Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Neural Model of Dominating Opponent Inhibition in Visual On and O Pathways for Robust Contour Extraction

In the primary visual pathway, information is represented in two distinct, complementary domains, namely onand o -cells. In this work we examine how onand o -cells may interact to form the input to simple cell sub elds. We propose a mechanism of dominating opponent inhibition, where a simple cell sub eld is driven by both domains, receiving stronger weighted input from the opponent pathway. We conduct a series of simulations employing synthetic test data as well as natural stimuli which show that the proposed circuit is robust to noise, largely independent of the amount of noise added. This unique property may give a rationale for the representation of contrast information in two complementary domains. Finally, we demonstrate that the model can account for physiological data on luminance gradient reversal recorded from simple cells in feline striate cortex. Based on these ndings we hypothesize that the visual system realizes a mechanism similar to dominating opponent inhibition in order to robustly extract features in noisy environments.
Application in risk detection based on r- limited Voronoi diagram

Voronoi diagram is a very important and practical geometric construction in computation geometry. In this paper, r- limited Voronoi diagram was introduced into the spatial pattern of corporate staff' safety awareness in emergent situation to describe the dynamic changes in the scope of swarm safety perception. Then, the virtual individual potential function of safety awareness emergency was put forward to enhance employees' safety perception and risk detection capability. The simulation results show that with the passage of time, the radius and area of employees' safety perception increase consistently under the guidance of potential function, and ultimately cover the entire region of space substantially.
Transfer of Learned Manipulation following Changes in Degrees of Freedom

The present study was designed to determine whether manipulation learned with a set of digits can be transferred to grips involving a different number of digits, and possible mechanisms underlying such transfer. The goal of the task was to exert a torque and vertical forces on a visually symmetrical object at object lift onset to balance the external torque caused by asymmetrical mass distribution. Subjects learned this manipulation through consecutive practice using one grip type (two or three digits), after which they performed the same task but with another grip type (e.g., after adding or removing one digit, respectively). Subjects were able to switch grip type without compromising the behavioral outcome (i.e., the direction, timing, and magnitude of the torque exerted on the object was unchanged), despite the use of significantly different digit force-position coordination patterns in the two grip types. Our results support the transfer of learning for anticipatory control of manipulation and indicate that the CNS forms an internal model of the manipulation task independent of the effectors that are used to learn it. We propose that sensory information about the new digit placement—resulting from adding or removing a digit immediately after the switch in grip type—plays an important role in the accurate modulation of new digit force distributions. We discuss our results in relation to studies of manipulation reporting lack of learning transfer and propose a theoretical framework that accounts for failure or success of motor learning generalization.
Survey of multidimensional visualization techniques

In this survey we have chosen to present eight multivariate data visualization techniques. We describe each technique by specifying a number of interactions and the most important contributions which were brought to them. Our motivation for this work is to collect the most important techniques of multi-dimensional visualization. Also this work is considered as a first step of our astrophysical data visualization project.
THE ANNALS OF "DUNAREA DE JOS" UNIVERSITY OF GALATI

Presenting the navigation environment in electronic format – ECDIS – triggers a major change of the classic method of cartography and raises up the need to approach a way of producing the charts in vector-like format. The present paper is intended to describe a way of processing information (provided by a RADAR system and a GPS receiver), using Kalman filter algorithms and the elements form graph theory, to provide a rough form of an electronic chart. This can be completed afterwards by adding further information so that the chart can become totally compatible with ECDIS standard and can be used in automatic or aided inland navigation.
Local control strategy of PV inverters for overvoltage prevention in low voltage feeder

With the high penetration of distributed photovoltaic(PV) generations in low voltage (LV) distribution network, it causes overvoltage in feeder. Therefore, in this paper, impaction on voltage in radial LV grid for distributed PV generations is analyzed. Local voltage self-regulating control strategy of each PV converter to prevent overvoltage and improve the high permeability is proposed. The PV converter control can operate under three patterns based on the detecting the voltage at point of common coupling(PCC) and its output reactive power. The three patterns include PV maximum power point tracking(MPPT) and unity power factor(PF), PV MPPT and constant PF, PV limiting power tracking and constant voltage. Based on the designed control strategy, the low voltage network with multi-distributed PV generation model is built. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is effective.
Enhanced Conformational Space Sampling Improves the Prediction of Chemical Shifts in Proteins

