Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Functional mri of human brain activation combining high spatial and temporal resolution by a cine flash technique

Functional mapping of human brain activation has been accomplished at high spatial and temporal resolution (voxel size 4.9 μl, temporal increment 100 ms). The approach was based on oxygenation‐sensitive long‐echo time FLASH MRI sequences synchronized to multiply repeated cycles of visual stimulation in a CINE acquisition mode. This high temporal resolution revealed that stimulus‐related signal intensity changes in human visual cortex display an initial latency followed by increases extending over several seconds. Furthermore, the temporal characteristics of the complete CINE MRI signal time course depended on the absolute and relative durations of activation and control periods and, for example, caused an apparent absence of a poststimulation “undershoot” phenomenon. Complementing hyperoxygenation due to rapid hemodynamic adjustments, these results suggest signal intensity modulation by enhanced oxygen consumption and concomitant deoxygenation during prolonged and/or repetitive stimulation.
NMF-based Models for Tumor Clustering: A Systematic Comparison

Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is one of the famous unsupervised learning models. In this paper, we give a short survey on NMF-related models, including K-means, Proba- bilistic Latent Semantic Indexing etc. and present a new Posterior Probabilistic Clustering model, and compare their numerical experimental results on five real microarray data. The results show that i) NMF using with K-L divergence objective function has better clustering performance; ii) Our purposed PPC model is among the best.
of Analysis of Analysis

Analyte CAS# Analyte Lot True Value This Certified Reference Material (RM) was manufactured and verified in accordance with ULTRA's ISO 9001 registered quality system, and the analyte concentrations were verified by our ISO 17025 accredited laboratory. The true value and uncertainty value at the 95% confidence level for each analyte, determined gravimetrically, is listed below. Lot Issue Date: Jul-2010 Certificate of Analysis
Effect of Difructose Anhydride III on Calcium Absorption in Humans

The effects of difructose anhydride III (DFAIII) on stimulating calcium absorption was investigated in humans. We studied changes in the time-course of characteristics urinary calcium excretion in 12 healthy men given 0.3, 1.0 or 3.0 g of DFAIII and 300 mg of calcium as calcium carbonate. In addition, urinary excretion and urine concentrations of creatinine and deoxypyridinoline were determined. Urine calcium excretion every 2 hours after the intake were higher over than that of the control subjects. The total amount of urinary calcium excretion for 10 hours was significantly greates in the subjects given 1.0 g or 3.0 g of DFAIII than that of the control subjects. However, there were no differences in the urine concentrations of creatinine and deoxypyridinoline between the subjects given DFAIII and the control subjects. These findings suggests that low dose of DFAIII had a stimulating effect on calcium absorption in humans.
Periodic Orbit Theory and Spectral Statistics for Quantum Graphs

Abstract We quantize graphs (networks) which consist of a finite number of bonds and vertices. We show that the spectral statistics of fully connected graphs is well reproduced by random matrix theory. We also define a classical phase space for the graphs, where the dynamics is mixing and the periodic orbits proliferate exponentially. An exact trace formula for the quantum spectrum is developed in terms of the same periodic orbits, and it is used to investigate the origin of the connection between random matrix theory and the underlying chaotic classical dynamics. Being an exact theory, and due to its relative simplicity, it offers new insights into this problem which is at the forefront of the research in quantum chaos and related fields.
Towards a continuous modeling of natural language domains

Humans continuously adapt their style and language to a variety of domains. However, a reliable definition of `domain' has eluded researchers thus far. Additionally, the notion of discrete domains stands in contrast to the multiplicity of heterogeneous domains that humans navigate, many of which overlap. In order to better understand the change and variation of human language, we draw on research in domain adaptation and extend the notion of discrete domains to the continuous spectrum. We propose representation learning-based models that can adapt to continuous domains and detail how these can be used to investigate variation in language. To this end, we propose to use dialogue modeling as a test bed due to its proximity to language modeling and its social component.
Socioeconomic Status, Functional Recovery, and Long-Term Mortality among Patients Surviving Acute Myocardial Infarction

