Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining the ApEn statistic with surrogate data analysis for the detection of nonlinear dynamics in time series

We tested the natural combination of surrogate data analysis with the ApEn regularity statistic developed by Pincus [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 88 (1991) 2297] by applying it to some popular models of nonlinear dynamics and publicly available experimental time series. We found that this easily implemented combination provided a useful method for discriminating signals governed by nonlinear dynamics from those governed by linear dynamics and noise. An apparently novel physical interpretation of ApEn also is supplied.
RF Exposure assessment in children head: Present questions and future challenges

The increasing use of handset by children has induced a public concern about possible children sensitivity to electromagnetic fields (EMF). This paper analyzes the radio frequency (RF) exposure induced by handset. It analyses the differences between the SAR induced in child head and adult heads. The study shows that, due to variability, the comparison between two head is not representative and needs statistical analysis.
Adaptive DNS/LES : a new agenda in cfd

We show that using adaptive finite element methods it is possible to accurately simulate turbulent flow with the computational power of a PC. We argue that this possibility should set a new agenda in CFD. The key to this break-through is (i) application of the general approach to adaptitive error control in Galerkin methods based on duality, coupled with (ii) crucial properties of turbulent flow allowing accurate computation of mean value quantities such as drag and lift without full resolution of all scales.
Probabilistic Resource Route Queries with Reappearance

In many routing applications, it is unclear whether driving to a certain destination yields the desired success. For example, consider driving to an appointment and looking for a parking spot. If there are generally few parking spots in the area or if occupancy of spots is currently high, the search may not be successful. In this case, the search is continued, possibly into a different area, where chances of success are higher. We generalize this problem and introduce a probabilistic formalization to model the availability of resources at certain locations. Our probabilistic model considers short term observations (e.g., vacant parking spots) as well as long term observations (e.g., average occupancy time) to adapt to the level of information currently available. In contrast to previous models, we allow resources to reappear after a probabilistically modeled amount of time (e.g., a car leaves a spot). Based on this model, we propose the so-called probabilistic resource route query with reappearance. In order to compute feasible solutions to this query in interactive time, we propose two greedy approaches. Furthermore, we examine backtracking for computing exact solutions and extend the proposed method into a significantly more efficient branch and bound algorithm. In our experiments, we investigate two realistic applications, examine the benefit of our model, and compare algorithmic solutions w.r. t. result quality and computational efficiency.
Comparing two UML Profiles for Non-functional Requirement Annotations: the SPT and QoS Profiles

The paper compares two UML Profiles adopted by OMG for annotating non-functional requirements of software systems: the UML Profile for Schedulability, Performance and Time (SPT) formally adopted in 2003 and the recently emerging UML Profile for Modeling Quality of Service and Fault Tolerance Characteristics and Mechanisms (QoS). The SPT Profile was the first attempt to extend UML with basic timing and concurrency concepts, and to express requirements and properties needed for conducting schedulability and performance analysis. While the SPT Profile is focused on these two types of analysis, the more recent QoS Profile has a broader scope, aiming to allow the user to define a wider variety of QoS requirements and properties. In order to compare the two profiles, we will focus on performability and timing aspects of software systems, by exemplifying the concepts through an example of embedded automation system. The comparative analysis shows that new concepts are needed in both profiles to express time intervals between two arbitrary events. Also, the two profiles will need to reach a common agreement on the specification of complex timing values, especially of those with stochastic characteristics. Another open problem is the parameterization of models, as in many cases fixed values for model parameters are not enough. The SPT Profile goes a step further by supporting symbolic variables and expressions, but the QoS Profile does not have such a capability yet. In general, both Profiles struggle with the balance between flexibility (i.e., allow the user to introduce its own definitions) and simplicity/convenience of expression. The challenge when defining a UML profile is to find convenient yet powerful mechanisms of expression for complex concepts, yet to remain within the limits of the UML standard extension mechanisms, which is necessary to insure that the annotated models could be understood by standard UML tools.
The Underutilized Potential of Teacher-to-Parent Communication: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Parental involvement is correlated with student performance, though the causal relationship is less well established. This experiment examined an intervention that delivered weekly one-sentence individualized messages from teachers to the parents of high school students in a credit recovery program. Messages decreased the percentage of students who failed to earn course credit from 15.8% to 9.3%—a 41% reduction. This reduction resulted primarily from preventing drop-outs, rather than from reducing failure or dismissal rates. The intervention shaped the content of parent–child conversations with messages emphasizing what students could improve, versus what students were doing well, producing the largest effects. We estimate the cost of this intervention per additional student credit earned to be less than one-tenth the typical cost per credit earned for the district. These findings underscore the value of educational policies that encourage and facilitate teacher-to-parent communication to empower parental involvement in their children's education.
Creating E-Business Value And Firm Performance From Supply Chain Perspective

