Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
JAPANESE TRAVEL CULTURE: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE LINKS BETWEEN EARLY JAPANESE PILGRIMAGE AND MODERN JAPANESE TRAVEL BEHAVIOUR

While in Western literature pilgrimage and tourism seem by nature to be dichotomous concepts—tourism being related to the profane and pilgrimage to the sacred—in Japanese culture no such contradiction exists and the two have developed side by side. A tourist has been defined as “one who travels for pleasure or culture, visiting a number of places for their objects of interest, scenery, or the like. ” In contrast, a pilgrim is defined as “one who journeys to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion” (Oxford English Dictionary 1989). The important difference between the definitions is the issue of purpose: a pilgrimage being “an act of religious devotion,” rather than an activity designed primarily for novelty and change. The issue of purpose for Japanese travellers is unclear for two reasons. Firstly, the divisions between the sacred and the profane, the godly and the worldly are much less clearly defined in Japanese society, so pilgrimage and travel can be viewed as complementary and not in any way opposite patterns of behaviour. Secondly, pilgrimage was the only option open to common people to justify travel, and was often used as the tatemae (‘official purpose’), if only in order to get around tight travel restriction in Tokugawa Japan. True intent cannot, therefore, be clearly established. From the earliest period of Japanese history, the distinction between the two activities has always been obscure. The pilgrimages of courtiers were also pleasure trips, as we know from their diaries (Keene 1999). Likewise, while the journeys of common people did have sacred places as their destination, an important part of the trip was the
An online learning algorithm for biometric scores fusion

In biometrics fusion, the match score level fusion has been frequently adopted because it contains the richest information regarding the input pattern. However, in practice, the size of training match scores increases almost exponentially with respect to the number of users. Under this situation, the cost of learning computation and memory usage can be very high. In this paper, we propose an online learning algorithm to resolve the computational problem. While the existing recursive least squares learning approach contains a mismatch between its objective function and the desired classification performance, the proposed online learning directly optimizes the classification performance with respect to fusion classifier design. Since the proposed method includes a weight that varies according to the class type of newly arrived data, an online learning formulation is non-trivial. Our empirical results on several public domain databases show promising potential in terms of verification accuracy and computational efficiency.
On performance bounds for MIMO OFDM based wireless communication systems

In this paper, we develop several increasingly tight and restrictive performance bounds for OFDM based MIMO wireless communication systems. Starting with channel capacity as the ultimate upper bound on the throughput, step by step we develop tighter bounds on the practically achievable throughput by incorporating typical design constraints. The presented bounds are applied to a Long Term Evolution system, allowing us to identify dominant sources of performance losses. The investigation reveals flaws of wireless communication systems thereby pointing at directions to efficiently improve performance in system design.
Poly-ubiquitin Binding by the Polyglutamine Disease Protein Ataxin-3 Links Its Normal Function to Protein Surveillance Pathways*

In at least nine inherited diseases polyglutamine expansions cause neurodegeneration associated with protein misfolding and the formation of ubiquitin-conjugated aggregates. Although expanded polyglutamine triggers disease, functional properties of host polyglutamine proteins also must influence pathogenesis. Using complementary in vitro and cell-based approaches we establish that the polyglutamine disease protein, ataxin-3, is a poly-ubiquitin-binding protein. In stably transfected neural cell lines, normal and expanded ataxin-3 both co-precipitate with poly-ubiquitinated proteins that accumulate when the proteasome is inhibited. In vitro pull-down assays show that this reflects direct interactions between ataxin-3 and higher order ubiquitin conjugates; ataxin-3 binds K48-linked tetraubiquitin but not di-ubiquitin or mono-ubiquitin. Further studies with domain-deleted and site-directed mutants map tetra-ubiquitin binding to ubiquitin interaction motifs situated near the polyglutamine domain. In surface plasmon resonance binding analyses, normal and expanded ataxin-3 display similar submicromolar dissociation constants for tetra-ubiquitin. Binding kinetics, however, are markedly influenced by the surrounding protein context; ataxin-3 that lacks the highly conserved, amino-terminal josephin domain shows significantly faster association and dissociation rates for tetra-ubiquitin binding. Our results establish ataxin-3 as a poly-ubiquitin-binding protein, thereby linking its normal function to protein surveillance pathways already implicated in polyglutamine pathogenesis.
Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications Grid Drawings of Binary Trees: an Experimental Study