Objectives To examine the relationship between socio-economic status (SES), functional recovery and long-term mortality following acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Background The extent to which SES mortality disparities are explained by differences in functional recovery following AMI is unclear. Methods We prospectively examined 1368 patients who survived at least one-year following an index AMI between 1999 and 2003 in Ontario, Canada. Each patient was linked to administrative data and followed over 9.6 years to track mortality. All patients underwent medical chart abstraction and telephone interviews following AMI to identify individual-level SES, clinical factors, processes of care (i.e., use of, and adherence, to evidence-based medications, physician visits, invasive cardiac procedures, referrals to cardiac rehabilitation), as well as changes in psychosocial stressors, quality of life, and self-reported functional capacity. Results As compared with their lower SES counterparts, higher SES patients experienced greater functional recovery (1.80 ml/kg/min average increase in peak V02, P<0.001) after adjusting for all baseline clinical factors. Post-AMI functional recovery was the strongest modifiable predictor of long-term mortality (Adjusted HR for each ml/kg/min increase in functional capacity: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.87–0.94, P<0.001) irrespective of SES (P = 0.51 for interaction between SES, functional recovery, and mortality). SES-mortality associations were attenuated by 27% after adjustments for functional recovery, rendering the residual SES-mortality association no longer statistically significant (Adjusted HR: 0.84; 95% CI:0.70–1.00, P = 0.05). The effects of functional recovery on SES-mortality associations were not explained by access inequities to physician specialists or cardiac rehabilitation. Conclusions Functional recovery may play an important role in explaining SES-mortality gradients following AMI.
Concealed Key-Phrase Verification

It is a common task in conversational applications to validate a claimed identity through utterance verification mechanisms; for example, by asking for a password or a challenge question. Sometimes, due to the private nature of the keyphrase, it is desirable to impose restrictions on how this keyphrase, or information that leads to it, is handled during the verification process. In this paper we describe a method where the utterance verification takes place in a concealed way, i.e., in a way that the keyphrase cannot be inferred or obtained directly by an intruder, from the decoding and application artifacts. We achieve this by a novel algorithm based on matrix operations in the verification network's nodes. If the traversed path corresponds to the keyphrase, the annotation converges to the dominant eigenvector of the occluded kernel matrix
A novel high-performance fault-tolerant ICAP controller

Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration is an important feature of modern FPGAs as it allows for better exploitation of FPGA resources over time and space. The Internal Configuration Access Port (ICAP) enables DPR from within an FPGA chip, leading to the possibility of fully autonomous FPGA-based systems. This paper presents a novel high performance and fault-tolerant ICAP controller which can operate at a high speed and recover from emerging faults. Test results showed that our ICAP controller is 25 times faster than the Xilinx' XPS_HWICAP IP core. We demonstrate the use of Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) in some of the ICAP controller components which have the ability to reconfigure the rest of the ICAP controller when faults are detected. This method is shown to have a 49% smaller area footprint compared to traditional full TMR.
Getting Lost Efficiently

We consider the mixing time of random walks on a graph G, using the eigenvalue gap to measure the mixing time. We attempt to bound the mixing time in terms of the diameter Diam of G. We show that, for the standard random walk, there exists a family of graphs with diameter 3 but mixing time Ω(n), and a family of trees with diameter 3 but mixing time Ω(n). The main result is a scheme for re-weighting the edges of any graph so that the mixing time becomes O(Diam).
The INVENIO platform for 2D/3D content re-use

