Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Journal of Integrated Creative Studies 1 New Developments in Neuroscience

The human brain is the most complex structure known to man. The complexity of the brain can compete with that of the universe. Neuroscience, the study of the brain and other parts of the nervous system, developed first slowly and then at a rapid pace. Similar to research in many other areas, research in neuroscience is driven by people’s curiosity and ingenuity. The brain is a giant information processor that can extract useful features in many forms of sensory signals. The brain is also a controller of complex motor systems and the site of human creativity and consciousness. It has enormous memory capacities, estimated to be in the size of 2.5 petabytes (2,500 terabytes)*(Reber, 2010). Understanding of some of these complex functions has enriched many lives and continues to do so with prospects of tangible public benefits from development of treatment of serious disorders of the brain and indeed the entire body. New hypotheses and serendipitous observations have contributed to many important discoveries. The increased knowledge and understanding of the functions of the nervous system acquired so far has already been beneficial to many people through the development of treatment of various diseases, and it has made it possible to devise ways to reduce the risk of acquiring many diseases. Research regarding organization and function of the brain continue to unveil fascinating aspects that were not imagined just a few decades ago. As stated in the Leonardo da Vinci quote "The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding. " Research requires resources, and the wider attention to the function of the brain brought by "The Decade of the Brain," spanning 1990 to 1999, had a beneficial effect on funding of research on neuroscience. The effect of the increased attention to the function of the brain, from governments and organizations that support research, can be expected to increase also in the future. The main purpose of this article is to describe, in a generally understandable language, some important new developments in neuroscience. The article discusses the implications and importance of recent finding for understanding some of the normal functions of the brain, and how brain functions are altered in some diseases where the symptoms are generated in the brain. The article also provides a brief history of the development of the science of medicine.
From lean production to the lean enterprise

In our book The Machine That Changed the World, we explained how companies can dramatically improve their performance by embracing the "lean production" approacb pioneered by Toyota. By eliminating unnecessary steps, aligning all steps in an activity in a continuous flow, recombining labor tivities is not the end of the road. If individual breakthroughs can he linked up and down the value chain to form a continuous value stream that creates, sells, and services a family of products, the performance of the whole can be raised to a dramat-
Computational role of eccentricity dependent cortical magnification

We develop a sampling extension of M-theory focused on invariance to scale and translation. Quite surprisingly, the theory predicts an architecture of early vision with increasing receptive field sizes and a high resolution fovea ‐ in agreement with data about the cortical magnification factor, V1 and the retina. From the slope of the inverse of the magnification factor, M-theory predicts a cortical “fovea” in V1 in the order of 40 by 40 basic units at each receptive field size ‐ corresponding to a foveola of size around 26 minutes of arc at the highest resolution, 6 degrees at the lowest resolution. It also predicts uniform scale invariance over a fixed range of scales independently of eccentricity, while translation invariance should depend linearly on spatial frequency. ≈ (B)
IRE1/bZIP60-Mediated Unfolded Protein Response Plays Distinct Roles in Plant Immunity and Abiotic Stress Responses

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-mediated protein secretion and quality control have been shown to play an important role in immune responses in both animals and plants. In mammals, the ER membrane-located IRE1 kinase/endoribonuclease, a key regulator of unfolded protein response (UPR), is required for plasma cell development to accommodate massive secretion of immunoglobulins. Plant cells can secrete the so-called pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins with antimicrobial activities upon pathogen challenge. However, whether IRE1 plays any role in plant immunity is not known. Arabidopsis thaliana has two copies of IRE1, IRE1a and IRE1b. Here, we show that both IRE1a and IRE1b are transcriptionally induced during chemically-induced ER stress, bacterial pathogen infection and treatment with the immune signal salicylic acid (SA). However, we found that IRE1a plays a predominant role in the secretion of PR proteins upon SA treatment. Consequently, the ire1a mutant plants show enhanced susceptibility to a bacterial pathogen and are deficient in establishing systemic acquired resistance (SAR), whereas ire1b is unaffected in these responses. We further demonstrate that the immune deficiency in ire1a is due to a defect in SA- and pathogen-triggered, IRE1-mediated cytoplasmic splicing of the bZIP60 mRNA, which encodes a transcription factor involved in the expression of UPR-responsive genes. Consistently, IRE1a is preferentially required for bZIP60 splicing upon pathogen infection, while IRE1b plays a major role in bZIP60 processing upon Tunicamycin (Tm)-induced stress. We also show that SA-dependent induction of UPR-responsive genes is altered in the bzip60 mutant resulting in a moderate susceptibility to a bacterial pathogen. These results indicate that the IRE1/bZIP60 branch of UPR is a part of the plant response to pathogens for which the two Arabidopsis IRE1 isoforms play only partially overlapping roles and that IRE1 has both bZIP60-dependent and bZIP60-independent functions in plant immunity.
Blind Detection of Digital Photomontage using Higher Order Statistics

