Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interaction of disparity and accommodative vergence

To fixate on a target that moves from far to near, two systems become activated; accommodation and disparity vergence. The goal of this study is to investigate how these systems interact through a new signal-processing algorithm known as independent component analysis. Preliminary data suggest that three underlying neural subcomponents are present where the two components of disparity vergence initiate the movement and the accommodative portion is activated to facilitate the steady state portion of the response.
Connected Bond Recognition for Handwritten Chemical Skeletal Structural Formulas

Recognizing handwritten chemical structural formulas is challenging due to the spatial complexity involved, especially for chemical skeletal structural formulas. In chemical skeletal structural formulas, the Carbon atoms are omitted in the drawing of chemical connected bonds, in which the single bonds are connected with hidden Carbon atoms as the connection points. To recognize chemical skeletal structural formulas, it is important to recognize the connected bond strokes and differentiate them from other similar symbols. Moreover, even if the connected bond stroke is identified, it is also challenging to split the connected bond stroke into several single bonds and identify the locations of the hidden Carbon atoms, and its positional relationship in the overall chemical structure. In this paper, we propose a progressive approach for recognizing chemical skeletal structural formulas, in particular the connected bonds. The proposed approach recognizes a chemical formula progressively while the user draws the chemical skeletal structural formula.
Pathophysiological Concepts and Treatment of Camptocormia

Camptocormia is a disabling pathological, non-fixed, forward bending of the trunk. The clinical definition using only the bending angle is insufficient; it should include the subjectively perceived inability to stand upright, occurrence of back pain, typical individual complaints, and need for walking aids and compensatory signs (e.g. back-swept wing sign). Due to the heterogeneous etiologies of camptocormia a broad diagnostic approach is necessary. Camptocormia is most frequently encountered in movement disorders (PD and dystonia) and muscles diseases (myositis and myopathy, mainly facio-scapulo-humeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD)). The main diagnostic aim is to discover the etiology by looking for signs of the underlying disease in the neurological examination, EMG, muscle MRI and possibly biopsy. PD and probably myositic camptocormia can be divided into an acute and a chronic stage according to the duration of camptocormia and the findings in the short time inversion recovery (STIR) and T1 sequences of paravertebral muscle MRI. There is no established treatment of camptocormia resulting from any etiology. Case series suggest that deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) is effective in the acute but not the chronic stage of PD camptocormia. In chronic stages with degenerated muscles, treatment options are limited to orthoses, walking aids, physiotherapy and pain therapy. In acute myositic camptocormia an escalation strategy with different immunosuppressive drugs is recommended. In dystonic camptocormia, as in dystonia in general, case reports have shown botulinum toxin and DBS of the globus pallidus internus (GPi-DBS) to be effective. Camptocormia in connection with primary myopathies should be treated according to the underlying illness.
“Social Movement or Social Partner? Strategies for the Revitalisation of British Trade Unionism”

The vocabulary and assumptions of social partnership and social movement unionism are strikingly different and they can be regarded as alternative choices for revitalising British labour (see Kelly 1996). What is striking, however, is that elements of both are occasionally fused in union policy. The central confederation of British labour, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), for example, has simultaneously sought to develop a ‘culture of organising’ across the British union movement and established an Organising Academy, while it advocates ‘partnership’ in relations with employers and has sought an integrative relationship with the new Labour Government elected in 1997 (Heery 1998). Accordingly, the paper concludes by considering the extent to which partnership and movement are genuine alternatives or whether they may prove mutually compatible and even reinforcing elements within a complex strategy for union renewal.
Vocal cord model to control various voices for anthropomorphic talking robot

We have developed a biomechanical vocal cord model for an anthropomorphic talking robot—the Waseda Talker Series. The model mimics the biomechanical structure of human vocal cords and is made of a soft rubber called Septon. It is able to reproduce vocal cord vibrations of the normal (modal) voice in a form similar to the human. We also developed a neural network based model for controlling the vocal cord parameters with acoustic parameters of the speech signal. The control model consists of a forward and inverse model, and a simple feedback model. We also describe voice quality control for the vocal cord model which is important for generating fluent and emotional speech.
Real-time Planning for Single Agents and Multi-agent Teams in Unknown and Dynamic Environments Thesis Proposal

As autonomous agents make the transition from solving simple, well-behaved problems to being useful entities in the real world, they must deal with the added complexity and uncertainty inherent in real environments. In particular, agents navigating through the real world can be confronted with incomplete or imperfect information (e.g. when prior maps are absent or incomplete), large state spaces (e.g. for robots with several degrees of freedom or teams of robots), and dynamic elements (e.g. when there are humans or other agents in the environment). In this work, we propose to address the problem of path planning and replanning in both static and dynamic environments for which prior information may be incomplete or imperfect. We intend to develop a set of planning algorithms that will enable single agents and multi-agent teams to operate more effectively in a wider range of realistic scenarios.
Planets around Cool Stars : A Spectroscopic and Photometric Study of M Dwarfs and their Planets