In this paper, we propose a novel image indexing platform, so-called INVENIO (INdexing Visual ENvironment for multimedia Items and Objects). INVENIO offers to professional users both 2D and 3D content re-use facilities. Concerning the 2D aspects, the system is entirely based on the ISO/MPEG-7 normative specification. INVENIO integrates visual metadata extraction engine, annotation tools, image databases management tools, as well as appropriated, ergonomic user interfaces. In the case of 3D graphical content, INVENIO makes it possible to exploit existing animation curves for generating new content and thus accelerating the content production process.
Platelet Dynamics during Natural and Pharmacologically Induced Torpor and Forced Hypothermia

Hibernation is an energy-conserving behavior in winter characterized by two phases: torpor and arousal. During torpor, markedly reduced metabolic activity results in inactivity and decreased body temperature. Arousal periods intersperse the torpor bouts and feature increased metabolism and euthermic body temperature. Alterations in physiological parameters, such as suppression of hemostasis, are thought to allow hibernators to survive periods of torpor and arousal without organ injury. While the state of torpor is potentially procoagulant, due to low blood flow, increased viscosity, immobility, hypoxia, and low body temperature, organ injury due to thromboembolism is absent. To investigate platelet dynamics during hibernation, we measured platelet count and function during and after natural torpor, pharmacologically induced torpor and forced hypothermia. Splenectomies were performed to unravel potential storage sites of platelets during torpor. Here we show that decreasing body temperature drives thrombocytopenia during torpor in hamster with maintained functionality of circulating platelets. Interestingly, hamster platelets during torpor do not express P-selectin, but expression is induced by treatment with ADP. Platelet count rapidly restores during arousal and rewarming. Platelet dynamics in hibernation are not affected by splenectomy before or during torpor. Reversible thrombocytopenia was also induced by forced hypothermia in both hibernating (hamster) and non-hibernating (rat and mouse) species without changing platelet function. Pharmacological torpor induced by injection of 5′-AMP in mice did not induce thrombocytopenia, possibly because 5′-AMP inhibits platelet function. The rapidness of changes in the numbers of circulating platelets, as well as marginal changes in immature platelet fractions upon arousal, strongly suggest that storage-and-release underlies the reversible thrombocytopenia during natural torpor. Possibly, margination of platelets, dependent on intrinsic platelet functionality, governs clearance of circulating platelets during torpor.
Impact of Uncertainties in Exposure Assessment on Estimates of Thyroid Cancer Risk among Ukrainian Children and Adolescents Exposed from the Chernobyl Accident

The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant remains the most serious nuclear accident in history, and excess thyroid cancers, particularly among those exposed to releases of iodine-131 remain the best-documented sequelae. Failure to take dose-measurement error into account can lead to bias in assessments of dose-response slope. Although risks in the Ukrainian-US thyroid screening study have been previously evaluated, errors in dose assessments have not been addressed hitherto. Dose-response patterns were examined in a thyroid screening prevalence cohort of 13,127 persons aged <18 at the time of the accident who were resident in the most radioactively contaminated regions of Ukraine. We extended earlier analyses in this cohort by adjusting for dose error in the recently developed TD-10 dosimetry. Three methods of statistical correction, via two types of regression calibration, and Monte Carlo maximum-likelihood, were applied to the doses that can be derived from the ratio of thyroid activity to thyroid mass. The two components that make up this ratio have different types of error, Berkson error for thyroid mass and classical error for thyroid activity. The first regression-calibration method yielded estimates of excess odds ratio of 5.78 Gy−1 (95% CI 1.92, 27.04), about 7% higher than estimates unadjusted for dose error. The second regression-calibration method gave an excess odds ratio of 4.78 Gy−1 (95% CI 1.64, 19.69), about 11% lower than unadjusted analysis. The Monte Carlo maximum-likelihood method produced an excess odds ratio of 4.93 Gy−1 (95% CI 1.67, 19.90), about 8% lower than unadjusted analysis. There are borderline-significant (p = 0.101–0.112) indications of downward curvature in the dose response, allowing for which nearly doubled the low-dose linear coefficient. In conclusion, dose-error adjustment has comparatively modest effects on regression parameters, a consequence of the relatively small errors, of a mixture of Berkson and classical form, associated with thyroid dose assessment.
A Comparative Study of Fine-grained Classification Methods in the Context of the LifeCLEF Plant Identification Challenge 2015

