Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Left Lateral Prefrontal Activity Reflects a Change of Behavioral Tactics to Cope with a Given Rule: An fNIRS Study

Rules prescribe human behavior and our attempts to choose appropriate behavior under a given rule. Cognitive control, a mechanism to choose and evaluate actions under a rule, is required to determine the appropriate behavior within the limitations of that rule. Consequently, such cognitive control increases mental workload. However, the workload caused by a cognitive task might be different when an additional rule must be considered in choosing the action. The present study was a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) investigation of an experimental task, in which the difficulty of an operation and existence of an additional rule were manipulated to dissociate the influence of that additional rule on cognitive processing. Twenty healthy Japanese volunteers participated. The participants performed an experimental task, in which the player caught one of five colored balls from the upper part of a computer screen by operating a mouse. Four task conditions were prepared to manipulate the task difficulty, which was defined in terms of operational difficulty. In turn, operational difficulty was determined by the width of the playable space and the existence of an additional rule, which reduced the score when a red ball was not caught. The 52-channel fNIRS data were collected from the forehead. Two regions of interest (ROIs) associated with the bilateral lateral prefrontal cortices (LPFCs) were determined, and a three-way repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed using the task-related signal changes from each ROI. The fNIRS results revealed that bilateral LPFCs showed large signal changes with the increase in mental workload. The ANOVA showed a significant interaction between the existence of an additional rule and the location of the ROIs; that is, the left lateral prefrontal area showed a significant increase in signal intensity when the additional rule existed, and the participant occasionally decided to avoid catching a ball to successfully catch the red-colored ball. Thus, activation of the left LPFC corresponded more closely to the increase in cognitive control underlying the behavioral change made to cope with the additional rule.
Context-sensitive ranking

Contextual preferences take the form that item i1 is preferred to item i2 in the context of X. For example, a preference might state the choice for Nicole Kidman over Penelope Cruz in drama movies, whereas another preference might choose Penelope Cruz over Nicole Kidman in the context of Spanish dramas. Various sources provide preferences independently and thus preferences may contain cycles and contradictions. We reconcile democratically the preferences accumulated from various sources and use them to create a priori orderings of tuples in an off-line preprocessing step. Only a few representative orders are saved, each corre-sponding to a set of contexts. These orders and associated contexts are used at query time to expeditiously provide ranked answers. We formally define contextual preferences, provide algorithms for creating orders and processing queries, and present experimental results that show their efficacy and practical utility.
SDP : Software Development Platform for Improving Software Productivity *

* This work is partially supported by NSC 99-2221-E-260-010-. † Correspondence to: D. -R. Duh; E-mail address: drduh@ncnu.edu. tw Abstract In order to improve software productivity, this work designs and implements a Software Development Platform (SDP). The provided software development platform is composed of a reusable kernel program, a Graphical Input and Output Designer (GIOD) and a State Table Generator (STG). The kernel program is regarded as a Software Processor and driven by state tables each of which is transformed from a finite state diagram. The GIOD is used to visually design the graphical user interface (GUI); while the STG also provides a visual environment for designing finite state diagrams and can transform every designed finite state diagram into a finite state table including adopted I/O functions. Generally, the provided SDP can help designers to produce software more efficiently and be adapted to many kinds of programs.
Deficits in Short-Latency Tracking Eye Movements after Chemical Lesions in Monkey Cortical Areas MT and MST

Past work has suggested that the medial superior temporal area (MST) is involved in the initiation of three kinds of eye movements at short latency by large-field visual stimuli. These eye movements consist of (1) version elicited by linear motion (the ocular following response), (2) vergence elicited by binocular parallax (the disparity vergence response), and (3) vergence elicited by global motion toward or away from the fovea (the radial-flow vergence response). We investigated this hypothesis by recording the effects of ibotenic acid injections in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) of both hemispheres in five monkeys. After the injections, all three kinds of eye movements were significantly impaired, with the magnitude of the impairments often showing a strong correlation with the extent of the morphological damage in the three subregions of the STS: dorsal MST on the anterior bank, lateral MST and middle temporal area on the posterior bank. However, the extent of the lesions in the three subregions often covaried, rendering it difficult to assess their relative contributions to the various deficits. The effects of the lesions on other aspects of oculomotor behavior that are known to be important for the normal functioning of the three tracking mechanisms (e.g., ocular stability, fixation disparity) were judged to be generally minor and to contribute little to the impairments. We conclude that, insofar as MST sustained significant damage in all injected hemispheres, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that MST is a primary site for initiating all three visual tracking eye movements at ultra-short latencies.
Cerebellar processing in a mental rotation task