I propose to carry out a systematic investigation of planet harboring M dwarfs. Specifically, over the course of my thesis I will: i) develop and refine a new highprecision method of sub-millimagnitude “snapshot” photometry to help discover and investigate more transiting planets; ii) apply this method to differential spectroscopy; iii) calibrate existing M dwarf metallicity estimates with FGK stars to facilitate a proper comparison with the established correlation between the presence of one or more giant planets (MP > MJ) and the metallicity of the host star (known as the planet metallicity correlation or PMC) observed for F, G, and early K type stars; and iv) use these calibrated metallicity and Teff determinations on late K and M dwarfs in the Kepler field that harbor newly discovered transiting planets. Through this work I will be able to gain a better understanding of how planet size, number of planets, and other properties of the planetary system depend on metallically and other properties of the host star. Additionally, by focusing on late K and M dwarfs where the stellar convection zone is large, I will be able to avoid side-effects from metallicity ‘pollution’ by the planet forming disk, as well as quantify the likelihood of pollution based explanations for the observed giant planet PMC around FGK stars. 1. Sub-mmag Relative Spectro-Photometry of Transiting Planets
Does Gaming the System Affect Students' Academic Achievement?

A growing body of evidence suggests that schools use test exemption to game educational accountability systems. However, it is not known whether test exemption affects students’ academic progress. Analyzing data from an urban school district in Texas, we find that special education students make larger achievement gains when they are tested. Using our most conservative estimates, the effect of being tested is approximately . 40 standard deviations in reading and . 28 standard deviations in math for grades 3-8. Because special education students are more likely to be minority and poor students and these students are more likely to be exempted than their white and non-poor special education counterparts, the exemption of special education students contributes to the growth of black-white, Hispanic-white, and high-low socioeconomic status achievement gaps.
Treatment Effect Stochastic Frontier Models with Endogenous Selection

Government policies are frequently used throughout the world to promote productivity. While some of the policies are designed to work through technology enhancement, others are meant to exert the influence through effciency improvement. It is therefore important to have a program evaluation method that can distinguish the channels of effects. We propose a treatment e ect stochastic frontier model for this purpose. One of the important feature of the model is that the participation in the treatment is endogenous. We illustrate the empirical application of the model using the data of large dams in India to study the e ects on the agricultural production.
Overlapping and synchronizing two worlds

Recently social network services in virtual space become popular. In particular, virtual reality services such as Second Life™ provide a very realistic environment for social networking. With recent advances in sensor technologies and mobile devices, several services of augmented reality are also being developed and provided. In this demo, we show a prototype, which connects these two different worlds - virtual reality and augmented reality - so that a user in real world and an avatar in a virtual space communicate for location-based social network. The prototype is implemented with Second Life for virtual space and augmented reality functions of smart phones and tracking sensors. It provides three basic functions. First, a given indoor space in real world is reflected in virtual space. Second the user in the real indoor space is tracked and her/his location is mapped into the virtual space, and at the same time, the location and movement of avatar in the virtual space are also mapped to the real world and shown via smart phone. Third, two users in the same area, a user in the real world and an avatar in the virtual space, can communicate by exchanging messages via dialog box in virtual space and short message service of smart phones. We expect that this prototype will be extended to provide enhanced and flexible social networking services.
On the Need of Precise Inter-App ICC Classification for Detecting Android

Malware collusion is a new threat against Android application security. It refers to the scenario where two or more applications interact with each other to perform malicious tasks. Most existing solutions assume the attack model of a standalone malicious application, and thus cannot detect collusion. The objective of this position paper is to point out the need for practical solutions for detecting malware collusion. We show experimental evidence on the technical challenges associated with classifying benign Android inter-component communication (ICC) flows from colluding ones. We statically construct ICC Maps to capture pairwise communicating ICC channels of 2,644 real benign apps. We find that existing permission-based collusion-detection policies trigger a large number of false alerts in benign apps pairs.
Nominal Effective Exchange Rate Neutrality: The Case of Macedonia

This paper uses quarterly data on Macedonian nominal effective exchange rate for the time period 1992 to 2009 along with six other variables to investigate the nominal effective exchange rate neutrality. SVAR and Impulse response functions had been used to prove the hypothesis. Empirical evidence in this paper supports the nominal exchange rate neutrality in the case of Macedonia.
The Flightless I homolog , fli-1 , regulates anterior-posterior polarity , asymmetric cell division and ovulation during C . elegans development

