Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Statistical topology via Morse theory, persistence and nonparametric estimation

In this paper we examine the use of topological methods for multivariate statistics. Using persistent homology from computational algebraic topology, a random sample is used to construct estimators of persistent homology. This estimation procedure can then be evaluated using the bottleneck distance between the estimated persistent homology and the true persistent homology. The connection to statistics comes from the fact that when viewed as a nonparametric regression problem, the bottleneck distance is bounded by the sup-norm loss. Consequently, a sharp asymptotic minimax bound is determined under the sup-norm risk over Holder classes of functions for the nonparametric regression problem on manifolds. This provides good convergence properties for the persistent homology estimator in terms of the expected bottleneck distance.
Mapping distributional to model-theoretic semantic spaces: a baseline

Word embeddings have been shown to be useful across state-of-the-art systems in many natural language processing tasks, ranging from question answering systems to dependency parsing. (Herbelot and Vecchi, 2015) explored word embeddings and their utility for modeling language semantics. In particular, they presented an approach to automatically map a standard distributional semantic space onto a set-theoretic model using partial least squares regression. We show in this paper that a simple baseline achieves a +51% relative improvement compared to their model on one of the two datasets they used, and yields competitive results on the second dataset.
Estrogen receptors (cid:1) and (cid:2) in the normal, hyperplastic and carcinomatous human prostate

Two di ﬀ erent estrogen receptors (ER- (cid:1) and ER- (cid:2) ) have been described, which are di ﬀ erentially involved in regu-lating the normal function of reproductive tissues. ER- (cid:1) was considered for a long time to be the only estrogen receptor, and it has been detected in the stromal cells of the human prostate but not in the epithelium. To obtain new information about the di ﬀ erential e ﬀ ects of both receptor types, we have investigated their localization in normal prostates, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and prostatic cancer (PC) by immunohistochemistry, ELISA and Western blot. Epithelial immunostaining was absent in normal prostates and was present in BPH (10% of cells) and PC (80% of cells), whereas about 15% of stromal cells were positively immunostained for ER- (cid:1) in the three types of prostatic specimens studied. Epithelial immunostaining for ER- (cid:2) was detected in normal prostates (13% of cells), BPH (30% of cells) and PC (79% of cells), whereas stromal immunostaining for ER- (cid:2) was absent in normal and hyperplastic prostates and was present in PC (12% of cells). The complementary presence of both receptor types in the normal prostate (ER- (cid:2) in the epithelium and ER- (cid:1) in the stroma) might explain the mechanism of estrogen action in the development of BPH. The increased epithelial immunostaining for both ER- (cid:1) and ER- (cid:2) in BPH and PC suggests that the involvement of estrogen receptors in hyperplasia and cancer concerns mainly the epithelium.
Nanotechnology, Science and Applications Dovepress Emerging Use of Nanostructure Films Containing Capped Gold Nanoparticles in Biosensors

The localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) property of gold nanoparticles (GNP) has been exploited in a variety of optical sensor configurations including solution-based bioassays, paper-based colorimetric detection, surface-confined nanoparticle film/array-based sensing, etc. Amongst these, gold nanostructured films are of great interest because of their high stability, good reproducibility, robustness, and cost-effectiveness. The inherent optical characteristics of GNP, are attributed to parameters like size and shape (eg, nanospheres, nanorods, nanostars), eg, LSPR spectral location sensitivity to the local environment, composition (eg, gold–silver or silica–gold nanoshells), sensing volume, mesospacing, and multiplexing. These properties allow sensor tunability, enabling enhanced sensitivity and better performance of these biosensors. Ultrasensitive biosensor designs were realized using gold nanostructured films fabricated by bottom-up as well as top-down approaches. In this review, we describe the past, present, and future trends in the development of GNP-LSPR-based sensors, concentrating on both design (fabrication) and application. In the process, we have discussed various combinations of GNP size and shape, substrate, and application domains.
Design of web-based Smart Home with 3D virtural reality interface

