Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A retrobulbar meningioma as a cause of unilateral exophthalmos and blindness in a horse

Summary This report describes the unusual diagnosis of a retrobulbar syncytial meningioma in a 16-year-old Thoroughbred gelding. The horse initially presented with unilateral left sided exophthalmos and apparent blindness characterised by unilaterally absent menace and pupillary light responses. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) identified a well-defined soft tissue mass intimately associated with the opticnerve.BasedonthecharacteristicMRIappearance,a meningioma was suspected. The eye was enucleated under general anaesthesia and partial excision of the mass was achieved. Histopathology confirmed the diagnosis and the horse underwent a course of adjuvant radiotherapy. Twelve months following surgery the horse is back in work, no neurological abnormalities have been detected and follow-up computed tomographic imaging of the skull has revealed mild bone sclerosis with no remnants of the mass identified. eve_112 503.510
Messy Genetic Algorithms for Subset Feature Selection

Subset Feature Selection problems can have several attributes which may make Messy Ge netic Algorithms an appropriate optimization method First competitive solutions may of ten use only a small percentage of the total available features this can not only o er an advantage to Messy Genetic Algorithms it may also cause problems for other types of evolutionary algorithms Second the evalu ation of small blocks of features is naturally decomposable Thus there is no di culty evaluating underspeci ed strings We apply variants of the Messy Genetic Algorithm to a application in computer vision with very good results We also apply variants of the Fast Messy Genetic Algorithm to synthethic test problems
Universal Secure Network Coding via Rank-Metric Codes

The problem of securing a network coding communication system against an eavesdropper is considered. The network implements linear network coding to deliver n packets from source to each receiver, and the adversary can eavesdrop on μ arbitrarily chosen links. The objective is to provide reliable communication to all receivers, while guaranteeing that the source information remains information-theoretically secure from the adversary. A coding scheme is proposed that can achieve the maximum possible rate of n - μ packets. The scheme, which is based on rank-metric codes, has the distinctive property of being universal: it can be applied on top of any communication network without requiring knowledge of or any modifications on the underlying linear network code. The only requirement of the scheme is that the packet length be at least n, which is shown to be strictly necessary for universal communication at the maximum rate. A further scenario is considered where the adversary is allowed not only to eavesdrop but also to inject up to t erroneous packets into the network, and the network may suffer from a rank deficiency of at most ρ. In this case, the proposed scheme can be extended to achieve the rate of n - ρ - 2t - μ packets. This rate is shown to be optimal under the assumption of zero-error communication.
Reciprocity, hierarchy, and obligation in world politics: From Kula to Potlatch

The observation that agents and structures are co-constituted is now commonplace, yet scholars continue to struggle to incorporate this insight. Rationalists tend to overemphasize actors’ agency in the constitution of social order while constructivists tend to overstate the degree to which structures determine action. This article uses The Gift to rethink the agent–structure debate, arguing that the model of social relations Mauss outlines in this work sheds new light on basic concepts in international relations theory such as reciprocity, hierarchy, and obligation. Mauss’ social theory locates the generative structure of social order in diffuse exchange relations, what he terms gift exchange, and assumes that actors are both socially positioned within hierarchical relations of exchange and reflexive agents who are able to understand and strive to change those relations. In so doing, he avoids reducing social order to either deeply internalized social norms or instrumental interests, navigating between agents and structures to develop a more dynamic model of social relations. This model of social order permits a richer understanding of hierarchy in world politics that appreciates the experience of domination and the possibility of resistance. It also provides a distinct understanding of the nature of social obligation and the “compliance pull” of social norms, locating their force in the reflexive recognition by actors that they are dependent on shared social relations for meaningful social agency. This points toward an ethics of stewardship that opens up new perspectives on the duties that states and others owe to each other, a duty grounded in an acknowledgment of our mutual vulnerability as socially constituted agents.
Mammogram mass classification based on discrete wavelet transform textural features

This paper proposes an algorithm for early detection of breast cancer. This work incorporates Manual segmentation and textural analysis for the mammogram mass classification. Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) features act as a powerful input to the classifiers. A total of 148 mammogram images were taken from authentic mini MIAS database and under the supervision of classifiers, solid breast nodules were classified into benign and malignant. The classifiers used are K- Nearest Neighbor (K-NN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFNN). It is found that RBFNN with DWT features outperform SVM and K-NN with 94.6% accuracy. The proposed system has a high potential for cancer detection from digital mammograms.
Teamwork Coordination for Realistically Complex Multi Robot Systems

