Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of Distance Measures for Feature based Image Registration using AlexNet

Image registration is a classic problem of computer vision with several applications across areas like defence, remote sensing, medicine etc. Feature based image registration methods traditionally used hand-crafted feature extraction algorithms, which detect key points in an image and describe them using a region around the point. Such features are matched using a threshold either on distances or ratio of distances computed between the feature descriptors. Evolution of deep learning, in particular convolution neural networks, has enabled researchers to address several problems of vision such as recognition, tracking, localization etc. Outputs of convolution layers or fully connected layers of CNN which has been trained for applications like visual recognition are proved to be effective when used as features in other applications such as retrieval. In this work, a deep CNN, AlexNet, is used in the place of handcrafted features for feature extraction in the first stage of image registration. However, there is a need to identify a suitable distance measure and a matching method for effective results. Several distance metrics have been evaluated in the framework of nearest neighbour and nearest neighbour ratio matching methods using benchmark dataset. Evaluation is done by comparing matching and registration performance using metrics computed from ground truth.
Character of Z-pole data constraints on standard model parameters

Despite the impressive precision of the Z-pole measurements made at LEP and SLC, the allowed region for the principle Standard Model parameters responsible for radiative corrections (the mass of the Higgs, the mass of the top and alpha(Mz)) is still large enough to encompass significant non-linearities. The nature of the experimental constraints therefore depends in an interesting way on the "accidental" relationships among the various measurements. In particular, the fact that the Z-pole measurements favor values of the Higgs mass excluded by direct searches leads us to examine the effects of external Higgsstrahlung, a process ignored by the usual precision electroweak calculations.
Title Structural dynamics of the Δe 22 ( Osaka ) familial Alzheimer ' s disease-linked amyloid β-protein Permalink

A familial form of Alzheimer disease (AD) recently was described in a kindred in Osaka, Japan. This kindred possesses an amyloid β-protein (Aβ) precursor mutation within the Aβ coding region that results in the deletion of Glu22 (ΔE22). We report here results of studies of [ΔE22]Aβ40 and ΔE22Aβ42 that sought to elucidate the conformational dynamics, oligomerization behavior, fibril formation kinetics, fibril morphology, and fibril stability of these mutant peptides. Both [ΔE22]Aβ peptides had extraordinary β-sheet formation propensities. The [ΔE22]Aβ40 mutant formed β-sheet secondary structure elements ≈400-fold faster. Studies of β-sheet stability in the presence of fluorinated alcohol cosolvents or high pH revealed that the ΔE22 mutation substantially increased stability, producing a rank order of [ΔE22]Aβ42 >> Aβ42 > [ΔE22]Aβ40 > Aβ40. The mutation facilitated formation of oligomers by [ΔE22]Aβ42 (dodecamers and octadecamers) that were not observed with Aβ42. Both Aβ40 and Aβ42 peptides formed nebulous globular and small string-like structures immediately upon solvation from lyophilizates, whereas short protofibrillar and fibrillar structures were evident immediately in the ΔE22 samples. Determination of the critical concentration for fibril formation for the [ΔE22]Aβ peptides showed it to be ≈1/2 that of the wild type homologues, demonstrating that the mutations causes a modest increase in fibril stability. The magnitude of this increase, when considered in the context of the extraordinary increase in β-sheet propensity for the ΔE22 peptides, suggests that the primary biophysical effect of the mutation is to accelerate conformational changes in the peptide monomer that facilitate oligomerization and higher-order assembly.
Holland ’ s Secondary Constructs and Career Choice Readiness ! ! " ! !

