Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tactile Hairs on the Postcranial Body in Florida Manatees: A Mammalian Lateral Line?

Previous reports have suggested that the sparsely distributed hairs found on the entire postcranial body of sirenians are all sinus type tactile hairs. This would represent a unique arrangement because no other mammal has been reported to possess tactile hairs except on restricted regions of the body, primarily the face. In order to investigate this issue further, hair counts were made systematically in three Florida manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris), and hair follicle microanatomy was studied in 110 specimens gathered from 9 animals. We found that the postcranial body possesses approximately 1500 hairs per side, and hair density decreases from dorsal to ventral. External hair length ranged from 2–9 mm, and most hairs were separated from their nearest neighbor by 20–40 mm, resulting in an independent domain of movement for each hair. All hairs exhibited the anatomical characteristics of follicle-sinus complexes typical of tactile hairs, including a dense connective tissue capsule containing an elongated circumferential blood sinus and innervation by 20–50 axons which ascend the mesenchymal sheath. We conclude that this represents a unique distributed underwater tactile system capable of conveying detailed and significant external information concerning approaching animals, water currents and possibly the presence of large stationary features of the environment. Such a system would be analogous to the lateral line in fish, and would be particularly useful in the turbid habitat frequented by Florida manatees.
Spatial resonant control of flexible structures-application to a piezoelectric laminate beam

Introduces a class of resonant controllers that can be used to minimize structural vibration using collocated piezoelectric actuator-sensor pairs. The proposed controller increases the damping of the structure so as to minimize a chosen number of resonant responses. The controller can be tuned to a chosen number of modes. This results in controllers of minimal dimension. The controller structure is chosen such that closed-loop stability is guaranteed. Moreover, the controller can be designed such that the spatial H/sub 2/ norm of the system is minimized. This will guarantee average reduction of vibration throughout the entire structure. Experimental validation on a simply supported beam is presented showing the effectiveness of the proposed controller.
Effect of aspirin and ticlopidine on platelet deposition in carotid atherosclerosis: assessment by indium-111 platelet scintigraphy.

The antiplatelet effects of aspirin and ticlopidine were studied by a dual-tracer method, using indium-111 labeled platelets and technetium-99m human serum albumin, in a group of 12 patients with suspected ischemic cerebrovascular disease. The magnitude of platelet accumulation at the carotid bifurcation was expressed as the ratio of radioactivity of indium-111 platelets deposited on the vascular wall to those circulating in the blood-pool (PAI, platelet accumulation index), 48 hr after injection of labeled platelets. PAI values were measured before (baseline studies) and after the antithrombotic therapies (aspirin studies: 325 mg bid for 22.3 +/- 1.3 days, ticlopidine studies: 100 mg tid for 21.8 +/- 2.1 days). At the baseline, the mean PAI value at 24 carotid bifurcations in the patient group was 15.7 +/- 15.3% (mean +/- S.D.) compared to -4.3 +/- 9.1 at 24 carotid bifurcations in 12 normal subjects (p less than 0.01). We defined the upper limit for a normal PAI (%) value to be +13.9, namely the mean PAI plus 2 SD for the carotid bifurcation in normal subjects and used this value for semiquantitative analysis. At the baseline, significant elevation of PAI (more than 13.9%; positive scintigram) was observed at 12 of 24 vessels, while 12 other regions were negative (less than 13.9%). In the lesions with positive scintigraphic results at the baseline, the mean PAI (%) value from the baseline, aspirin and ticlopidine studies was 29.5 +/- 7.0, 11.2 +/- 8.5 (p less than 0.01 versus baseline) and 21.4 +/- 21.3 (not significant from baseline), respectively. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Effects of Task Complexity on L2 Writing Behaviors and Linguistic Complexity

This study investigated whether task complexity influences second language (L2) writers’ fluency, pausing, and revision behaviors and the cognitive processes underlying these behaviors; whether task complexity affects linguistic complexity of written output; and whether relationships between writing behaviors and linguistic complexity are moderated by task complexity. Participants were 73 advanced L2 writers, who completed simple or complex essay tasks. Task complexity was operationalized as the absence versus presence of content support. Participants’ writing behaviors were recorded via keystroke logging software. Four writers, drawn from groups performing simple and complex tasks, additionally engaged in stimulated recall. Content support was found to lead to less pausing, more revision, and increased linguistic complexity. When content support was absent, more frequent pauses and revisions were associated with less sophisticated lexis. These results, combined with stimulated recall comments, suggest that content support likely reduced processing burden on planning processes, facilitating attention to linguistic encoding.
Stochastic Fragments: A Framework for the Exact Reduction of the Stochastic Semantics of Rule-Based Models