In this paper, the design of the a web-based Smart Home system is introduced. The proposed system provides a web interface through which users are able to check the home status and control the domestic appliance remotely as long as they have a PC system connected to the Internet. In order to give users a more vivid way to access the Smart Home system, a web based 3D interface with virtual reality technology is proposed in this paper. The rooms, appliances and furniture are reconstructed in the web-based interface. Users can “look around” in the virtual home remotely. They are able to check the security alarms, control the appliances in the 3D virtual reality similar as they do in real homes.
Nonsense Suppression as an Approach to Treat Lysosomal Storage Diseases

In-frame premature termination codons (PTCs) (also referred to as nonsense mutations) comprise ~10% of all disease-associated gene lesions. PTCs reduce gene expression in two ways. First, PTCs prematurely terminate translation of an mRNA, leading to the production of a truncated polypeptide that often lacks normal function and/or is unstable. Second, PTCs trigger degradation of an mRNA by activating nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD), a cellular pathway that recognizes and degrades mRNAs containing a PTC. Thus, translation termination and NMD are putative therapeutic targets for the development of treatments for genetic diseases caused by PTCs. Over the past decade, significant progress has been made in the identification of compounds with the ability to suppress translation termination of PTCs (also referred to as readthrough). More recently, NMD inhibitors have also been explored as a way to enhance the efficiency of PTC suppression. Due to their relatively low threshold for correction, lysosomal storage diseases are a particularly relevant group of diseases to investigate the feasibility of nonsense suppression as a therapeutic approach. In this review, the current status of PTC suppression and NMD inhibition as potential treatments for lysosomal storage diseases will be discussed.
Size fair and homologous tree crossovers

Size fair and homologous crossover genetic operators for tree based genetic programming are described and tested. Both produce considerably reduced increases in program size (i.e.\ less bloat) and no detrimental effect on GP performance. GP search spaces are partitioned by the ridge in the number of program v. \ their size and depth. While search efficiency is little effected by initial conditions, these do strongly influence which half of the search space is searched. However a ramped uniform random initialisation is described which straddles the ridge. With subtree crossover trees increase about one level per generation leading to sub-quadratic bloat in program length.
Robust prevention of limit cycles for robustly decoupled car steering dynamics

Considerable safety benefits are achieved by robustly decoupling the lateral and yaw motions of a car with active steering. Robust unilateral decoupling requires an actuator to generate an additional front wheel steering angle. However, introducing actuators to closed loop systems may cause limit cycles due to actuator saturation and rate limits. Such limit cycles are intolerable w.r. t. safety and comfort. By introducing a simple nonlinear modification of the control law, this paper proposes a remedy to significantly reduce the susceptibility to limit cycles for robustly decoupled car steering dynamics. The robustness of the resulting system w.r. t. the avoidance of limit cycles is investigated for varying operating conditions by combining the parameter space approach and the theory of describing functions.
Representations of Digit Positions and Forces Manipulation After Object Rotation Reveals Independent Sensorimotor Memory

[PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] 2009; 89 (2): 453-479. Physiol Rev Riitta Hari and Miiamaaria V. Kujala Brain Basis of Human Social Interaction: From Concepts to Brain Imaging [PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , June , 2010; 103 (6): 2953-2964. J Neurophysiol Wei Zhang, Andrew M. Gordon, Qiushi Fu and Marco Santello Representations of Digit Positions and Forces Manipulation After Object Rotation Reveals Independent Sensorimotor Memory [PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , July , 2010; 104 (1): 128-140. J Neurophysiol Jan Jastorff, Chiara Begliomini, Maddalena Fabbri-Destro, Giacomo Rizzolatti and Guy A. Orban Premotor Cortex of Humans Coding Observed Motor Acts: Different Organizational Principles in the Parietal and
The Influence of the Family on Adolescent Sexual Experience: A Comparison between Baltimore and Johannesburg