A biased-potential molecular dynamics simulation method, accelerated molecular dynamics (AMD), was combined with the chemical shift prediction algorithm SHIFTX to calculate 1HN, 15N, 13Cα, 13Cβ, and 13C′ chemical shifts of the ankyrin repeat protein IκBα (residues 67−206), the primary inhibitor of nuclear factor κ-B (NF-κB). Free-energy-weighted molecular ensembles were generated over a range of acceleration levels, affording systematic enhancement of the conformational space sampling of the protein. We have found that the predicted chemical shifts, particularly for the 15N, 13Cα, and 13Cβ nuclei, improve substantially with enhanced conformational space sampling up to an optimal acceleration level. Significant improvement in the predicted chemical shift data coincides with those regions of the protein that exhibit backbone dynamics on longer time scales. Interestingly, the optimal acceleration level for reproduction of the chemical shift data has previously been shown to best reproduce the experimental residual dipolar coupling (RDC) data for this system, as both chemical shift data and RDCs report on an ensemble and time average in the millisecond range.
Second Order (b,F)-Convexity in Multiobjective Nonlinear Programming

A new class of functions namely, second order (b,F)-convex functions, which is an extension of (b,F)-convex functions and second order F-convex functions, is introduced. Sufficient optimality conditions for proper efficiency and second order mixed type duality theorems for multiobjective nonlinear programming problems are established under the assumptions of second order (b,F)-convexity on the functions involved. Mathematics Subject Classification: 90C30, 90C46, 49N15
Measures of Technology and the Short-Run Responses to Technology Shocks Is the RBC-Model Consistent with Swedish Manufacturing Data ?

This paper estimates technology growth using several variants of the Hall (1988, 1990) method on data for Swedish two-digit manufacturing industries. I first apply and evaluate two different approaches to control for varying factor utilization developed by Basu et al. (1998) and Burnside et al. (1995). Second, I propose a generalization of the latter specification. Finally, the cyclical behavior of the resulting technology measure is studied and the responses of hours and output to a technology shock are estimated using a variant of the standard VAR-approach. The main finding is that a positive technology shock has, on impact, a contractionary effect on hours and non-expansionary effect on output. This finding is inconsistent with the predictions of the standard real business cycle model.
N ov 2 00 7 Spectral properties of entanglement witnesses

Entanglement witnesses are observables which when measured, detect an entanglement in a measured composed system. It is shown what kind of relations between eigenvectors of an observable should be fulfilled, to allow an observable to be an entanglement witness. Some restrictions on the signature of entaglement witnesses, based on algebraic-geometrical theorem will be given. Set of entanglement witnesses are lineary isomorphic to set of maps between matrix algebras which are positive, but not completely positive. Translation of the results to the language of positive mappings will be also included. The properties of entanglement witnesses and positive maps are the special cases of general thorems for k−Schmidt witnesses and k−positive maps, so since the begining the results will be presented in a general framework.
Neutron Star Properties in the Thomas-Fermi Model

The modern nucleon-nucleon interaction of Myers and Swiatecki, adjusted to the properties of finite nuclei, the parameters of the mass formula, and the behavior of the optical potential is used to calculate the properties of β-equilibrated neutron star matter, and to study the impact of this equation of state on the properties of (rapidly rotating) neutron stars and their cooling behavior. The results are in excellent agreement with the outcome of calculations performed for a broad collection of sophisticated nonrelativistic as well as relativistic models for the equation of state.
The value of secondary school quality