In this paper, we propose an abstract interpretation-based framework for reducing the state space of stochastic semantics for protein-protein interaction networks. Our approach consists in quotienting the state space of networks. Yet interestingly, we do not apply the widely-used strong lumpability criterion which imposes that two equivalent states behave similarly with respect to the quotient, but a weak version of it. More precisely, our framework detects and proves some invariants about the dynamics of the system: indeed the quotient of the state space is such that the probability of being in a given state knowing that this state is in a given equivalence class, is an invariant of the semantics. Then we introduce an individual-based stochastic semantics (where each agent is identified by a unique identifier) for the programs of a rule-based language (namely Kappa) and we use our abstraction framework for deriving a sound population-based semantics and a sound fragments-based semantics, which give the distribution of the traces respectively for the number of instances of molecular species and for the number of instances of partially defined molecular species. These partially defined species are chosen automatically thanks to a dependency analysis which is also described in the paper.
The structure of wages in India , 1983-1999

This paper examines the structure of wages for adult male workers within a dual labour market framework using micro survey data for three years spanning almost two decades. Augmented Mincerian wage equations are estimated for different types of workers – those with regular wage or salaried jobs and those with casual or contractual jobs using a set of human capital measures and a variety of worker, industry and state characteristics after correcting for potential selection bias. This paper finds that the returns to education and experience are significantly different for these two types of workers consistent with the notion of segmented labour markets while casual workers face at best flat returns the returns for regular workers are positive and rising in education level. There is some evidence of significant changes in the returns to education for regular workers over time. The widening of the gap between graduate and primary education and the rise in wage inequality could possibly be a consequence of trade liberalisation and other reforms pursued during the 1990s. JEL codes: J31, I20, J42
The use of epidemiology in alcohol research

Aims This paper presents examples to illustrate the utility and limitations in the use of epidemiology in alcohol research and discusses some promising new directions. Methods Review of literature, concentrating on epidemiological alcohol research with relevance to public health. Findings and conclusion Epidemiology offers tools for assessment of causes and effects of alcohol consumption as well as the effects of efforts to prevent alcohol consumption and its consequences. Epidemiological studies have made significant contributions to alcohol research with respect to public health and public policy. Fixed-effects modelling, difference-in-differences estimation and integrated qualitative and epidemiological methods are promising but underused methods in epidemiological studies. Many epidemiological studies have limited transferability of knowledge to other cultures and jurisdictions.
ECMWF Analyses and Reanalyses Depiction of ENSO Signal in Antarctic Precipitation

The El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signal in Antarctic precipitation is evaluated using European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) operational analyses and ECMWF 15-yr (1979-93) reanalyses. Operational and reanalysis datasets indicate that the ENSO teleconnection with Antarctic precipitation is man- ifested through a close positive correlation between the Southern Oscillation index and West Antarctic sector (758-908S, 1208W-1808) precipitation from the early 1980s to 1990, and a close negative correlation after 1990. However, a comparison between the operational analyses and reanalyses shows significant differences in net precipitation (P 2 E) due to contrasts in the mean component of moisture flux convergence into the West Antarctic sector. These contrasts are primarily due to the mean winds, which differ significantly between the operational analyses and the reanalyses for the most reliable period of overlap (1985-93). Some of the differences in flow pattern are attributed to an error in the reanalysis assimilation of Vostok station data that suppresses the geopotential heights over East Antarctica. Reanalysis geopotential heights are also suppressed over the Southern Ocean, where there is a known cold bias below 300 hPa. Deficiencies in ECMWF reanalyses result in a weaker ENSO signal in Antarctic precipitation and cause them to miss the significant upward trend in precipitation found in recent operational analyses. Ice-core analyses reflect both an upward trend in ice accumulation and the ENSO teleconnection correlation pattern seen in the operational analyses. This study confirms the results of a previous study using ECMWF operational analyses that was the first to find a strong correlation pattern between the moisture budget over the West Antarctic sector and the Southern Oscillation index.
Certificate Validation Through Public Ledgers and Blockchains