In this paper we consider the class of binary trees and present the results of a comprehensive experimental study on the four most representative algorithms for drawing trees, one for each of the following tree-drawing approaches: Separation-Based, Path-based, Level-based, and Ringed Circular Layout. We establish a simpler, more intuitive format for storing binary trees in files and create a large suite of randomly-generated, unbalanced, complete, AVL, Fibonacci, and molecular combi-natory binary trees of various sizes. Our study is therefore conducted on randomly-generated, unbalanced, and AVL binary trees with between 100 and 50, 000 nodes, on Fibonacci trees T n for on molecular combinatory binary trees with between 133 and 50, 005 nodes. Our study yields 70 charts comparing the performance of the drawing algorithms with respect to ten quality None of the algorithms has been found to be the best in all categories. This observation leads us to create an adaptive system that determines the type of a binary tree and then selects an algorithm to draw the tree depending upon the specified quality measures. Currently, our adaptive tree drawing system recognizes all six types of binary trees and all ten measures included in our experimental study. Under our settings, our adaptive tree drawing system outperforms any system using a single binary tree drawing algorithm.
Resolution of front-back ambiguity in spatial hearing by listener and source movement.

Normally, the apparent position of a sound source corresponds closely to its actual position. However, in some experimental situations listeners make large errors, such as indicating that a source in the frontal hemifield appears to be in the rear hemifield, or vice versa. These front-back confusions are thought to be a result of the inherent ambiguity of the primary interaural difference cues, interaural time difference (ITD) in particular. A given ITD could have been produced by a sound source anywhere on the so-called "cone of confusion. " More than 50 years ago Wallach [J. Exp. Psychol. 27, 339-368 (1940)] argued that small head movements could provide the information necessary to resolve the ambiguity. The direction of the change in ITD that accompanies a head rotation is an unambiguous indicator of the proper hemifield. The experiments reported here are a modern test of Wallach's hypothesis. Listeners indicated the apparent positions of real and virtual sound sources in conditions in which head movements were either restricted or encouraged. The front-back confusions made in the restricted condition nearly disappeared in the condition in which head movements were encouraged. In a second experiment head movements were restricted, but the sound source was moved, either by the experimenter or by the listener. Only when the listener moved the sound source did front-back confusions disappear. The results clearly support Wallach's hypothesis and suggest further that head movements are not required to produce the dynamic cues needed to resolve front-back ambiguity.
Predicting Enhanced Cell Killing through PARP Inhibition

PARP inhibitors show promise as combination and single agents in cancer chemotherapy. Here, we evaluate results obtained with mouse fibroblasts and the common laboratory PARP inhibitor 4-amino-1,8-naphthalimide (4-AN) and analyze the potential for enhanced cytotoxicity following the combination of a DNA-damaging agent and a PARP inhibitor. Methylated DNA bases are repaired by the monofunctional glycosylase-initiated single-nucleotide base excision repair (BER) pathway. An intermediate of this process has a single-nucleotide gap in double-stranded DNA containing the 5′-deoxyribose phosphate (dRP) group at one margin. This 5′-dRP group is removed by the lyase activity of pol β prior to gap filling; then completion of repair is by DNA ligation. PARP-1 binds to and is activated by the 5′-dRP group–containing intermediate, and poly(ADP-ribos)ylation is important for efficient repair. 4-AN–mediated sensitization to the methylating chemotherapeutic agent temozolomide is extreme, producing a level of cytotoxicity not seen with either agent alone. In contrast, with agents producing oxidative DNA damage repaired by bifunctional glycosylase-initiated BER, there is only weak sensitization by cotreatment with PARP inhibitor. Other clinically used DNA-damaging agents repaired by different DNA repair pathways also reveal minimal 4-AN–mediated sensitization. This information has potentially important implications for strategic use of PARP inhibitors in chemotherapy. Mol Cancer Res; 11(1); 13–18. ©2012 AACR.
Effect of 902 MHz mobile phone transmission on cognitive function in children

We examine whether a standard mobile exposure at 902 MHz has a significant effect on cognitive function in 18 children 10–12 years of age. These were in a single group in which each child was given a single training session and then three test sessions in a randomized, three‐way crossover design, using the cognitive drug research (CDR) cognitive assessment system. Exposures were 0, 0.025, or 0.25 W from a standard Nokia 3110 mobile phone handset mounted on a plastic headset in normal use position. The results of testing showed that the baseline (0 W) performance for the reaction time measurements was considerably slower than for the comparable measures in adult. There was a tendency for reaction time to be shorter during exposure to radiation than in the sham (baseline) condition, an effect that was most marked for simple reaction time. However, no effects reached statistical significance after Bonferroni correction. Therefore, we conclude that this study on 18 children did not replicate our earlier finding in adults that exposure to microwave radiation was associated with a reduction in reaction time. It should be noted that the present study investigated the effects of radiation from a GSM handset, whereas in our previous study the effect on reaction time was observed only with a more powerful analogue handset. Bioelectromagnetics Supplement 7:S138–S143, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Dehazing model based on multiple scattering

In computer vision, the existing model used for dehazing is based on single scattering of atmosphere, so it cannot eliminate blurring in the images. In this paper, we propose a novel model for dehazing by including multiple scattering into the existing model. Based on visual manifestations, we conclude that scene radiance can be blurred by neighborhood radiance due to multiple scattering of atmosphere. With necessary simplification, we modeled multiple scattering as an aggregation of neighborhood radiance. Experiments demonstrate that our model can be applied in many existing approaches for dehazing and blurring effects can be significantly eliminated.
Paradoxical effects of supportive audiences on performance under pressure: The home field disadvantage in sports championships.