This paper describes the participation of Inria to the plant identification task of the LifeCLEF 2015 challenge. The aim of the task was to produce a list of relevant species for a large set of plant observations related to 1000 species of trees, herbs and ferns living in Western Europe. Each plant observation contained several annotated pictures with organ/view tags: Flower, Leaf, Fruit, Stem, Branch, Entire, Scan (exclusively of leaf). To address this challenge, we experimented two popular families of classification techniques, i.e. convolutional neural networks (CNN) on one side and fisher vectors-based discriminant models on the other side. Our results show that the CNN approach achieves much better performance than the fisher vectors. Beyond, we show that the fusion of both techniques, based on a Bayesian inference using the confusion matrix of each classifier, did not improve the results of the CNN alone.
A Cross-National Study of Socialization into Physical Activity in Corporate Settings: The Case of Japan and Canada

The purpose of this study was to account for the process of socialization into physical activity among employees of large corporations. A conceptual frame-work that integrated a variety of variables within four dimensions was used: (a) an antecedent dimension, (b) a cultural dimension, (c) an attitudinal dimension, and (d) a situational dimension. Information was provided by 371 employees of two large corporations in Japan and 262 employees of two large corporations in Canada. The findings indicated that the degree of exercise involvement was greatly influenced by the situational dimension only, while sport involvement was strongly influenced by the antecedent, cultural, and situational dimensions. Such significant others as the peer group and instructors or coordinators were particularly important socializing agents for involvement in the major activities in each country (i.e., sport in Japan and exercise in Canada). In general, the hypothesized model accounted for an average 38% of the variance in expla.
The C-Terminal Region of G72 Increases d-Amino Acid Oxidase Activity

The schizophrenia-related protein G72 plays a unique role in the regulation of d-amino acid oxidase (DAO) in great apes. Several psychiatric diseases, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are linked to overexpression of DAO and G72. Whether G72 plays a positive or negative regulatory role in DAO activity, however, has been controversial. Exploring the molecular basis of the relationship between G72 and DAO is thus important to understand how G72 regulates DAO activity. We performed yeast two-hybrid experiments and determined enzymatic activity to identify potential sites in G72 involved in binding DAO. Our results demonstrate that residues 123–153 and 138–153 in the long isoform of G72 bind to DAO and enhance its activity by 22% and 32%, respectively. A docking exercise indicated that these G72 peptides can interact with loops in DAO that abut the entrance of the tunnel that substrate and cofactor must traverse to reach the active site. We propose that a unique gating mechanism underlies the ability of G72 to increase the activity of DAO. Because upregulation of DAO activity decreases d-serine levels, which may lead to psychiatric abnormalities, our results suggest a molecular mechanism involving interaction between DAO and the C-terminal region of G72 that can regulate N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor-mediated neurotransmission.
Presynaptic Glycine Receptors on GABAergic Terminals Facilitate Discharge of Dopaminergic Neurons in Ventral Tegmental Area