In this paper we examine human tasks in controlling UAV teams by considering their computational complexity in the number of UAVs. This analysis suggests that controlling or following fine grained cooperation among many subteams of UAVs is the most difficult task and probably beyond human capabilities for most sizes of teams. We introduce Machinetta, a teamwork system that automates fine grained level of cooperation through proxies and uses a heuristic approach based on small world networks to allow coordination of large teams. We describe an interface based on the FalconView pfps system that has been successfully used to control small teams of UAVs. We describe likely obstacles to human control of larger teams and introduce a 3 tiered architecture in which a commander performs O(1) control tasks, a group of secondary operators perform O(n) control tasks on a call room basis, and a teamwork system such as Machinetta automates the O(mn) coordination tasks. 1.0 INTRODUCTION Effective military use of robotics will depend on coordination of large teams. Automating an aircraft squadron, for example, would not only require automating the piloting of planes but also leadership functions, support roles, and incidental forms of cooperation such as battle damage assessment or escort functions. To illustrate anticipated scales one scenario proposed by RAND [1] using LOCAAS (low cost autonomous attack system) calls for the use of up to 1,000 UAVs (uninhabited aerial vehicles) in a massed attack. Because some functions such as selection of targets or authorization to attack may doctrinally require human input evaluating the operator’s span of control as the number of controlled entities scale is critical for designing feasible human-automation control systems. Current human span of control limitations are severe. Miller [2], for example, showed that under expected target densities, a controller who is required to authorize weapon release for a target identified by a UCAV (unmanned combat air vehicle), could control no more than 13 UAVs even in the absence of other tasks. A similar breakpoint of 12 was found by [3] for retargeting Tomahawk missiles. Recent AFRL studies [4] target an even more modest 4 UAVs/operator. Similar numbers (3-9) [5] have been found for UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles). To extend these numbers to large scale teams will require breaking new ground in redefining the role of the operator and taking advantage of new forms of automation. Roles traditionally reserved for a human commander such as verifying each UCAV-found target prior to weapon release [2,6] may become infeasible in rapidly evolving missions as the size of teams increases unless novel control architectures can be developed. To extend operator span of control to large teams we must consider how control difficulty for different control tasks grows with increases in team size. Authorization for weapon release after operator verification of each
Spectroscopic Properties of QSOs Selected from Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxy Samples

We performed spectroscopic observations for a large infrared quasi-stellar object (QSO) sample with a total of 25 objects. The sample was compiled from the QDOT redshift survey, the 1 Jy ultraluminous IRAS galaxy survey, and a sample obtained by a cross-correlation study of the IRAS Point-Source Catalogue with the ROSAT All-Sky Survey Catalogue. Statistical analyses of the optical spectra show that the vast majority of infrared QSOs have narrow permitted emission lines (with FWHM of Hβ less than 4000 km s-1) and more than 60% of them are luminous narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies. Two of the infrared QSOs are also classified as low-ionization broad absorption line (lo-BAL) QSOs. More than 70% of infrared QSOs are moderately or extremely strong Fe II emitters. This is the highest percentage of strong Fe II emitters in all subclasses of QSO Seyfert 1 samples. We found that the Fe II to Hβ line ratio is significantly correlated with the [O III] λ5007 peak and Hβ blueshift. Soft X-ray–weak infrared QSOs tend to have large blueshifts in permitted emission lines and significant Fe II 48, 49 (5100–5400 Å) residuals relative to the Boroson & Green Fe II template. If the blueshifts in permitted lines are caused by outflows, then they appear to be common in infrared QSOs. As the infrared-selected QSO sample includes both luminous narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies and lo-BAL QSOs, it could be a useful laboratory to investigate the evolutionary connection among these objects.
Human Capital and Interethnic Marriage Decisions

Common explanations for the generally negative relationship between education and ethnic endogamy include (1) education makes immigrants and their children better able to adapt to native culture thereby eliminating the need for a same-ethnicity spouse and (2) education raises the likelihood of leaving ethnic enclaves, thereby decreasing the probability of meeting potential same-ethnicity spouses. This paper considers a third option, the role of assortative matching on education. If education distributions differ by ethnicity, then spouse-searchers may trade similarities in ethnicity for similarities in education when choosing spouses. U.S. Census data on second-generation immigrants provide strong support for the assortative matching mechanism.
Correlatives in earlier English: Change and continuity in the expression of interclausal dependencies

Abstract A construction very widely used in Old English and Old Germanic more broadly are correlatives introduced by an adverbial or conditional subclause, as in When you've done your homework, (then) you can come back (Old English: ‘…, then can you come back’). Correlatives originate from a paratactic clause structure, making use of resumptive adverbs such as then belonging to the Old Germanic series of demonstrative adverbs, whose syntactic niche was the clause-initial position, particularly in Verb Second main clauses. Paratactic structure in correlatives is diagnosed by the presence of a resumptive adverb. We show that the correlative use of resumptive adverbs is sensitive to both clause-internal and clause-external variables: mood, subclause-internal particles, negation, subject type, subclause weight, text type, translation. Correlatives decline from late Old English onward. Although it may seem tempting to attribute this to the loss of Verb Second in English, it resulted primarily from the loss of the original Germanic resumptive adverbs.
Practical considerations in the design of multiphase pick-ups for contactless power transfer systems

