Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recalling and Forgetting Dreams: Theta and Alpha Oscillations during Sleep Predict Subsequent Dream Recall

Under the assumption that dream recall is a peculiar form of declarative memory, we have hypothesized that (1) the encoding of dream contents during sleep should share some electrophysiological mechanisms with the encoding of episodic memories of the awake brain and (2) recalling a dream(s) after awakening from non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep should be associated with different brain oscillations. Here, we report that cortical brain oscillations of human sleep are predictive of successful dream recall. In particular, after morning awakening from REM sleep, a higher frontal 5–7 Hz (theta) activity was associated with successful dream recall. This finding mirrors the increase in frontal theta activity during successful encoding of episodic memories in wakefulness. Moreover, in keeping with the different EEG background, a different predictive relationship was found after awakening from stage 2 NREM sleep. Specifically, a lower 8–12 Hz (alpha) oscillatory activity of the right temporal area was associated with a successful dream recall. These findings provide the first evidence of univocal cortical electroencephalographic correlates of dream recall, suggesting that the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the encoding and recall of episodic memories may remain the same across different states of consciousness.
xact bit error probabilities and packet error statistics for SVD transmission over ime-varying dual-branch MIMO systems obtained by a Markov model redrag

Using a finite state Markov channel model, we develop an analytical method for evaluation of the packet error structure in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems based on singular value decomposition (SVD). We consider dual-branch MIMO systems, with either two transmit and arbitrary number of receive antennas, or arbitrary number of transmit and two receive antennas. The corresponding Markov model parameters are obtained using a novel closed-form expressions for probability density function and level crossing rate of the signal-to-noise ratio at the output of eigenchannels in a MIMO system, derived for a case of Rayleigh propagation, imperfect channel state information and any fixed power allocation. arkov model ultiple-input multiple-output systems acket error structure ingular value decomposition The exact bit error rate for the transmission of quadrature amplitude modulated (QAM) symbols through the eigenchannels is derived in polynomial closed form. Furthermore, by using the developed Markov model, the packet error statistics in the corresponding eigenchannels are determined, and the closed-form analytical expression for the system throughput is derived when ‘go-back-N’ automatic repeat request procedure is applied in time-varying eigenchannels. The analytical results are validated by using Monte Carlo simulations.
Preventing impersonation attacks in MANET with multi-factor authentication

Existing MANET authentication schemes cannot fully protect nodes from well-known impersonation attacks. Although these schemes cryptographically link an entity to a claimed identity, the actual entity is never linked to the physical node device. However, the link is implicitly assumed. This shortcoming may be easily exploited within a MANET setting, due to the broadcast nature of the access medium. In this paper we propose a multifactor authentication framework that extends the cryptographic link, binding an entity to a physical node device. This is achieved by using two distinct authentication factors; certified keys and certified node characteristics. Although the proposed framework requires additional sensing capabilities from the MANET nodes, it provides the additional confidence level required for node authentication in critical applications.
The Pestivirus N Terminal Protease Npro Redistributes to Mitochondria and Peroxisomes Suggesting New Sites for Regulation of IRF3 by Npro

The N-terminal protease of pestiviruses, Npro is a unique viral protein, both because it is a distinct autoprotease that cleaves itself from the following polyprotein chain, and also because it binds and inactivates IRF3, a central regulator of interferon production. An important question remains the role of Npro in the inhibition of apoptosis. In this study, apoptotic signals induced by staurosporine, interferon, double stranded RNA, sodium arsenate and hydrogen peroxide were inhibited by expression of wild type Npro, but not by mutant protein Npro C112R, which we show is less efficient at promoting degradation of IRF3, and led to the conclusion that Npro inhibits the stress-induced intrinsic mitochondrial pathway through inhibition of IRF3-dependent Bax activation. Both expression of Npro and infection with Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus (BVDV) prevented Bax redistribution and mitochondrial fragmentation. Given the role played by signaling platforms during IRF3 activation, we have studied the subcellular distribution of Npro and we show that, in common with many other viral proteins, Npro targets mitochondria to inhibit apoptosis in response to cell stress. Npro itself not only relocated to mitochondria but in addition, both Npro and IRF3 associated with peroxisomes, with over 85% of Npro puncta co-distributing with PMP70, a marker for peroxisomes. In addition, peroxisomes containing Npro and IRF3 associated with ubiquitin. IRF3 was degraded, whereas Npro accumulated in response to cell stress. These results implicate mitochondria and peroxisomes as new sites for IRF3 regulation by Npro, and highlight the role of these organelles in the anti-viral pathway.
Childhood Psychosocial Adversity and Adult Neighborhood Disadvantage as Predictors of Cardiovascular Disease: A Cohort Study