We recorded 306-channel MEG data during a mental rotation task. Nine subjects viewed 48 pairs of 3D perspective drawings of 10 cubes arranged in chiral patterns in a variety of orientations. These were displayed on a screen for 6 seconds at interstimulus intervals of 600 ms; each pair was presented 5 times. Participants were asked to judge whether the paired images represented the same object viewed from different angles or different objects, and to indicate their response with their dominant hand using a response pad. L1 minimumnorm estimates were calculated for trials with correct responses. The minimum response latency was 830 ms and the mean initial response time was 1250 ms. Consistent with previous studies [1], activation was observed during the first 350 ms after stimulus presentation in occipital, posterior parietal and superior postcentral cortex and the parieto-occipital region. Prominent cerebellar activation was seen at mean latencies of 126 and 212 ms. This finding complements previous MEG studies showing cerebellar activation during somatosensory tasks [2]. Cerebellum has been viewed as a motor organ. The observation of short-latency cerebellar evoked responses to visual input support a role for cerebellum in the processing of purely sensory input.
Using Sas and Other Xml Tools Effectively

SAS programmers who have XML processing needs, face a bewildering array of tools and standards to consider. The XML tools in SAS include ODS MARKUP, PROC TEMPLATE, and the LIBNAME XML engine with XMLMap. However, particular applications might be enhanced by the use of other tools and approaches also. There are many other technologies available for XML document modeling, processing and presentation. This paper attempts to sort through some of the standards-based XML tools to provide a view from a SAS-centric perspective. The utility of these XML supporting technologies will be considered in relation to the functionality of the SAS XML tools. Emphasis will focus on Java-based examples.
A Literature Review on Teachers’ Emotional Labor

In view of the teachers’ professional characteristics, teachers are rated as high emotional workers. By reviewing the literatures of Chinese and foreign teachers’ emotional labor research, this paper sums up four aspects about teachers’ emotional labor: the definition of the concept of emotional labor, teacher’s emotional display rules, teachers’ emotional labor strategies and the antecedents and the consequences of teachers’ emotional labor and also discusses the shortage of contemporary studies about teachers’ emotional labor tentatively.
Working Capital Management and Corporate Performance: Case of Malaysia

Working capital always being disregard in financial decision making since it involve investment and financing in short term period. However, it is an important component in firm financial management decision. An optimal working capital management is expected to contribute positively to the creation of firm value. To reach optimal working capital management firm manager should control the trade off between profitability and liquidity accurately. The intention of this study is to examine the relationship between working capital management and firm profitability. Cash conversion cycle is used as measure of working capital management. This study is used panel data of 1628 firm-year for the period of 1996-2006 that consist of six different economic sectors which are listed in Bursa Malaysia. The coefficient results of Pooled OLS regression analysis provide a strong negative significant relationship between cash conversion cycle and firm profitability. This reveals that reducing cash conversion period results to profitability increase. Thus, in purpose to create shareholder value, firm manager should concern on shorten of cash conversion cycle till optimal level is achieved.
Structural transformation in production and consumption: long-run growth and income disparities

The paper provides a theoretical explanation for the dramatic differences observed in the income growth and distribution across countries and within countries through time. The model we propose provides micro foundations for linking structural change to economic growth. The model formalizes the links between production technology, firm organization, and functional composition of employment on the supply side and the endogenous evolution of income distribution and consumption patterns on the demand side. Wage distribution is the main channel between the organization of firms and the consumption patterns. Firm selectionis the main trigger of capital investment, productivity increase, and cumulative causation growth through demand. We analyze the effect of different structural conditions via numerical simulations. We find that these conditions have a stunning effect on the long run rate of income growth and distribution. For example, product and demand variety have a jointly positive effect on growth when variety cumulates over time. Large jumps in technological change affect the economy in a very heterogeneous way, depending on the complexity of firm organization; the positive effect of complex organizational structures on growth can be hindered by large earning disparities.
Regulation of myoglobin expression

