Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physiological markers of local sleep

Substantial evidence suggests that brain regions that have been disproportionately used during waking will require a greater intensity and/or duration of subsequent sleep. For example, rats use their whiskers in the dark and their eyes during the light, and this is manifested as a greater magnitude of electroencephalogram (EEG) slow‐wave activity in the somatosensory and visual cortex during sleep in the corresponding light and dark periods respectively. The parsimonious interpretation of such findings is that sleep is distributed across local brain regions and is use‐dependent. The fundamental properties of sleep can also be experimentally defined locally at the level of small neural assemblies such as cortical columns. In this view, sleep is orchestrated, but not fundamentally driven, by central mechanisms. We explore two physiological markers of local, use‐dependent sleep, namely, an electrical marker apparent as a change in the size and shape of an electrical evoked response, and a metabolic marker evident as an evoked change in blood volume and oxygenation delivered to activated tissue. Both markers, applied to cortical columns, provide a means to investigate physiological mechanisms for the distributed homeostatic regulation of sleep, and may yield new insights into the consequences of sleep loss and sleep pathologies on waking brain function.
Persistent delay activity in cortex: a Galilean phase in neurophysiology?

This paper underlines the computational, methodological and conceptual importance of delay activity experiments in cognitively performing animals. The argument consists of two parts. First, a delineation of the various dimensions affected by these experiments. Second, an outline, in the light of the first part, of several outstanding questions (or predictions) calling for future experimental and theoretical effort. *Discussion paper for the Human Frontiers meeting, Hakone, Japan, April 1994.
Congestion-aware caching and search in information-centric networks

The performance of in-network caching in information-centric networks, and of cache networks more generally, is typically characterized by network-centric performance metrics such as hit rate and hop count, with approaches to locating and caching content evaluated and optimized for these metrics. We believe that user-centric performance metrics, in particular the delay from when a content request is made by the user to the time at which the requested content has been completely downloaded, are also important. For such metrics, performance is often determined by link capacity constraints and network congestion. We investigate network cache management and search policies that account for path-level (content-server to content-requestor) congestion and file popularity in order to directly minimize user-centric, content-download delay. Through simulation, we find that our policies yield significantly better download delay performance than existing policies, even though these existing policies provide better performance according to traditional metrics such as cache hit rate and hop count.
Displaying bias in sampling effort of data accessed from biodiversity databases using ignorance maps

Abstract Background Open-access biodiversity databases including mainly citizen science data make temporally and spatially extensive species’ observation data available to a wide range of users. Such data have limitations however, which include: sampling bias in favour of recorder distribution, lack of survey effort assessment, and lack of coverage of the distribution of all organisms. These limitations are not always recorded, while any technical assessment or scientific research based on such data should include an evaluation of the uncertainty of its source data and researchers should acknowledge this information in their analysis. The here proposed maps of ignorance are a critical and easy way to implement a tool to not only visually explore the quality of the data, but also to filter out unreliable results. New information I present simple algorithms to display ignorance maps as a tool to report the spatial distribution of the bias and lack of sampling effort across a study region. Ignorance scores are expressed solely based on raw data in order to rely on the fewest assumptions possible. Therefore there is no prediction or estimation involved. The rationale is based on the assumption that it is appropriate to use species groups as a surrogate for sampling effort because it is likely that an entire group of species observed by similar methods will share similar bias. Simple algorithms are then used to transform raw data into ignorance scores scaled 0-1 that are easily comparable and scalable. Because of the need to perform calculations over big datasets, simplicity is crucial for web-based implementations on infrastructures for biodiversity information. With these algorithms, any infrastructure for biodiversity information can offer a quality report of the observations accessed through them. Users can specify a reference taxonomic group and a time frame according to the research question. The potential of this tool lies in the simplicity of its algorithms and in the lack of assumptions made about the bias distribution, giving the user the freedom to tailor analyses to their specific needs.
Construction of a Blog Emotion Corpus for Chinese Emotional Expression Analysis

There is plenty of evidence that emotion analysis has many valuable applications. In this study a blog emotion corpus is constructed for Chinese emotional expression analysis. This corpus contains manual annotation of eight emotional categories (expect, joy, love, surprise, anxiety, sorrow, angry and hate), emotion intensity, emotion holder/target, emotional word/phrase, degree word, negative word, conjunction, rhetoric, punctuation and other linguistic expressions that indicate emotion. Annotation agreement analyses for emotion classes and emotional words and phrases are described. Then, using this corpus, we explore emotion expressions in Chinese and present the analyses on them.
A comparison of deep learning and hand crafted features in medical image modality classification