The study examined the relationship between the secondary constructs of Holland’s (1997) theory of vocational interests and career choice readiness [career maturity] attitudes with 358 Swiss secondary students. The hypothesis was tested that the secondary constructs consistency, coherence, differentiation, and congruence are measures for the degree of vocational interest development. Thus, they should belong to the content domain in career choice readiness and should show meaningful relations to career choice readiness attitudes. The hypothesis was confirmed for congruence, coherence, and differentiation. Interest profile consistency showed no relation to career choice readiness attitudes. Vocational identity emerged as a direct measure for career choice readiness attitudes. Realism of career aspirations was related to career choice readiness attitudes and coherence of career aspirations. Profile elevation was positively connected to more career planning and career exploration. Differences between gender, ethnicity, and school-types are presented. Implications for career counselling and assessment practice are discussed.
Superconductivity dichotomy in K-coated single and double unit cell FeSe films on SrTi O 3

We report the superconductivity evolution of one unit cell (1-UC) and 2-UC FeSe films on $\mathrm{SrTi}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$(001) substrates with potassium (K) adsorption. By in situ scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurement, we find that the superconductivity in 1-UC FeSe films is continuously suppressed with increasing K coverage, whereas nonsuperconducting 2-UC FeSe films become superconducting with a gap of $\ensuremath{\sim}17\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\mathrm{meV}$ or $\ensuremath{\sim}11\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\mathrm{meV}$ depending on whether the underlying 1-UC films are superconducting or not. This work explicitly reveals that the FeSe/STO interface plays a vital role in enhancing Cooper pairing in both 1-UC and 2-UC FeSe films.
Title Assessment of heterologous butyrate and butanol pathway activity by measurement of intracellular pathway intermediates in recombinant Escherichia coli Permalink

In clostridia, n-butanol production from carbohydrates at yields of up to 76% of the theoretical maximum and at titers of up to 13 g/L has been reported. However, in Escherichia coli, several groups have reported butyric acid or butanol production from recombinant expression of clostridial genes, at much lower titers and yields. To pinpoint deficient steps in the recombinant pathway, we developed an analytical procedure for the determination of intracellular pools of key pathway intermediates and applied the technique to the analysis of three sets of E. coli strains expressing various combinations of butyrate biosynthesis genes. Low expression levels of the hbd-encoded S-3hydroxybutyryl-CoA dehydrogenase were insufficient to convert acetyl-CoA to 3-hydroxybutyryl-CoA, indicating that hbd was a rate-limiting step in the production of butyryl-CoA. Increasing hbd expression alleviated this bottleneck, but in resulting strains, our pool size measurements and thermodynamic analysis showed that the reaction step catalyzed by the bcd-encoded butyryl-CoA dehydrogenase was rate-limiting. E. coli strains expressing both hbd and ptb-buk produced crotonic acid as a byproduct, but this byproduct was not observed with expression of related genes from non-clostridial organisms. Our thermodynamic interpretation of pool size measurements is applicable to the analysis of other metabolic pathways.
Controlled by Integrin Two Types of Procoagulant Platelets Are Formed Upon Physiological Activation and Are

Zakharova, Anastasia A. Abaeva, Marie Loosveld, Fazoil I. Ataullakhanov, Alan T. Nurden, Nikolay N. Topalov, Alena O. Yakimenko, Matthias Canault, Elena O. Artemenko, Natalia V. 3 β IIb α Controlled by Integrin Two Types of Procoagulant Platelets Are Formed Upon Physiological Activation and Are Print ISSN: 1079-5642. Online ISSN: 1524-4636 Copyright © 2012 American Heart Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Greenville Avenue, Dallas, TX 75231 is published by the American Heart Association, 7272 Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology doi: 10.1161/ATVBAHA.112. 253765 2012;32:2475-2483; originally published online July 26, 2012; Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. http://atvb.ahajournals. org/content/32/10/2475 World Wide Web at: The online version of this article, along with updated information and services, is located on the http://atvb.ahajournals. org/content/suppl/2012/07/26/ATVBAHA.112. 253765.DC1. html Data Supplement (unedited) at:
A spectroscopic measure of the star formation rate density in dwarf galaxies at z∼ 1