The advent of the modern digital technology has not only brought about the prevalent use of digital images in our daily activities but also the ease of creating image forgery such as digital photomontages using publicly accessible and userfriendly image processing tools such as Adobe Photoshop. Among all operations involved in image photomontage, image splicing can be considered the most fundamental and essential operation. In this report, our goal is to detect spliced images by a passive-blind approach, which can do without any prior information, as well as without the need of embedding watermark or extracting image features at the moment of image acquisition. Bicoherence, a third-order moment spectra and an effective technique for detecting quadratic phase coupling (QPC), has been previously proposed for passive-blind detection of human speech splicing, based on the assumption that human speech signal is low in QPC. However, images originally have non-trivial level of bispectrum energy, which implies an originally significant level of QPC. Hence, we argue that straightforward applications of bicoherence features for detecting image splicing are not effective. Furthermore, the theoretical connection between bicoherence and image splicing is not clear. For this work, we created a data set, which contains 933 authentic and 912 spliced image blocks. Besides that, we proposed two general methods, i.e., characterizing the image features that bicoherence is sensitive to and estimating the splicinginvariant component, for improving the performance of the bicoherence technique. We also proposed a model of image splicing to explain the effectiveness of bicoherence for image-splicing detection. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the features derived from the proposed improvement methods by Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification on the data set. The results show a significant improvement in image splicing detection accuracy, from 62% to 72%.
Optimal Identity Matching via Statistical Estimation and Information Acquisition

The accelerating growth of the Internet, along with the current stress on privacy that limits the nature of data that organizations can collect and use, has rendered it increasingly difficult to control data quality. To that end many organizations use identity matching software to help determine whether an incoming record pertains to the same subject as that of an existing record in their system. Commonly used software essentially yields a ‘match strength score’ for each potential match. It is virtually always the case that at most one resident record will have very high strength, and the decision problem for the user is whether or not to consider the two to be a ‘true match’. That decision is based on a threshold score, above which the answer will be ‘match’. Clearly the optimal threshold is a context dependent parameter, which is a function of the costs of erroneous matching or non-matching, as well as of the underlying probabilities that true matches are associated with given score values. In many practical settings, these probabilities are unknown and difficult to calculate, leading to a need to estimate the threshold effectively via sampling. However it is extremely costly to acquire the sampling information needed for estimation, and also not clear what properties the estimators will possess. Here, a number of possible estimators are developed and compared. A comparative analysis of estimators reveals that a maximum likelihood based estimator displays the best large sample properties. Also the option of iteratively purchasing additional information, to aid in the matching decision, is investigated. This analysis provides us the opportunity to develop important characteristics of the market for such information provision.
Simulation of a smart home environment

This research will focus on options to reduce the complexity and cost of designing and evaluating smart homes by developing a residential environment and ambient sensor simulator that can respond to different movements of people. The map editor is used to create and save different types of floor plans, including existing furniture or appliances and to add ambient sensors in a 2-dimensional (2D) model. The WSN simulator provides the ability to simulate the resident's movement through the residential environment, as defined by the 2D model, and monitor how ambient sensors respond in a binary (on/off) manner to the resident's movement.
Opportunistic Task Scheduling over Co-Located Clouds in Mobile Environment

With the growing popularity of mobile devices, a new type of peer-to-peer communication mode for mobile cloud computing has been introduced. By applying a variety of short-range wireless communication technologies to establish connections with nearby mobile devices, we can construct a mobile cloudlet in which each mobile device can either works as a computing service provider or a service requester. Although the paradigm of mobile cloudlet is cost-efficient in handling computation-intensive tasks, the understanding of its corresponding service mode from a theoretic perspective is still in its infancy. In this paper, we first propose a new mobile cloudlet-assisted service mode named Opportunistic task Scheduling over Co-located Clouds (OSCC), which achieves flexible cost-delay tradeoffs between conventional remote cloud service mode and mobile cloudlets service mode. Then, we perform detailed analytic studies for OSCC mode, and solve the energy minimization problem by compromising among remote cloud mode, mobile cloudlets mode and OSCC mode. We also conduct extensive simulations to verify the effectiveness of the proposed OSCC mode, and analyze its applicability. Moreover, experimental results show that when the ratio of data size after task execution over original data size associated with the task is smaller than 1 (<italic/>i.e., <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$r<1$</tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="chen-ieq1-2589247.gif"/> </alternatives></inline-formula>) and the average meeting rate of two mobile devices <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\lambda$</tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="chen-ieq2-2589247.gif"/> </alternatives></inline-formula> is larger than <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.00014$</tex-math> <alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="chen-ieq3-2589247.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, our proposed OSCC mode outperforms existing service modes.
Lower Respiratory Tract Diseases Caused by Common Respiratory Viruses among Stem Cell Transplantation Recipients: A Single Center Experience in Korea