Public key infrastructures (PKIs) are of crucial importance for the life of online services relying on certiﬁcate-based authentication, like e-commerce, e-government, online banking, as well as e-mail, social networking, cloud services and many others. One of the main points of failure (POFs) of modern PKIs concerns reliability and security of certiﬁcate revocation lists (CRLs), that must be available and authentic any time a certiﬁcate is used. Classically, the CRL for a set of certiﬁcates is maintained by the same (and sole) certiﬁcation authority (CA) that issued the certiﬁcates, and this introduces a single POF in the system. We address this issue by proposing a solution in which multiple CAs share a public, decentralized and robust ledger where CRLs are collected. For this purpose, we consider the model of public ledgers based on blockchains, introduced for the use in cryptocurrencies, that is becoming a widespread solution for many online applications with stringent security and reliability requirements.
Computational crowd camera : enabling remote-vision via sparse collective plenoptic sampling

In this thesis, I present a near real-time algorithm for interactively exploring a collectively captured moment without explicit 3D reconstruction. This system favors immediacy and local coherency to global consistency. It is common to represent photos as vertices of a weighted graph, where edge weights measure similarity or distance between pairs of photos. I introduce Angled Graphs as a new data structure to organize collections of photos in a way that enables the construction of visually smooth paths. Weighted angled graphs extend weighted graphs with angles and angle weights which penalize turning along paths. As a result, locally straight paths can be computed by specifying a photo and a direction. The weighted angled graphs of photos used in this paper can be regarded as the result of discretizing the Riemannian geometry of the high dimensional manifold of all possible photos. Ultimately, this system enables everyday people to take advantage of each others' perspectives in order to create on-the-spot spatiotemporal visual experiences similar to the popular bullet-time sequence. I believe that this type of application will greatly enhance shared human experiences spanning from events as personal as parents watching their children's football game to highly publicized red carpet galas. In addition, security applications can greatly benefit from such a system by quickly making sense of a large collection of visual data.
Distributed web spider based on cluster and grid technologies

We present our web spider developed as a part of a web search engine with language grammar support. Spider is optimized for distributed memory multi- processor arhitecture, with multithreading core processors. As a part of this work, distributed data models have been devel- oped to optimize fast manipulation and long time storage of the large amount of data generated by process of web indexing. Development of the spider is part of CRO- GRID Applications project, subproject of the CRO-GRID project.
Elevated moral condemnation of third-party violations in multiple sclerosis patients

ABSTRACT Recent research has demonstrated impairments in social cognition associated with multiple sclerosis (MS). The present work asks whether these impairments are associated with atypical moral judgment. Specifically, we assessed whether MS patients are able to integrate information about intentions and outcomes for moral judgment (i.e., appropriateness and punishment judgments) in the case of third-party acts. We found a complex pattern of moral judgments in MS patients: although their moral judgments were comparable to controls’ for specific types of acts (e.g., accidental or intentional harms), they nevertheless judged behaviors to be less appropriate and endorsed more severe punishment across the board, and they were also more likely to report that others’ responses would be congruent with theirs. Further analyses suggested that elevated levels of externally oriented cognition in MS (due to co-occurring alexithymia) explain these effects. Additionally, we found that the distinction between appropriateness and punishment judgments, whereby harmful outcomes influence punishment judgments to a greater extent than appropriateness judgments, was preserved in MS despite the observed disruptions in the affective and motivational components of empathy. The current results inform the two-process model for intent-based moral judgments as well as possible strategies for improving the quality of life in MS patients.
Income Inequality, Intergenerational Mobility, and the Great Gatsby Curve: Is Education the Key?

It is widely believed that countries with greater levels of income inequality also have lower levels of intergenerational mobility. This relationship, known as the Great Gatsby Curve (GGC), has been prominently cited by high-ranking public policymakers, bestselling authors, and Nobel Prize–winning academics. Yet, relatively little cross-national work has empirically examined the mechanisms thought to underpin the GGC—particularly with regard to the role of educational attainment. This paper uses the cross-nationally comparable Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data set to shed new light on this issue. We find that income inequality is associated with several key components of the intergenerational transmission process—including access to higher education, the financial returns on education, and the residual effect of parental education upon labor-market earnings. Thus, consistent with theoretical models, we find that educational attainment is an important driver of the relationship between intergenerational mobility and income inequality. We hence conclude that unequal access to financial resources plays a central role in the intergenerational transmission of advantage.
The Role of the GABAAR α 1 Subunit in Ocular Dominance Plasticity