SUMMARY Myoglobin is a well-characterized, cytoplasmic hemoprotein that is expressed primarily in cardiomyocytes and oxidative skeletal muscle fibers. However, recent studies also suggest low-level myoglobin expression in various non-muscle tissues. Prior studies incorporating molecular, pharmacological, physiological and transgenic technologies have demonstrated that myoglobin is an essential oxygen-storage hemoprotein capable of facilitating oxygen transport and modulating nitric oxide homeostasis within cardiac and skeletal myocytes. Concomitant with these studies, scientific investigations into the transcriptional regulation of myoglobin expression have been undertaken. These studies have indicated that activation of key transcription factors (MEF2, NFAT and Sp1) and co-activators (PGC-1α) by locomotor activity, differential intracellular calcium fluxes and low intracellular oxygen tension collectively regulate myoglobin expression. Future studies focused on tissue-specific transcriptional regulatory pathways and post-translational modifications governing myoglobin expression will need to be undertaken. Finally, further studies investigating the modulation of myoglobin expression under various myopathic processes may identify myoglobin as a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of various cardiac and skeletal myopathies.
JOLED: A Mid-air Display based on Electrostatic Rotation of Levitated Janus Objects

We present JOLED, a mid-air display for interactive physical visualization using Janus objects as physical voxels. The Janus objects have special surfaces that have two or more asymmetric physical properties at different areas. In JOLED, they are levitated in mid-air and controllably rotated to reveal their different physical properties. We made voxels by coating the hemispheres of expanded polystyrene beads with different materials, and applied a thin patch of titanium dioxide to induce electrostatic charge on them. Transparent indium tin oxide electrodes are used around the levitation volume to create a tailored electric field to control the orientation of the voxels. We propose a novel method to control the angular position of individual voxels in a grid using electrostatic rotation and their 3D position using acoustic levitation. We present a display in which voxels can be flipped independently, and two mid-air physical games with a voxel as the playable character that moves in 3D across other physical structures and rotates to reflect its status in the games. We demonstrate a voxel update speed of 37.8 ms/flip, which is video-rate.
International Conference on Information Systems ( ICIS ) 2010 ENGAGED DESIGN SCIENCE : DEVELOPING DESIGN VISIONS FOR THE FUTURE E-NEWSPAPER

This paper reports the development of design visions for the future electronic (e-) newspaper. The ambition is to bring together the features of printed newspapers with the possibilities of online media. In an engaged design science research project we together with representatives of the newspaper industry and newspaper readers identified the three design challenges genre awareness, stress and lack of control, and obstruction. We also developed the guiding design metaphor of a calm e-reading experience and three design principles provision of media recognition support, support for user control, and support for focus on content. The design principles were evaluated through e-newspaper prototypes and on this basis we revised the design principles which led to a design theory for e-reading solutions on and for digital media.
A comprehensive review on various preprocessing methods in detecting diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is the primary cause of visual loss in case of diabetic patients. It is mainly caused by the changes in the blood vessels of the retina even though manual screening is available but they are very much time consuming and inefficient. Therefore for automatic detection of these changes and prevention of vision loss, color retinal image is an important tool used by the ophthalmologist. This paper discusses on seven different preprocessing available in literature and found the optimum technique for enhancing the retinal images. The performance of all the techniques has been tested on more than 1000 images obtained from several publicly available DRIVE and STARE and MESSIDOR dataset.
A model-data comparison of gross primary productivity: Results from the North American Carbon Program site synthesis

[1] Accurately simulating gross primary productivity (GPP) in terrestrial ecosystem models is critical because errors in simulated GPP propagate through the model to introduce additional errors in simulated biomass and other fluxes. We evaluated simulated, daily average GPP from 26 models against estimated GPP at 39 eddy covariance flux tower sites across the United States and Canada. None of the models in this study match estimated GPP within observed uncertainty. On average, models overestimate GPP in winter, spring, and fall, and underestimate GPP in summer. Models overpredicted GPP under dry conditions and for temperatures below 0°C. Improvements in simulated soil moisture and ecosystem response to drought or humidity stress will improve simulated GPP under dry conditions. Adding a low-temperature response to shut down GPP for temperatures below 0°C will reduce the positive bias in winter, spring, and fall and improve simulated phenology. The negative bias in summer and poor overall performance resulted from mismatches between simulated and observed light use efficiency (LUE). Improving simulated GPP requires better leaf-to-canopy scaling and better values of model parameters that control the maximum potential GPP, such asemax (LUE), Vcmax (unstressed Rubisco catalytic capacity) or Jmax (the maximum electron transport rate).
The concept of a set