Modality corresponding to medical images is a vital filter in medical image retrieval systems, as radiologists or physicians are interested in only one of radiology images e.g CT scan, MRI, X-ray. Various handcrafted feature schemes have been proposed for medical image modality classification. On the other hand not enough attempts have been made for deep learned feature extraction. A comparative evaluation of both handcrafted and deep learned features for medical image modality classification is presented in this paper. The experiments are performed on IMAGECLEF 2012 data. After carrying out the experiments it is shown that the handcrafted features outperforms the deep learned features and shows the potential of handcrafted feature extraction models in the medical image field.
The Home Improvements and Structural Alterations Benefits Program: Veterans With Disabilities and Home Accessibility

Inaccessible home environments can negatively affect the health-related quality of life of individuals with disabilities, increase the number of home accidents, diminish activities of daily living, and increase avoidable institutionalization. Appropriate home modification (HM) can change the home environment by making it more accessible. Accessible environments can be approached and used independently by individuals with diverse disabilities. This article provides a general overview of the Home Improvements and Structural Alterations (HISA) program, a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) program within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Established in 1973, HISA provides HM for Veterans with disabilities, facilitates continued treatment, and promotes access to essential facilities within the home. The program is unique given the decisive role medical practitioners and nonmedical persons play in the process of facilitating accessibility for Veterans with disabilities. However, little is known about the HISA benefits program. This article describes the structure and process of the HISA program, compares the program with other VA HM programs, and discusses potential research needs in VA’s HM applications. This explanation can inform both VA and non-VA health care professionals about the benefits and challenges of an innovative HM program and suggest ways to further advance HM policies.
Exploring the commercial value of social networks: Enhancing consumers' brand experience through Facebook pages

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors which impact upon the consumers’ willingness to utilise company Facebook pages and e-word-of mouth by proposing and testing a conceptual framework which is inspired by theories in marketing and information systems fields. The authors believe that only by applying both theories will provide a more complete understanding of the relationship between brand experience and Facebook. The research model attempts to illustrate the factors according to customers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and their impact on brand experience, brand Facebook page loyalty and e-word-of-mouth (E-WOM). Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopted an online survey method for data collection. The subjects the authors used were Facebook users. The data were collected in Taiwan over spring 2011. The authors then used the structural equation model to analyse the data collected. Findings – The findings suggest that users are influenced by the technical characteri.
Gender Peer Effects on Students' Academic and Noncognitive Outcomes: Evidence and Mechanisms

This paper estimates the gender peer effects on students' academic performance and noncognitive outcomes. The analysis uses a nationally representative survey of middle school students in China and focuses on schools that randomly assign students into classrooms. Our findings show that having a higher proportion of female peers in class improves students' test scores and noncognitive outcomes, such as mental stress, social acclimation and satisfaction, and disciplinary problems. There is evidence in support of improved classroom environment, teacher-student interactions, and teachers' level of job satisfaction when there are more female students in the class. The findings extend the study of gender peer effects from the traditional focus on academic achievements to noncognitive outcomes, and provide useful evidence on potential mechanisms.
Gyrotactic swimmer dispersion in pipe flow: experimental challenge of competing models

Suspensions of microswimmers are a rich source of fascinating new fluid mechanics. Recently we predicted the nonclassical pipe flow dispersion of gyrotactic microalgae, whose orientation is biased by gravity and flow shear. Analytical theory predicts that these active swimmers disperse in a markedly distinct manner from passive tracers (Taylor dispersion). Dispersing swimmers display nonzero drift and effective diffusivity that is non-monotonic with Peclet number. Such predictions agree with numerical simulations, but hitherto have not been tested experimentally. Here, we extend the theory to realistically describe suspensions of negatively buoyant bi-flagellate algae and obtain new predictions for the model species Dunaliella salina, parametrised using tracking video microscopy. We then present a new experimental method to measure gyrotactic dispersion using fluorescently stained D. salina and provide a preliminary comparison with predictions of a nonzero drift above the mean flow. Finally, we propose further experiments for a full experimental characterisation of gyrotactic dispersion measures and discuss implications of our results for algal dispersion in industrial photobioreactors.
Energy Efficient State Estimation With Wireless Sensors Through the Use of Predictive Power Control and Coding