Improving the quality of state-funded secondary school education has become a major policy aim in the UK. However, without a valuation of the social benefits derived from public provision of educational services, the rational evaluation of policy to this end is difficult. Utilizing the argument that dwellings near better schools command a price premium, this paper presents results from an empirical exercise aimed at providing such a social valuation of increased school quality. Using a large set of data for England, and an instrumental variable approach, results indicate an elasticity of dwelling purchase price with respect to exam performance by schools at around +0.05. One implication is that society would value a general increase of five percentage points in exam performance by about 450 million pounds per annum. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Detecting Anomalies Efficiently in SDN Using Adaptive Mechanism

Monitoring and measurement of network traffic flows in SDN is key requirement for maintaining the integrity of our data in network. It plays a vital role in management task of SDN controller for controlling the traffic. Anomaly detection considered as one of the important issues while monitoring the traffic. More efficiently we detect the anomalies, easier it will be for us, to manage the traffic. However we have to consider the workload, response time and overhead on network while applying the network monitoring policies, so that our network perform with similar efficiency. To reduce the overhead, it is required to perform analysis on certain portion of traffic instead of analyzing each and every packet in the network. This paper presents an adaptive mechanism for dynamically updating the policies for aggregation of flow entries and anomaly detection, so that monitoring overhead can be reduced and anomalies can be detected with greater accuracy. In previous work, rules for expansion and contraction of aggregation policies according to adaptive behavior are defined. This paper represents a work towards reducing the complexity of dynamic algorithm for updating policies of flow counting rules for anomaly detection.
Research on Very Large Scale Multimedia Services (i) -pµe½s¸¹¡g Nsc 89 -2213-e-011-020 °õ¦ae´á--¡g 88¦~8¤ë1¤é¦ü89¦~7¤ë31¤é ¥d«ù¤h¡g³¯¬îµø ³õ¤h °ê¥ß¥xaew¬ì §þ¤j¾ç¹q¤l©ò

¥Ø«e¤w¦³³\¦h¨ã¦³°ÊºA¸s²Õ»PªA°È«~½è ¥H¤ä´©¤Î®Éºô»Úºô¸ô¸s¼½À³¥Î¤ §¬ã¨s ¡C¦U ºØ²{¦s¤ §³g°ý¦¡ªA°È«~½è ·Pª¾ªº¿ï®|³q«H¨ó©w , ¦pYAM »PQoSMIC , ¤´¦³¤£¨ã¨}¦nªºÂX ¥R©Ê¤ §°ÝÃD¡C¥t¥~ , ¤j³¡¥÷²{¦s¤ §°ÊºA³q «H¨ó©w¹ï¸s²Õ±K«×¦³¤£¦P¤ §¾A¥Î©Ê¡C¦b¥» ³ø §i¤¤, §Ú-Ì´£¥X¤@¤À´²¦¡¸ô®|¿ï¾Ü¤ §³q «H¨ó©w (ºÙ¬°DSDMR) ¡C¥¦¹ï¸s²Õ±K«×¨ã¦³ ¦Û §Ú½Õ¾A¯à¤O¥B¯à¦b·¥ §C±±¨î«H® §-t²ü»P §C¥[¤J®É ¶¡©µ¿ð¤ §±¡ªp¤U«Ø¥ßªñ¥G³Ì¨Î³g °ý¦¡¤èªk©Ò²£¥Í¤ § §C¦¨¥»¾ð¡C ÃöÁäµü: ¸s¼½¡B°ÊºA¿ï®|¡B«~½è·Pª¾¿ï®| Much research has been done on supporting real-time IP multicast applications with dynamic group member joining and QoS requirements. Various existing greedy QoS-aware routing protocols, such as YAM and QoSMIC still suffer from the problem of poor scalability. In addition, most existing dynamic protocols have different group density adaptability. In this report, we introduce a distributed candidates selection protocol, named DSDMR, that is capable of self-adaptation depending on sensed group densities and create low cost tree close to optimal greedy strategy with very low control overhead and join latency. Much existing protocols [7] have devoted to address the dynamic nature of the network. There exists two major categories of ·¥¤j«¬ºô¸ô¦h´CÅéªA°È¤ §¬ã¨s (I) technology to handle network dynamics. The first is tree reconstruction that puts the major concern on rebuilding optimal delivery tree. The second major category is tree maintenance that emphasize fast join, but the result may be suboptimal tree temporally. Many protocols have been proposed using this kind of mechanism [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] and it is the major category we focus on in this report. Dynamic IP multicast routing protocols can be classified into QoS-unaware ones including DVMRP, PIM, and CBT or QoS-aware ones including YAM [1] and QoSMIC [2]. The later is capable of finding the most suitable path for a new member to attach to existing multicast tree while meeting the user's QoS requirement. Ways to find the path can be further separated into two approaches: from new member side, named local search, or from existing multicast tree side, named multicast tree search. Both YAM and QoSMIC are greedy based multiple paths protocols, where YAM uses local search only but QoSMIC finds candidates from both sides concurrently. The major concerns for a good QoS routing strategy used in real Internet include routing efficiency, scalability, and distributed computation. Besides, we are particularly interested on the aspect of group density adaptability in this report since most protocols have biased density proclivity. We propose a density-sensitive dynamic routing protocol, named DSDMR, to achieve efficient management of network resources under constrained and unconstrained delay. We also evaluate our group density adaptability algorithm against other QoS-aware protocols on all major metrics.
Angle control of pneumatically-driven musculoskeletal model using antagonistic muscle ratio and antagonistic muscle activity