On the basis of recent research on self-presentation and self-attention, we predicted that the presence of supportive audiences might be detrimental to performance in some circumstances. Specifically, the imminent opportunity to claim a desired identity in front of a supportive audience might engender a state of self-attentio n that could interfere with the execution of skillful responses. Archival data from championship series in two major league sports supported this reasoning. In baseball's World Series, home teams tend to win early games but lose decisive (final) games. Supplementary analyses suggested that the pattern occurs when the home team has the opportunity to win the championship and that it does involve performance decrements by the home team. Similar patterns were found in semifinal and championship series in professional basketball. The present study concerns whether the presence of supportive versus unsympathetic audiences could interact with opportunities for claiming desired identities to cause paradoxical decrements in the quality of performance. Researchers of self-presentation have used terms such as audience and performance to describe self-presentation ever since Goffman's (1959) dramaturgical analysis of behavior. Our study seeks to test self-presentational hypotheses in the context of actual professional performers and their audiences. We chose professional athletic contests because they provide circumscribed, quantifiable performances and because careful records are generally kept. Our hypotheses were derived by the three steps that follow.
Free and Open Source Software Development and Research: Opportunities for Software Engineering

Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities have produced a large amount of valuable software that is directly or indirectly used daily by any person with access to a computer. The field of Software Engineering studies processes, mechanisms, tools, and frameworks for the development of software artifacts. Historically, however, most of Software Engineering research and education does not benefit from the large and rich source of data and experimental testbeds offered by FLOSS projects and their hundreds of millions of lines of working code. In this paper, we discuss how Software Engineering research and education can greatly benefit from the wealth of information available in the FLOSS ecosystem. We then evaluate how FLOSS has been used, up to now, by papers published in the Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering. Finally, we present an agenda for the future, proposing concrete ways to exploit the synergies between research and education in Software Engineering and FLOSS projects.
Comparison of Classifiers with Event Related Potentials as an Attribute in Emotion Quantification along Valence Axis Using EEG Signals

Emotion exerts powerful force on human behavior. It is a complex state of feelings that results in psychological and physical change that influences the thoughts and human behavior. Psychological emotions correspond to the cognitive processes or state of mind such as happy, sad, depress, excited etc. Emotions can be detected by capturing the EEG signals using EEG cap. In this study EEG data from enterface website 06 was used and classified along the valence axis in two emotion classes namely high valence considered as pleasant emotion and low valence considered as unpleasant emotion state. P100, N100, P200, N200, and P300 are the Event Related Potential (ERP) features extracted from the raw EEG data of 3 participants over seven electrodes. The Naive Bayes classifier when used over ERP as an attribute resulted in the accuracy of 56%. While with single hidden layer ANN the average accuracy obtained 57%. 100% accuracy has been obtained on using 2 hidden layer ANN classifier, the accuracy obtained for the ERP features showing the best of the results ever obtained in the classification of emotions. As emotions play a very important role in daily life of human beings, so to recognize psychological emotions more clearly and sharply various recognition methods were introduced by various authors that were very affective. So in this paper, our objective is to analyze the ERP feature in different combination using ANN classifier and compare the classifier for emotion quantification using extracted features. This time also all above described features were included but on the basis of ERP features judgment was made on the better classifier's efficiency.
Let's not forget the role of deafness in sign/speech bilingualism*

Emmorey, Giezen and Gollan (Emmorey, Giezen & Gollan) address the fascinating question of what can be learnt about language, cognition and the brain from the unique group of people who have grown up learning both a signed and a spoken language. The focus of their review is hearing individuals – referred to as hearing bimodal bilinguals. The review presents an excellent overview of research in this field and highlights the unique insights that this population can provide.
A Discriminative Syntactic Word Order Model for Machine Translation

We present a global discriminative statistical word order model for machine translation. Our model combines syntactic movement and surface movement information, and is discriminatively trained to choose among possible word orders. We show that combining discriminative training with features to detect these two different kinds of movement phenomena leads to substantial improvements in word ordering performance over strong baselines. Integrating this word order model in a baseline MT system results in a 2.4 points improvement in BLEU for English to Japanese translation.
Lack of Patchy Horizontal Connectivity in Primary Visual Cortex of a Mammal without Orientation Maps

