Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rules or associations in the acquisition of morphology ? The frequency by Regularity interaction in human and PDP learning of morphosyntax

When fluent English speakers are asked to produce past tense forms, their latencies are affected by frequency of past tense forms when generating irregular inflections, but not when generating regular ones. This interaction has been used to support hybrid accounts of morphosyntax where regular inflections are computed by an affixation rule in a neurally based symbol manipulating syntactic system, while irregular verbs are retrieved from an associative memory. This article describes adult learning of morphosyntax in a novel language where frequency and regularity are factorially combined. The accuracy and latency data demonstrate frequency effects for both regular and irregular forms early in the acquisition process. However, as learning progresses, the frequency effect on regular items diminishes whereas it remains for irregular items. The regularity by frequency interaction is a natural consequence of the power law of practice and is thus entirely consistent with associative learning processes: Regularit.
Modeling of a new multiple input converter configuration for PV/battery system with MPPT

For renewable sources, such as wind and solar energy, the generated voltages often vary because of environmental changes. When the input voltage drops to the value lower than the battery, it will fail to recharge. The cascaded buck-boost converters are conventionally used to step-up or step-down the input voltage, however it is relatively complex and costly. In this paper, a new battery charging system is proposed based on the noninverting buck-boost converters. The converter requires one less inductor and capacitor compared with the conventional buck-boost converters, thus the cost and loss are reduced significantly. The model is validated through the simulation results of one and multiple sources with constant and variable input voltages. Test results show stable operating performances on both steady-state and transit conditions. Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) algorithm is also successfully applied to the proposed multiple input converter configuration. The proposed system is suitable for both low-voltage portable charging devices and grid-based battery bank systems.
A Spatially Robust Least Squares Crosstalk Canceller

Crosstalk cancellation is a well-known technique to generate virtual 3D sound via loudspeakers. Usually, headphones are used to playback audio material, which has been filtered with HRTFs. Audio playback in a reverberant room using loudspeakers and crosstalk cancellation is our intended application. This raises the need for a robust design, since listeners might slightly move their heads during a listening session. The novel design is based on a known least squares crosstalk canceller design technique, but with added robustness. The robustness is achieved with the help of assumed stochastic perturbation systems, which lie in parallel to the actual propagation impulse responses, during the design process.
Sketches with Curvature: The Curve Indicator Random Field and Markov Processes

While complaints about typical edge operators are common, proposals articulating a notion of the "perfect" edge map are comparatively rare, hindering the improvement of contour enhancement techniques. To address this situation, we suggest that one objective of visual contour computation is the estimation of a clean sketch from a corrupted rendition, the latter modeling noisy and low contrast edge or line operator responses to an image. Our formal model of this clean sketch is the curve indicator random field (CIRF), whose role is to provide a basis for defining edge likelihood models by eliminating the parameter along each curve to create an image of curves. For curves modeled with stationary Markov processes, this ideal edge prior is non-Gaussian and its moment generating functional has a form closely related to the Feynman-Kac formula. This sketch model leads to a nonlinear, minimum mean squared error contour enhancement filter that requires the solution of two elliptic partial differential equations. The framework is also independent of the order of the contour model, allowing us to introduce a Markov process model for contour curvature. We analyze the distribution of such curves and show that its mode is the Euler spiral, a curve minimizing changes in curvature. Example computations using the contour enhancement filter with the curvature-based contour model are provided, highlighting how the filter is curvature-selective even when curvature is absent in the input.
First stars VI - Abundances of C, N, O, Li, and mixing in extremely metal-poor giants. Galactic evolution of the light elements

