Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of a Multicore-Optimized Implementation for Tomographic Reconstruction

Tomography allows elucidation of the three-dimensional structure of an object from a set of projection images. In life sciences, electron microscope tomography is providing invaluable information about the cell structure at a resolution of a few nanometres. Here, large images are required to combine wide fields of view with high resolution requirements. The computational complexity of the algorithms along with the large image size then turns tomographic reconstruction into a computationally demanding problem. Traditionally, high-performance computing techniques have been applied to cope with such demands on supercomputers, distributed systems and computer clusters. In the last few years, the trend has turned towards graphics processing units (GPUs). Here we present a detailed description and a thorough evaluation of an alternative approach that relies on exploitation of the power available in modern multicore computers. The combination of single-core code optimization, vector processing, multithreading and efficient disk I/O operations succeeds in providing fast tomographic reconstructions on standard computers. The approach turns out to be competitive with the fastest GPU-based solutions thus far.
Long-term psychological consequences of symptomatic pulmonary embolism: a qualitative study

Objective To explore the psychological consequences of experiencing symptomatic pulmonary embolism (PE). Design Qualitative interview-based study using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Setting Outpatients who attended an anticoagulation clinic in a district general hospital. Participants Patients attending an anticoagulation clinic following hospital admission for symptomatic PE were approached to participate. A total of 9 (4 women, 5 men) of 11 patients approached agreed to be interviewed. Participants were aged between 26 and 72 years and had previously experienced a PE between 9 and 60 months (median=26 months, mean=24 months). Intervention Audiotaped semistructured qualitative interviews were undertaken to explore participants experiences of having a PE and how it had affected their lives since. Data were transcribed and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis to identify emergent themes. Results Three major themes with associated subthemes were identified. Participants described having a PE as a life-changing experience comprising initial shock, followed by feeling of loss of self, life-changing decisions and behaviour modification. Features of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were described with flashbacks, hypervigilance and intrusive thoughts being most prevalent. Participants identified several areas of support needed for such patients including easier access to support through information giving and emotional support. Conclusions Long-term consequences of venous thromboembolism go beyond the physical alone. Patients describe experiencing symptomatic PE to be a life-changing distressing event leading to behaviour modification and in some PTSD. It is likely that earlier psychological intervention may reduce such long-term sequelae.
QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE PROPERTIES OF AN INTELLIGENCE TEST : SERIES COMPLETION THE THE LAZAR STAN KOV UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

z This article employs conjoint measurement and correlational procedures in order to study measurement properties of intelligence. The theoretical background of this article derives from recent deveiopments in cognitive psychology and in psychometrics. In particular, the choice of independent variables-changes in working memory requirements and motivation -was influenced by the theory of processing resources and a view which sees intelligence as a conglomerate of elementary cognitive abilities. The three dependent variables (number correct, time to complete the test, and a derived measure representing the rate of working through the test) show support for the hypothesis that intelligence has quantitative structure. Therefore, the use of parametric statistics with these measures is justified. Correlations between the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test and number correct scores from the Letter Series test show a systematic increase with working memory requirements (but not with motivation). This finding supports the view that task complexity depends on the amount of processing resources demanded by the Letter Series task. In intelligence testing, test outcomes are usually expressed as number correct or accuracy scores. With the use of computers for test administration, speed of answering data is increasingly available. Scores that combine correctness and speed information can thus be calculated, providing a new type of measure of performance. What are the measurement properties of accuracy, speed and these new ‘rate’ scores? According to psychometric measurement theory, the Direct all correspondence to: Lazar Stankov, Department of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Sydney, 2006. Australia. Leaming and Individual Dine~neec, Volume 5, Number 2, 1993, pages 137-169. Co~right
Tailoring Pattern Databases for Unsolvable Planning Instances

There has been an astounding improvement in domain-independent planning for solvable instances over the last decades and planners have become increasingly efficient at constructing plans. However, this advancement has not been matched by a similar improvement for identifying unsolvable instances. In this paper, we specialise pattern databases for dead-end detection and, thus, for detecting unsolvable instances. We propose two methods of constructing pattern collections and show that spending any more time constructing the pattern collection is likely to be unproductive. In other words, very few other pattern collections within the given space bounds are able to detect more dead-ends. We show this by carrying out a novel statistical analysis: a large computer cluster has been used to approximate the limit of pattern collections with respect to dead-end detection for many unsolvable instances, and this information is used in the analysis of the proposed methods. Consequently, further improvement must come from combining pattern databases with other techniques, such as mutexes. Furthermore, we explain why one of the proposed methods tends to find significantly more unsolvable variable projections, which is desirable since they imply that the instance is unsolvable. Finally, we compare the best proposed method with the winner and the runner up of the first unsolvability international planning competition, and show that the method is competitive.
Genes Are Often Sheltered from the Global Histone Hyperacetylation Induced by HDAC Inhibitors

