Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Running head : LORETA in CFS Twins Low-resolution Electromagnetic Brain Tomography ( LORETA ) of Monozygotic Twins Discordant for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Background: Previous work using quantified EEG has suggested that brain activity in individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and normal persons differs. Our objective was to investigate if specific frequency band-pass regions and spatial locations are associated with CFS using low-resolution electromagnetic brain tomography (LORETA). Methods: We conducted a co-twin control study of 17 pairs of monozygotic twins where 1 twin met criteria for CFS and the co-twin was healthy. Twins underwent an extensive battery of tests including a structured psychiatric interview and a quantified EEG. Eyes closed EEG frequencydomain analysis was computed and the entire brain volume was compared of the CFS and healthy twins using a multiple comparison procedure. Results: Compared with their healthy co-twins, twins with CFS differed in current source density. The CFS twins had higher delta in the left uncus and parahippocampal gyrus and higher theta in the cingulate gyrus and right superior frontal gyrus. Conclusions: These findings suggest that neurophysiological activity in specific areas of the brain may differentiate individuals with CFS from those in good health. These preliminary findings await replication.
A Novel Idea for Credit Card Fraud Detection using Decision Tree

Online shopping and banking has increased by the growth of internet and by use of credit card. Along with this number of credit card fraud is also increased. Many modern techniques based on Artificial Intelligence, Data warehousing has evolved in detecting various credit card fraudulent transactions. We proposed a system which detect fraud in credit card transaction processing using a decision tree with combination of Luhn's algorithm and Hunt's algorithm. Luhn’s algorithm is used to validate the card number. Address matching rule checks whether the Billing Address and Shipping Address match or not. This check does not guarantee whether a transaction is fraud or genuine. But if the two addresses match, the transaction can be classified as genuine with a high probability. Else, the transaction is labelled as suspect. A customer usually carries out similar types of transactions in terms of amount, which can be visualized as part of a cluster. Since a fraudster is likely to differ from the customer’s account, his transactions can be detected as exceptions to the cluster – a process known as outlier detection.
Authentic assessment for Fundamental Electronics

This paper aims to address the gaps in the way current Fundamental Electronics (FE) laboratory sessions are conducted and assessed in polytechnic education by designing two performance tasks and adopting authentic assessment. The rationales include: 1) transformation of global economy and the goal of polytechnic education; 2) educational reform on teaching and learning; and 3) misalignment between the Ministry of Education (MOE) Science curriculum framework, the instructions and assessments in current FE laboratory lesson. The benefits and challenges in implementing the designed performance tasks and authentic assessment are also addressed.
Theoretical Analysis of the Performance of Anonymous Communication System 3-Mode Net

This paper aims at analyzing the performance of an anonymous communication system 3-Mode Net with respect to the number of relay nodes required for communication and sender anonymity. As for the number of relay nodes, we give explicit formulas of the probability distribution, the expectation, and the variance. Considering sender anonymity, we quantify the degree of sender anonymity under a situation where some relay nodes collude with each other. The above analyses use random walk theory, a probability generating function, and their properties. From obtained formulas, we show several conditions for avoiding a situation where the number of relay nodes becomes large, and for providing high sender anonymity. Furthermore, we investigate the relationship between the number of relay nodes and sender anonymity, and give a condition for providing a better performance of 3MN.
Polymorphisms in the Promoter Region of the Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor Gene Are Not Associated with Myocardial Infarction in a Slovene Population with Type 2 Diabetes

Basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) is a multifunctional growth factor that may play a significant role in atherosclerotic vascular complications in patients with type 2 diabetes. This study was designed to investigate the association between genetic polymorphisms (–553 T/A, −834 T/A and −921 C/G) in the promoter region of the bFGF gene and myocardial infarction (MI) in 443 patients with type 2 diabetes (149 with MI and 294 with no history of coronary artery disease). The −553 T/A, −834 T/A and −921 C/G polymorphisms of the bFGF gene were found not to be risk factors for MI in patients with type 2 diabetes. The impact of bFGF gene polymorphisms on serum bFGF levels was also investigated and significantly higher serum levels of bFGF were demonstrated in diabetes patients with the TA genotype of the −553 T/A polymorphism compared with diabetes patients with the TT wild type genotype (9.0 ± 5.6 ng/l versus 3.0 ± 1.9 ng/l, respectively). Thus, the tested bFGF gene polymorphisms cannot be used as genetic markers for MI in diabetic Caucasians.
RO OF Differential requirements for FGF 3 , FGF 8 and FGF 10 during inner ear development

a Instituto de Biología y Genética Molecular, Universidad de Valladolid y Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, C/Sanz y Forés s/n, E-47003 Valladolid, Spain b Center for Molecular Neurobiology, University of Hamburg, Falkenried 94, D-20251 Hamburg, Germany c Zoology Department, Zoology Building, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland d University Tübingen, Anatomical Institute, Österbergstr. 3, 72074 Tübingen, Germany e School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK
An investigation into combining both facial detection and landmark localisation into a unified procedure using GPU computing

This thesis describes the design and implementation of a unified framework for face detection and landmark alignment in arbitrary in the wild images. Traditionally, both of these problems have been addressed separately in literature with impressive results being recently reported in both of these fields. But, if one was to construct a pipeline consisting of a state-of-the-art face detection method followed by a state-of-the-art facial landmark localisation algorithm, the overall performance outcome would not be proficient enough to be used in high level algorithms such as face recognition and facial expression. This is because the accuracy produced by the face detector is not sufficiently high enough to initialise the landmark localisation algorithm. To address this aforementioned limitation, this thesis aims to propose an approach that combines both of these tasks into a single unified algorithm that can be run in real time, by utilising the parallel computing architecture of the graphics processing unit (GPU). This will be done by using a Cascaded-Regression (CR) algorithm in a sliding window fashion. The proposed system will exploit the CR algorithms ability to compute the 2D pose of a face from rough initial estimates, in order to generate a Hough- Transform voting scheme for detecting candidate faces and filtering out irrelevant background. The obtained detection surface will then be further refined using SVM to yield both face detections and the location of their parts. The proposed system for this thesis will be built within the MATLAB environment, using a MEX-file which will provide an interface to the proposed CUDA algorithm. The results of which, will be tested against current state-of-the-art methods for both face detection and landmark localisation. We evaluate performance on the most widely used data sets in face detection, namely annotated faces in-the-wild (AFW) (Zhu and Ramanan, 2012), Face Detection Dataset and Benchmark (FDDB) (Jain and Learned-Miller, 2010) and Caltech Occluded Faces in the Wild (COFW) (Burgos-Artizzu, Perona and Dollar, 2013). The empirical results demonstrate that the proposed unified framework achieves state-of-the-art performance in both face detection and facial alignment, and that our detector clearly outperforms all commercial and published methods by a margin of over 10% in detection accuracy on the AFW dataset.
Haptic Exercises for Measuring Improvement of Post-Stroke Rehabilitation Patients

Rehabilitation exercises supervised by occupational therapists (OTs), involve applying task-oriented forces to the injured/disabled area to regain, for instance, strength and range of motion. Haptic interfaces have shown clear benefits in imitating therapists' exercises with the possibilities of position, grasping angles and force capturing. In this paper, we present two haptic-based virtual reality exercises for stroke patients undergoing rehabilitation to recover all, or some, of their lost hand functions. The two exercises, the squeeze ball exercise and the maze exercise, were implemented using the CyberForce system. The squeeze ball exercise helps patients recover the action of hand grasping whereas the maze exercise aims at increasing the steadiness of the patient's movement. Our measurements of these exercises show that we can continuously evaluate the patient's improvement.
SUBADULT FEMALE EXPERIENCE DOES NOT INFLUENCE SPECIES RECOGNITION IN THE WOLF SPIDER SCHIZOCOSA UETZI STRATTON 1997