We have investigated the poorly-understood origin of nitrogen in the early Galaxy by determining N abundances from the NH band at 336 nm in 35 extremely metal-poor halo giants, with carbon and oxygen abundances from Cayrel et al. (\cite{CDS04}, AA these stars are generally more evolved and located on the upper Red Giant Branch (RGB) or Horizontal Branch (HB). The second group has [N/Fe] < 0.5, shows no evidence for C to N conversion, and Li is only moderately diluted; these stars belong to the lower RGB and we conclude that their C and N abundances are very close to those of the gas from which they formed in the early Galaxy, they are called ``unmixed stars''. The [O/Fe] and [(C+N)/Fe] ratios are the same in the two groups, confirming that the differences between them are caused by dredge-up of CN-processed material in the first group, with negligible contributions from the O-N cycle. The ``unmixed'' stars reflect the abundances in the early Galaxy: the [C/Fe] ratio is constant (about +0.2 dex) and the [C/Mg] ratio is close to solar at low metallicity, favouring a high C production by massive zero-metal supernovae. The [N/Fe] and [N/Mg] ratios scatter widely. Their mean values in each metallicity bin decrease with increasing metallicity, but this trend could be a statistical effect. The larger values of these ratios define a flat upper plateau ([N/Mg] = 0.0, [N/Fe] = +0.1), which could reflect higher values within a wide range of yields of zero-metal SNe II. Alternatively, by analogy with the DLAs, the lower abundances ([N/Mg] = -1.1, [N/Fe] = -0.7) could reflect generally low yields from the first SNe II, the other stars being N enhanced by winds of massive Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars. Since all the stars show clear [? /Fe] enhancements, they were formed before any significant enrichment of the Galactic gas by SNe Ia, and their composition should reflect the yields of the first SNe II. However, if massive AGB stars or AGB supernovae evolved more rapidly than SNe Ia and contaminated the ISM, our stars would also reflect the yields of these AGB stars. At present it cannot be decided whether primary N is produced primarily in SNe II or in massive AGB stars, or in both. The stellar N abundances and [N/O] ratios are compatible with those found in Damped Lyman-? (DLA) systems. They extend the well-known DLA ``plateau'' at [N/O] ? -0.8 to lower metallicities, albeit with more scatter; no star is found below the putative ``low [N/? ] plateau'' at [N/O] ? -1.55 in DLAs. Based on observations obtained with the ESO VLT under ESO programme ID 165.N-0276(A). This work has made use of the SIMBAD database.
Ignoring Data in Court : An Idealized Decision-Theoretic Analysis

We give a decision-theoretic analysis of a central issue regarding statistical evidence in court: are there circumstances under which it is reasonable to ignore the part of the data that gave rise to suspicion in the first place? We heuristically show that under a minimax/robust Bayesian analysis, this part of the data should in fact be treated differently from any additional data one might have. In some situations, even completely ignoring this part of the data can be a minimax optimal strategy. Lucia de B. is a Dutch nurse who worked in the Juliana children’s hospital in The Hague from 1999 to 2001. She happened to be on duty whenever a patient in her ward suddenly died or suddenly needed to be reanimated. The hospital’s management became suspicious and notified the police. The police then gathered data about Lucia’s shifts in the Red Cross hospital, a hospital where she had worked a few years previously. Thus, these data were only taken into account later, after the investigation against Lucia began. In 2004, the Court of Appeals found her guilty of 7 murders and 3 murder attempts. Statistics played a crucial role in the verdict; a statistician calculated that what happened “could not have been a coincidence”. Despite warnings by the statistician, the court did not need much further evidence to change “not a coincidence” into “murder. ” The statistical analysis itself was flawed in several respects. The question is: can we do better? When presenting the case in the UCL evidence seminar (March 20th 2007), I claimed that a purely Bayesian approach is problematic here. From a Bayesian point of view, we would like to determine posterior probabilities that Lucia is innocent or gulty. This requires a prior probability that Lucia is guilty. The problem is that there are a broad range of priors that may be deemed “reasonable,” and these may differ by several orders of magnitude. Therefore, I argued, one should either adopt a “robust Bayesian” approach, adopting a set of priors rather than a single one; or one should adopt a Neyman-Pearson (NP) style hypothesis test, but, to avoid selection bias, one should then ignore the first data set, and only use the second one. The latter proposal generated a lot of resistance. I have now studied both suggestions in more detail, focusing on the question whether it can be sensible to ignore, or at least treat differently, the first data set. Following a suggestion by C. Manski, I have taken a decision-theoretic approach. The result is the present note.
Dual Action of a Ligand for Eph Receptor Tyrosine Kinases on Specific Populations of Axons during the Development of Cortical Circuits

The structural basis of cortical columns are radially oriented axon collaterals that form precise connections between distinct cortical layers. During development, these connections are highly specified from the initial outgrowth of collateral branches. Our previous work provided evidence for positional cues confined to individual layers that induce and/or prevent the formation of axon collaterals in specific populations of cortical neurons. Here we demonstrated within situ hybridization techniques that mRNA of the Eph receptor tyrosine kinase EphA5 and one of its ligands, ephrin-A5, are present in distinct cortical layers, at a time when intrinsic connections are being formed in the cortex. Axonal guidance assays indicate that ephrin-A5 is a repellent signal for a populations of axons that in vivo avoid the cortical layer expressing ephrin-A5. In contrast to its established role as a repulsive axonal guidance signal, ephrin-A5 specifically mediates sprouting of those cortical axons that target the ephrin-A5-expressing layer in vivo. These results identify a novel function of ephrin-A5 on axonal arbor formation. The laminar distribution and the dual action on specific populations of axons suggest that ephrin-A5 plays a role in the assembly of local cortical circuits.
Characterization of DSRC performance as a function of transmit power