After e-commerce (electronic commerce) bubbled in the new millennium, the trend of information technology thus moved forward e-business (electronic business) manifestly. This is because e-business integrated and valued greater than e-commerce both in the physical and virtual networks. Also, it apparently shows that businesses are planning to achieve digitally tightened integration with suppliers, customers, and employees from the development of information technology in recent years. It means that e-business technologies are widely used by businesses. However, not all businesses are successfully using e-business technologies. Some of them face the failure of e-business technologies use to yield satisfactory value and firm performance due to the much more important lack of significant knowledge or capability to use e-business technologies. Therefore, such researches of ebusiness have been paid much attention by academia and practitioners. This study would initially investigate the relevant references of e-business technologies use and IT integration capability in order to identify the involved relationships. Furthermore, intrafirm integration and interfirm integration are regarded as two significant mediators and then try to verify the influence of abovementioned variables on e-business value and firm performance so as to propose the research model. The results and findings in this study support the hypotheses we presented in the light of 248 respondents gathered from Taiwan top 1000 enterprises. Expect that there is a guideline to follow and the research model would contribute to enhance the success of e-business value and firm performance for businesses as using e-business technologies. Moreover, the results and findings of this study could be as the reference for academia and practitioners as conducting related researches.
Reduced Self-Reactivity of an Autoreactive T Cell After Activation with Cross-reactive Non–Self-Ligand

Autoreactive CD4+ T lymphocytes are critical to the induction of autoimmune disease, but because of the degenerate nature of T cell receptor (TCR) activation such receptors also respond to other ligands. Interaction of autoreactive T cells with other non–self-ligands has been shown to activate and expand self-reactive cells and induce autoimmunity. To understand the effect on the autoreactivity of naive cross-reactive T cells of activation with a potent nonself ligand, we have generated a TCR transgenic mouse which expresses a TCR with a broad cross-reactivity to a number of ligands including self-antigen. The activation of naive transgenic recombination activating gene (Rag)2 − / − T cells with a potent non–self-ligand did not result in a enhancement of reactivity to self, but made these T cells nonresponsive to the self-ligand and anti-CD3, although they retained a degree of responsiveness to the non–self-ligand. These desensitized cells had many characteristics of anergic T cells. Interleukin (IL)-2 production was selectively reduced compared with interferon (IFN)-γ. p21ras activity was reduced and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) was relatively spared, consistent with known biochemical characteristics of anergy. Surprisingly, calcium fluxes were also affected and the anergic phenotype could not be reversed by exogenous IL-2. Therefore, activation with a hyperstimulating non–self-ligand changes functional specificity of an autoreactive T cell without altering the TCR. This mechanism may preserve the useful reactivity of peripheral T cells to foreign antigen while eliminating responses to self.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Role of Attention in the Generation and Modulation of Tinnitus

Keywords: Neural mechanisms of tinnitus Auditory attention Neural plasticity Neural synchrony Cholingeric neuromodulation Hyperacusis a b s t r a c t Neural mechanisms that detect changes in the auditory environment appear to rely on processes that predict sensory state. Here we propose that in tinnitus there is a disparity between what the brain predicts it should be hearing (this prediction based on aberrant neural activity occurring in cortical frequency regions affected by hearing loss and underlying the tinnitus percept) and the acoustic information that is delivered to the brain by the damaged cochlea. The disparity between the predicted and delivered inputs activates a system for auditory attention that facilitates through subcortical neuromodulatory systems neuroplastic changes that contribute to the generation of tinnitus. We review behavioral and functional brain imaging evidence for persisting auditory attention in tinnitus and present a qualitative model for how attention operates in normal hearing and may be triggered in tinnitus accompanied by hearing loss. The viewpoint has implications for the role of cochlear pathology in tinnitus, for neural plasticity and the contribution of forebrain neuromodulatory systems in tinnitus, and for tinnitus management and treatment. ଝ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Rule-Based Learning Explains Visual Perceptual Learning and Its Specificity and Transfer