The sensitive period of ocular dominance (OD) plasticity in the mouse visual cortex occurs around week 4-5 of development. When one eye is closed for a prolonged time during this period, the cortex will become more responsive to the open eye. This shift in ocular dominance is less pronounced before and after the sensitive period. Timing of the sensitive period is regulated by the maturation of perisomatic GABAergic inhibitory synapses formed by parvalbumin (PV) positive neurons. These synapses are formed both on excitatory and inhibitory neurons and preferentially utilize α1 subunit-containing GABAA receptors. Previous literature has shown that an early sensitive period can be induced by stimulating α1 subunit containing GABAARs with benzodiazepines, while this is not possible if the α1 subunit is rendered insensitive to benzodiazepines. The α1 subunit may thus be essential in the sensitive period plasticity of the visual cortex. We tested this by making use of α1 subunit deficient animals. We found that in these mice, expression of the α3 subunit of the GABAA receptor is increased in the visual cortex. PV positive inhibitory innervation of layer IIIII pyramidal cells is still present in α1 KO mice, and the number of perisomatic puncta is equal to that in WT mice. This was also true for perisomatic inhibition onto PV positive soma, as assessed with synaptotagmin 2 (Syt2) labeling. Also the developmental increase of visual acuity from P22 to P28 in α1 KO mice is normal which suggests unaffected timing of the sensitive period. With in vivo intrinsic optical imaging (IOI), we measured ocular dominance plasticity in the cortex of α1 subunit deficient animals. We found that in the absence of the α1 subunit OD plasticity can be induced but is reduced. Our data suggest that the α3 subunit can substitute for the α1 subunit for initiating sensitive period onset. However, specific properties of the α1 subunit could be essential for more effective plasticity. We further investigated the role of the α1 subunit in specific synapses in the inhibitory circuitry using the Cre-Lox system, during the preand normal sensitive period.
A Graph-Theoretic Classification of Gene Expression Microarray Data of Cancer

Microarray is a fascinating technology capable of providing high throughput simultaneous measurement of expression levels of thousands of genes which can accurately represent the state of a biological cell or tissue of interest. For this reason, it is used for many applications including identification of various types of disease-related genes [1] [2], classification of biological samples into normal and diseased [3] [4] [5] or two or more subcategories of a given disease [1] [6], pharmacogenomics and clinical studies, and many more.
Genetic Deletion of SEPT7 Reveals a Cell Type-Specific Role of Septins in Microtubule Destabilization for the Completion of Cytokinesis

Cytokinesis terminates mitosis, resulting in separation of the two sister cells. Septins, a conserved family of GTP-binding cytoskeletal proteins, are an absolute requirement for cytokinesis in budding yeast. We demonstrate that septin-dependence of mammalian cytokinesis differs greatly between cell types: genetic loss of the pivotal septin subunit SEPT7 in vivo reveals that septins are indispensable for cytokinesis in fibroblasts, but expendable in cells of the hematopoietic system. SEPT7-deficient mouse embryos fail to gastrulate, and septin-deficient fibroblasts exhibit pleiotropic defects in the major cytokinetic machinery, including hyperacetylation/stabilization of microtubules and stalled midbody abscission, leading to constitutive multinucleation. We identified the microtubule depolymerizing protein stathmin as a key molecule aiding in septin-independent cytokinesis, demonstrated that stathmin supplementation is sufficient to override cytokinesis failure in SEPT7-null fibroblasts, and that knockdown of stathmin makes proliferation of a hematopoietic cell line sensitive to the septin inhibitor forchlorfenuron. Identification of septin-independent cytokinesis in the hematopoietic system could serve as a key to identify solid tumor-specific molecular targets for inhibition of cell proliferation.
Towards a principled approach to designing distributed MAC protocols

Emerging applications such as cyber-physical systems and the electric smart grid have placed a greater demand for distributed protocols that can scale and adapt without centralized control, while providing throughput and delay guarantees. This paper proposes a formal approach to designing a distributed scheduling protocol. Similar to previous queue-length based CSMA-type schedulers, the protocol proposed in this paper is a CSMA-type scheduler that is throughput-optimal, generates collision-free schedules, is fully distributed, and adapts to traffic demands without explicitly knowing the arrival rates. However, our design takes a more formal approach, where the multi-information (a natural extension of mutual information) between links is minimized, rather than maximizing the entropy, as was done by previous CSMA-type schedulers. Zero multi-information corresponds to a fully distributed scheduler. The formal approach in this paper also admits side information (e.g., a universal clock from GPS) into the framework. Simulations show our proposed protocol has better delay performance compared with previous CSMA-type schedulers.
Bayesian Network Classification: Application to Epilepsy Type Prediction Using PET Scan Data

Different types of Bayesian networks may be used for supervised classification. We combine such approaches together with feature selection and discretization and we show that such combination gives rise to powerful classifiers. A large choice of data sets from the UCI machine learning repository are used in our experiments and an application to Epilepsy type prediction based on PET scan data confirms the efficiency of our approach.