Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recurrent networks of coupled Winner-Take-All oscillators for solving constraint satisfaction problems

We present a recurrent neuronal network, modeled as a continuous-time dynamical system, that can solve constraint satisfaction problems. Discrete variables are represented by coupled Winner-Take-All (WTA) networks, and their values are encoded in localized patterns of oscillations that are learned by the recurrent weights in these networks. Constraints over the variables are encoded in the network connectivity. Although there are no sources of noise, the network can escape from local optima in its search for solutions that satisfy all constraints by modifying the effective network connectivity through oscillations. If there is no solution that satisfies all constraints, the network state changes in a seemingly random manner and its trajectory approximates a sampling procedure that selects a variable assignment with a probability that increases with the fraction of constraints satisfied by this assignment. External evidence, or input to the network, can force variables to specific values. When new inputs are applied, the network re-evaluates the entire set of variables in its search for states that satisfy the maximum number of constraints, while being consistent with the external input. Our results demonstrate that the proposed network architecture can perform a deterministic search for the optimal solution to problems with non-convex cost functions. The network is inspired by canonical microcircuit models of the cortex and suggests possible dynamical mechanisms to solve constraint satisfaction problems that can be present in biological networks, or implemented in neuromorphic electronic circuits.
Numerical Modeling of Heterogeneous Asperity Distributions Controlling the Growth of Shear Rupture on a Frictional Fault

Author(s): Selvadurai, PA; Parker, JM; Glaser, SD | Abstract: Copyright 2016 ARMA, American Rock Mechanics Association. A better understanding of the strength distributions and the seismic response of asperities failing within a cohesive (or breakdown) region of the growing shear rupture is important in many engineering disciplines, such as, hydraulic fracture and induced seismicity. In the laboratory, a fault is experimentally modeled by a 400 mm × 80 mm × 12 mm PMMA slider sheared across a large PMMA base plate. A pressure-sensitive film was employed to localize and size, and measure normal stress upon contact junctions. Moments prior to rapid sliding, multiple discrete and localized dynamic events (or foreshocks) were observed at a section of the fault that exhibited a sparse to dense transition in asperity distribution. Experiments showed that foreshocks occurred as the crack (rupture front) moved into the resistive patch of densely distributed asperities. We use the results of pressure sensitive film asperity measurements to develop a heterogeneous finite element (FE) model that studies the effect of asperities within the cohesive region have on the expanding shear crack. Slip accumulated heterogeneously during the loading cycle due to the non-uniform distribution of asperities. We study the constitutive behavior of a frictional interface where local slip is determined by the asperities and their ability to communicate elastically. A foreshock (Mw ∼ -7.4) was simulated in a quasi-static manner by instantaneoulsy removing an asperity contact during the loading cycle. The foreshock increased shear stress perturbations to neighboring regions up to distances of ∼ 10 to 15 source radii.
Disparity of serum uric acid threshold for CKD among hypertensive and non-hypertensive individuals

Abstract Introduction Hypertension and rising serum uric acid (sUA) played a pivotal role in the development of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). This study investigates the interactive effect of sUA and hypertension on CKD and identifies the optimal threshold of sUA among individuals with and without hypertension in the Chinese community population. Materials and methods The study included 4180 individuals aged 45–85 years, derived from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) between 2011 and 2015. Additionally, a hospital-based study enrolled subjects in the Department of Nephrology at Zhongshan Hospital, China from January 1, 2019, to December 31, 2021. The interaction effect analysis were used to assess the impact of sUA and hypertension on CKD. We also compared the distribution of sUA and the CKD risk in community populations, distinguishing between those with and without hypertension. For the hospital-based population, kidney injury was marked by a KIM-1 positive area. Results Our results indicate a higher prevalence of CKD in the community population with hypertension (10.2% vs. 3.9%, p < .001). A significant additive synergistic effects of the sUA and hypertension on the CKD risk were found. When the sUA level was < 4.55 mg/dL in the hypertensive population and < 5.58 mg/dL in the non-hypertensive population, the risk of CKD was comparable (p = .809). In the propensity score matched (PSM) population, the result remained roughly constant. Conclusion Therefore, even moderate levels of sUA was associated with a higher risk of CKD in middle-aged hypertensive patients, who warrant stricter sUA control.
EXPRESS: Lack of Effects of Acute Exercise Intensity on Mnemonic Discrimination.