We use a K-selected (22.5 < KAB < 24.0) sample of dwarf galaxies (8.4 < log(M∗/M � ) < 10) at 0.89 < z < 1.15 in the Chandra Deep Field-South to measure their contribution to the global star formation rate density (SFRD), as inferred from their [O II] flux. By comparing with [O II]-based studies of higher stellar mass galaxies, we robustly measure a turnover in the [O II] luminosity density at a stellar mass of M ∼ 10 10 M� . By comparison with the [O II]-based SFRD measured from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey we confirm that, while the SFRD of the lowest mass galaxies changes very little with time, the SFRD of more massive galaxies evolves strongly, such that they dominate the SFRD at z = 1.
Travel and the Built Environment: A Synthesis

The potential to moderate travel demand through changes in the built environment is the subject of more than 50 recent empirical studies. The majority of recent studies are summarized. Elasticities of travel demand with respect to density, diversity, design, and regional accessibility are then derived from selected studies. These elasticity values may be useful in travel forecasting and sketch planning and have already been incorporated into one sketch planning tool, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Growth Index model. In weighing the evidence, what can be said, with a degree of certainty, about the effects of built environments on key transportation “outcome” variables: trip frequency, trip length, mode choice, and composite measures of travel demand, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and vehicle hours traveled (VHT)? Trip frequencies have attracted considerable academic interest of late. They appear to be primarily a function of socioeconomic characteristics of travelers and secondarily a function of the built environment. Trip lengths have received relatively little attention, which may account for the various degrees of importance attributed to the built environment in recent studies. Trip lengths are primarily a function of the built environment and secondarily a function of socioeconomic characteristics. Mode choices have received the most intensive study over the decades. Mode choices depend on both the built environment and socioeconomics (although they probably depend more on the latter). Studies of overall VMT or VHT find the built environment to be much more significant, a product of the differential trip lengths that factor into calculations of VMT and VHT.
Extending the SAREF ontology for building devices and topology

In recent years, approaches to model different domains that interact in the IoT landscape are constantly emerging, such as the building information one, which includes related sensors, devices and appliances. The SAREF ontology represents a reference model for smart appliances, originally focused on the smart home domain. This work presents a SAREF extension for building devices as well as their location.
ICLR 2019 PPO Egocentric Fine Map Egocentric Coarse Map RGB Image Compute Reward ! "

Numerous past works have tackled the problem of task-driven navigation. But, how to effectively explore a new environment to enable a variety of down-stream tasks has received much less attention. In this work, we study how agents can autonomously explore realistic and complex 3D environments without the context of task-rewards. We propose a learning-based approach and investigate different policy architectures, reward functions, and training paradigms. We find that use of policies with spatial memory that are bootstrapped with imitation learning and finally finetuned with coverage rewards derived purely from on-board sensors can be effective at exploring novel environments. We show that our learned exploration policies can explore better than classical approaches based on geometry alone and generic learning-based exploration techniques. Finally, we also show how such task-agnostic exploration can be used for down-stream tasks. Videos are available at: https://sites.google. com/view/exploration-for-nav/.
Subspace-based dimension reduction for chemical kinetics applications with epistemic uncertainty

We focus on an efficient approach for quantification of uncertainty in complex chemical reaction networks with a large number of uncertain parameters. Parameter dimension reduction is accomplished by computing an active subspace that predominantly captures the variability in the quantity of interest (QoI). In the present work, we compute the active subspace for a H2/O2 mechanism that involves 19 chemical reactions, using an efficient iterative strategy. The active subspace is first computed for a 19-parameter problem wherein only the uncertainty in the pre-exponents of the individual reaction rates is considered. This is followed by the analysis of a 33-dimensional case wherein the activation energies are also considered uncertain. In both cases, a 1-dimensional active subspace is identified, which indicates enormous potential for efficient statistical analysis of complex chemical systems. In addition, we explore links between active subspaces and global sensitivity analysis, and exploit these links for identification of key contributors to the variability in the model response.
Neuropsychological profiles of members of organized crime and drug-traffic organizations