Flightless I (Fli I) is an evolutionarily conserved member of the gelsolin family, containing actin binding and severing activity in vitro. The physiological function of Fli I during animal development remains largely undefined. In this study, we reveal a key role of the C. elegans Fli I homolog, fli-1, in specifying asymmetric cell division and establishing anterior-posterior polarity in the zygote. The fli-1 gene also regulates the cytokinesis of somatic cells, the development of germline, and interacts with the phosphoinositol signaling pathway in the regulation of ovulation. The fli-1 reporter gene shows that the localization of FLI-1 coincides with actin-rich regions, and the actin cytoskeleton is impaired in many tissues in the fli-1 mutants. Furthermore, the function of fli-1 in C. elegans can be functionally substituted by the Drosophila Fli I. Our studies demonstrate that fli-1 plays an important role in regulating the actin-dependent events during C. elegans development.
Quantitative CT: Associations between Emphysema, Airway Wall Thickness and Body Composition in COPD

The objective of the present study was to determine the association between CT phenotypes—emphysema by low attenuation area and bronchitis by airway wall thickness—and body composition parameters in a large cohort of subjects with and without COPD. In 452 COPD subjects and 459 subjects without COPD, CT scans were performed to determine emphysema (%LAA), airway wall thickness (AWT-Pi10), and lung mass. Muscle wasting based on FFMI was assessed by bioelectrical impedance. In both the men and women with COPD, FFMI was negatively associated with %LAA. FMI was positively associated with AWT-Pi10 in both subjects with and without COPD. Among the subjects with muscle wasting, the percentage emphysema was high, but the predictive value was moderate. In conclusion, the present study strengthens the hypothesis that the subgroup of COPD cases with muscle wasting have emphysema. Airway wall thickness is positively associated with fat mass index in both subjects with and without COPD.
Parallelisation of the Valgrind Dynamic Binary Instrumentation Framework

Valgrind is a dynamic binary translation and instrumentation framework. It is suited to analysing memory usage. It is used in memory validation and profiling tools. Currently, Valgrind is restricted to executing a guest with serialised thread scheduling. This results in lost opportunity for performance when analysing highly parallel applications on parallel architectures. We have extended the framework to allow parallel execution of guest threads. Code caching mechanisms have been made thread-safe, by delaying flushing of translated code, while preserving critical areas of performance. Three methods which preserve atomicity of instructions are implemented and evaluated with respect to speed, reliability and instrumentation effects. Serialising both store and atomic operations preserves atomicity in the strongest sense, but suffers unacceptable performance overhead. Serialising only atomic instructions or utilising host atomic instructions provides speedup in line with native execution. These methods show average slow downs of only 2.6× and multithreaded 2.2× over native parallel execution respectively.
Fatigue, sleep, and nocturnal complaints in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Background and purpose: Fatigue is a common symptom in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Although sleep disturbances are a candidate factor that may interfere with fatigue in patients with ALS, the role of sleep-related abnormalities in determining fatigue in ALS is unknown. Objective: To evaluate the frequency and determinants of fatigue in a group of 91 consecutive patients with ALS, with special attention to the relationship between fatigue and sleep problems. Methods: Measures included the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), ALS Functional Rating ScaleRevised (ALSFRS-R), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Results: The mean FSS score was 4.35 ± 1.1, and 48 patients with ALS (52.75%) reported clinical significant fatigue. FSS score correlated with ALSFRS-R score, forced vital capacity, ESS, BDI, and global PSQI score. Patients with fatigue were significantly more disabled and more frequently reported difficulties staying asleep and nocturnal complaints, such as nocturia and disturbing muscle cramps. After multivariate analysis, patients disability and nocturnal complaints were significantly associated with fatigue. Conclusion: In this study, we demonstrated that fatigue, a troublesome and disabling symptom in ALS, is associated with physical impairment and night-time complaints (such as nocturia and muscle cramps), suggesting that treating sleep problems might be useful in alleviating fatigue in these patients.
Towards physical activity support community

Nowadays it is recognized that physical activity, besides other lifestyles, has indisputable beneficial affects on cardiovascular diseases prevention and treatment. Additionally the social support is important and has a valuable impact on the outcomes in cardiovascular disease patients. To provide the patients the social support needed and, to support and motivate them in their daily physical activity, we are working on building a mobile virtual community for physical activity support connected to a triaxial accelerometer, where the physical activity will be monitored and the main objective will be to motivate and support the patients to be adequately physically active. In this paper, the main functionalities supported by the community are discussed and the instrumental support is also investigated and metrics, based on the IMA metric, are proposed.
Achieving capacity and security in wireless communications with lattice codes

