Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Circadian and Homeostatic Control of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) Sleep: Promotion of REM Tendency by the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus

The daily timing of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep reflects an interaction between the circadian pacemaker located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus (SCN) and a homeostatic process that induces compensatory REM sleep in response to REM sleep loss. Whether the circadian variation in REM sleep propensity is caused by active promotion, inhibition, or passive gating of REM sleep homeostasis by the SCN is unknown. To investigate these possibilities, compensatory responses to 24 hr REM sleep deprivation (RSD) were compared between SCN-lesioned (SCNx) and sham-lesioned rats at different times of day in constant dark. The attempts to enter REM sleep (REM tendency) increased during RSD in all rats and were modulated by circadian phase in sham-lesioned, but not SCNx rats. REM sleep homeostasis interacted with circadian time, such that REM tendency doubled during the rest phase in sham-lesioned rats relative to SCNx rats (F(6,93) = 17.9;p = 0.0001). However, REM tendency was indistinguishable between SCNx and sham-lesioned rats during the activity phase, suggesting the SCN does not inhibit REM tendency at this time. By contrast, the amount of compensatory REM sleep examined 2, 6, 12, or 24 hr after RSD did not depend on circadian phase. Thus, transitions into REM sleep are facilitated by the SCN during the rest phase, but the amount of REM sleep, once initiated, is determined primarily by homeostatic mechanisms. This work supports a role for the SCN in the active promotion of REM sleep at specific times of day.
A Non-Linear Warping Method for Face Hallucination Based-on Subdivision Mesh

Image resolution is an important factor affecting face recognition by human and computer. We propose a new non- linear warping method to align the facial images of the training set, which is then used to predict high resolution facial image from a signal input low resolution facial image. Using sparse initial mesh specified by the facial feature points and a special designed subdivision mesh algorithm, we can refine the initial mesh to arbitrary precision. Hence, we can warp the training facial images to a unified form pixel by pixel. The input low- resolution image is also be warped to the unified form by same way. Then we can use Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to fit the warped input facial image to the linear combination of the warped facial images of the training set. Because the presented warping method can warp all kinds of facial image such as different race or pose to a unified form smoothly, we get well image registration results and hallucinating faces by only very simple PCA global approach. Experiments indicate our non- linear warping method can enhance the similarity between the input facial image and training facial images, which is the foundation of hallucinating face method. Therefore, our non- linear warping method can also be used as a pre-align step to improve the performance of the other hallucinating face methods. Keywords-face hallucination; non-linear warping; subdivision mesh
Illumination compensation: Model space weighting vs. regularized inversion

A safety ruler and guide used with a rotary cutter or the cutting tool for cutting fabric, the ruler designed to protect a user's first hand when holding the ruler on top of the fabric while the second hand is cutting the fabric with the cutting tool. The ruler has a vertical guard mounted exactly upright to a base guide, dividing the base equally into a first side and a second side. Each first side and second side display grids, ruler measurements and measuring scale to enable a right or left handed user to properly read and measure length and width of the fabric being cut. The first side and second side also include a ruler edge for measuring the length of fabric being cut, and serving as a guide and cutting edge for the rotary cutter. The user may then cut the fabric using the cutting tool without the cutting tool or fabric moving during cutting. In the event the cutting tool slips while cutting, the hand holding and applying pressure to the ruler is protected by the vertical guard.
Congestion management of deregulated electricity market using locational marginal pricing

In a deregulated power industry, estimation of power price and management of congestion is a major issues handled by market members. Modeling of sensible pricing structure of power systems is important to provide financial signals for electrical utilities. Locational Marginal Pricing technique is used to determine the energy price for transacted power and to manage the system congestion. In this paper Lossless Direct Current Optimal Power Flow is used to find the LMP value at each bus. Resulting optimization problem is solved by Linear Programming. Variation of LMP values with transmission constraint is studied in this paper. Simulation is carried out on IEEE 14 bus test system and obtained result gives the electricity value at each location.
Formulating cohesive digital ecosystem of micro sourcing business process in Malaysia

Malaysia is fostering a digital ecosystem through several initiatives with intention to create itself as developed digital economy country as well as uplifting household income of each family by 2020. Micro sourcing is one of the industries that can strongly support the country into this direction which it able to facilitate income generation among the poor. The poor which resides at the bottom 40 percentage of the population in terms of household income per capita can generate extra income by becoming as a micro worker. In this study, we formulated a cohesive digital ecosystem of existing micro sourcing business process that combined with existing ICT and government's digital initiatives. We identified some vital technologies that appropriate to the B40 level of knowledge and affordability. The ecosystem is expected to facilitate the responsible agencies to identify initial action plans to strengthen the micro sourcing implementation throughout the country.
Prospects for Detection of Catastrophic Collisions in Debris Disks

