional wisdom. The second motivation of our work involved the use of adaptiv e architectures for multimedia applications. Researchers have recently begun to propose adaptive rchitectures that can dynamically reduce power and/or energy [4, 6, 10, 19]. our results implied that it is po ssible to dynamically predict the behavior of future frames on a variety of architectures and clock freque ncies. This led to an algorithm for selecting the best architecture for the next frame in an adaptive system th at optimizes performance and energy. In this paper, we extend our previous work in two ways:
Complex Tasks Force Hand Laterality and Technological Behaviour in Naturalistically Housed Chimpanzees: Inferences in Hominin Evolution

Clear hand laterality patterns in humans are widely accepted. However, humans only elicit a significant hand laterality pattern when performing complementary role differentiation (CRD) tasks. Meanwhile, hand laterality in chimpanzees is weaker and controversial. Here we have reevaluated our results on hand laterality in chimpanzees housed in naturalistic environments at Fundació Mona (Spain) and Chimfunshi Wild Orphanage (Zambia). Our results show that the difference between hand laterality in humans and chimpanzees is not as great as once thought. Furthermore, we found a link between hand laterality and task complexity and also an even more interesting connection: CRD tasks elicited not only the hand laterality but also the use of tools. This paper aims to turn attention to the importance of this threefold connection in human evolution: the link between CRD tasks, hand laterality, and tool use, which has important evolutionary implications that may explain the development of complex behaviour in early hominins.
Container Loading for Nonorthogonal Objects with Stability and Load Bearing Strength Compliance

A feasible solution for a container loading problem is the exact order, position and orientation in which the objects are loaded into the container. However, the more constraints are taken into account, the more complex the problem is. Several algorithms have been proposed to load objects with different shapes and taking into account a few constraints. Nevertheless, most of the approaches restrict the shape to be orthogonal (i.e., standard boxes) and constraints like stability or load bearing strength were not considered. The aim of this paper is to provide an approach to solve the problem of loading orthogonal and non-orthogonal boxes, considering them as polyhedral. In addition, our proposal deals with constraints on the dimensions of the container, whether every box can be rotated in any of the three dimensions, the maximum load bearing strength and also the minimum stability required. To solve the problem with the characteristics mentioned above a data structure is proposed to represent the i-th state of the container's loading process by storing the height values and the remaining load bearing strength of the objects inside the container.
Enabling Operator Reordering in Data Flow Programs Through Static Code Analysis

In many massively parallel data management platforms, programs are represented as small imperative pieces of code connected in a data flow. This popular abstraction makes it hard to apply algebraic reordering techniques employed by relational DBMSs and other systems that use an algebraic programming abstraction. We present a code analysis technique based on reverse data and control flow analysis that discovers a set of properties from user code, which can be used to emulate algebraic optimizations in this setting.
Ultrasound influence on impression evaluation of music

We have investigated whether ultrasound changes our audible impressions when we listen tomusic or not. To solve this question, we verify that there might be a mechanism perceiving ultrasound by a physiological pre-experiment, and review discrepancy in subjective estimations for two kinds of sounds played back with and without ultrasound by a psychological experiment. In this paper, we study whether we can distinguish between the two of those sounds by subjective estimations or not by using discriminant analysis in multivariate analysis technique. As a result, we discriminated those two kinds of sounds with a high rate on drum music. This result suggests that ultrasound affects our audible impressions when we listen to music.
Fountain Uncorrectable Sets and Finite-Length Analysis

Decoding performance of Fountain codes for the binary erasure channel (BEC) depends on two aspects. One is the essential code structure, on which stopping set analysis operates. The other is the effect from the channel characteristic, which is difficult to give a precise estimation. To tackle these problems, in this paper, we propose a solution to analyzing the performance of Fountain codes based on the uncorrectable set. We give the condition for Fountain decoding failure over the BEC. Then, we conduct the analysis of uncorrectable set on Fountain codes. Finally, we combine the stopping set and the uncorrectable set to provide the integrated analysis on the performance of Fountain codes for BEC.
High‐precision wavelength calibration of astronomical spectrographs with laser frequency combs

ABSTRACT We describe a possible new technique for precise wavelength calibration of high-resolutionastronomical spectrographs using femtosecond-pulsed mode-locked lasers controlled by sta-ble oscillators such as atomic clocks. Such ‘frequency combs’ provide a series of narrowmodes which are uniformly spaced according to the laser’s pulse repetition rate and whoseabsolute frequencies are known a priori with relative precision better than 10 −12 . Simula-tions of frequency comb spectra show that the photon-limited wavelength calibration preci-sion achievable with existing echelle spectrographs should be ∼1cms −1 when integrated overa 4000A range. Moreover, comb spectra may be used to accurately characterise distortionsof the wavelength scale introduced by the spectrograph and detector system. The simulationsshow that frequency combs with pulse repetition rates of 5–30GHz are required, given thetypical resolving power of existing and possible future echelle spectrographs. Achieving suchhigh repetition rates, together with the desire to produce all comb modes with uniform inten-sity over the entire optical range, represent the only signiﬁcant challenges in the design ofa practical system. Frequency comb systems may remove wavelength calibration uncertain-ties from all practical spectroscopic experiments, even those combining data from diﬀerenttelescopes over many decades.Key words: instrumentation: spectrographs – instrumentation: detectors – methods: labora-tory – techniques: spectroscopic
Multiple Regulatory Domains of IRF-5 Control Activation, Cellular Localization, and Induction of Chemokines That Mediate Recruitment of T Lymphocytes

ABSTRACT Transcription factors of the interferon regulatory factor (IRF) family have been identified as critical mediators of early inflammatory gene transcription in infected cells. We recently determined that, besides IRF-3 and IRF-7, IRF-5 serves as a direct transducer of virus-mediated signaling. In contrast to that mediated by the other two IRFs, IRF-5-mediated activation is virus specific. We show that, in addition to Newcastle disease virus (NDV) infection, vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) and herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) infection activates IRF-5, leading to the induction of IFNA gene subtypes that are distinct from subtypes induced by NDV. The IRF-5-mediated stimulation of inflammatory genes is not limited to IFNA since in BJAB/IRF-5-expressing cells IRF-5 stimulates transcription of RANTES, macrophage inflammatory protein 1β, monocyte chemotactic protein 1, interleukin-8, and I-309 genes in a virus-specific manner. By transient- transfection assay, we identified constitutive-activation (amino acids [aa] 410 to 489) and autoinhibitory (aa 490 to 539) domains in the IRF-5 polypeptide. We identified functional nuclear localization signals (NLS) in the amino and carboxyl termini of IRF-5 and showed that both of these NLS are sufficient for nuclear translocation and retention in infected cells. Furthermore, we demonstrated that serine residues 477 and 480 play critical roles in the response to NDV infection. Mutation of these residues from serine to alanine dramatically decreased phosphorylation and resulted in a substantial loss of IRF-5 transactivation in infected cells. Thus, this study defines the regulatory phosphorylation sites that control the activity of IRF-5 in NDV-infected cells and provides further insight into the structure and function of IRF-5. It also shows that the range of IRF-5 immunoregulatory target genes includes members of the cytokine and chemokine superfamilies.
A Comparison of Interactive and Robotic Systems in Therapy and Education for Children with Autism

In this paper we discuss the use of interactive environments in autism therapy. In particular we review the Aurora project and summarise the results of three studies within Aurora project, one using a non-humanoid mobile robot, one using a small humanoid doll robot, and the last using a touch sensitive screen. All three studies seek, in different ways, to promote social skills and an enhanced sense of self and other. We draw some comparisons between the technologies.