The hippocampus is thought to support episodic memory by pattern separation, thereby supporting the ability to discriminate high similarity items. Past research evaluating whether acute exercise can improve mnemonic discrimination of high similarity items is mixed. The present experiment attempts to extend these prior mixed findings by evaluating the effects of multiple exercise intensities on hippocampal-dependent, mnemonic discrimination and memory performance. Fifty-seven young adults completed a three-condition (control, moderate-intensity, and vigorous-intensity), within-subjects crossover pretest-posttest comparison. We observed no effects of acute exercise on recognition memory or mnemonic discrimination. We discuss the implications of these null findings with the broader literature by discussing the complexity of this potential exercise-mnemonic discrimination relationship, including the unique role of exercise intensity, differences in the level of processing (e.g., conceptual v perceptual) and unique brain regions involved in mnemonic discrimination.
Insomnia is related to long-term atrial fibrillation recurrence following radiofrequency ablation

Abstract Objective Atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common cardiac arrhythmia, presents significant health challenges, and the intricate connection between insomnia and AF has garnered substantial attention. This cohort study aims to investigate the relationship between insomnia and AF recurrences following radiofrequency ablation. Materials and Methods Data were retrieved from an electronic database of patients who underwent radiofrequency ablation for AF. The primary endpoint was AF recurrence. We utilized a multivariable Cox model, coupled with three propensity score methods, for analysis. Results Between January 1, 2017, and June 1, 2022, 541 patients who underwent radiofrequency ablation for AF were recorded in the database. After excluding 185 patients, the final cohort comprised 356 patients. Among them, 68 were afflicted by insomnia, while 288 were not. Over a median follow-up of 755 days, one patient died, and 130 (36.5%) experienced AF recurrence. Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that the insomnia group had a higher risk of AF recurrence compared to the non-insomnia group (HR: 1.83, 95% CI: 1.16–2.89). Further landmark analysis showed no significant difference in AF recurrence rates during the initial 1-year follow-up. However, beyond 1 year, the insomnia group demonstrated a significantly higher AF recurrence rate. As the number of insomnia symptoms increased, the risk of AF recurrence also rose significantly, indicating a dose-response relationship. Conclusion This study establishes a significant link between insomnia and long-term AF recurrence following radiofrequency ablation. It underscores the importance of identifying and addressing insomnia in patients with AF undergoing radiofrequency ablation.
METHODS OF DETECTION OF DISEASES ON WHEAT CROPS ACCORDING TO REMOTE SENSING (overview)

Nowadays multi- and hyperspectral data of remote sensing is widely used in many countries worldwide for agricultural lands monitoring. The issue of their application for detection and assessment of infestation of agricultural crops, damage from diseases and weeds is understudied both in Russia and abroad. Early detection and accurate diagnosis of various wheat diseases are key factors in crop production, contributing to the reduction of qualitative and quantitative crop losses, as well as improving the effectiveness of protective measures. The paper presents a review of up-to-date methods for detecting diseases and assessing the extent of crop damage by remote sensing of wheat using optical imaging systems, the most promising of which is hyperspectral imaging equipment. The identification spectra of healthy plants and the ones with signs of damage from the main fungal diseases as well as the correlation of spectra with the degree of damage are shown. To be able to effectively use the results of diagnostics and detection of diseases, the informational value of the spectral indices of vegetation in the detection of diseases is presented. A table of vegetation indices is given, calculated from the values of reflection coefficients in wide and narrow spectral ranges when determining wheat diseases. The use of optical methods in the monitoring of the main fungal diseases of wheat will accurately identify lesions of crops, reliably diagnose diseases and the extent of plant damage from diseases, and thereby provide support to agricultural producers in decision-making on timely and effective crop protection measures. The results of the review will be used to develop digital technology of early detection and lesion focalization of spring wheat and other agricultural crops.
Idaho Habitat/Natural Production Monitoring Part I, 1995 Annual Report.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) has been monitoring trends in juvenile spring and summer chinook salmon, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, and steelhead trout, O. mykiss, populations in the Salmon, Clearwater, and lower Snake River drainages for the past 12 years. This work is the result of a program to protect, mitigate, and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the development and operation of hydroelectric power plants on the Columbia River. Project 91-73, Idaho Natural Production Monitoring, consists of two subprojects: General Monitoring and Intensive Monitoring. This report updates and summarizes data through 1995 for the General Parr Monitoring (GPM) database to document status and trends of classes of wild and natural chinook salmon and steelhead trout populations. A total of 281 stream sections were sampled in 1995 to monitor trends in spring and summer chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha and steelhead trout O. mykiss parr populations in Idaho. Percent carrying capacity and density estimates were summarized for 1985--1995 by different classes of fish: wild A-run steelhead trout, wild B-run steelhead trout, natural A-run steelhead trout, natural B-run steelhead trout, wild spring and summer chinook salmon, and natural spring and summer chinook salmon. The 1995 data were also summarized by subbasinsmore » as defined in Idaho Department of Fish and Game`s 1992--1996 Anadromous Fish Management Plan. « less
Family-friendly work conditions and well-being among Malaysian women