We investigate the prospects for detecting dust from two-body collisions during the late stages of planet formation at 1–150 AU. We develop an analytic model to describe the formation of a dusty cloud of debris and use numerical coagulation and N-body calculations to predict observable signals from these events. In a minimum mass solar nebula, collisions of 100–1000 km objects at distances of 3–5 AU or less from the parent star are observable at mid-IR wavelengths as bright clumps or rings of dust. At 24 μm, the clumps are ∼0.1–1 mag brighter than emission from dust in the background debris disk. In edge-on systems, dusty clumps produce eclipses with depths of ≲1.0 mag that last for ∼100 orbital periods. Large-scale surveys for transits from exosolar planets, using satellites such as Kepler, can plausibly detect these eclipses and provide important constraints on the terrestrial environment for ages of ≲100–300 Myr.
ASBRU: A TASK-SPECIFIC, INTENTION-BASED, AND TIME-ORIENTED LANGUAGE FOR REPRESENTING SKELETAL PLANS

Skeletal plans are a powerful way to reuse existing domain-specific procedural knowledge. They are instantiated and refined dynamically over time. In the Asgaard project, we are investigating a set of tasks that support the design and the execution of skeletal plans by a human executing agent other than the original plan designer. The underlying requirement to develop task-specific problem-solving methods is a modeling language. We developed a time-oriented machine-readable language, called Asbru, to represent and to annotate durative skeletal plans based on the task-specific ontology. During the design phase of plans, Asbru allows to express durative actions and plans caused by durative states of an observed agent. We represent explicitly the intentions underlying these plans as temporal patterns to be maintained, achieved or avoided. The result is an uniformly represented and organized plan-specification library. During the execution phase an applicable plan is instantiated with distinctive arguments and state-transition criteria are added to execute and reason about different tasks.
Accurate optical flow estimation in noisy sequences by robust tensor-driven anisotropic diffusion

In this paper, a new tensor-driven anisotropic diffusion filtering method is proposed for achieving accurate optical flow estimation in noisy image sequences. The novelties of our approach are: (1) robust tensor-driven anisotropic diffusion computation, (2) new thresholding criterion for normalization function. By utilizing the decomposed eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the 3D structure tensor, the robust diffusion tensor is computed to steer the anisotropic filtering over the input image sequence. The moving orientations of the local spatio-temporal structures are precisely captured during the denoising process. For achieving more accurate diffusion tensor computation, a new thresholding criterion is developed in the normalization function to threshold the decomposed eigenvalues. As compared with that of existing methods, our experimental results demonstrate much improved accuracy on both motion field classification and optical flow estimation.
Microreactors for Gold Nanoparticles Synthesis: From Faraday to Flow

The seminal work of Michael Faraday in 1850s transmuted the “Alchemy of gold” into a fascinating scientific endeavor over the millennia, particularly in the past half century. Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) arguably hold the central position of nanosciences due to their intriguing size-and-shape dependent physicochemical properties, non-toxicity, and ease of functionalization and potential for wide range of applications. The core chemistry involved in the syntheses is essentially not very different from what Michael Faraday resorted to: transforming ions into metallic gold using mild reducing agents. However, the process of such reduction and outcome (shapes and sizes) are intricately dependent on basic operational parameters such as sequence of addition and efficiency of mixing of the reagents. Hence, irreproducibility in synthesis and maintaining batch-to-batch quality are major obstacles in this seemingly straightforward process, which poses challenges in scaling-up. Microreactors, by the virtue of excellent control over reagent mixing in space and time within narrow channel networks, opened a new horizon of possibilities to tackle such problems to produce GNPs in more reliable, reproducible and scalable ways. In this review, we will delineate the state-of-the-art of GNPs synthesis using microreactors and will discuss in length how such “flask-to-chip” paradigm shift may revolutionize the very concept of nanosyntheses.
Modeling of the UAV On-board Pan-tilt Control System Based on Biomimetic Eye

In this paper, oculomotor characteristics and form were analyzed, the three-dimensional oculomotor control system model of biomimetic eye was developed based on the oculomotor neural paths, then the model was applied to the UAV on-board pan-tilt control system in the ground moving target low-altitude tracking system to coordinately control UAV and the on-board pan-tilt camera, thus the on-board camera can track the ground moving target continuously, smoothly, clearly and stably like human eyes
Panel data unit roots and cointegration: an overview Oxford Bulletin of Economics & Statistics 61