Contactless power transfer systems are receiving newfound attention, although current commercial systems can only tolerate limited movement of the receiver relative to the track (transmitter). A new multi-phase (Quadrature) pick-up has previously been presented to extend the allowable movement. This paper presents a high power prototype of the quadrature pick-up based on a commercial pick-up design for AGV systems. Practical aspects of the design are covered, such as producing a consistent power output with lateral movement, and maintaining vertical clearance between the pick-up and the track.
Arterial alterations with aging and high blood pressure. A noninvasive study of carotid and femoral arteries.

Noninvasive in situ evaluations of pulsatile changes of blood pressure and arterial diameter were performed at the sites of the common carotid and femoral arteries in a population of 78 untreated normotensive and hypertensive subjects. Arterial segments were studied by using an original echo-tracking technique for internal diameter and validated applanation tonometry for local pulse pressure measurements. Whereas mean arterial pressure is known to be identical in all parts of the arterial tree, pulse pressure was significantly lower in the carotid (52.7 +/- 2.2 mm Hg) than in the brachial (62.0 +/- 2.0 mm Hg) or femoral (62.5 +/- 2.5 mm Hg) arteries. Despite a higher pulse pressure and diastolic diameter, the femoral artery had a lower pulsatile change in diameter (3.47 +/- 0.18% versus 6.07 +/- 0.28%; p < 0.0001) and distensibility coefficient (9.36 +/- 0.58 versus 21.60 +/- 1.75 x 10(-3) kPa-1) than the carotid artery. Local cross-sectional compliance of the carotid artery was higher than that of the femoral artery (7.42 +/- 0.46 versus 6.20 +/- 0.28 m2.kPa-1.10(-7); p < 0.05). Whereas age was strongly correlated with arterial parameters at the site of the carotid artery (pulse pressure: r = 0.54, p < 0.0001; pulsatile change in arterial diameter: r = -0.62, p < 0.0001; distensibility coefficient: r = -0.70, p < 0.0001), no significant correlation was observed at the femoral artery. Mean blood pressure was the second factor of carotid artery alterations: the higher the mean blood pressure, the lower the distensibility of this artery (r = -0.36, p < 0.01). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Neurodevelopment in Early Childhood Affected by Prenatal Lead Exposure and Iron Intake

AbstractNo safe threshold level of lead exposure in children has been recognized. Also, the information on shielding effect of maternal dietary iron intake during pregnancy on the adverse effects of prenatal lead exposure on children's postnatal neurocognitive development is very limited. We examined the association of prenatal lead exposure and neurodevelopment in children at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months and the protective action of maternal dietary iron intake against the impact of lead exposure.The study participants comprise 965 pregnant women and their subsequent offspring of the total participants enrolled in the Mothers and Children's environmental health study: a prospective birth cohort study. Generalized linear model and linear mixed model analysis were performed to analyze the effect of prenatal lead exposure and mother's dietary iron intake on children's cognitive development at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months.Maternal late pregnancy lead was marginally associated with deficits in mental development index (MDI) of children at 6 months. Mothers having less than 75th percentile of dietary iron intake during pregnancy showed significant increase in the harmful effect of late pregnancy lead exposure on MDI at 6 months. Linear mixed model analyses showed the significant detrimental effect of prenatal lead exposure in late pregnancy on cognitive development up to 36 months in children of mothers having less dietary iron intake during pregnancy.Thus, our findings imply importance to reduce prenatal lead exposure and have adequate iron intake for better neurodevelopment in children.
Natively Probabilistic Computation by Vikash

I introduce a new set of natively probabilistic computing abstractions, including probabilistic generalizations of Boolean circuits, backtracking search and pure Lisp. I show how these tools let one compactly specify probabilistic generative models, generalize and parallelize widely used sampling algorithms like rejection sampling and Markov chain Monte Carlo, and solve difficult Bayesian inference problems. I first introduce Church, a probabilistic programming language for describing probabilistic generative processes that induce distributions, which generalizes Lisp, a language for describing deterministic procedures that induce functions. I highlight the ways randomness meshes with the reflectiveness of Lisp to support the representation of structured, uncertain knowledge, including nonparametric Bayesian models from the current literature, programs for decision making under uncertainty, and programs that learn very simple programs from data. I then introduce systematic stochastic search, a recursive algorithm for exact and approximate sampling that generalizes a popular form of backtracking search to the broader setting of stochastic simulation and recovers widely used particle filters as a special case. I use it to solve probabilistic reasoning problems from statistical physics, causal reasoning and stereo vision. Finally, I introduce stochastic digital circuits that model the probability algebra just as traditional Boolean circuits model the Boolean algebra. I show how these circuits can be used to build massively parallel, fault-tolerant machines for sampling and allow one to efficiently run Markov chain Monte Carlo methods on models with hundreds of thousands of variables in real time. I emphasize the ways in which these ideas fit together into a coherent software and hardware stack for natively probabilistic computing, organized around distributions and samplers rather than deterministic functions. I argue that by building uncertainty and randomness into the foundations of our programming languages and computing machines, we may arrive at ones that are more powerful, flexible and efficient than deterministic designs, and are in better alignment with the needs of computational science, statistics and artificial intelligence. Thesis Supervisor: Joshua B. Tenenbaum Title: Paul E. Newton Career Development Professor
Organizational Trust and Normative Commitment