Correspondence: Feggy Ostrosky Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Psychophysiology, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico Tel +52 55 5622 2327 Email feggy@unam.mx Abstract: Members of organized crime and drug traffic organization have developed a hierarchical model of association while participating in the production, distribution, and commercialization of drugs and defense of their territory. The nature of these organizations leads to extremely violent acts, similar to those performed by psychopathic delinquents. Eightytwo incarcerated male offenders – members of these organizations – were assessed and later classified according to the role they played in the organization: kingpins, money launderers, protectors, enforcers, and distributors/producers. These individuals were paired to a control group of 76 nonincarcerated healthy male volunteers from a community sample. We obtained their psychopathic profile and frontal lobe functioning using the Psychopathy Checklist, Revised (PCL-R), PCL-R score, and the Frontal Lobe and Executive Functions Battery. Kingpins and enforcers were considered as psychopaths across the entire range, while the money launderers fit in the description of successful psychopathy, and interesting contrasts were observed within the groups in the PCL-R factors. The orbitofrontal cortex was the functional area affected in the inmate sample, being more detrimentally affected in the most violent samples, thus providing a useful measure of psychopathy and violence of unimpaired criminals. An objective classification of incarcerated criminals will allow us to distinguish between neuronal and cultural psychopaths and sociopaths, which will help us establish adequate readaptation programs. Social issues were also determinants: it was found that in the environment where these criminals grew up, there is a broad acceptance and validation of lifestyles characterized by the accumulation and showing off of material values over intellectual and social values, which in addition to drug consumption trigger the development of aggressive and violent personalities. Readaptation programs must strengthen cognitive abilities, which are normally diminished in these individuals, and encourage a lifestyle with an “integral wealth perspective” that values not only economic but also personal, social, familial, labor, and cultural assets.
THE GEMINI SPECTRAL LIBRARY OF NEAR-IR LATE-TYPE STELLAR TEMPLATES AND ITS APPLICATION FOR VELOCITY DISPERSION MEASUREMENTS

We present a spectroscopic library of late spectral type stellar templates in the near-IR range 2.15–2.42 μm, at R = 5300–5900 resolution, oriented to support stellar kinematics studies in external galaxies, such as the direct determination of the masses of supermassive black holes in nearby active (or non-active) galaxies. The combination of high spectral resolution and state-of-the-art instrumentation available in 8 m class telescopes has made the analysis of circumnuclear stellar kinematics using the near-IR CO band heads one of the most used techniques for such studies, and this library aims to provide the supporting data sets required by the higher spectral resolution and larger spectral coverage currently achieved with modern near-IR spectrographs. Examples of the application for kinematical analysis are given for data obtained with two Gemini instruments, but the templates can be easily adjusted for use with other near-IR spectrographs at similar or lower resolution. The example data sets are also used to revisit the “template mismatch” effect and the dependence of the velocity dispersion values obtained from the fitting process with the characteristics of the stellar templates. The library is available in electronic form from the Gemini Web pages.
TITLE : The aerobic performance of trained and untrained handcyclists with spinal cord injury