Recently, research into robots that coexist with people in many areas such as the service and medical industries is active. Such robots need to be both safe and flexible. To satisfy this demand, a pneumatic actuator is appropriate because it is lightweight and has natural compliance. Our research focuses on a joint angle control method for a five-fingered robot hand using low-pressure driven pneumatic actuators. This robot mimics appearance of a human hand and musculoskeletal structure, which has antagonistic muscle pairs for each joint. We proposed a biologically-inspired control method using the following parameters: “antagonistic muscle ratio” and “antagonistic muscle activity”. We also investigated the validity of the proposed method by implementing it in a one-degree-of-freedom joint model, developed a feedback control system and conducted the joint angle control.
Improving performance of router-assisted transport protocols over variable capacity links

Many promising congestion control protocols use explicit feedback from the network to achieve high performance. These protocols often use congestion signals whose computation requires an estimate of link capacity. Such estimates are not available in networks where capacity varies over time. This paper studies the impact of inaccurate capacity estimates on the performance of congestion control protocols over variable capacity links. As a case study, we focus on 802.11 WLANs. We show that such estimates can lead to either under-utilization or unfairness and network overload. Using a model, we characterize the available capacity of a node in a 802.11 WLAN and then study a method for capacity estimation. Using simulations, we show that the method leads to high utilization and fairness over shared, multi-access networks.
A Dataset for Performance Evaluation of Text / Graphic Separation Methods

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) involves electronic translation from scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into digital images and translating these images into machine-encoded form (say ASCII codes) that computer can manipulate. As the amount of new written material increased, the need to process all in a fast and reliable manner grown. Today there are many OCRs that are designed using different algorithms. All of the popular algorithms goes for high accuracy and high speed. Many OCR softwares e.g. Abbyy1, Iris2, Cvision3 etc. which are available commercially have been developed to cope up with this growth. These softwares deal with the text in scanned documents where text lines are usually horizontal and they are parallel to each other. Many documents are printed in stylistic (artistic) way to catch people’s attention. With the advancement of information technology, recognition of characters and symbols in such documents becomes an extremely important issue. Handling text character in such documents is a challenging research topic, aiming at recognizing characters in multi-scale and multi-rotation environment and overcoming all difficulties encountered. There are printed artistic or graphical documents where text lines of a single page may have different orientations. The text lines in these documents may be written in curved, rotated, or in other stylistic ways. As a result, it is difficult to detect the skew of such documents and hence character recognition of such documents is a complex task. Some examples of such complex documents are shown in Fig.? for illustration. In Fig.? (a), we show a map, where English characters are in different rotation for annotation purpose. Fig.? (b) presents a Bengali magazine document where characters are printed in curvi-linear way for attention. The OCR systems that are available commercially, do not perform well in handling these rotated characters. In the literature there exists some pieces of work dedicated to this problem. Text/symbol identification in complex documents is done in two
DYNAMICAL ASPECTS OF KINOUCHI-COPELLI MODEL: EMERGENCE OF AVALANCHES AT CRITICALITY