Metaphysical interpretations of set theory are either inconsistent or incoherent. The uses of sets in mathematics actually involve three distinct kinds of collections (surveyable, definite, and heuristic), which are governed by three different kinds of logic (classical, intuitionistic, and minimal). A foundational system incorporating this analysis and based on the principles of mathematical conceptualism accords better with actual mathematical practice than Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory does.
Incremental Object Discovery in Time-Varying Image Collections

In this paper, we address the problem of object discovery in time-varying, large-scale image collections. A core part of our approach is a novel Limited Horizon Minimum Spanning Tree (LH-MST) structure that closely approximates the Minimum Spanning Tree at a small fraction of the latter's computational cost. Our proposed tree structure can be created in a local neighborhood of the matching graph during image retrieval and can be efficiently updated whenever the image database is extended. We show how the LH-MST can be used within both single-link hierarchical agglomerative clustering and the Iconoid Shift framework for object discovery in image collections, resulting in significant efficiency gains and making both approaches capable of incremental clustering with online updates. We evaluate our approach on a dataset of 500k images from the city of Paris and compare its results to the batch version of both clustering algorithms.
Inducing decision tree pronunciation variation models from annotated speech data

Amodelofpronunciationof words in discourse context has been induced from the annotation of a spoken language corpus. The information included in the annotation is a set of variables hypothesised to be important for thepronunciationof words in discourse context. The annotation is connected to segmentally defined units on tiers corresponding to linguistically relevant units: the discourse, the utterance, the phrase, the word, the syllable and the phoneme. Themodelis represented as atreestructure, making it transparent for analysis and easy to use in aspeechsynthesis system. Using phonemic canonicalpronunciationrepresentations to estimate the segmental string of theannotateddatagives a 22.1% phone error rate.Decisiontreepronunciationvariationmodelsgenerated in a tenfold cross validation procedure showed an average phone error rate of 9.9%. Using multiple context variables for modellingpronunciationvariationcould thus reduce the error rate by 55%, compared to a baseline using canonicalpronunciationrepresentations.
Lycopene Deficiency in Ageing and Cardiovascular Disease

Lycopene is a hydrocarbon phytochemical belonging to the tetraterpene carotenoid family and is found in red fruit and vegetables. Eleven conjugated double bonds predetermine the antioxidant properties of lycopene and its ability to scavenge lipid peroxyl radicals, reactive oxygen species, and nitric oxide. Lycopene has a low bioavailability rate and appears in the blood circulation incorporated into chylomicrons and other apo-B containing lipoproteins. The recent body of evidence suggests that plasma concentration of lycopene is not only a function of intestinal absorption rate but also lycopene breakdown via enzymatic and oxidative pathways in blood and tissues. Oxidative stress and the accumulation of reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide may represent a major cause of lycopene depletion in ageing, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes mellitus. It has been shown recently that low carotenoid levels, and especially decreased serum lycopene levels, are strongly predictive of all-cause mortality and poor outcomes of cardiovascular disease. However, there is a poor statistical association between dietary and serum lycopene levels which occurs due to limited bioavailability of lycopene from dietary sources. Hence, it is very unlikely that nutritional intervention alone could be instrumental in the correction of lycopene and carotenoid deficiency. Therefore, new nutraceutical formulations of carotenoids with enhanced bioavailability are urgently needed.
A Shape-Function Grammar Approach for the Synthesis and Modelling of Pixel-Microstrip-Antennas

Classical microstrip antenna models are either an empirically derived mathematical formula or a full-wave numerical solution. The former type is limited to specific simple geometries, is very fast to compute, and to some extent relates dimensional attributes to electromagnetic properties. On the other hand the latter is applicable to any arbitrary geometrical shape and is very accurate, but is computationally intensive and does not give an explanation of how the device works. In this paper a novel approach to modelling microstrip antennas that address this void is proposed. The model makes use of a coupled shape-function grammar to yield an estimate of the electromagnetic properties of arbitrary shaped microstrip antennas and also relates shape attributes to electromagnetic properties. The model is demonstrated on a pixel microstrip antenna structure in analysis and synthesis.
A Hough based algorithm for extracting text lines in handwritten documents

The method herein proposed detects text lines on handwritten pages which may include either lines oriented in several directions, erasures, or annotations between main lines. The method has a hypothesis-validation strategy which is iteratively activated until the end of the segmentation is reached. At each stage of the process, the best text-line hypothesis is generated in the Hough domain. Taking into account the fluctuations of the text-line components. Afterwards, the validity of the line is checked in the image domain using a proximity criteria which analyses the context in which is perceived the alignment hypothesized. Ambiguous components belonging to several text lines are also marked.