The purpose of this study was to compare the cardiorespiratory response and mechanical efficiency (ME) of highly trained spinal cord injured (SCI) handcyclists with untrained SCI men. Ten trained handcyclists (≥ 2yr training) and 10 untrained but physically active SCI men completed an incremental exercise test to exhaustion and a sub-maximal test (50 and 80W) on an electro-magnetically braked arm ergometer. The trained participants completed a questionnaire on their training and race performance over the past year including; average training volume (in kilometers), number of training sessions per week and best 20 km time trial. The trained SCI men had higher O2 peak, peak power (p≤0.001) and peak heart rate (p=0.021) compared to the untrained SCI men. The trained men had higher (p≤0.001) ME at 50 W (14.1 ± 2.0 %) and 80 W (17.2 ± 2.6) compared to the untrained men (50 W; 12.5 ± 1.8 and 80 W; 15.7 ± 2.1). Peak power (r=-0.87, p=0.001), O2 peak (r=-0.67, p=0.033) and ME (r=-0.58, p=0.041) were negatively correlated with the participants best 20 km time trial. Multiple linear regression indicated peak power (p<0.001) and O2 peak (p=0.021) were the best predictors (87%) of 20 km time trial performance Highly trained SCI handcyclists have a greater aerobic capacity and ME compared to untrained SCI and are able to reach their maximum age-predicted heart rate during an incremental exercise test. The best predictor of 20 km race performance in highly trained SCI handcyclists is peak power attained during an incremental exercise test.
Male painted gobies (Pomatoschistus pictus) vocalise to defend territories

Summary Many fish species emit sounds in agonistic contexts. During direct confrontations sounds are typically produced during the display phase in conjunction with visual exhibitions. Here we studied sound production during territorial defence in captive painted gobies, Pomatoschistus pictus, and related acoustic parameters with male traits and the date of recording (Julian day, i.e., with the approach of the peak of the breeding season). Territorial males emitted drumming sounds during displays that involved darkening the chin and fins, spreading fins and quivering the body. Drums were trains of low frequency pulses (≈23 pulses) repeated every 27 ms and usually lasting under a second. Drums were produced in short sequences of sounds (bursts). All acoustic parameters differed significantly among males. Drum and burst duration, and drum number of pulses increased significantly with male size. Calling duration (including drum, burst duration and drum number of pulses) also increased significantly with Julian date and presented a high intra-male variability, suggesting that these parameters may also depend on the individual’s motivation. We provide the first report for agonistic sound production in sand gobies and give evidence that sound parameters contain information that can be used during mutual assessment in contests over territories.
Cosmological constant and general isocurvature initial conditions

We investigate in detail the question whether a non-vanishing cosmological constant is required by present-day cosmic microwave background and large scale structure data when general isocurvature initial conditions are allowed for. We also discuss differences between the usual Bayesian and the frequentist approaches in data analysis. We show that the COBE-normalized matter power spectrum is dominated by the adiabatic mode and therefore breaks the degeneracy between initial conditions which is present in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. We find that in a flat universe the Bayesian analysis requires \Omega \Lambda \neq 0 to more than 3 \sigma, while in the frequentist approach \Omega \Lambda = 0 is still within 3 \sigma for a value of h < 0.48. Both conclusions hold regardless of initial conditions.
Does Investment Spur Growth Everywhere? Not Where Institutions are Weak

We investigate the impact of investment on growth in a sample of developed and developing countries, conditioning the marginal effect of investment on institutional quality. The panel structure of our dataset allows controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and dealing with the risk of endogeneity bias. In line with our expectations, we find that investment increases growth more in countries with high institutional quality than in countries with defective institutions. The results are essentially driven by government instability, corruption, and the rule of law.
Me , Myself , and Facebook : Cyber Bullying , Presence , and Self-Esteem

Due to a growing literature demonstrating its negative effects, cyberbullying is a rising concern for both adolescents and adults. Although this literature has investigated individual factors which might predict victimization, the current study explores how the experience of self-presence might influence the relationship between cyber bullying victimization and self-esteem. University students (N = 227) completed the study questionnaire consisting of instruments measuring cyber bullying victimization, state self-esteem and self-presence with students’ Facebook profile. Results suggest that although there is a negative relationship between cyber bullying victimization and self-esteem, this relationship is not significantly stronger for those who experience higher levels of self-presence with their Facebook profile as opposed to those who experience lower selfpresence. In spite of this, post hoc analysis provides reason to suspect that selfpresence is an important variable to consider in future studies investigating the relationship between cyberbullying victimization and self-esteem.