Purpose To describe the incidence, clinical courses, and risk factors for mortality of lower respiratory tract diseases (LRDs) caused by common respiratory viruses (CRVs) in stem cell transplantation (SCT) recipients. Materials and Methods We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 1038 patients who received SCT between January 2007 and August 2011 at a single center in Korea. Results Seventy-one CRV-LRDs were identified in 67 (6.5%) patients. The human parainfluenza virus (HPIV) was the most common causative pathogen of CRV-LRDs at 100 days [cumulative incidence estimate, 23.5%; 95% confidence interval (CI), 3.3–43.7] and 1 year (cumulative incidence estimate, 69.2%; 95% CI, 45.9–92.5) following SCT. The 30-day overall mortality rates due to influenza-LRDs, respiratory syncytial virus-LRDs, HPIV-LRDs, and human rhinovirus-LRDs were 35.7, 25.8, 31.6, and 42.8%, respectively. Co-pathogens in respiratory specimens were detected in 23 (33.8%) patients. The overall mortality at day 30 after CRV-LRD diagnosis was 32.8% (22/67). High-dose steroid usage (p=0.025), a severe state of immunodeficiency (p=0.033), and lymphopenia (p=0.006) were significantly associated with death within 30 days following CRV-LRD diagnosis in a univariate analysis. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that high-dose steroid usage [odds ratio (OR), 4.05; 95% CI, 1.12–14.61; p=0.033] and lymphopenia (OR, 6.57; 95% CI, 1.80–24.03; p=0.004) were independent risk factors for mortality within 30 days of CRV-LRDs. Conclusion CRV-LRDs among SCT recipients showed substantially high morbidity and mortality rates. Therefore, the implement of an active diagnostic approaches for CRV infections is required for SCT recipients with respiratory symptoms, especially those receiving high-dose steroids or with lymphopenia.
Computing and Bounding the Generalized Marcum Q-Function via a Geometric Approach

The generalized Marcum Q-function, Qm(a,b), is here explained geometrically as the probability of a 2m-dimensional, real, Gaussian random vector, whose mean vector has a Frobenius norm of a, lying outside a hypersphere of 2m dimensions, with radius b, and centered at the origin. Based on this new geometric interpretation, a new closed-form representation Qm(a,b) is derived for the case where m is an odd multiple of 0.5. This representation involves only the exponential and the erfc functions, and thus is easy to handle, both numerically and analytically. For the case where m is an even multiple of 0.5, Qm+0.5(a,b) and Qm-0.5(a,b), which can be evaluated using our new representation mentioned above, are shown to be tight upper and lower bounds on Qm(a,b), respectively. They are shown in most cases to be much tighter than the existing bounds in the literature, and are valid for the entire ranges of a and b concerned. Their average is also a good approximation to Q m(a,b)
GENETIC CONTROL OF GRAIN SIZE AND WEIGHT IN WHEAT – WHERE ARE WE NOW ?

Wheat is one of the world’s most important food sources, alongside with rice and maize, directly providing about 50% of human food calories. By 2020, it is estimated that the global demand for wheat will increase by a further 40%, due to the increasing world population. Therefore, higher yield is one of the most important goals in wheat breeding. Larger grains not only directly relate to grain yield but also have favorable effects on seedling vigour and early growth, thereby promoting and stabilizing yielding ability. Large grain size has been an important trait and it is usually measured in plant breeding practice by one thousand grain weight (TGW), mainly determined by grain width (GW), grain length (GL) and grain thickness (GT), but also by grain shape and density. Milling and baking quality is also influenced by grain size and shape. Geometrical models indicated that changes in grain shape and size could result in increases in flour yield of up to 5%. Test weight (volumetric weight), a trait largely used in commercial transactions with wheat, also depends on grain size and shape larger grains, deviating from spherical shape having lower test weight. Grain size in wheat is a complex character and any information on its genetic control is useful for increasing breeding efficiency. Identifying molecular markers linked to quantitative trait loci (QTLs) controlling seed size would facilitate selection in early generations and may contribute to improved yield and end-use quality in wheat by accumulating such loci into elite backgrounds. Grain size in wheat is a quantitative trait controlled by quantitative trait loci (QTL), and numerous QTLs for grain size have been reported. Previous research showed important QTLs on all chromosomes, but most significant QTLs were identified on chromosomes 1B, 1D, 2A, 2B, 2D, 3A, 3B, 3D, 4B, 4D, 5A, 5B, 5D, 6A, 6B, 6D, 7A, 7B, 7D. Grain size is negatively correlated with grain number, mainly due to competition for available assimilates. Alleviating this correlation should be facilitated by a more detailed knowledge of grain size genetic control. In this mini-review we will focus on the latest information about the QTLs and genes involved in genetic control of wheat grain size and weight, and the best molecular markers associated with these traits.
studies of Juniperus communis dying out population in the “ Jałowce ” reserve ( Pomerania )

