Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Slower Visuomotor Corrections with Unchanged Latency are Consistent with Optimal Adaptation to Increased Endogenous Noise in the Elderly

We analyzed age-related changes in motor response in a visuomotor compensatory tracking task. Subjects used a manipulandum to attempt to keep a displayed cursor at the center of a screen despite random perturbations to its location. Cross-correlation analysis of the perturbation and the subject response showed no age-related increase in latency until the onset of response to the perturbation, but substantial slowing of the response itself. Results are consistent with age-related deterioration in the ratio of signal to noise in visuomotor response. The task is such that it is tractable to use Bayesian and quadratic optimality assumptions to construct a model for behavior. This model assumes that behavior resembles an optimal controller subject to noise, and parametrizes response in terms of latency, willingness to expend effort, noise intensity, and noise bandwidth. The model is consistent with the data for all young (n = 12, age 20–30) and most elderly (n = 12, age 65–92) subjects. The model reproduces the latency result from the cross-correlation method. When presented with increased noise, the computational model reproduces the experimentally observed age-related slowing and the observed lack of increased latency. The model provides a precise way to quantitatively formulate the long-standing hypothesis that age-related slowing is an adaptation to increased noise.
Sensorimotor Memory Biases Weight Perception During Object Lifting

When lifting an object, the brain uses visual cues and an internal object representation to predict its weight and scale fingertip forces accordingly. Once available, tactile information is rapidly integrated to update the weight prediction and refine the internal object representation. If visual cues cannot be used to predict weight, force planning relies on implicit knowledge acquired from recent lifting experience, termed sensorimotor memory. Here, we investigated whether perception of weight is similarly biased according to previous lifting experience and how this is related to force scaling. Participants grasped and lifted series of light or heavy objects in a semi-randomized order and estimated their weights. As expected, we found that forces were scaled based on previous lifts (sensorimotor memory) and these effects increased depending on the length of recent lifting experience. Importantly, perceptual weight estimates were also influenced by the preceding lift, resulting in lower estimations after a heavy lift compared to a light one. In addition, weight estimations were negatively correlated with the magnitude of planned force parameters. This perceptual bias was only found if the current lift was light, but not heavy since the magnitude of sensorimotor memory effects had, according to Weber’s law, relatively less impact on heavy compared to light objects. A control experiment tested the importance of active lifting in mediating these perceptual changes and showed that when weights are passively applied on the hand, no effect of previous sensory experience is found on perception. These results highlight how fast learning of novel object lifting dynamics can shape weight perception and demonstrate a tight link between action planning and perception control. If predictive force scaling and actual object weight do not match, the online motor corrections, rapidly implemented to downscale forces, will also downscale weight estimation in a proportional manner.
Mad 2 inhibits the mitotic kinesin MKlp 2

The segregation of sister chromatids to daughter cells must be orchestrated with cytokinesis. Mad2 is an essential mitotic checkpoint mediator that arrests cells in metaphase by inhibiting the E3 ubiquitin ligase anaphase-promoting complex (APC) through the formation of an inactive complex with Cdc20 (Li et al., 1997; Fang et al., 1998) until bipolar spindle attachment is completed. Moreover, deregulated Mad2 induces cytokinesis failure at a high frequency. This has been attributed to chromosome segregation errors (Hernando et al., 2004; Sotillo et al., 2007), but it is possible that Mad2 might function directly in orchestrating the mitotic checkpoint with cytokinesis. A key player in cytokinesis is the chromosome passenger complex (CPC), which consists of Aurora B, INCENP, survivin, and borealin (for review see Ruchaud et al., 2007). Aurora B is a protein kinase that phosphorylates several components involved in cytokinesis, and INCENP is a scaffold protein that activates Aurora B. Although the CPC localizes at centromeres in early mitosis, it relocates to the central spindle at the metaphase to anaphase transition (Cooke et al., 1987; Schumacher et al., 1998). This relocation requires mitotic kinesin-like protein 2 (MKlp2), a kinesin essential for cytokinesis in mammalian cells (Hill et al., 2000; Gruneberg et al., 2004). In this study, we have identified MKlp2 as a mitotic target of Mad2. We further demonstrate that controlling MKlp2 by Mad2 is important for mediating proper mitotic progression and cytokinesis.
QoS-constrained Fault-tolerant Routing in MANETs based on Segment-Backup Paths