Background— Childhood adverse psychosocial factors (eg, parental divorce, long-term financial difficulties) and adult neighborhood disadvantage have both been linked to increased cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, their combined effects on disease risk are not known. Methods and Results— Participants were 37 699 adults from the Finnish Public Sector study whose data were linked to a national neighborhood disadvantage grid with the use of residential addresses between the years 2000 and 2008 and who responded to a survey on childhood psychosocial adversities and adult CVD risk behaviors in 2008 to 2009. Survey data were also linked to national registers on hospitalization, mortality, and prescriptions to assess CVD risk factors in 2008 to 2009 and to ascertain incident CVD (coronary heart disease or cerebrovascular disease) between the survey and the end of December 2011 (mean follow-up, 2.94 years; SD=0.44 years). Combined exposure to high childhood adversity and high adult disadvantage was associated with CVD risk factors (hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, obesity, smoking, heavy alcohol use, and physical inactivity) and with a 2.25-fold (95% confidence interval, 1.39–3.63) hazard of incident CVD compared with a low childhood adversity and low adult disadvantage. This hazard ratio was attenuated by 16.6% but remained statistically significant after adjustment for the CVD risk factors (1.96; 95% confidence interval, 1.22–3.16). Exposure to high childhood adversity or high adult neighborhood disadvantage alone was not significantly associated with CVD in fully adjusted models. Conclusions— These findings suggest that individuals with both childhood psychosocial adversity and adult neighborhood disadvantage are at an increased risk of CVD. In contrast, those with only 1 of these exposures have little or no excess risk after controlling for conventional risk factors.
Burchnall-Chaundy Theory, Ore Extensionsand σ-Differential Operators

A classical theorem of J. L. Burchnall and T. W. Chaundy shows that two commuting differential operators P and Q give rise, via a differential resultant, to a complex algebraic curve with equation F(x, y) = 0, such that formally inserting P and Q for x and y in F(x, y), gives identically zero. In addition, the points on this curve have coordinates which are exactly the eigenvalues associated with the operators P and Q (see the Introduction for a more precise statement). In this paper, we prove a generalization of this result using resultants in Ore extensions.
Calcitonin gene-related peptide: possible role in formation and maintenance of neuromuscular junctions

The expression and content of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) and secretogranin II (SgII) in adult rat motor neurons were examined by in situ hybridization, Northern blot analysis, and immunocytochemistry. Normal motor nerve terminals did not contain detectable CGRP or SgII. Ten to 15 days after a peripheral nerve crush about 80% of the motor nerve terminals reinnervating the soleus (SOL) muscle contained detectable CGRP but no SgII. Thereafter, the percentage of CGRP- positive terminals declined towards zero. In the spinal cord, CGRP expression was higher than normal 1 d after a sciatic nerve crush and increased during the next few days. No increase in SgII expression was observed. Nerve blocks by tetrodotoxin (TTX) and botulinum toxin (BoTX) increased CGRP content and expression in motor neurons but had no effect on SgII. After 10 d of BoTX treatment and 33 d of TTX treatment (the longest time points studied), more than 90% of the motor nerve terminals stained for CGRP. The density of large dense core vesicles (LDCVs) was also higher than normal in such terminals. Some increase in CGRP content and expression occurred in the nontreated side. In a group of rats, the peroneal nerve was stimulated electrically with brief, intermittent pulse trains at 100 Hz. The stimulation was applied below a TTX block that had started 7 or 19 d earlier. One minute of such stimulation was sufficient to remove CGRP from most of the terminals. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Construction of codes protographes LDPC quasi-cycliques based on an arithmetic progression

In this document, we study the construction of codes LDPC quasi cyclic based on a protograph. In addition to their large perimeters, the presented codes take profit from the advantages of bass coding and decoding complexity. The aim of this article is to make an improvement on the implementation of quasi-cyclic LDPC codes. Thus to respect the structure of the basic protograph we use an arithmetic progression to determine in advance the positions of certain nodes of control in the derived graph, which turn to some extent amounts generating a new model while proceeding to an enlarging of the basic protograph. Once this new model conceived we apply the usual techniques to build in an optimal way the derived graph.
A Family of Simplified Geometric Distortion Models for Camera Calibration

The commonly used radial distortion model for camera calibration is in fact an assumption or a restriction. In practice, camera distortion could happen in a general geometrical manner that is not limited to the radial sense. This paper proposes a simplified geometrical distortion modeling method by using two different radial distortion functions in the two image axes. A family of simplified geometric distortion models is proposed, which are either simple polynomials or the rational functions of polynomials. Analytical geometric undistortion is possible using two of the distortion functions discussed in this paper and their performance can be improved by applying a piecewise fitting idea. Our experimental results show that the geometrical distortion models always perform better than their radial distortion counterparts. Furthermore, the proposed geometric modeling method is more appropriate for cameras whose distortion is not perfectly radially symmetric around the center of distortion.
Explaining Diversity in Metagenomic Datasets by Phylogenetic-Based Feature Weighting