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the institutional, vertical and horizontal trust upon normative and normative team commitment. The survey was conducted in Poland on 501 randomly selected employees. The method of multiple regression analysis was used in order to test hypotheses on the impact of different of types organizational trust on the normative and normative team commitment. The results indicate that the horizontal trust exerts the greatest influence on both types of normative commitment. Impact of institutional trust on normative team commitment has not been confirmed.
3 D Theremin : A Novel Approach for Convenient “ Point and Click ”-Interactions in Vehicles

Efficient and intuitive interaction with screens is a topic of ever increasing importance. The same applies for the car domain, where (i) navigation systems use large screens to provide information, (ii) traditional instrument boards are more and more replaced with fully configurable digital screens, and (iii) novel visual information systems such as the head-up display (HUD) find its way into. Capacitive proximity sensing has been identified as promising technique to cope with the lack of support for screen content adaptation by proposing eyes-free, contactless humansystem interaction in a mouse-like manner. While input with a single or dual dimensional capacitive proximity sensing device has been successfully demonstrated, the extension of the same paradigm to support “point & click” operations in 3D is a novelty discussed in this work.
TransCom : A Virtual Disk based Pervasive Computing Platform for Heterogeneous Services

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of TransCom, a virtual disk based pervasive computing platform that supports heterogeneous services of operating systems and their above applications in enterprise environments. In TransCom, clients store all data and software, including OS and application software, on virtual disks that correspond to disk images located on centralized servers, while computing tasks are carried out by the clients. Users can choose to boot any client for using the desired OS including Windows, and access software and data services from virtual disks as usual without considerations of any other tasks, such as installation, maintenance and management. By centralizing storage yet distributing computing tasks, TransCom can greatly reduce the system maintenance and management costs in potential. We have implemented a multiplatform TransCom prototype that supports both Windows and Linux services. Our extensive evaluation based on both testbed and real usage experiments has demonstrated that TransCom is a feasible, scalable, and efficient solution for successful real world use.
Graph limits and parameter testing

We define a distance of two graphs that reflects the closeness of both local and global properties. We also define convergence of a sequence of graphs, and show that a graph sequence is convergent if and only if it is Cauchy in this distance. Every convergent graph sequence has a limit in the form of a symmetric measurable function in two variables. We use these notions of distance and graph limits to give a general theory for parameter testing. As examples, we provide short proofs of the testability of MaxCut and the recent result of Alon and Shapira about the testability of hereditary graph properties.
Construction of 3D scene with cloud robot platform based on intelligent space

This paper investigates the 3D scene construction for dynamic simulation. The constructed scene can be used to make tests for the validation of robot executable plan. A method is proposed for the scene construction of complex household environment based on the cloud robot platform of intelligent space. The data acquisition is achieved with the technology of intelligent space by identifying the information of the distributed sensors and equipments under the environment. And the constructed models are added with corresponding rigid body along with their features such as weight, size, friction. Unity is chosen as the tool as it has good stability. The necessary data will be uploaded to the cloud platform for information sharing. Based on the constructed 3D scene, dynamic simulation can be achieved by collision detection, state acquisition and inference. This method is convenient and efficient.
Chemoreception Scientists Gather under the Florida Sun: The 31st Annual Association for Chemoreception Sciences Meeting

The 31st Annual Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) met in Sarasota, Florida April 22–26, 2009, attracting approximately 600 registrants and nearly 400 abstracts. In addition to poster and platform presentations, the program offered symposia, special lectures, and various National Institutes of Health (NIH)‐sponsored workshops, including one on computational approaches to olfaction.
Homothetic Polygons and Beyond: Intersection Graphs, Recognition, and Maximum Clique

We study the Clique problem in classes of intersection graphs of convex sets in the plane. The problem is known to be NP-complete in convex-set intersection graphs and straight-line-segment intersection graphs, but solvable in polynomial time in intersection graphs of homothetic triangles. We extend the latter result by showing that for