Abstract In many vertebrate systems, early experience has been linked to the learning of species-specific traits that are subsequently assessed during mate choice, thus ensuring conspecific matings. In invertebrate systems, however, early experience was not thought to play a role in mate choice until a recent study using Schizocosa uetzi Stratton 1997 wolf spiders demonstrated that females mate more readily with males of a familiar versus unfamiliar phenotype. The function of early mate choice learning in this system is not yet known, but a role in learning species-specific traits seems unlikely. In northwestern Mississippi, S. uetzi is found sympatrically with S. stridulans Stratton 1991, which matures slightly earlier in the season. If S. uetzi early mate choice learning functions in learning species-specific traits used in mate choice, as is often the case in vertebrate systems, then subadult female exposure to heterospecifics (S. stridulans) could result in heterospecific matings. Here, I exposed subadult S. uetzi females to courtship advances from mature males of either S. uetzi (conspecifics) or S. stridulans (heterospecifics) in order to test a species-specific mate choice learning function. Previously exposed females were paired with a mature male of the same, or the opposite, species as their exposure male. As expected, the results do not support a species-specific mate choice learning function. Previously exposed females mated significantly more with conspecific males regardless of their exposure treatment, as did unexposed females. The highest pre-mating sexual cannibalism rates occurred in heterospecific mate choice trials regardless of the exposure treatment, and exposed females were more likely to cannibalize males than unexposed females. While previous results demonstrate that subadult experience influences conspecific mate choice, a species recognition template seems to exist that is independent of the influence of early experience. The potential influence of multimodal signal interactions on conspecific mate choice learning is discussed.
A CB-SVPWM control strategy for neutral-poin voltage balancing in three-level NPC inverters

For the three-level neutral-point-clamped inverters, neutral point voltage balancing control is necessary for proper operation. This paper presents a balancing control strategy of the neutral-point voltage with a closed-loop dc-link mid-point capacitor voltage control. Instead of the adjustable pulse-width switching sequence of the small voltage vector with the space-vector-based concept, it is only done by mathematical analysis of the neutral-point current coordinated with the carrier-based pulse width modulation concept to find out the relative DC offset added into the continuous modulating signals. This is in order to regulate the inverter operation for solving the unbalanced dc voltages of two split capacitors. The distinctive simplicity of the proposed control strategy is the use of the DC-side diagnosis along with a convenient P controller. The performance and feasibility of the proposed control strategy are verified by detailed simulation results.
Multicore Mixed-Criticality Systems: Partitioned Scheduling and Utilization Bound

In mixed-criticality (MC) systems, multiple activities with various certification requirements (thus with different criticality levels) can co-exist on shared hardware platforms, where multicore processors have emerged as the de facto computing engines. In this paper, by using the partitioned earliest-deadline-first with virtual deadlines (EDF-VDs) scheduler for a set of periodic MC tasks running on multicore systems, we derive a criticality-aware utilization bound for efficient feasibility tests and then identify its characteristics. Our analysis shows that the bound increases with increasing number of cores and decreasing system criticality level. We show that, since the utilizations of MC tasks at different criticality levels can vary considerably, the utilization contribution of a task on different cores may have large variations and thus can significantly affect the system schedulability under the EDF-VD scheduler. Based on these observations, we propose a novel and efficient criticality-aware task partitioning algorithm (CA-TPA) to compensate for the inherent pessimism of the utilization bound. In order to improve the system schedulability, the task priorities are determined according to their utilization contributions to the system in CA-TPA. Moreover, by analyzing the utilization variations of tasks at different levels, we develop several heuristics to minimize the utilization increment and balance the workload on cores. The simulation results show that the CA-TPA scheme is very effective in achieving higher schedulability ratio and yielding balanced workloads. The actual implementation in Linux operating system further demonstrates the applicability of CA-TPA with lower run-time overhead, compared to the existing partitioning schemes.
A Modelica-Based Modeling, Simulation and Knowledge Sharing Web Platform