The main objective of this paper is to understand the role of the family on the sexual experiences of adolescents from urban, disadvantaged settings in Baltimore and Johannesburg. Data were collected as part of the WAVE study, a global study of disadvantaged youth in five cities. Qualitative data were based on key informant interviews, a Photovoice exercise, community mapping, focus groups and in-depth interviews with adolescents. Quantitative data were gathered from an ACASI survey that was administered to approximately 450–500 adolescents per site. Results from the qualitative data revealed that while parents were viewed as important sources of information for sexual and reproductive health, they were often not present in the adolescents’ lives. This lack of parental presence was perceived to result in adolescents feeling an overall lack of adult support and guidance. The impact of parental presence and support on adolescent sexual experience was further examined from the quantitative data and revealed a complex picture. In both Baltimore and Johannesburg, female adolescents who were raised by other relatives were less likely to report having had sex compared to those raised by two biological parents, which was not observed for males. In Johannesburg, female adolescents who were paternal orphans were less likely to have had sex compared to non-orphans; the opposite was true among males. Finally, in both sites, female adolescents who had been exposed to violence were more likely to have had sex compared to those who had not; for males, there was no significant relationship. The study demonstrates the powerful influence of both context and gender for understanding the influences of the family on adolescent sexual behaviors. Programs aiming to reduce adolescent sexual risk behaviors the need to understand the complex influences on risk behaviors in different settings and in particular, the role of mothers and fathers. Prevention strategies need to also understand and incorporate gender-specific messages and interventions in order to address the high risk of sexual behaviors among adolescents in these settings.
Path planning among moving obstacles using spatial indexing

A method is presented for planning a path in the presence of moving obstacles. Given a set of polygonal moving obstacles, a path is generated for a mobile robot that navigates in the two-dimensional plane. Time is included as one of the dimensions of the model world. This allows the moving obstacles to be regarded as stationary in the extended world. For a solution to be feasible, the robot must not collide with any other moving obstacles and must navigate within the predetermined range of velocity, acceleration, and centrifugal force. A spatial index is used to facilitate geometric search for the path-planning task. Computer simulation results are presented to illustrate the feasibility of this approach. <<ETX>>
Neuropsychological Profiles of Neglected Children

RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Volume 2 | Issue 2 ScholArena | www.scholarena. com Journal of Neuroscience and Neuropsychology Background: Although maltreatment is associated with a wide array of cognitive impairments, few neuropsychological data are available concerning neglected children. Because they represent a highly heterogeneous group, the main goal of this study was to identify cognitive profiles in neglected children using valid neuropsychological measures.
A Comparative Study of Contemporary Color Tongue Image Extraction Methods Based on HSI

Tongue image with coating is of important clinical diagnostic meaning, but traditional tongue image extraction method is not competent for extraction of tongue image with thick coating. In this paper, a novel method is suggested, which applies multiobjective greedy rules and makes fusion of color and space information in order to extract tongue image accurately. A comparative study of several contemporary tongue image extraction methods is also made from the aspects of accuracy and efficiency. As the experimental results show, geodesic active contour is quite slow and not accurate, the other 3 methods achieve fairly good segmentation results except in the case of the tongue with thick coating, our method achieves ideal segmentation results whatever types of tongue images are, and efficiency of our method is acceptable for the application of quantitative check of tongue image.
Theta rhythm of navigation: Link between path integration and landmark navigation, episodic and semantic memory