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) are increasingly used as therapeutic agents, but the mechanisms by which they alter cell behaviour remain unclear. Here we use microarray expression analysis to show that only a small proportion of genes (∼9%) have altered transcript levels after treating HL60 cells with different HDACi (valproic acid, Trichostatin A, suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid). Different gene populations respond to each inhibitor, with as many genes down- as up-regulated. Surprisingly, HDACi rarely induced increased histone acetylation at gene promoters, with most genes examined showing minimal change, irrespective of whether genes were up- or down-regulated. Many genes seem to be sheltered from the global histone hyperacetyation induced by HDACi.
Asynchronous assertions

Assertions are a familiar and widely used bug detection technique. Traditional assertion checking, however, is performed synchronously, imposing its full cost on the runtime of the program. As a result, many useful kinds of checks, such as data structure invariants and heap analyses, are impractical because they lead to extreme slowdowns. We present a solution that decouples assertion evaluation from program execution: assertions are checked asynchronously by separate checking threads while the program continues to execute. Our technique guarantees that asynchronous evaluation always produces the same result as synchronous evaluation, even if the program concurrently modifies the program state. The checking threads evaluate each assertion on a consistent snapshot of the program state as it existed at the moment the assertion started. We implemented our technique in a system called Strobe, which supports asynchronous assertion checking in both single-and multi-threaded Java applications. Strobe runs inside the Java virtual machine and uses copy-on-write to construct snapshots incrementally, on-the-fly. Our system includes all necessary synchronization to support multiple concurrent checking threads, and to prevent data races with the main program threads. We find that asynchronous checking significantly outperforms synchronous checking, incurring tolerable overheads -- in the range of 10% to 50% over no checking at all -- even for heavy-weight assertions that would otherwise result in crushing slowdowns.
Force-Transfer: A New Approach to Removing Overlapping Nodes in Graph Layout

Graphs where each node includes an amount of text are often used in applications. A typical example of such graphs is UML diagrams used in CASE tools. To make text information in each node readable in displaying such graphs, it is required there should be no overlapping nodes. This paper proposes the Force-Transfer algorithm to give a new efficient approach to removing overlapping nodes. The proposed approach employs a heuristic method to approximate the global optimal adjustment with the local minimal movement. Scanning from the seed node, the approach orthogonally transfers the minimum forces to only those nodes recursively overlapping with the node from where the forces start. We compare the Force-Transfer with the Force-Scan algorithm by mathematical proofs and experiments. The Force-Transfer approach can generate better results.
Culture and Demography in Organizations. J. Richard Harrison and Glenn R. Carroll

Harrison and Carroll have written an invaluable book on organizational culture. They inform us about organizational culture and demography through a synthesis that gives us new insights on what culture is and how it can be managed. The perspective is that of the manager: namely, the manager can change the selectivity and rate of hiring and departures, as well as his or her own socialization efforts. The simulation model they develop is fully embedded in the literature and is a parsimonious model of a complex phenomenon. Harrison and Carroll explain the model fully so that it can be replicated and validated. Finally, the model and the experimental design are carefully crafted, so we can have confidence that the results mean what the authors conclude they mean. In short, Harrison and Carroll have contributed greatly to our understanding of culture and demography and to the methodology of our science.
Understanding the Functional Plasticity in Neural Networks of the Basal Ganglia in Cocaine Use Disorder: A Role for Allosteric Receptor-Receptor Interactions in A2A-D2 Heteroreceptor Complexes

Our hypothesis is that allosteric receptor-receptor interactions in homo- and heteroreceptor complexes may form the molecular basis of learning and memory. This principle is illustrated by showing how cocaine abuse can alter the adenosine A2AR-dopamine D2R heterocomplexes and their receptor-receptor interactions and hereby induce neural plasticity in the basal ganglia. Studies with A2AR ligands using cocaine self-administration procedures indicate that antagonistic allosteric A2AR-D2R heterocomplexes of the ventral striatopallidal GABA antireward pathway play a significant role in reducing cocaine induced reward, motivation, and cocaine seeking. Anticocaine actions of A2AR agonists can also be produced at A2AR homocomplexes in these antireward neurons, actions in which are independent of D2R signaling. At the A2AR-D2R heterocomplex, they are dependent on the strength of the antagonistic allosteric A2AR-D2R interaction and the number of A2AR-D2R and A2AR-D2R-sigma1R heterocomplexes present in the ventral striatopallidal GABA neurons. It involves a differential cocaine-induced increase in sigma1Rs in the ventral versus the dorsal striatum. In contrast, the allosteric brake on the D2R protomer signaling in the A2AR-D2R heterocomplex of the dorsal striatopallidal GABA neurons is lost upon cocaine self-administration. This is potentially due to differences in composition and allosteric plasticity of these complexes versus those in the ventral striatopallidal neurons.
Mathematics Self-Efficacy of Community College Students in Developmental Mathematics Courses