In the cerebral cortex of mammals, horizontal connections link cells up to several millimeters apart. In primary visual cortex (V1) of mammals with orientation maps, horizontal connections ramify in periodic patches across the cortical surface, connecting cells with similar orientation preferences. Rodents have orientation-selective cells but lack orientation maps, raising questions about relationships of horizontal connections to functional maps and receptive field properties. To address these questions, we studied anatomy of horizontal connections and characterized horizontal functional interactions in V1 of the gray squirrel, a highly visual rodent. Long-range intrinsic connections in squirrel V1 extended 1–2 mm but were not patchy or periodic. This result suggests that periodic and patchy connectivity is not a universal organizing principle of cortex, and the existence of patchy and periodic connectivity and functional maps may be linked. In multielectrode and intracellular recordings, we found evidence of unselective local interactions among cells, similar to pinwheel centers of carnivores. These data suggest that, in mammals with and without orientation maps, local connections link near neighbors without regard to orientation selectivity. In single-unit recordings, we found length-summing and end-stopped cells that were similar to those in other mammals. Length-summing cell surrounds were orientation selective, whereas surrounds of end-stopped cells were not. Receptive field response classes are quite similar across mammals, and therefore patchy and columnar connectivity may not be essential for these properties.
ENSINO DE LINGUAGEM RECEPTIVA PARA CRIANÇAS COM AUTISMO: COMPARANDO DOIS PROCEDIMENTOS

This study compared the efficiency of a Simple-Conditional Discrimination (SCD) procedure that from the start used trial blocks and three stimuli, with another procedure of Conditional Discrimination (CD) in teaching receptive language to three autistic children. Each child was trained in nine spoken-word/figure relations contained in each type of procedure. The SCD procedure consisted of six blocks of three trials in Phase 1, nine blocks of two trials in Phase 2, and randomized trials in Phase 3. The CD procedure was identical to Phase 3 of SCD, but with other stimuli. The CD procedure was more efficient for establishing receptive language, but the SCD was more effective for maintaining the repertoire. The implications of these results for the applied area and directions for future research are discussed.
Roles of the TRAPP-II Complex and the Exocyst in Membrane Deposition during Fission Yeast Cytokinesis

The cleavage-furrow tip adjacent to the actomyosin contractile ring is believed to be the predominant site for plasma-membrane insertion through exocyst-tethered vesicles during cytokinesis. Here we found that most secretory vesicles are delivered by myosin-V on linear actin cables in fission yeast cytokinesis. Surprisingly, by tracking individual exocytic and endocytic events, we found that vesicles with new membrane are deposited to the cleavage furrow relatively evenly during contractile-ring constriction, but the rim of the cleavage furrow is the main site for endocytosis. Fusion of vesicles with the plasma membrane requires vesicle tethers. Our data suggest that the transport particle protein II (TRAPP-II) complex and Rab11 GTPase Ypt3 help to tether secretory vesicles or tubulovesicular structures along the cleavage furrow while the exocyst tethers vesicles at the rim of the division plane. We conclude that the exocyst and TRAPP-II complex have distinct localizations at the division site, but both are important for membrane expansion and exocytosis during cytokinesis.
A model-driven approach to rapid service introduction

We present a model-driven approach to rapid service introduction, in which the need for writing and integrating custom integration code in existing operations systems is replaced by interface mapping between service components and management components of operations systems. In particular, services are represented as dependency models, from which mappings to management interfaces of individual OSS components can be derived. Through strategic use of XML, XSLT, and related technologies, our approach is applicable to a wide variety of services and operations systems. A working prototype system has been developed, which includes a custom modeling tool and OSS environment. By separately developing and deploying VoIP and push-to-talk (PTT) services in the prototype, we have successfully demonstrated viability of our approach.
Single-Layer Wideband Microwave Absorber Using Array of Crossed Dipoles

In this letter, a single-layer wideband absorber with compact thickness is proposed, and its ability to reduce the radar cross section (RCS) is investigated. The absorber consists of two-dimensional array of conductive crossed dipoles with lumped resistor elements on the top of a single-layer FR4 substrate, backed by continuous metallic layer. Simple methodologies for design and analysis of the absorber are presented. The thickness of the fabricated sample is less than 0. 077λL. (wavelength at the lowest cutoff frequency). It offers the 10-dB reflection reduction bandwidth of 70.7% (5.3-11.2 GHz) and full width at half-maximum (FWHM) absorption bandwidth of 104.76% (3.75-12 GHz). The experimentally demonstrated performance of the absorber shows good agreement with the numerical simulations.