Five key topics have been reverberating in hippocampal‐entorhinal cortex (EC) research over the past five decades: episodic and semantic memory, path integration (“dead reckoning”) and landmark (“map”) navigation, and theta oscillation. We suggest that the systematic relations between single cell discharge and the activity of neuronal ensembles reflected in local field theta oscillations provide a useful insight into the relationship among these terms. In rats trained to run in direction‐guided (1‐dimensional) tasks, hippocampal cell assemblies discharge sequentially, with different assemblies active on opposite runs, i.e., place cells are unidirectional. Such tasks do not require map representation and are formally identical with learning sequentially occurring items in an episode. Hebbian plasticity, acting within the temporal window of the theta cycle, converts the travel distances into synaptic strengths between the sequentially activated and unidirectionally connected assemblies. In contrast, place representations by hippocampal neurons in 2‐dimensional environments are typically omnidirectional, characteristic of a map. Generation of a map requires exploration, essentially a dead reckoning behavior. We suggest that omnidirectional navigation through the same places (junctions) during exploration gives rise to omnidirectional place cells and, consequently, maps free of temporal context. Analogously, multiple crossings of common junction(s) of episodes convert the common junction(s) into context‐free or semantic memory. Theta oscillation can hence be conceived as the navigation rhythm through both physical and mnemonic space, facilitating the formation of maps and episodic/semantic memories. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Does Han Fei have a conception of justice?

ABSTRACT Han Fei’s political theory is widely characterized as eschewing any connection with morality; so, can he have any conception of justice? In this paper, I accept the interpretation of Han Fei jettisoning any moral commitment, but I argue that he gives heed to an understanding of justice. This conception of justice arises naturally from the ordinary human sentiment of resentment for wrongs done and becomes a moral staple in the consciousness of ordinary people. Such a conception of justice has these features: all and only the guilty receive punishment, and the punishments are in some sense proportionate to the crime. Since disregarding this popular conception of justice results in resentment and political instability, Han Fei, without any moral commitment to it, accepts the popular conception of justice on prudential and consequentialist grounds.
Using Secure DisCSP Solvers for Generalized Vickrey Auctions ∗ Complete and Stochastic Secure Techniques

Within incentive auctions, several bidders cooperate for clearing a set of offers or requests formalized by an auctioneer, ensuring that each participant cannot do better than by inputing his true utility. We use a distributed weighted constraint satisfaction (DisWCSP) framework where the actual constraints are secrets that are not known by any agent. They are defined by a set of functions on the secret inputs from all agents. The solution is also kept secret and each agent learns just the result of applying an agreed function on the solution. We show how to apply this framework for modeling and solving General Vickrey Auctions (GVAs). Solutions based on secure complete algorithms as well as solutions using faster secure stochastic algorithms are proposed.
A Systematic Review of the Reporting of Adverse Events Associated With Medical Herb Use Among Children

Purpose: Information about the safety of herbal medicine often comes from case reports published in the medical literature, thus necessitating good quality reporting of these adverse events. The purpose of this study was to perform a systematic review of the comprehensiveness of reporting of published case reports of adverse events associated with herb use in the pediatric population. Methods: Electronic literature search included 7 databases and a manual search of retrieved articles from inception through 2010. We included published case reports and case series that reported an adverse event associated with exposure to an herbal product by children under the age of 18 years old. We used descriptive statistics. Based on the International Society of Epidemiology's “Guidelines for Submitting Adverse Events Reports for Publication,” we developed and assigned a guideline adherence score (0—17) to each case report. Results: Ninety-six unique journal papers were identified and represented 128 cases. Of the 128 cases, 37% occurred in children under 2 years old, 38% between the ages of 2 and 8 years old, and 23% between the ages of 9 and 18 years old. Twenty-nine percent of cases were the result of an intentional ingestion while 36% were from an unintentional ingestion. Fifty-two percent of cases documented the Latin binomial of the herb ingredients; 41% documented plant part. Thirty-two percent of the cases reported laboratory testing of the herb, 20% documented the manufacturer of the product, and 22% percent included an assessment of the potential concomitant therapies that could have been influential in the adverse events. Mean guideline adherence score was 12.5 (range 6—17). Conclusions: There is considerable need for improvement in reporting adverse events in children following herb use. Without better quality reporting, adverse event reports cannot be interpreted reliably and do not contribute in a meaningful way to guiding recommendations for medicinal herb use.
Two New Measures for Permutations: Ambiguity and Deficiency