Visual perceptual learning models, as constrained by orientation and location specificities, propose that learning either reflects changes in V1 neuronal tuning or reweighting specific V1 inputs in either the visual cortex or higher areas. Here we demonstrate that, with a training-plus-exposure procedure, in which observers are trained at one orientation and either simultaneously or subsequently passively exposed to a second transfer orientation, perceptual learning can completely transfer to the second orientation in tasks known to be orientation-specific. However, transfer fails if exposure precedes the training. These results challenge the existing specific perceptual learning models by suggesting a more general perceptual learning process. We propose a rule-based learning model to explain perceptual learning and its specificity and transfer. In this model, a decision unit in high-level brain areas learns the rules of reweighting the V1 inputs through training. However, these rules cannot be applied to a new orientation/location because the decision unit cannot functionally connect to the new V1 inputs that are unattended or even suppressed after training at a different orientation/location, which leads to specificity. Repeated orientation exposure or location training reactivates these inputs to establish the functional connections and enable the transfer of learning.
Real Time Face Recognition Using Step Error Tolerance BPN Image processing

— The ever-increasing volume in the collection of image data in various fields of science, medicine, security and other fields has brought the necessity to extract knowledge. Face classification/recognition is one of the challenging problems of computer vision. This paper presents details development of a real time face recognition system (FRS) aimed to operate in less constrained environment. Firstly, it is reviewed the well-known techniques used in face recognition then the details of every step in recognition process and explains the ideas, which leaded to these techniques. Being widely used in pattern recognition tasks, neural networks have also been applied in face recognition. In this study, we developed a face With the advent of electronic medium, especially computer, society is increasingly dependent on computer for processing, storage and transmission of information. Computer plays an important role in every part of life and society in modern civilization. With increasing technology man is involved with computer as the leader of this technological age and the technological revolution has taken place all over the world based on it. Therefore, the advancement of multimedia technology and the progress of information society have lead to ample increase of image collections in great volumes. To analyze these large collections of images and to acquire new knowledge has lead the data mining communities to take up the challenges. The variations in lighting condition, viewpoint, pose and facial expression have risen to severe challenges in analyzing the face images. The problems with existing technology [1][3] relates to the overall accuracy, particularly in large databases, sensitivity to changes in lighting, camera angle, pose and computational load of searches. The necessity for a new system to recognize new images of known faces and insensitive to nuisance variations in image acquisition comes into demand. The Data mining approaches of neural network [4] has expended its knowledge to efficiently explore these large collections of image. Image data mining is an area with applications in numerous domains including space images, medical images and geological images. The image data mining process consists of four major processes as depicted in Fig. 1. Face recognition is the identification of a person from an image of his face. The need to address heightened security in face recognition and biometrics are the major concerns of 21 st century. Humans have an innate ability to recognize faces in cluttered scenes with relative ease, having the ability to identify distorted …
Scalable Automatic Buffer Tuning to Provide High Performance and Fair Service for TCP Connections

Although many research efforts have been devoted to the network congestion against an increase of network traffic in the Internet, only a few discussions on the performance improvement of the endhosts are recently made. In this paper, we propose a new architecture, which is called Scalable Automatic Buffer Tuning (SABT), to provide high performance and fair service for many TCP connections at the Internet endhosts. In SABT, the sender host estimates ‘expected’ throughput of the TCP connections through the simple mathematical equations, and assign the send socket buffer to them according to the estimated throughput. If the socket buffer is short, the max-min fairness policy is utilized to allocate the send socket buffer. Since SABT uses the measurementbased approach to estimate the throughput, an initial values of the buffer size cannot be determined. Thus, an initial buffer size of the connection is determined by taking account of the characteristics of WWW traffic. We confirm an effectiveness of our proposed algorithm through both of a simulation technique and an actual experimental system where we implement our algorithm.
MammaPrint Feasibility in a Large Tertiary Urban Medical Center: An Initial Experience