We study state estimation via wireless sensors over fading channels. Packet loss probabilities depend upon time-varying channel gains, packet lengths and transmission power levels of the sensors. Measurements are coded into packets by using either independent coding or distributed zero-error coding. At the gateway, a time-varying Kalman filter uses the received packets to provide the state estimates. To trade sensor energy expenditure for state estimation accuracy, we develop a predictive control algorithm which, in an online fashion, determines the transmission power levels and codebooks to be used by the sensors. To further conserve sensor energy, the controller is located at the gateway and sends coarsely quantized power increment commands, only whenever deemed necessary. Simulations based on real channel measurements illustrate that the proposed method gives excellent results.
Low power and area efficient implementation of N-phase non overlapping clock generator using GDI technique

This paper proposes a low power implementation of a non-overlapping clock (NOC) generator based on area efficient realization of Gate-Diffusion-Input (GDI) D flip-flops. The design is programmable for the number of required phases of the NOC and the amount of non-overlap period, legitimate over the wide range of frequency. The derived clocking scheme can be used for various dynamic or multi-phase clocked logic gates to decrease complexity and increase speed. The benefits derived proportionate multi-folds when utilized for low frequency bio-medical applications. Simulation results stand unanimous suggesting the design to be area and power efficient while maintaining a low complexity of logic design. Process and temperature invariance adds its acceptability over a wide range of applications. Various alternate realizations of NOC generator are proposed based on design requirements.
Analytical approach to evaluate the effect of the spread of quantization noise through the cascade of decision operators for spherical decoding

The use of fixed point arithmetic for digital signal processing applications has several benefits in terms of cost, energy consumption and time to market. The existing analytical approaches for evaluating fixed-point systems performance are not able to evaluate the error caused by quantization noise in the case of un-smooth operators such as decision operators and especially when the quantization noise propagates through the cascade of decision operators. This problem is familiar in the case of spherical decoding algorithms. In this paper, we propose a generic analytical model allowing the evaluation of decision error probability for a case of spherical decoding which is SSFE algorithm. This algorithm contains an increasing decision operators cascade. Our model calculates the decision error probability taking into account the propagation of quantization noise from one decision operator to another. We have tested our generic approach described as an algorithm in the cases of BPSK, QPSK and 16-QAM constellations.
Self-Dual Codes

A survey of self-dual codes, written for the Handbook of Coding Theory. Self-dual codes are important because many of the best codes known are of this type and they have a rich mathematical theory. Topics covered in this chapter include codes over F2, F3, F4, Fq, Z4, Zm, shadow codes, weight enumerators, Gleason-Pierce theorem, invariant theory, Gleason theorems, bounds, mass formulae, enumeration, extremal codes, open problems. There is a comprehensive bibliography.
Short-Length Raptor Codes for Mobile Free-Space Optical Channels

Free-space optical (FSO) links are competitive wireless Links offering high data rate, security and low system complexity. For mobile applications, e.g., from a ground base station to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the FSO channel can suffer from severe instantaneous misalignment. This time varying misalignment is unknown to the transmitter and causes data packet corruption and erasure. As a result, the application of traditional fixed-rate erasure coding techniques is difficult. In this paper, we consider the application of rateless Raptor codes for such mobile FSO channels. Due to the high data rates required, short-length (16-1024) Raptor codes are designed and simulated on a severe jitter FSO channel. A key advantage of Raptor codes is their independence on channel state, no matter how large the misalignment. With a 1 Gbps transmitter, the designed Raptor code with k = 64 message packets offers 560 Mbps data rate and decoding cost of 4.14 operations per packet when transmitting power is 20 dBm. In contrast, a traditional automatic repeat-request (ARQ) algorithm technique on the same FSO jitter channel achieves a rate of 60 Mbps.
Tuning Database Configuration Parameters with iTuned

Database systems have a large number of configuration parameters that control memory distribution, I/O optimization, costing of query plans, parallelism, many aspects of logging, recovery, and other behavior. Regular users and even expert database administrators struggle to tune these parameters for good performance. The wave of research on improving database manageability has largely overlooked this problem which turns out to be hard to solve. We describe iTuned, a tool that automates the task of identifying good settings for database configuration parameters. iTuned has three novel features: (i) a technique called Adaptive Sampling that proactively brings in appropriate data through planned experiments to find high-impact parameters and high-performance parameter settings, (ii) an executor that supports online experiments in production database environments through a cycle-stealing paradigm that places near-zero overhead on the production workload; and (iii) portability across different database systems. We show the effectiveness of iTuned through an extensive evaluation based on different types of workloads, database systems, and usage scenarios.
Are the abiotic and biotic characteristics of aquatic mesocosms representative of in situ conditions