David W. Clutts. MATHEMATICS SELF-EFFICACY OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS IN DEVELOPMENTAL MATHEMATICS COURSES. (Under the direction of Scott B. Watson, Ph.D., Chair of Graduate Studies) School of Education, October, 2010). Mathematics self-efficacy was defined as an individual’s beliefs about how he or she would perform a specific math task or in a specific mathematics or related course. Mathematics self-efficacy was differentiated from self-esteem. Previous literature found self-efficacy in general and mathematics self-efficacy in particular to be significantly related to enrollment, retention, and completion. This study used the Mathematics Self-Efficacy Survey to investigate whether age, gender, developmental mathematics course, or developmental mathematics grade were significantly predictive of mathematics self-efficacy among developmental mathematics students course at a Kentucky community college. Multiple linear regression found that none of these variables were statistically significant predictors of mathematics self-efficacy among respondents. The study discussed the resulting implications and made recommendations for future research and practice.
The recognition based on band tree for blood vessel of ocular fundus

Today, iris recognition, fingerprint recognition, face recognition, voice recognition and other biometric technology are experiencing rapid development. This paper addresses a new biometric technology--optic fundus blood vessel skeleton recognition based on band tree. The green gray scale ocular fundus image is utilized. The skeleton feature of optic fundus blood vessel is extracted at first. After filtering treatment and extracting feature, the band tree represented vector curve of blood vessels is obtained. The band tree matching is later carried out by means of reference point matching and tree indexing. The ocular fundus blood vessel recognition has been demonstrated in this paper to possess high recognition rate, low recognition rejection rate as well as good universality, exclusiveness and stability. With more and more progress made in extracting technology, the optic fundus blood vessel recognition is to become an effective biometric technology.
Twitter Language Identification Of Similar Languages And Dialects Without Ground Truth

We present a new method to bootstrap filter Twitter language ID labels in our dataset for automatic language identification (LID). Our method combines geo-location, original Twitter LID labels, and Amazon Mechanical Turk to resolve missing and unreliable labels. We are the first to compare LID classification performance using the MIRA algorithm and langid.py. We show classifier performance on different versions of our dataset with high accuracy using only Twitter data, without ground truth, and very few training examples. We also show how Platt Scaling can be use to calibrate MIRA classifier output values into a probability distribution over candidate classes, making the output more intuitive. Our method allows for fine-grained distinctions between similar languages and dialects and allows us to rediscover the language composition of our Twitter dataset.
A Novel Remote Rehabilitation System with the Fusion of Noninvasive Wearable Device and Motion Sensing for Pulmonary Patients

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a type of lung disease caused by chronically poor airflow that makes breathing difficult. As a chronic illness, it typically worsens over time. Therefore, pulmonary rehabilitation exercises and patient management for extensive periods of time are required. This paper presents a remote rehabilitation system for a multimodal sensors-based application for patients who have chronic breathing difficulties. The process involves the fusion of sensory data—captured motion data by stereo-camera and photoplethysmogram signal by a wearable PPG sensor—that are the input variables of a detection and evaluation framework. In addition, we incorporated a set of rehabilitation exercises specific for pulmonary patients into the system by fusing sensory data. Simultaneously, the system also features medical functions that accommodate the needs of medical professionals and those which ease the use of the application for patients, including exercises for tracking progress, patient performance, exercise assignments, and exercise guidance. Finally, the results indicate the accurate determination of pulmonary exercises from the fusion of sensory data. This remote rehabilitation system provides a comfortable and cost-effective option in the healthcare rehabilitation system.
Musa paradisiaca l. and musa sapientum l. : A phytochemical and pharmacological review

Musa paradisiaca L. and Musa sapientum L. (Musaceae) are mainly grown in the tropical and subtropical countries and are widely used for its nutritional values all over the world. The fruits as well as the other parts of the plant are used to treat different diseases in human in traditional medicine. This review presents the scientific information on the traditional uses, phytochemistry and pharmacology of these two species. Both M. paradisiaca and M. sapientum are traditionally used in diarrhoea, dysentery, intestinal lesions in ulcerative colitis, diabetes, sprue, uremia, nephritis, gout, hypertension and cardiac disease. This review reports the phytochemicals isolated and identified from fruit pulp, peel, seeds and flowers. A comprehensive assessment of the biological activities of different extracts is included and possible mechanisms and phytochemicals involved have been correlated.
Location of partial discharge sources in power transformers based on advanced auscultatory technique