In the context of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), we consider the problem of identifying (a) an optimal primary path which satisfies the required QoS constraints, and (b) a set of alternate paths that may be used in case a link or a node on the primary path fails. The alternate paths are also required to satisfy the same set of QoS constraints as is the case with the primary path. This methodology ensures two things: (a) when there is no link or node failure the traffic moves along the preferred optimal route, but (b) if there is link or node failure the traffic will be instantly re-routed along a route that continues to satisfy the same QoS constraints, although it may experience some performance degradation. In the paper, we have proposed that the traffic be re-routed along a sub-path that by-passes a segment of the primary path that contains the failed link or node. The identification of the segments is not fixed a priori but is determined based on (a) availability of alternate paths, and (b) so that QoS constraints are met. This approach ensures that if connectivity between a given pair of nodes is rich enough then for any primary path one can always find alternate paths so as to address the problem of link or node failure. This flexibility in identifying the segments can also be used to ensure that the delay in switching traffic over to an alternate path, and the resulting packet loss, are bounded. We have described a protocol to identify (a) a primary path, (b) the collections of segments, and (c) the corresponding set of alternate paths, one for each segment, each of which satisfies specified QoS constraints, and so that the delay in switching traffic over to an alternate path is bounded
Genetic Algorithm-like Approach to Natural Language Phrase Generation - Case of Study Spanish

This paper describes an approach to natural language generation for Spanish language. The proposed system automatically generates and evaluates Spanish trivial phrases using a genetic algorithm (GA)-like transfer approach and n-gram frequency information obtained from the Web. The experiment showed the encouraging results of a 79.06% user understandability of the good phrases generated by the system
Collision Detection Queries on moving objects with uncertain velocity

A new type of the spatio-temporal queries is the Collision Detection Query (CDQ for short). In this paper, we focus on efficiently processing the CDQ on moving objects with uncertainty. Given two sets O and Q of objects, each of which moves with uncertain speed and direction, and a time instant t, the CDQ returns each pair of objects (o, q) (where o ∈ O and q ∈ Q), such that o is possible to collide with q at time t. The pairs of objects satisfying the CDQ are termed the collision-possible pairs (or CPPs for short). We first utilize the Rlsd-tree, in which the spatially proximate objects with similar uncertain speeds and directions are grouped together, to effectively manage the moving objects in O and Q. Then, with the two Rlsd-trees for O and Q, we develop the specialized index traversals combined with three pruning criteria, the location-pruning criterion, the angle-pruning criterion, and the speed-pruning criterion to efficiently determine the objects that may collide with each other.
Rapid uptake and degradation of glycine by astroglial cells in culture: Synthesis and release of serine and lactate

Free glycine is known to have vital functions in the mammalian brain, where it serves mainly as both neurotransmitter and neuromodulator. Despite its importance, little is known about the metabolic pathways of glycine synthesis and degradation in the central nervous system. In this study, the pathway of glycine metabolism in astroglia‐rich primary cultures from rat brain was examined. The cells were allowed to degrade glycine in the presence of [U‐14C]glycine, [U‐13C]glycine or [15N]glycine. The resulting intra‐ and extracellular metabolites were analyzed both by high‐performance liquid chromatography and by 13C/15N nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Glycine was rapidly consumed in a process obeying first‐order kinetics. The initial glycine consumption rate was 0.47 nmol per mg protein. The half‐life of glycine radiolabel in the incubation medium was shorter than that of glycine mass. This suggests that glycine is produced from endogenous sources and released simultaneously with glycine uptake and metabolism. As the main metabolites of the glycine carbon skeleton in astroglia‐rich primary cultures from rat brain, serine and lactate were released during glycine consumption. The main metabolite containing the glycine amino nitrogen was glutamine. To establish a metabolic pathway from glycine to serine in neural tissue, homogenates of rat brain and of neural primary cultures were assayed for their content of serine hydroxymethyltransferase (SHMT) and glycine cleavage system (GCS). SHMT activity was present in homogenates of rat brain as well as of astroglia‐rich and neuron‐rich primary cultures, whereas GCS activity was detectable only in homogenates of rat brain and astroglia‐rich primary culture. Of the two known SHMT isoenzymes, only the mitochondrial form was found in rat brain homogenate. It is proposed that, in neural tissue, glycine is metabolized by the combined action of SHMT and the GCS. Owing to the absence of the GCS from neurons, astrocytes appear to be the only site of this part of glycine metabolism in brain. However, neurons are able to utilize as energy source the lactate formed by astroglial cells in this metabolic pathway. GLIA 27:239–248, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
An Ergonomics Study of Menu-Operation on Mobile Phone Interface

The studies on user and mobile phone interaction have been an important problem in small screen interface design. The present study was intend to investigate the impact of three common mobile phone menu displays: matrix, tree, and page-to-page - and differential organizations of their sub-menus and functions by reaction time experiment. We also used rating scale to investigate users' preference of different mobile phone menu displays. Reaction time for accurately completing these operations was fastest when participants were presented with the matrix menu and fastest when participants were presented organizations emphasizing logical categorization rather than non-logical categorization. The result also showed consistency between users' operating efficiency and mobile phone users' interface preference. Finally, the implications of these findings for mobile phone design are discussed.
Do (and Say) as I Say: Linguistic Adaptation in Human–Computer Dialogs