IEEE 802.11p is an emerging standard designed to provide wireless access in a vehicular environment. A major application of 802.11p-based Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) is Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) safety messaging. The US FCC has designated 75 MHz of bandwidth in the 5.9GHz band to support DSRC with a maximum permissible transmit power level of 33 dBm. In this paper we study the relationship between transmission power and packet reception in realistic propagation environments in an effort to understand the impact transmission power has on the performance of safety applications. The study is based on field tests with vehicles communicating using prototype DSRC radios.
HearMe: assisting the visually impaired to record vibrant moments of everyday life

The auditory sense is the primary channel for the visually impaired to experience the world around them. Typically they use various recording devices, such as tape recorders and digital voice recorders, to record what they'd like to keep. In recent years, touch-screen technology with dynamic interface and portability has become an alternative for visually impaired users. However, very few recording applications are tailored for their use. In this study, we interviewed twelve visually impaired people to investigate their behaviors and needs. Based upon the data gained therefrom, we have concluded design considerations and present HearMe, a touch-based application to assist the visually impaired for recording sounds during everyday life.
Working Paper No . 608 Assessing the Returns to Education in Georgia by

1 Assistant Professor of Economics, Bard College, P.O. Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504; khitaris@bard.edu. The author thanks the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research for financial support and the Georgian Statistics Department for providing the data. This paper greatly benefited from comments and suggestions of seminar participants at Bard College, Union College, and the Midwest International Economic Development Conference.
Enhanced expression and production of monocyte chemoattractant protein‐1 in inflammatory bowel disease mucosa

Peripheral blood monocytes are recruited to the inflamed mucosa of inflammatory bowel disease but the specific chemotactic signals responsible for their attraction are not known. Monocyte chemoattractant protein‐1 (MCP‐1) is a chemokine with potent monocyte attracting and activating properties and the aim of this study was to examine its expression and production in inflammatory bowel disease. In situ hybridisation demonstrated mRNA for MCP‐1 in macrophages, some of which had been recently recruited from the circulation as demonstrated by their co‐expression of the monocyte marker CD14, as well as in smooth muscle and endothelial cells in inflamed mucosa. Immuno‐histochemical studies showed a corresponding distribution of MCP‐1 protein production by macrophages, smooth muscle, and endothelial cells. By contrast minimal MCP‐1 mRNA expression and protein were found in histologically normal mucosa. Macrophages isolated from surgically resected inflammatory bowel disease colons and examined by Northern analysis expressed MCP‐1 mRNA significantly more frequently (15/24 vs. 0/19, P< 0.0001) than macrophages from histologically normal mucosa from colon cancer resections. Blood monocytes stimulated by lipopolysaccharide and treated with hydrocortisone, 5‐aminosalicylic acid, or cyclosporin A showed reduced MCP‐1 expression and production in the presence of these agents. This study demonstrates increased expression of MCP‐1 mRNA and protein and cells of origin of MCP‐1 in inflamed intestinal mucosa. Together with the demonstrated influence of therapeutic agents on monocyte MCP‐1 production the findings suggest a role for MCP‐1 in monocyte attraction to the mucosal lesion of inflammatory bowel disease.
Image segmentation using genetic algorithm and morphological operations

This thesis presents an image segmentation procedure that uses genetic algorithm and mathematical morphology for optimizing a criterion function. The image is divided into subimages and segmentation algorithm is applied to each subimage, starting with initial random populations. Each individual of the population is evaluated using an a fitness function. The best-fit individuals are selected and mated to produce offsprings that form the next generation. The morphological operation is used to produce the next generation along with the crossover and mutation operators. The algorithm converges to yield the segmented subimages. These segmented subimages then are combined to form the final result. The performance of genetic algorithm and morphological operations to an image segmentation problem is evaluated with respect to various parameters and the results are presented and discussed.
Automatic detection of red lesions in digital color fundus photographs

The robust detection of red lesions in digital color fundus photographs is a critical step in the development of automated screening systems for diabetic retinopathy. In this paper, a novel red lesion detection method is presented based on a hybrid approach, combining prior works by Spencer et al. (1996) and Frame et al. (1998) with two important new contributions. The first contribution is a new red lesion candidate detection system based on pixel classification. Using this technique, vasculature and red lesions are separated from the background of the image. After removal of the connected vasculature the remaining objects are considered possible red lesions. Second, an extensive number of new features are added to those proposed by Spencer-Frame. The detected candidate objects are classified using all features and a k-nearest neighbor classifier. An extensive evaluation was performed on a test set composed of images representative of those normally found in a screening set. When determining whether an image contains red lesions the system achieves a sensitivity of 100% at a specificity of 87%. The method is compared with several different automatic systems and is shown to outperform them all. Performance is close to that of a human expert examining the images for the presence of red lesions.
“Show Me Data.” Observational Study of a Conversational Interface in Visual Data Exploration