Recent developments in the field of the econometrics of panel data with non-stationary series are reviewed and interpreted. In particular, we discuss tests for unit roots and cointegration, and the roles of mean and variance correction, non-parametric correction and full modification for the construction of these tests and estimators. A discussion of the key contributions of the papers in this special issue is placed within the framework of the current literature and areas for further development are propose. Copyright 1999 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Stability and approximation of invariant measures of Markov chains in random environments

We consider finite-state Markov chains driven by stationary ergodic invertible processes representing random environments. Our main result is that the invariant measures of Markov chains in random environments (MCREs) are stable under a wide variety of perturbations. We prove stability in the sense of convergence in probability of the invariant measure of the perturbed MCRE to the original invariant measure. We also develop a new numerical scheme to construct rigorous approximations of the invariant measures, which converge in probability as the resolution of the scheme increases. This numerical approach is illustrated with an example of a random walk in a random environment.
Extensive Divergence and Convergence in the Thalamocortical Projection to Monkey Somatosensory Cortex

This study examined the extent of thalamocortical divergence as a potential determinant of activity-dependent representational plasticity in area 3b of adult monkey somatosensory cortex. Single or paired injections of anterogradely transported tracers, of varying anteroposterior extent, were made horizontally from behind in defined parts of the body representation in the ventral posterior lateral (VPL) and/or ventral posterior medial (VPM) thalamic nuclei, and the distribution and density of labeled thalamocortical terminations were mapped in cortex. Injections of increasing size in any dimension of VPL or VPM resulted in increasing accumulation of labeled terminals within the region of projection, implying extensive convergence of individual axons. Anteroposteriorly elongated injections labeled mediolaterally extended but anteroposteriorly restricted zones in cortex. Dorsoventral placement of an injection in VPL or VPM determined anteroposterior location of labeling in cortex. Dual injections separated mediolaterally or dorsoventrally by ∼1 mm, and in different parts of the thalamic body or head–face representation gave rise to labeled thalamocortical terminations that overlapped extensively. For injection sites at different anteroposterior levels in VPL or VPM, the area of cortical convergence was related to their extent of anteroposterior coincidence. Labeled terminations arising from injections in immediately adjacent parts of VPL and VPM did not overlap in cortex. The extent of thalamocortical divergence and convergence revealed by these experiments is greater than that predictable from labeling of single axons and is sufficiently great to account for representational plasticity that exceeds the 1.5 mm cortical “distance limit. ”
Artificial impostor voice transformation effects on false acceptance rates

This paper investigates the effect of a transfer function-based voice transformation on automatic speaker recognition system performance. We focus on increasing the impostor acceptance rate, by modifying the voice of an impostor in order to target a specific speaker. This paper follows previous works where we demonstrate that, if someone has a knowledge on the speaker recognition method used, it is possible to impersonate a given speaker, in the view of this speaker recognition method. In this paper we extend the previous work by relaxing the needed knowledge on the targeted speaker recognition system. The results show that the voice transformation allows a drastic increase of the false acceptance rate, without damaging the natural perception of the voice, and without needing a large knowledge on the targeted speaker recognition system.
Complex Adaptations and the Evolution of Evolvability

1 One may wonder, . ] how complex organisms evolve at all. They seem to have so many genes, so many multiple or pleiotropic eeects of any one gene, so many possibilities for lethal mutations in early development, and all sorts of problems due to their long development. Abstract: The problem of complex adaptations is studied in two largely disconnected research traditions: evolutionary biology and evolutionary computer science. This paper summarizes the results from both areas and compares their implications. In evolutionary computer science it was found that the Darwinian process of mutation, recombination and selection is not universally eeective in improving complex systems like computer programs or chip designs. For adaptation to occur, these systems must possess "evolvability", i.e. the ability of random variations to sometimes produce improvement. It was found that evolvability critically depends on the way genetic variation maps onto phenotypic variation, an issue known as the representation problem. The genotype-phenotype map determines the variability of characters, which is the propensity to vary. Variability needs to be distinguished from variation, which are the actually realized diierences between individuals. The genotype-phenotype map is the common theme underlying such varied biological phenomena as genetic canalization, developmental constraints, biological versatility , developmental dissociability, morphological integration, and many more. For evolutionary biology the representation problem has important implications: how is it that extant species acquired a genotype-phenotype map which allows improvement by mutation and selection? Is the genotype-phenotype map able to change in evolution? What are the selective forces, if any, that shape the genotype-phenotype map? We propose that the genotype-phenotype map can evolve by two main routes: epistatic mutations, or the creation of new genes. A common result for organismic design is modularity. By modularity we mean a genotype-phenotype map in which there are few pleiotropic eeects among characters serving diierent functions, with pleiotropic eeects falling mainly among characters that are part of a single functional complex. Such a design is expected to improve evolvability by limiting the interference between the adaptation of diierent functions. Several population genetic models are reviewed that are intended to explain the evolutionary origin of a modular design. While our current knowledge is insuucient to assess the plausibil-ity of these models, they form the beginning of a framework for understanding the evolution of the genotype-phenotype map.
Condition-Dependent Cell Volume and Concentration of Escherichia coli to Facilitate Data Conversion for Systems Biology Modeling