Background. The MammaPrint (MP) diagnostic assay stratifies breast cancer patients into high- and low-risk groups using mRNA analysis of a 70-gene profile. The assay is validated for assessment of patients with estrogen receptor positive or negative tumors less than 5 cm with 3 or fewer malignant lymph nodes. TargetPrint (TP) is an assay for assessing estrogen, progesterone, and HER2-neu receptor status based on mRNA expression. A potential limitation of these assays is that they require an evaluation of fresh tissue samples. There is limited published experience describing MP or TP implementation. Methods. Over 10 months, 4 breast surgeons obtained samples from 54 patients for MP/TP analysis. The samples were analyzed by Agendia Labs. The tumors were independently evaluated for receptor status using immunohistochemistry (IHC). Retrospectively, we identified patients who were assessed by MP/TP during this period. Patients who underwent OncotypeDx evaluation were also identified. Results. Of the 54 patients receiving MP, 4 were found ineligible for MP risk assessment because >3 lymph nodes were found to be malignant. Out of all eligible patients, 14/50 (28%) had samples whose quantity of tumor was not sufficient for analysis (QNS). Out of eligible patients with tumors <1 cm, 7/8 (88%) had QNS samples. 7/42 with tumors ≥1 cm (17%) had QNS samples. Nine patients had discordant receptor results when evaluated by IHC versus. TP. Of patients who also underwent OncotypeDx testing, 6/14 (43%) had discordant results with MP. Conclusions. This study indicates that using MP/TP assay is feasible in a tertiary care center but there may be utility in limiting MP testing to patients with tumors between 1 and 5 cm due to high likelihood of uninformative results in subcentimeter tumors. Further study is needed to explore the discordance between oncotype and MP results.
u-PaV: Automatic Transformation of Web Content into TV-like Video Content for Ubiquitous Environment

We propose a system that automatically transforms web content into TV-like video content for ubiquitous environments. We call this system the ubiquitous/universal passive viewer (u-PaV). The u-PaV consists mainly of audio and visual components. The audio component uses synthesized speech to read out titles and lines extracted from the target web content. Simultaneously, the visual component of the u- PaV presents the titles and lines to a user display through a ticker. Keywords and images extracted from the web content are animated on the display. A suitable background color is determined based on the overall impression of the content. The u-PaV synchronizes the ticker, animation, and speech. We introduce the u-PaV and explain how the keywords are extracted and how the impression value of the web content is determined. A test with 50 users showed that the u-PaV is easier to use and understand than browsing web content alone.
Terje Lohndal, Phrase structure and argument structure: A case study of the syntax–semantics interface (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 49). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. x 171.

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Self-employment and Conflict in Colombia

Many Colombians are confronted with the ongoing conflict that influences their decision making in everyday life, including their behavior in labor markets. This study focuses on the impact of violent conflict on self-employment, enlarging the usual determinants with a set of conflict variables. Our estimation strategy compares three different estimates: one from fixed-effects panel data (OLS-FE), estimates using lagged conflict indicators instead of contemporaneous regressors, and instrumental variables (IV-FE) estimates. Our results show that a one standard deviation increase in net displacement rates increases the rate of self-employment by about 7 percent points. Dividing the self-employed into different sectors (services and agriculture), we find that net displacement increases self-employment in the services sector but has no effect in agriculture that is affected by attacks by rebel and paramilitary groups, instead. Looking at the income of self-employed individuals, an influx of displaced reduces sharply hourly income in the self-employment sector.
Asymmetry of the face in orthodontic patients.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the laterality of the normal asymmetry of the human face, examining differences in laterality in relation to sex, growth stage, and skeletal classification. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 1800 Japanese subjects (651 males and 1149 females; mean age, 15 years 3 months; range, 4 years 2 months to 59 years 11 months) were selected. Individuals in the sample were categorized according to sex, one of three growth stages, and one of three skeletal patterns. Differences in length between distances from the points at which ear rods were inserted to the facial midline and the perpendicular distance from the soft-tissue menton to the facial midline were measured on a frontal facial photograph. Subjects with a discrepancy of more than 3 standard deviations of the measurement error were categorized as having left- or right-sided laterality. RESULTS Of subjects with facial asymmetry, 79.7% had a wider right hemiface, and 79.3% of those with chin deviation had left-sided laterality. These tendencies were independent of sex, age, or skeletal jaw relationships. In this regard, during pubertal growth, the proportion of subjects with wider right hemiface decreased (P < .0001), whereas the proportion of those with a wider left hemiface increased (P < .01), despite a consistent tendency for right-sided dominance. CONCLUSION These results suggest that laterality in the normal asymmetry of the face, which is consistently found in humans, is likely to be a hereditary rather than an acquired trait.