There is strong research evidence showing that people naturally align to each other’s vocabulary, sentence structure, and acoustic features in dialog, yet little is known about how the alignment mechanism operates in the interaction between users and computer systems let alone how it may be exploited to improve the efficiency of the interaction. This article provides an account of lexical alignment in human–computer dialogs, based on empirical data collected in a simulated human–computer interaction scenario. The results indicate that alignment is present, resulting in the gradual reduction and stabilization of the vocabulary-in-use, and that it is also reciprocal. Further, the results suggest that when system and user errors occur, the development of alignment is temporarily disrupted and users tend to introduce novel words to the dialog. The results also indicate that alignment in human–computer interaction may have a strong strategic component and is used as a resource to compensate for less optimal (visually impoverished) interaction conditions. Moreover, lower alignment is associated with less successful interaction, as measured by user perceptions. The article distills the results of the study into design recommendations for human–computer dialog systems and uses them to outline a model of dialog management that supports and exploits alignment through mechanisms for in-use adaptation of the system’s grammar and lexicon. Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline. com/hhci.
Automatic bounding of programmable shaders for efficient global illumination

This paper describes a technique to automatically adapt programmable shaders for use in physically-based rendering algorithms. Programmable shading provides great flexibility and power for creating rich local material detail, but only allows the material to be queried in one limited way: point sampling. Physically-based rendering algorithms simulate the complex global flow of light through an environment but rely on higher level information about the material properties, such as importance sampling and bounding, to intelligently solve high dimensional rendering integrals. We propose using a compiler to automatically generate interval versions of programmable shaders that can be used to provide the higher level query functions needed by physically-based rendering without the need for user intervention or expertise. We demonstrate the use of programmable shaders in two such algorithms, multidimensional lightcuts and photon mapping, for a wide range of scenes including complex geometry, materials and lighting.
A palladium decorated signal walled carbon nanotube enabled chipless sensor for detecting methane at room temperature based on UWB-RFID system

In order to detect methane at room temperature, a chipless methane sensor in ultra-wideband radio frequency identification (UWB-RFID) is designed in the paper. The proposed sensor is a type of thin film equipped by an antenna and a nano-technique enabled sensor head. The antenna is a planar patch with arc typed edge loaded by lumped circuit for impedance matching; the sensor head is an electrode with interdigitated fingers (IDE) loaded by the palladium decorated single walled carbon nanotubes (Pd-SWCNTs). The performance of the proposed sensor is validated by the analytical and numerical analyses in terms of a predefined scenario where the concentration of methane is increased from 0ppm to 100ppm at room temperature. Results show that, if the sensor is geometrized in the mechanism of amplitude modulation of band-gap, the identifiable sensitivity can achieve -9.32dB; on the contrary, if it is geometrized in the mechanism of frequency modulation of band-gap, the identifiable sensitivity can achieve a little bit high by -11.30dB.
Neural Coding and Entropy 1 Conditional Stimulus and Spike Probabilities

The groundbreaking work of Kuuer (1953) at Harvard lead to a ood of studies concerning the receptive eld properties 1 of retinal ganglion cells, that is the region in visual space (in retinal coordinates) from which the cells' ring rate can be modulated. Rodieck (1965) was the rst to formally describe the receptive eld of cat ganglion cells using the diierence between two suitably scaled Gaussian functions, a narrow central Gaussian function and a much shallower and broader Gaussian. For an ON cell, the narrow Gaussian is excitatory and the broad one inhibitory and vice-versa for an OFF cell. Another closely related term from cellular physiology is the tuning curve, that is the response of the neuron as some stimulus parameter of relevance is varies, such as the contrast of the visual stimulus or the orientation of a line. The shape of 1-D tuning curves frequently falls into one of two categories, sigmoidal shaped, as the tuning for contrast or near and far-stereo cells for instance, and single-peaked Gaussian, as for direction of motion or orientation. Note that for the same cell, the tuning can be sigmoidal in one dimension and Gaussian is another. All of these methods characterize the response of the cell given some stimulus s(t). We can safely assume that to a good rst and second order approximation we can neglected anything about the individual spike except its time of occurence. Of course, we can't detect this time with arbitrary resolution but only within some reasonable level of resolution t (typically, t = 1 msec). This implies that we can characterize the entire response of the cell via a point process and only need to keep track of the times t i the impulses were generated. Typically, these times are written as series of delta function P i (t ? t i). In the following, we will abbreviate such a spike train as ft i g. Receptive elds and tuning curves then correspond to measuring the conditional probability P ft i gj s(t)] : (1) The most complete description of the behavior of the neuron as a function of the stimulus is of course the joint probability distribution P ft i g; s(t)] : (2) 1 A term introduced by Hartline at Rockefeller into the literature, working on the visual system of the horseshoe crab.
Recognition of Nigerian Major Languages Using Neural Networks