There is debate about whether results from mesocosm studies should be extrapolated to natural ecosystems. Critics argue that the abiotic and biotic characteristics of mesocosms do not represent the i n situ conditions of the habitats in which they are designed to mimic. We addressed this idea by deploying mesocosms in two lakes of varying trophic status (mesotrophic and eutrophic). Water chemistry was relatively similar between the mesocosms and the respective lakes. In contrast, biological variables including most phytoplankton, nanoflagellates, ciliates, and zooplankton were lower in the mesocosms than they were in the respective lakes. There was also a shift in zooplankton composition such that mesocosm assemblages diverged from pelagic to littoral communities. While our results show that freshwater planktonic organisms can vary considerably between mesocosms and in situ habitats, we also suggest that factors such as isolation from lake sediments, the lack of predators, and the temporal scale at which mesocosms are filled and sampled should be considered when designing and interpreting mesocosm studies. Nevertheless, mesocosms are an important tool for developing and testing general ecological hypotheses that cannot be achieved using other approaches alone.
Strong-coupling perturbation theory for the extended Bose-Hubbard model

We develop a strong-coupling perturbation theory for the extended Bose-Hubbard model with on-site and nearest-neighbor boson-boson repulsions on (d>1)-dimensional hypercubic lattices. Analytical expressions for the ground-state phase boundaries between the incompressible (Mott or charge-density-wave insulators) and the compressible (superfluid or supersolid) phases are derived up to third order in the hopping t. We also briefly discuss possible implications of our results in the context of ultracold dipolar Bose gases with dipole-dipole interactions loaded into optical lattices.
Process variability-induced timing failures— A challenge in nanometer CMOS low-power design

This paper studies the impact of intra-die random variability on low-power digital circuit designs, specifically, circuit timing failures due to intra-die variability. We identify a new low-Vdd statistical failure mode that is strongly supply-voltage dependent and also introduce a simple yet novel method for quantifying the effects of process variability on digital timing - a delay overlapping stage (DOS) chart. We propose a circuit design optimization and verification methodology that considers process variability.
Pre and Post Test Evaluations of Students in the Needs-Analysis Based EAP Course at Undergraduate Level

Iran’s education system is exam-based and to gain admission to universities at undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate levels, candidates have to sit a competitive examination. For this reason, developing an EAP course which prepares the candidates for these examinations is of crucial importance. The present study attempted to develop an EAP course for the selected number of undergraduate students of Statistics at Alzahra University and Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. The aim was to prepare these students for the English language section of the entrance examination for MS degree in Statistics and then to determine if there was any significant difference between students’ performance in their pre and post tests. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were applied in this study and different instruments such as a questionnaire, semi-structured and structured interviews, and analysis of texts, were used to gather needs analysis data. The results indicated that the majority of participants preferred the presence of more ESP courses at universities. There was also a significant difference between pretest and posttest scores of the participants who took part in the EAP course.
Hepatocyte growth factor is required for alveologenesis in the neonatal rat.

RATIONALE Our core hypothesis is that growth factors that have dysregulated expression during experimental neonatal lung injury are likely to be involved in normal postnatal lung growth and alveologenesis. OBJECTIVES To determine if hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is upregulated in neonatal lung injury and is essential for postnatal alveologenesis. METHODS A neonatal lung injury, in which there were patchy areas of interstitial thickening with a relative increase in the proportion of epithelial cells, was induced in newborn rats by exposing them to 60% oxygen for 14 days. Air-exposed pups had binding of endogenous HGF to its natural receptor, c-Met, inhibited by the intraperitoneal injection of either neutralizing antibody to HGF, or a truncated soluble c-Met receptor. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS The 60% oxygen-mediated lung injury was associated with increased lung mRNAs for hepatocyte growth factor and c-Met, relative to air-exposed control lungs, at Day 7 after birth. After exposure to 60% oxygen, immunoreactive HGF was increased at Days 4 and 7, and immunoreactive c-Met was increased at Day 14. In air-exposed pups, intraperitoneal injections of neutralizing antibody to HGF inhibited DNA synthesis in alveoli-forming secondary crests, and reduced the number of alveoli in 6-day-old pups. Intraperitoneal injections of a truncated soluble c-Met receptor inhibited DNA synthesis in secondary crests in 4-day-old air-exposed rat pups. CONCLUSIONS HGF and its c-Met receptor are required for normal postnatal alveolar formation from secondary crests, and are upregulated during 60% oxygen-induced neonatal lung injury.