The aim of undertaken research was recognition the reasons of dying out the common juniper Juniperus communis L. ssp. communis population in the forest nature reserve “Jałowce” (Pomerania). Applied methods of dendrochronological analysis let to determine the age of juniper-stand in the reserve and describe the influence of climatic conditions on its growth. Obtained results testify to Juniperus communis chronology with signature WIE collected from 17 individual sequences which numbered 102 tree ring width and represented a time span 1903 to 2004. Such results described the juniper-stand in the reserve as ageing population with the oldest specimen at age 98 years. However, the last several years were characterised by the lack of strong growth depressions typical for earlier time periods with tree ring width ranged 0.7–1.0 mm (the mean annual tree ring width amounted to 0.85 mm), but the visible symptoms of degeneration and dying out of protected common juniper population intensified probably because of its age. Additional key words: tree ring width, dendroclimatological analysis, meteorological conditions Addresses: A. Cedro, Laboratory of Climatology and Marine Meteorology, Institute of Marine Science, Faculty of Natural Science, University of Szczecin, Wąska 13, 71-415 Szczecin, Poland, e-mail: Anna.Cedro@univ.szczecin.pl M. Wróbel, Department of Botany and Nature Protection, Agricultural University, Słowackiego 17, 71-434 Szczecin, Poland, e-mail: mwrobel@agro.ar. szczecin.pl S. Jurzyk, Department of Dendrology and Landscape Architecture, Agricultural University, Janosika 8, 71-424 Szczecin, Poland, e-mail: sylwjur@wp.pl
Speech transduction based on linguistic content

Digital hearing aids use a variety of advanced digital signal processing methods in order to improve speech intelligibility. These methods are based on knowledge about the acoustics outside the ear as well as psychoacoustics. This paper investigates the recent observation that speech elements with a high degree of information can be robustly identified based on basic acoustic properties, i.e., function words have greater spectral tilt than content words for each of the 18 Danish talkers investigated. In this paper we examine these spectral tilt differences as a function of time based on a speech material six times the duration of previous investigations. Our results show that the correlation of spectral tilt with information content is relatively constant across time, even if averaged across talkers. This indicates that it is possible to devise a robust method for estimating information density in the speech signal based on computationally simple short-term band-level differences. The principle described here has the potential to improve speech transduction in hearing aids and cochlear implants. In addition, the concept of information-based speech transduction may also be applicable in automatic speech recognition systems.
FUTURES: a mechanism for concurrency among objects

A future provides the basic primitive through which a user in an object-oriented distributed system can achieve concurrency. It is based on the notion of being able to translate what appears to be a remote procedure call into a request for computation to be scheduled by the system. The mechanism required to make this translation is discussed. Refinements to the future mechanism allow futures to be passed as arguments to other procedure calls. This provides the user with the added flexibility of implementing synchronization schemes suited to specific needs. Further, it simplifies the process of migrating an object which has outstanding futures at the time of migration.
Genetic control of age-related gene expression and complex traits in the human brain

Age is the primary risk factor for many of the most common human diseases—particularly neurodegenerative diseases—yet we currently have a very limited understanding of how each individual’s genome affects the aging process. Here we introduce a method to map genetic variants associated with age-related gene expression patterns, which we call temporal expression quantitative trait loci (teQTL). We found that these loci are markedly enriched in the human brain and are associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Examining potential molecular mechanisms, we found that age-related changes in DNA methylation can explain some cis-acting teQTLs, and that trans-acting teQTLs can be mediated by microRNAs. Our results suggest that genetic variants modifying age-related patterns of gene expression, acting through both cis- and trans-acting molecular mechanisms, could play a role in the pathogenesis of diverse neurological diseases.
Chinese Verb's Subcategorization Frame Acquisition from Unreliably Parsed Corpus

In this paper, we propose some machine learning techniques for the acquisition of subcategorization frames (SCFs) information from parsed corpora for Chinese. A smoothing algorithm is used in order to minimize mistake caused by falsely parsing. Our algorithm is based on Support Vector Machines to filter improper SCFs extracted from low quality corpora parsed by dependency parser which we show give an improvement in performance over a linear back off algorithm widely used in SCF acquisition for English.