We analyze the behavior of bursts of neural activity in the Kinouchi-Copelli model, originally conceived to explain information processing issues in sensory systems. We show that, at a critical condition, power-law behavior emerges for the size and duration of the bursts (avalanches), with exponents experimentally observed in real biological systems.
Prevalence of Asymptomatic Carotid Artery Stenosis According to Age and Sex: Systematic Review and Metaregression Analysis

Background and Purpose— In the discussion on the value of population-wide screening for asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis (ACAS), reliable prevalence estimates are crucial. We set out to provide reliable age- and sex-specific prevalence estimates of ACAS through a systematic literature review and meta-regression analysis. Methods— We searched PubMed and EmBase until December 2007 for studies that reported the prevalence of ACAS in a population free of symptomatic carotid artery disease. Data were extracted with use of a standardized form on participants’ characteristics, assessment method, study quality, and prevalence estimates for moderate (≥50% stenosis) and severe (≥70% stenosis) ACAS. Metaregression was used to investigate sources of heterogeneity. Results— Forty studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. There was considerable variation among studies with respect to demographics, methods of grading stenosis, and stenosis cutoff point used. The pooled prevalence of moderate stenosis was 4.2% (95% CI, 3.1% to 5.7%). Prevalence of moderate stenosis among people age <70 years was 4.8% (95% CI, 3.1% to 7.3%) in men and 2.2% (95% CI, 0.9% to 4.9%) in women. Among those ≥70 years, prevalence increased to 12.5% (95% CI, 7.4% to 20.3%) in men and to 6.9% (95% CI, 4.0% to 11.5%) in women. Metaregression showed that both age and sex significantly affected the prevalence of moderate stenosis. No contribution of study size, publication year, geographic region, assessment method, and study quality was found. The pooled prevalence of severe stenosis was 1.7% (95% CI, 0.7% to 3.9%). Conclusions— Prevalence of moderate stenosis increases with age in both men and women, but men at all ages have the higher prevalence estimates. The number of studies that allowed meaningful data synthesis of severe stenosis was limited.
Cost-aware cloud storage service allocation for distributed data gathering

In today cyber-infrastructures, large datasets are produced in real-time by different sources geographically distributed. These data must be acquired and preserved for further use in knowledge extraction. In the context of multi-cloud environments, the cost-efficient storage service selection is a challenge. There are plenty of Cloud storage providers offering multiple options so, it is crucial to select the best solution in terms of cost and quality of service that meet customers requirements. Due to its multi-objective nature, the process of optimal service selection becomes a difficult problem. In this paper, we study the multi-objective optimization problem for storage service selection. We start from a real world case scenario and build our mathematical model for the optimization problem. Then we propose an aggregated linear programming technique to find a near optimal solution for the service selection problem.
Individualized Goal Directed Perioperative Care – The Way to Go!

Treating critically ill and high-risk patients is one of the greatest challenges in medicine, and it is also a multidisciplinary task. Practice varies country by country resulting in a large scatter in outcome data, which makes the interpretation difficult. Regarding anesthesia and surgery, based on an international 7 day cohort, the EUSOS-study, conducted in 28 countries in Europe including 46,000 patients undergoing inpatient surgery, the overall mortality was 4%, which was higher than expected (1). What is even more surprising that 73% of the patients who died were never admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU). One of the leading reasons of an unfavorable outcome is inadequate perioperative hemodynamic management. Although this statement is widely accepted, yet fluids and catecholamines are commonly prescribed to subjective criteria (2). Several large prospective randomized trials have recently studied the effects of advanced hemodynamic monitoring based perioperative goal-directed therapy (3–7). There is also gathering evidence in other fields of perioperative care that patients should be treated according to individualized, physiology based values rather than guidelines or treatment bundles determined values (8). These results may lead to a paradigm shift in critical care medicine and change our practice from a protocolized “figure based” management to treating patients according to their individual and actual needs.