In the paper a new partial discharge (PD) location technique based on acoustic emission and conventional partial discharge detection method is presented. Synergetic combination of two methods allows obtaining a high accuracy of the insulation fault location and reducing the time of measurement procedure. Several cases of practical application of the new technique for PD location in the power transformers tested in an HV laboratory and in a substation are discussed.
The Processing of Gender Agreement in L1 and L2 Spanish: Evidence from Reaction Time Data

The present study investigates the processing of Spanish gender agreement during an online comprehension task. The linguistic variables examined are the noun class (semantic or non-semantic) and gender (masculine or feminine) of the head and attractor nouns, head noun morphology (overt or non-overt), and noun class and gender congruencies (matched or mismatched). The study is guided by specific research questions considering whether there is an effect of these variables on gender agreement reaction times (RTs), and whether there is a difference in performance between L2 learners of Spanish and native-Spanish speakers. Analysis of the data indicated inconsistent responses to some of the linguistic variables, but that the class of the subject noun was significant for RTs. Results are explained in light of the competition model, and suggest that animacy is a strong linguistic cue for both native and non-native speakers when establishing correct gender agreement.
The Genome Organization of Thermotoga maritima Reflects Its Lifestyle

The generation of genome-scale data is becoming more routine, yet the subsequent analysis of omics data remains a significant challenge. Here, an approach that integrates multiple omics datasets with bioinformatics tools was developed that produces a detailed annotation of several microbial genomic features. This methodology was used to characterize the genome of Thermotoga maritima—a phylogenetically deep-branching, hyperthermophilic bacterium. Experimental data were generated for whole-genome resequencing, transcription start site (TSS) determination, transcriptome profiling, and proteome profiling. These datasets, analyzed in combination with bioinformatics tools, served as a basis for the improvement of gene annotation, the elucidation of transcription units (TUs), the identification of putative non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), and the determination of promoters and ribosome binding sites. This revealed many distinctive properties of the T. maritima genome organization relative to other bacteria. This genome has a high number of genes per TU (3.3), a paucity of putative ncRNAs (12), and few TUs with multiple TSSs (3.7%). Quantitative analysis of promoters and ribosome binding sites showed increased sequence conservation relative to other bacteria. The 5′UTRs follow an atypical bimodal length distribution comprised of “Short” 5′UTRs (11–17 nt) and “Common” 5′UTRs (26–32 nt). Transcriptional regulation is limited by a lack of intergenic space for the majority of TUs. Lastly, a high fraction of annotated genes are expressed independent of growth state and a linear correlation of mRNA/protein is observed (Pearson r = 0.63, p<2.2×10−16 t-test). These distinctive properties are hypothesized to be a reflection of this organism's hyperthermophilic lifestyle and could yield novel insights into the evolutionary trajectory of microbial life on earth.
Terahertz sensing method for protein detection using a thin metallic mesh

A label-free biological sensor, which is based on the resonant transmission phenomenon of a thin metallic mesh, is proposed in the terahertz wave region. By using this sensor, we demonstrate the highly sensitive detection of small amounts of protein horseradish peroxidase. For quantitative investigation of the sensitivity of our sensor, horseradish peroxidase was printed on the metallic mesh surface by using a commercial available printer. A distinct shift of the transmission dip frequency is observed for 500pg∕mm2 (11fmol) of horseradish peroxidase printed on the metallic mesh, indicating the significantly high sensitivity of our sensor.
A Gain Bounded Speech-enhancement Algorithm for Improving Intelligibility ?

A higher intelligibility subspace speech-enhancement algorithm based on a theoretical upper bound on the gain function is proposed. The majority existing speech-enhancement algorithms cannot effectively improve enhanced speech intelligibility. One important reason is that they only use Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) to constrain speech distortion but ignore that speech distortion region differences have a significant effect on intelligibility and the theoretical upper bound on the gain function does exist for speech intelligibility. A priori Signal Noise Ratio (SNR) is estimated in order to compute the upper bound for the highest value allowed for the gain function. Then the values of the gain function are bounded in accordance with the theoretical upper bound. Both objective evaluation and subjective audition show that the proposed algorithm which can limit the values of the gain function to fall within this upper bound does improve the enhanced speech intelligibility.