In order to adapt to the changes brought by mobile office, reduce the initial cost of modeling and simulation, share knowledge resources, and finally attract more customers by platform-community effect formed, the WebMWorks is presented in this paper. Deployed on cloud-computing platform, it provides user a low cost Modelica-based modeling, simulation and knowledge library sharing service of multi-domain physical system. It is based on Web, supporting multi-tenant, collaborative design, textual and visual modeling, knowledge publishing, leasing and purchasing, model commenting and communicating between users. Adopting SOA, the basic function components of WebMWorks is packed into stateless service composites, which can be deployed on cloud-computing platform and extended easily. WebMWorks is assembled with these composites, and provides service online through RIA based on browser.
Accuracy of ICD-9-CM Codes in Identifying Reportable Communicable Diseases

Billing records from the outpatient clinics of a uni versity medical center were used to identify report able communicable diseases. Patient charts were re viewed to check the accuracy of all cases of commu nicable diseases not reported to the local health department. Thirty-three percent of the cases iden tified as one of 20 communicable diseases, using the ICD-9-CM system, were found to be incorrectly coded. This study documents a lack of specificity (nu merous false positives) when using encounter form data and ICD-9-CM codes to identify communicable diseases in an outpatient setting.
At acidic pH, the GPA2–cAMP pathway is necessary to counteract the ORD1‐mediated repression of the hypoxic SRP1/TIR1 yeast gene

The hypoxic SRP1/TIR1 gene encodes a stress‐response cell wall mannoprotein and this gene is downregulated at acidic pH. The stress‐responsive HOG pathway is necessary to maintain hypoxic TIR1 expression, but only at acidic pH. However, unlike known HOG pathway‐dependent genes, TIR1 is under positive cAMP control and this effect is mediated by GPA2 but not by RAS2. Genetic analysis showed that ord1 mutation was epistatic to the gpa2 mutation, thereby indicating that Gpa2p is needed to counteract the Ord1 factor, which is involved in the repression of hypoxic TIR1 expression, while the HOG pathway appears to be independent from Ord1 repression. In addition, an increased ORD1 gene expression was observed in the Δgpa2 mutant cells, meaning that GPA2 maintains a low basal level of ORD1 transcripts. Thus, cAMP allows partial relief of the TIR1 repression exerted by Ord1p. However, this is contradicted at acidic pH by the HOG pathway requirement because Hog1p is activated under stress conditions when the cAMP cellular content is low. The opposite effects of the GPA2–cAMP and HOG pathways are likely to explain the diminished hypoxic expression of TIR1 at acidic pH. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Planar and nanowire Schottky barrier MOSFETs on SOI with NiSi and epitaxial NiSi2 contacts

The scaling of Schottky barrier (SB)-MOSFETs is investigated experimentally and by simulations for devices with minimum gate length as small as 20nm. The results reveal that the scaling of SB-MOSFETs with undoped silicide contacts and thus with fairly large SB has severe limitations. In contrast to normal MOSFETs, the smaller SB transistors provide lower currents due to the increasing overlap of the source/drain potential in the channel. Better scaling behavior can only be achieved for SB-MOSFETs with SB≤0.1eV. Boron and arsenic implantations into silicide (IIS) are used to lower the effective SB height (SBH). With the reduced effective SBH the experimental results demonstrate that the scaling of SB-MOSFETs behaves like conventional MOSFETs. The performance of nanowire devices is significantly improved due to the better electrostatics and the high hole mobilities on the (110) side walls.
Small Rho GTPases and Cholesterol Biosynthetic Pathway Intermediates in African Swine Fever Virus Infection