We introduce the concepts of weighted ambiguity and deficiency for a mapping between two finite Abelian groups of the same size. Then, we study the optimum lower bounds of these measures for permutations of an Abelian group. A construction of permutations, by modifying some permutation functions over finite fields, is given. Their ambiguity and deficiency is investigated; most of these functions are APN permutations. We show that, when they are not optimal, the Möbius function in the multiplicative group of \BBFq is closer to being optimal in ambiguity than the inverse function in the additive group of \BBFq. We note that the inverse function over \BBF28 is used in AES. Finally, we conclude that a twisted permutation polynomial of a finite field is again closer to being optimal in ambiguity than the APN function employed in the SAFER cryptosystem.
Barriers to Cooperation Aid Ideological Rigidity and Threaten Societal Collapse

Understanding the factors that promote, disrupt, or shape the nature of cooperation is one of the main tasks of evolutionary biology. Here, we focus on attitudes and beliefs supportive of in-group favoritism and strict adherence to moral consensus, collectively known as ideological rigidity, that have been linked with both ends of the political spectrum. The presence among the political right and the left is likely to make ideological rigidity a major determinant of the political discourse with an important social function. To better understand this function, we equip the indirect reciprocity framework – widely used to explain evaluation-mediated social cooperation – with multiple stylized value systems, each corresponding to the different degree of ideological rigidity. By running game theoretical simulations, we observe the competitive evolution of these systems, map conditions that lead to more ideologically rigid societies, and identify potentially disastrous outcomes. In particular, we uncover that barriers to cooperation aid ideological rigidity. The society may even polarize to the extent where social parasites overrun the population and cause the complete collapse of the social structure. These results have implications for lawmakers globally, warning against restrictive or protectionist policies.
A Fast Random Walk Approach to Find Diverse Paths for Robot Navigation

Finding a set of diverse paths among dynamic obstacles is an appealing navigation strategy for mobile robots to qualitatively reason about multiple path hypotheses to the goal. We introduce an efficient randomized approach, based on weighted random walks, that finds $K$ diverse paths on the Voronoi diagram of the environment, where each path represents a distinct homotopy class. We show experimentally that our approach is significantly faster at finding paths of higher diversity in distinct homotopy classes than two state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, we prove that our method is probabilistically complete.
Analytic comparison of wake-up receivers for WSNs and benefits over the wake-on radio scheme

Since in most wireless sensor network (WSN) scenarios nodes must operate autonomously for months or years, power management of the radio (usually consuming the largest amount of node's energy) is crucial. In particular, reducing the power consumption during listening plays a fundamental role in the whole energy balance of a sensor node, since shutting down the receiver when no messages are expected can remarkably increase the autonomy. Idle listening is a hard challenge because incoming messages are often unpredictable and developers have to trade off low power consumption and high quality of service. This paper is focusing on benefits of introducing a wake-up receiver over simple duty-cycling (wake-on radio). We analyze and compare the existing wake-up receiver prototypes and explore their benefits using simulations of two typical scenarios: with and without addressing requirements. A particular approach outperforms other solutions in terms of lifetime extension because of its very low power consumption (1$\mu$W). We also evaluate the overhead of the addressing capability, which sometimes has a non-negligible impact on the performance.
Occlusion-free appearance modeling of body parts for human pose estimation

In this paper we examine efficacy of occlusion-free appearance learning for part based model. Appearance modeling with less accurate appearance data is problematic because it adversely affects entire learning process. We evaluate the effectiveness of excluding occluded body parts to be modeled for better appearance modeling process. To meet this end, We employ a simple but effective occlusion detection method. We present our approach contributes to improve the performance of human pose estimation.