Based on lattice Gaussian distributions and ideal lattices, we present a unified framework of lattice coding to achieve the channel capacity and secrecy capacity of wireless channels in the presence of Gaussian noise. The standard additive white Gaussian-noise (AWGN) channel, block fading channel, and multi-input multi-output (MIMO) fading channel are considered, which form a hierarchy of increasingly challenging problems in coding theory. To achieve channel capacity, we apply Gaussian shaping to a suitably defined good lattice for channel coding. To achieve secrecy capacity, we use a secrecy-good lattice nested with a coding lattice.
Fuzzy logic based wall tracking controller for mobile robot navigation

This paper describes the design and implementation of a fuzzy logic based controller for wall tracking behavior of mobile robot. The controller accepts inputs from three ultrasonic sensors and generates speed commands for differentially steered robot to track wall on its left side at a set distance. The controller is implemented in real time using an inexpensive 8 bit microcontroller and is validated through experimental runs in following the corner trajectory.
MultiFusion: A boosting approach for multimedia fusion

The multimodal data usually contain complementary, correlated and redundant information. Thus, multimodal fusion is useful for many multisensor applications. Here, a novel multimodal fusion algorithm is proposed, which is referred to as “MultiFusion. ” The approach adopts a boosting structure where the atomic event is considered as the fusion unit. The correlation of multimodal data is used to form an overall classifier in each iteration. Moreover, by adopting the Adaboost-like structure, the overall fusion performance is improved. Both the simulation experiment and the real application show the effectiveness of the MultiFusion approach. Our approach can be applied in different multimodal applications to exploit the multimedia data characteristics and improve the performance.
A factoring algorithm for solving the problem of partitioning core networks

Double homing is effective especially for disasters; and for it to succeed on telecommunications networks, two disjoint paths are assigned between two pairs; but assigning such disjoint paths is not easy because telecommunications networks are large and complicated systems. We previously proposed a method to overcome this difficulty by partitioning a network into subnetworks that never share any common equipment. However, we had no way to check whether a network can be successfully partitioned or not, except for an approximation method. This paper proposes two new exact methods to check the partitionability of networks. One finds all the solutions, and the other performs factoring with reductions.
Separate Populations of Receptor Cells and Presynaptic Cells in Mouse Taste Buds

Taste buds are aggregates of 50–100 cells, only a fraction of which express genes for taste receptors and intracellular signaling proteins. We combined functional calcium imaging with single-cell molecular profiling to demonstrate the existence of two distinct cell types in mouse taste buds. Calcium imaging revealed that isolated taste cells responded with a transient elevation of cytoplasmic Ca2+ to either tastants or depolarization with KCl, but never both. Using single-cell reverse transcription (RT)-PCR, we show that individual taste cells express either phospholipase C β2 (PLCβ2) (an essential taste transduction effector) or synaptosomal-associated protein 25 (SNAP25) (a key component of calcium-triggered transmitter exocytosis). The two functional classes revealed by calcium imaging mapped onto the two gene expression classes determined by single-cell RT-PCR. Specifically, cells responding to tastants expressed PLCβ2, whereas cells responding to KCl depolarization expressed SNAP25. We demonstrate this by two methods: first, through sequential calcium imaging and single-cell RT-PCR; second, by performing calcium imaging on taste buds in slices from transgenic mice in which PLCβ2-expressing taste cells are labeled with green fluorescent protein. To evaluate the significance of the SNAP25-expressing cells, we used RNA amplification from single cells, followed by RT-PCR. We show that SNAP25-positive cells also express typical presynaptic proteins, including a voltage-gated calcium channel (α1A), neural cell adhesion molecule, synapsin-II, and the neurotransmitter-synthesizing enzymes glutamic acid decarboxylase and aromatic amino acid decarboxylase. No synaptic markers were detected in PLCβ2 cells by either amplified RNA profiling or by immunocytochemistry. These data demonstrate the existence of at least two molecularly distinct functional classes of taste cells: receptor cells and synapse-forming cells.
Robust Assembly of Complex Shaped Planar Parts Using Vision and Force

The paper addresses the fusion of vision and force-torque information for robotic assembly tasks. The torque-controlled DLR light-weight robot is used, which is specially designed for fast and safe interaction with a changing environment. The image processing is based on standard hardware components and uses color segmentation and affine invariant feature classification. It provides a position estimation within the region of attraction (ROA) of a compliance based assembly strategy. The assembly planning toolbox is based on a theoretical analysis and the maximization of the ROA. This guarantees the local convergence of the assembly process under consideration of the part geometry. The convergence analysis uses the passivity properties of the robot and the environment. The method is validated through extensive experiments