Speech Recognition is the technology by which sounds, words or phrases spoken by humans are converted into electrical signals and these signals are transformed into coding patterns to which meanings are assigned. It has two main types: discrete word and continuous speech recognition systems. Each type can be further sub-divided into two categories as Speaker Dependent and Speaker Independent recognition systems. Speaker dependent system operates only on the speech of a particular speaker for which the system is trained, while the Speaker Independent systems can be operated on the speech of any speaker. The speech recognition system proposed here digitizes the isolated words spoken by a speaker and performs Mel Frequency ceptral analysis and other signal processing techniques on the digitized data. The processed speech signal is then passed on to a pattern recognition which takes action based on the type of command pattern received. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used as speech recognition engine. Two different corpora were collected of audio recordings of Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa language speakers, in which subjects read aloud different words. One of the collected corpora contained data with background noise and the other without background noise. The results obtained from simulation can be generalized to cater for larger vocabularies and for continuous speech recognition.
Secure and Efficient Regression Analysis Outsourcing Algorithm for Cloud Server

IT industry has been experiencing the benefits of outsourcing for years, since the outsourcing brings down both the capital and operational expenditure. Similarly, cloud computing provides storage, computation, and other specialized services on demand to customers over the internet at a very generous cost. However, outsourcing data and computation to a third party cloud server is a great cause of concern to the client because a customer physically loses control over their sensitive/classified data and computation. The loss of physical control over the data and computation is the main issue for a client that makes him feel insecure using cloud computing services. The solution to address outsourcing issues, first, the cloud service provider must be honest by providing correct and secure computation; second, the outsourced data and computation shall be verifiable to customers in terms of confidentiality and integrity. In this paper, we investigate the problem of regression analysis, outsourcing problem and devise a secure and efficient outsourcing algorithm which provides security for the input and also provide safeguards to the output result computed on cloud servers. Further, a novel and efficient result verification technique have been developed to detect server misbehavior and cheating with optimal probability of 1. Furthermore, theoretical and experimental analysis has compared with existing algorithm to demonstrate the efficiency, security and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
Effective Crack Control of Concrete by Self-Healing of Cementitious Composites Using Synthetic Fiber

Although concrete is one of the most widely used construction materials, it is characterized by substantially low tensile strength in comparison to its compression strength, and the occurrence of cracks is unavoidable. In addition, cracks progress due to environmental conditions including damage by freezing, neutralization, and salt, etc. Moreover, detrimental damage can occur in concrete structures due to the permeation of deteriorating elements such as Cl− and CO2. Meanwhile, under an environment in which moisture is being supplied and if the width of the crack is small, a phenomenon of self-healing, in which a portion of the crack is filled in due to the rehydration of the cement particles and precipitation of CaCO3, is been confirmed. In this study, cracks in cementitious composite materials are effectively dispersed using synthetic fibers, and for cracks with a width of more than 0.1 mm, a review of the optimal self-healing conditions is conducted along with the review of a diverse range of self-healing performance factors. As a result, it was confirmed that the effective restoration of watertightness through the production of the majority of self-healing products was achieved by CaCO3 and the use of synthetic fibers with polarity, along with the effect of inducing a multiple number of hairline cracks. In addition, it was confirmed that the self-healing conditions of saturated Ca(OH)2 solution, which supplied CO2 micro-bubbles, displayed the most effective self-healing performance in the surface and internal sections of the cracks.
Yoga and Mindfulness as Therapeutic Interventions for Stroke Rehabilitation: A Systematic Review

Aim. This paper reports a systematic review and critical appraisal of the evidence on the effectiveness of behavioral therapies such as yoga and mindfulness practices for stroke rehabilitation. Background. The experience of stroke can have a negative impact on both psychological and physical health and on quality of life. Yoga and relevant practices are promising therapies that have been used with patients with a variety of conditions. In order to draw conclusions on effectiveness for stroke patients, the evidence requires systematic assessment. Methods. A comprehensive search of major biomedical and complementary medicine databases was conducted. Relevant research was categorized by study type and appraised according to study design. Results. Five randomized controlled clinical trials and four single case studies were found. Additionally, one qualitative research study was identified. Studies reported positive results, including improvements in cognition, mood, and balance and reductions in stress. Modifications to different yoga practices make comparison between studies difficult, and a lack of controlled studies precludes any firm conclusions on efficacy. Conclusion. Yoga and mindfulness could be clinically valuable self-administered intervention options for stroke rehabilitation. Further research is needed to evaluate these specific practices and their suitability in stroke rehabilitation.