Metagenomics is revolutionizing our understanding of microbial communities, showing that their structure and composition have profound effects on the ecosystem and in a variety of health and disease conditions. Despite the flourishing of new analysis methods, current approaches based on statistical comparisons between high-level taxonomic classes often fail to identify the microbial taxa that are differentially distributed between sets of samples, since in many cases the taxonomic schema do not allow an adequate description of the structure of the microbiota. This constitutes a severe limitation to the use of metagenomic data in therapeutic and diagnostic applications. To provide a more robust statistical framework, we introduce a class of feature-weighting algorithms that discriminate the taxa responsible for the classification of metagenomic samples. The method unambiguously groups the relevant taxa into clades without relying on pre-defined taxonomic categories, thus including in the analysis also those sequences for which a taxonomic classification is difficult. The phylogenetic clades are weighted and ranked according to their abundance measuring their contribution to the differentiation of the classes of samples, and a criterion is provided to define a reduced set of most relevant clades. Applying the method to public datasets, we show that the data-driven definition of relevant phylogenetic clades accomplished by our ranking strategy identifies features in the samples that are lost if phylogenetic relationships are not considered, improving our ability to mine metagenomic datasets. Comparison with supervised classification methods currently used in metagenomic data analysis highlights the advantages of using phylogenetic information.
A SAS MACRO FOR THE POSITIVE STABLE FRAILTY MODEL

A SAS macro to extend the Cox proportional hazards regression model to allow for positive stable frailties is presented. This macro computes, using a modi ed EM algorithm, estimates of the model parameters and their respective standard errors. The likelihood ratio test of the independence assumption is also provided. An example data set is used to illustrate the macro.
A robust low-complexity algorithm for voice command recognition in adverse acoustic environments

The paper proposes a noise robust, low-complexity algorithm for voice command recognition. The matching block technique, called vector quantization-weighted hit rate (VQWHR), uses a time normalization like dynamic time warping (DTW) with the advantage of about 35% of the complexity and about 10% of the memory requirements of the reference technique. Results obtained in tests are given in terms of recognition rate using the TIMIT-46 database with various types of background noise and different SNRs. The experimental results and comparisons with the main matching techniques demonstrate that, offering a good trade-off between performance and complexity, the new algorithm is appropriate for all applications that present great limitations in terms of processing capacity and memory. Finally, for application where it is necessary to recognise linked lists of words, such as names and surnames in voice dialling applications, a contextual analysis based on double matching control is proposed. Thanks to the double matching linking mechanism proposed in this paper, the performance is better than in recognition of names or surnames alone
Distributed relational temporal difference learning

Relational representations have great potential for rapidly generalizing learned knowledge in large Markov decision processes such as multi-agent problems. In this work, we introduce relational temporal difference learning for the distributed case where the communication links among agents are dynamic. Thus no critical components of the system should reside in any one agent. Relational generalization among agents' learning is achieved through the use of partially bound relational features and a message passing scheme. We further describe how the proposed concepts can be applied to distributed reinforcement learning methods that use value functions. Experiments were conducted on soccer and real-time strategy game domains with dynamic communication. Results show that our methods improve goal achievement in online learning with a greatly decreased number of parameters to learn when compared with existing distributed learning methods.
Distribution of Multi-Words in Chinese and English Documents

As a hybrid of N-gram in natural language processing and collocation in statistical linguistics, multi-word is becoming a hot topic in area of text mining and information retrieval. In this paper, a study concerning distribution of multi-words is carried out to explore a theoretical basis for probabilistic term-weighting scheme. Specifically, the Poisson distribution, zero-inflated binomial distribution, and G-distribution are comparatively studied on a task of predicting probabilities of multi-words' occurrences using these distributions, for both technical multi-words and nontechnical multi-words. In addition, a rule-based multi-word extraction algorithm is proposed to extract multi-words from texts based on words' occurring patterns and syntactical structures. Our experimental results demonstrate that G-distribution has the best capability to predict probabilities of frequency of multi-words' occurrence and the Poisson distribution is comparable to zero-inflated binomial distribution in estimation of multi-word distribution. The outcome of this study validates that burstiness is a universal phenomenon in linguistic count data, which is applicable not only for individual content words but also for multi-words.
Semantic Cloud: An Enhanced Browsing Interface for Exploring Resources in Folksonomy Systems