GABA-mediated postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) were recorded from dopaminergic (DA) neurons of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of rats, in acute brain slices, and from enzymatically or mechanically dissociated neurons. In young rats (3-10 d of age), where GABA is excitatory, glycine (1-3 μm) and taurine (10-30 μm) increased the amplitude of evoked IPSCs (eIPSCs) and the frequency of spontaneous IPSCs (sIPSCs) but had minimal postsynaptic effects. Strychnine (1 μm) blocked the action of glycine; when applied alone, it reduced the amplitude of eIPSCs and the frequency of sIPSCs, indicating a tonic facilitation of GABAergic excitation by some endogenous glycine agonist(s). In medium containing no Ca2+, or with Cd2+ or tetrodotoxin added, the amplitude and especially the frequency of sIPSCs greatly diminished. In many cells, glycine had no effect on remaining miniature IPSCs, suggesting a preterminal site of glycine receptors (GlyRs). Fura-2 fluorescent imaging showed a glycine-induced increase of [Ca2+] in nerve terminals (on DA neurons), which was suppressed by strychnine or 3 μm ω-conotoxin MVIIA. Therefore, the presynaptic GlyR-mediated facilitation of GABAergic transmission seems to be mediated by N- and/or P/Q-type Ca2+ channels. In older rats (22-30 d of age), where GABA causes inhibition, the effect of strychnine on GABAergic IPSCs was reversed to facilitation, indicating a tonic glycinergic inhibition of GABA release. Furthermore, glycine (1-3 μm) reduced the amplitude of eIPSCs and the frequency of sIPSCs. Hence, the overall effect of the presynaptic action of glycine is to enhance the firing of DA cells, both in very young and older rats.
Optimization of Non-Stationary Problems with Evolutionary Algorithms and Dynamic Memory

Traditionally optimization problems are solved by analytical methods or an iterative refinement of a single candidate solution. However, traditional methods can fail if the quality function of the optimization problem is not well-defined or the number of possible solutions is too enormous. In context of real world optimization problems the objective function is often very complex and implicit. Additionally, real world optimization problems are often non-static. Therefore other optimization techniques are often needed, than traditional methods, to solve this class of problems. Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are incremental search techniques inspired by Darwinian evolution in nature. EAs use the concept of a population of individuals representing candidate solutions to the optimization problem. The population is refined and driven towards better and better candidate solutions by an iterative process of evolution by operators, known as selection, recombination, and mutation. EAs are known to yield valuable solutions to stationary optimization problems, but in context of non-stationary optimization problems they have a tendency to lose track of the optima, due to the low level of diversity in the EA population. In the literature implicit memory approaches, i.e. redundant genome representation, as well as explicit memory approaches, i.e. an extra storage area, have been introduced to yield better optimization techniques for nonstationary search landscapes. The problem with these approaches is that the memory is not able to self-adapt to the changes in the search landscape and thus, the GA still loses track of optima if they do not reappear at the same location. In this thesis I introduce a dynamic explicit memory approach to evolutionary algorithms that uses the presence of cyclic and repetitive patterns in a non-stationary search landscape to obtain better approximations to the optimization problem. The memory self-adapts by gradually moving stored candidate solutions towards the genotype of the best individual in the EA population. The experiments yielded better results regarding the quality of the best solution than a classic GA, a static memory scheme and four ant colony optimization approaches on non-static and real world like benchmark problems. The outcome of my research shows that dynamic memory can be valuable to evolutionary algorithms in the context of non-stationary real world like environments.
HRTF interpolation in the wavelet transform domain

This paper presents a new HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) interpolation technique for three-dimensional sound generation. The proposed approach is based on the determination of the optimal weights to be applied to the HRTF coefficients of neigh-boring positions in the wavelet domain in order to obtain the HRTF at a given point. The proposed method is compared to conventional interpolation methods through the error analysis of the HRTFs in the frequency and time domains. It is verified that the proposed method presents smaller interpolation errors for all HRIRs (Head Related Impulse Responses) of an available database.
Faraday pilot-wave dynamics: modelling and computation

A millimetric droplet bouncing on the surface of a vibrating fluid bath can self-propel by virtue of a resonant interaction with its own wave field. This system represents the first known example of a pilot-wave system of the form envisaged by Louis de Broglie in his double-solution pilot-wave theory. We here develop a fluid model of pilot-wave hydrodynamics by coupling recent models of the droplet’s bouncing dynamics with a more realistic model of weakly viscous quasi-potential wave generation and evolution. The resulting model is the first to capture a number of features reported in experiment, including the rapid transient wave generated during impact, the Doppler effect and walker–walker interactions.