Visual data exploration poses challenges for ’InfoVis Novices’. A ’conversational interface’ which would enable users to generate and interact with visualizations through natural language and gestures, while maintaining a history of the data exploration, has the potential to ameliorate many of these challenges. We performed an exploratory, observational study designed to examine the role of such a conversational interface in visual data exploration. We simulated a conversational interface, using a remote human mediator, with multiple cycles of visualization construction. We believe analysis of this data will yield concrete design goals for conversational interfaces in information visualization.
Temporal Performance Degradation under RTN: Evaluation and Mitigation for Nanoscale Circuits

Random telegraph noise (RTN) is one of the critical reliability concerns in nanoscale circuit design, and it is important to consider the impact of RTN on the circuits' temporal performance. This paper proposes a framework to evaluate the RTN-induced performance degradation and variation of digital circuits, and the evaluation results show that RTN can result in 54.4% degradation and 59.9% variation on the circuit delay at 16nm technology node. Power supply tuning and gate sizing techniques are investigated to demonstrate the impact of such circuit-level techniques on mitigating the RTN effect.
Polarization-doped AlGaN light-emitting diode

The development and application of nitride-based light-emitting diodes is handicapped by the low hole conductivity of Mg-doped layers. Mg-doping becomes increasingly difficult with shorter LED wavelength and higher Al-content of the p-AlGaN layers. As an alternative, polarization-induced hole doping in N-face graded AlGaN was recently demonstrated. Using advanced numerical device simulation, we show that the internal quantum efficiency can be strongly increased and the efficiency droop eliminated by using such graded AlGaN layer instead of the traditional AlGaN electron-blocker layer (EBL).
Charge and Potential Distributions for Particles Approaching Substrates With Regular Structures

The charge and potential distributions for insulating particles approaching a substrate with regular insulating structures are studied by particle-in-cell numerical simulations. An elongated particle and a substrate with elongated structures are considered for flowing plasmas. The plasma flow leads to enhanced ion density and potential regions in the particle wake. The role of the relative position of the particle and the substrate in their interactions is investigated. It is also demonstrated that the interactions are modified by photoemission due to directed UV light. The simulations are in 2-D, with ions and electrons both treated as individual particles.
Development of Kalman Filters for WLAN Based Tracking

Location based service (LBS) cannot be realized unless the location of the user is available. For indoor LBS, indoor positioning must be utilized and many researchers have been working on indoor positioning and tracking. For example, extended Kalman filter (EKF) was exploited in Bluetooth based indoor positioning. Nowadays, WLAN (wireless local area network) is available virtually everywhere. Thus, WLAN based indoor positioning and tracking is more economical than Bluetooth based ones. The main purpose of this paper is to propose a new WLAN based EKF indoor tracking method by extending existing Bluetooth based EKF positioning method. Experimental results comparing our method with other previous methods are discussed.
Gradient based Approximate Joint Diagonalization by orthogonal transforms

Approximate Joint Diagonalization (AJD) of a set of symmetric matrices by an orthogonal transform is a popular problem in Blind Source Separation (BSS). In this paper we propose a gradient based algorithm which maximizes the sum of squares of diagonal entries of all the transformed symmetric matrices. Our main contribution is to transform the orthogonality constrained optimization problem into an unconstrained problem. This transform is performed in two steps: First by parameterizing the orthogonal transform matrix by the matrix exponential of a skew-symmetric matrix. Second, by introducing an isomorphism between the vector space of skew-symmetric matrices and the Euclidean vector space of appropriate dimension. This transform is then applied to a gradient based algorithm called GAEX to perform joint diagonalization of a set of symmetric matrices.
A Case of Metastatic Extramammary Paget's Disease Responding to Trastuzumab plus Paclitaxel Combination Therapy

There is no effective treatment for advanced extramammary Paget’s disease (EMPD). The human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) protein is often overexpressed in EMPD. Trastuzumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody against HER2 used in the treatment of breast cancers in which HER2 is overexpressed. We report a case of advanced EMPD in which trastuzumab and paclitaxel combination therapy was effective. The patient was a70-year-old Japanese woman who presented with EMPD on the vulva and multiple metastatic lymph nodes. Immunohistochemical staining revealed strong HER2 protein expression in the primary tumor and metastatic lymph nodes. The patient received trastuzumab and paclitaxel. After 4 courses of this regimen, the mass on the vulva and the metastatic lymph nodes regressed. Our findings may imply that trastuzumab plus paclitaxel combination therapy is useful for the treatment of advanced EMPD overexpressing HER2.