Systems biology modeling typically requires quantitative experimental data such as intracellular concentrations or copy numbers per cell. In order to convert population-averaging omics measurement data to intracellular concentrations or cellular copy numbers, the total cell volume and number of cells in a sample need to be known. Unfortunately, even for the often studied model bacterium Escherichia coli this information is hardly available and furthermore, certain measures (e.g. cell volume) are also dependent on the growth condition. In this work, we have determined these basic data for E. coli cells when grown in 22 different conditions so that respective data conversions can be done correctly. First, we determine growth-rate dependent cell volumes. Second, we show that in a 1 ml E. coli sample at an optical density (600 nm) of 1 the total cell volume is around 3.6 µl for all conditions tested. Third, we demonstrate that the cell number in a sample can be determined on the basis of the sample's optical density and the cells' growth rate. The data presented will allow for conversion of E. coli measurement data normalized to optical density into volumetric cellular concentrations and copy numbers per cell - two important parameters for systems biology model development.
NIHSS Training and Certification Using a New Digital Video Disk Is Reliable

Background and Purpose— NIH Stroke Scale certification is required for participation in modern stroke clinical trials and as part of good clinical care in stroke centers. The existing training and certification videotapes, however, are more than 10 years old and do not contain an adequate balance of patient findings. Methods— After producing a new NIHSS training and demonstration DVD, we selected 18 patients representing all possible scores on 15 scale items for a new certification DVD. Patients were divided into 3 certification groups of 6 patients each, balanced for lesion side, distribution of scale item findings, and total score. We sought to measure interrater reliability of the certification DVD using methodology previously published for the original videotapes. Raters were recruited from 3 experienced stroke centers. Each rater watched the new training DVD and then evaluated one of the 3 certification groups. Results— Responses were received from 112 raters: 26.2% of all responses came from stroke nurses, 34.1% from emergency departments/other physicians, and 39.6% from neurologists. One half (50%) of raters were previously NIHSS-certified. Item responses were tabulated, scoring performed as previously published, and agreement measured with unweighted &kgr; coefficients for individual items and an intraclass correlation coefficient for the overall score. &kgr; ranged from 0.21±0.05 (ataxia) to 0.92±0.09 (LOC-C questions). Of 15 items, 2 showed poor, 11 moderate, and 2 excellent agreement based on &kgr; scores. The intraclass correlation coefficient for total score was 0.94 (95% confidence interval, 0.84 to 1.00). Reliability scores were similar among specialists and centers, and there were no differences between nurses and physicians. &kgr; scores trended higher among raters previously certified. Conclusions— These certification DVDs are reliable for NIHSS certification, and scoring sheets have been posted on a web site for real-time, online certification.
Constrained Discretion and Monetary Policy

Under a strict rules-based approach to monetary policy, advocated most prominently by Milton Friedman and his followers, the policy instruments of the central bank would be set according to some simple and publicly announced formula, with little or no scope for modification or discretionary action on the part of policymakers. For example, under Friedmans most famous proposal, the so-called kpercent rule (Friedman, 1960), the central bank would be charged with ensuring that some specified measure of the national money supply increase by a fixed percentage each year, irrespective of broader economic conditions. Friedman believed that such a rule would have the important advantage of preventing major monetary policy errors, as when the Federal Reserve permitted the U.S. money supply to collapse in the 1930s a blunder that contributed substantially to the severity of the Great Depression. In addition, Friedman argued, a rule of this type would have the advantages of simplicity, predictability, and credibility, and it would help insulate monetary policy from outside political pressures and what Friedman saw as an inherent tendency toward excessive policy activism.