ABSTRACT The integrity of the cholesterol biosynthesis pathway is required for efficient African swine fever virus (ASFV) infection. Incorporation of prenyl groups into Rho GTPases plays a key role in several stages of ASFV infection, since both geranylgeranyl and farnesyl pyrophosphates are required at different infection steps. We found that Rho GTPase inhibition impaired virus morphogenesis and resulted in an abnormal viral factory size with the accumulation of envelope precursors and immature virions. Furthermore, abundant defective virions reached the plasma membrane, and filopodia formation in exocytosis was abrogated. Rac1 was activated at early ASFV infection stages, coincident with microtubule acetylation, a process that stabilizes microtubules for virus transport. Rac1 inhibition did not affect the viral entry step itself but impaired subsequent virus production. We found that specific Rac1 inhibition impaired viral induced microtubule acetylation and viral intracellular transport. These findings highlight that viral infection is the result of a carefully orchestrated modulation of Rho family GTPase activity within the host cell; this modulation results critical for virus morphogenesis and in turn, triggers cytoskeleton remodeling, such as microtubule stabilization for viral transport during early infection.
Reproductive success depends on the quality of helpers in the endangered, cooperative El Oro parakeet (Pyrrhura orcesi)

In cooperative species, helping behaviour and reproductive success can be correlated, but understanding this correlation is often impaired by the difficulty to correctly infer causation. While helpers can incur costs by participating in brood care, it is yet unclear if their help depends on their individual quality. We address these questions in the previously unknown cooperative breeding system of the endangered El Oro parakeet (Pyrrhura orcesi). Specifically, we ask (i) whether breeders benefit directly from helpers by an enhanced reproductive success and if so, (ii) whether the amount of this potential benefit is regulated by the quality of contributing group members. Groups consist of a dominant breeding pair accompanied by helpers, but cooperation is not obligate. Microsatellite heterozygosity was used to assess individual quality; its suitability as indicator of quality was reflected in the positive relationship between offspring heterozygosity and recruitment into the population. The reproductive success of breeding pairs depended on helper (genetic) quality and the number of helpers. This relationship occurred on two different levels: clutch size and fledging success, indicating (i) that females profit from high‐quality helpers and probably adjust clutch size accordingly and (ii) that the helpers increase fledging success. Congruently, we found that offspring body condition is positively affected by helper quality, which is most probably explained by the increased feeding rates when helpers are present. We suggest a causal link between cooperation and reproductive success in this frugivorous, endangered parakeet. Further, helper (genetic) quality can be a relevant factor for determining reproductive fitness in cooperative species, particularly in small and bottlenecked populations.
An automatic programming tool for heterogeneous multiprocessor systems

Advances in network technology and the higher levels of circuit integration due to VLSI have led to widespread interest in the use of multiprocessor systems in solving many practical problems. As the hardware continues to diminish in size and cost, new possibilities are being created for systems that are heterogeneous by design. Parallel multiprocessor architectures are now feasible and provide a valid solution to the throughput rates demands of the increasing sophistication of control and/or instrumentation systems. Increasing the number of processors and the complexity of the problems to be solved makes programming multiprocessor systems more difficult and error-prone. This paper describes some parts already implemented (mainly the scheduler) of a software development tool for a heterogeneous multiprocessor system that will automatically perform code generation, execution time estimation, scheduling, and handles the communication primitive insertion.
Chromatic Dispersion Estimation in Digital Coherent Receivers

Polarization-diverse coherent demodulation allows to compensate large values of accumulated linear distortion by digital signal processing. In particular, in uncompensated links without optical dispersion compensation, the parameter of the residual chromatic dispersion (CD) is vital to set the according digital filtering function. We present different non-data-aided (blind) CD estimation methods for single-carrier transmission under implementation constraint conditions such as bandwidth limitation and sampling rate. The estimation performance for various modulation formats is compared with respect to precision and robustness for a wide range of combined channel impairments.