Popular Web folksonomy systems such as Delicious or Flickr allow users to create web contents and annotate them with a set of freely chosen keywords (tags) in order to organize them for later retrieval. Unfortunately, existing user interfaces of folksonomy systems have limited browsing capabilities and do not exploit tag semantics sufficiently for browsing linked data. In this paper, we present Semantic Cloud, an approach for exploring data in folksonomy systems based on a hierarchical semantic representation of the tag-space, which is obtained by analyzing folksonomy data.
Is the Burden Too Small? – Effective Tax Rates in Ghana

This paper examines capital income taxation in Ghana. We calculate effective marginal tax rates (EMTR) and effective average tax rates (EATR) using an extended Devereux-Griffith methodology to accommodate for tax incentives - an exercise that has not been done so far for Ghana. We find that the wide range of tax incentives leads to a high variation of effective average tax rates in Ghana. Tax holidays and preferential income tax rates lower the effective tax burden to a significant extent and encourage individual tax avoidance strategies. Furthermore our results confirm previous findings that tax holidays, effectively reducing EATR, favor high-profit short-lived investment projects raising doubts about their rationale.
Wage and Price Dynamics in Portugal an Integrated Approach Using Qualitative Data

A correct definition of economic policies in general and monetary policy in particular requires a deeper understanding of the characteristics and determining factors underlying wage dynamics. When the exchange rate is no longer available to bring about adjustments, wage flexibility becomes a fundamental requirement for ensuring an adequate adjustment to shocks, whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, within a monetary union. Indeed, even though a number of reforms in labour markets have been put into place in various euro area countries, there are striking differences remaining in collective bargaining procedures and other labour market institutions (Du Caju et al., 2008). In addition, wages are also an important determinant of firms’ prices. Recent microeconomic research, both qualitative and quantitative, suggests that those sectors with a higher labour cost share, such as services, typically show a greater rigidity in prices (Fabiani et al., 2006 and 2007, Altissimo et al., 2006, Alvarez et al., 2006). Against this background, the Eurosystem set up in 2006 a research network entitled Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) aiming at study more in depth the features and sources of wage and labour cost dynamics in the euro area and their implications for monetary policy. One of the lines of research of this network consisted in analysing data from surveys among firms relating to their price and wage setting behaviour. It is within this context that this article details the findings of a survey carried out by the Banco de Portugal in the first half of 2008 within the scope of its participation in the WDN.
An efficient earth mover's distance algorithm for shape context feature

Shape context is not rotation invairent as a local visual feature. Using earth mover's distance (EMD) for similarity comparison can make the feature rotation invairent but its computational cost is expensive. In this paper, based on the property which the feature histogram's angel dimansion circle shifts when image rotates, a fast and efficient method is presented to compute EMD between two shape context features for point matching problem. The analysis shows the time complexity is much lower and the experiments show the effective and efficiency of new method.
Characterization and evaluation of tandem repeats for the identification of Geobacillus

Taxonomy of thermophilic, endospore-forming bacteria has evoked a great interest over the past few years. Although a number of taxonomic markers were previously evaluated, their sequences in Geobacillus were too conservative, and identification of more variable markers is needed. Repetitive DNA is one of the promising variable targets in the development of the taxon-specific genotyping and identification schemes in bacteria. The aim of our study was to evaluate the possibility of using repetitive DNA in the taxonomy of Geobacillus. In this paper, we report the analysis of perfect tandem repeats of geobacilli. We focused on the long repeats (with a motif length of ≥20 nucleotides). This choice was based on the assumption that these motifs can be used for the construction of oligonucleotides — primers and probes. Thirty-three Geobacillus genus-specific motifs were identified in our work, fifteen of them were species-specific and fifteen — species cluster -specific. Three of them were genus-, but not species- or species cluster-specific. Some of the motifs were used for the construction of the primer pairs. The primers were validated by PCR. Out of 12 designed primer pairs, 11 were genus-specific and 4 — species-specific. Species-specific primers were successfully constructed for the phylogenetically defined species Geobacillus thermodenitrificans and Geobacillus toebii.
Bounds on the secrecy capacity region of the degraded multiple-access relay wiretap channel

In this paper, we investigate the effects of an additional trusted relay node on the secrecy of the degraded multiple-access wiretap channel (DMAC-WT) by considering the model of the degraded multiple-access relay wiretap channel (DMARC-WT). Inner and outer bounds on the secrecy capacity regions of the DMARC-WT are provided for both the discrete memoryless and the Gaussian cases. For the Gaussian DMARC-WT, we find that in some particular cases, Tekin-Yener's achievable secrecy rate region of the Gaussian DMAC-WT is enhanced by using this trusted relay node.