Background: Although participation in paid work improves women’s quality of life and well-being, the health benefits decline for women with young children. Implementing family-friendly work conditions is one strategy for improving working women’s well-being, especially those with competing unpaid work responsibilities. Objective: This study investigated the extent to which accessibility and use of 11 specific family-friendly work conditions were associated with physical health, anxiety and depression in Malaysian women with young children. Design: A cross-sectional design using a retrospective self-complete, anonymous, online survey was conducted between March and October 2021. Methods: Women with a child aged 5 years or less (N = 190) completed an online survey measuring their exposure (availability and use) to 11 specific family-friendly work conditions, and their physical health, anxiety, and depression. The sample included women who were currently and recently working and with both formal and informal employment. Results: After accounting for potential confounders, women who used paid maternity leave have a lower likelihood of having anxiety symptoms. Conclusion: Future research is needed to extend the findings from this study by over-sampling women who are informally employed and not currently working. Policy creation and development processes, including research and decision-making, should be led by and inclusive of women. For example, research funding could be allocated to ‘lived experience’ research that privileges the co-design of research with consumers. Based on these findings, the extent to which family-friendly work conditions fulfill their intent to improve the well-being for working women requires further critique.
A metatranscriptomics strategy for efficient characterization of the microbiome in human tissues with low microbial biomass

ABSTRACT The high background of host RNA poses a major challenge to metatranscriptome analysis of human samples. Hence, metatranscriptomics has been mainly applied to microbe-rich samples, while its application in human tissues with low ratio of microbial to host cells has yet to be explored. Since there is no computational workflow specifically designed for the taxonomic and functional analysis of this type of samples, we propose an effective metatranscriptomics strategy to accurately characterize the microbiome in human tissues with a low ratio of microbial to host content. We experimentally generated synthetic samples with well-characterized bacterial and host cell compositions, and mimicking human samples with high and low microbial loads. These synthetic samples were used for optimizing and establishing the workflow in a controlled setting. Our results show that the integration of the taxonomic analysis of optimized Kraken 2/Bracken with the functional analysis of HUMAnN 3 in samples with low microbial content, enables the accurate identification of a large number of microbial species with a low false-positive rate, while improving the detection of microbial functions. The effectiveness of our metatranscriptomics workflow was demonstrated in synthetic samples, simulated datasets, and most importantly, human gastric tissue specimens, thus providing a proof of concept for its applicability on mucosal tissues of the gastrointestinal tract. The use of an accurate and reliable metatranscriptomics approach for human tissues with low microbial content will expand our understanding of the functional activity of the mucosal microbiome, uncovering critical interactions between the microbiome and the host in health and disease.
Simbios Project 1999 Annual Report

The purpose of this technical memorandum is to provide current documentation of the Sensor Intercomparison and Merger for Biological and Interdisciplinary Oceanic Studies (SIMBIOS) Project activities, NASA Research Announcement (NRA) research status, satellite data processing, data product validation, and field calibration. This documentation is necessary to ensure that critical information is related to the scientific community and NASA management. This critical information includes the technical difficulties and challenges of combining ocean color data from an array of independent satellite systems to form consistent and accurate global bio-optical time series products. This technical report is not meant as a substitute for scientific literature. Instead, it will provide a ready and responsive vehicle for the multitude of technical reports issued by an operational project.
Research Statement of Yisong Yue

My core research interests lie in statistical machine learning, with a primary application focus in the field of information retrieval and access. In particular, I am interested in developing principled learning methods with theoretical foundations that will not only lead to practical systems of immediate benefit, but also push our ability to reason about the increasingly sophisticated information systems of the future. More broadly, I am interested in developing general learning approaches that can be applied to automate prediction tasks in a wide range of application domains. Managing digital information is a growing problem in every application domain, ranging from integrating biological data, browsing digital libraries, organizing personal content, searching in specialty domains, or filtering news feeds or Twitter updates. Current design methodologies are labor intensive and require extensive hands-on expertise. This inherently limits the scope and reasoning power of the systems that we can efficiently deploy today. Moving forward, I am particularly interested in developing and applying new machine learning approaches. Existing learning approaches have proven to be invaluable with their ability to combine coarse human feedback (e.g., “this document is relevant”) with statistical regularities of the prediction domain in order to derive effective models. This is evidenced by their widespread commercial adoption, and I am convinced that progress in machine learning will be crucial in understanding and overcoming the frontier challenges involved in developing the next generation of information access systems. In future work, I intend to build upon and extend my current line of research in exploring fundamental issues in machine learning. Two fundamental and inter-related themes in machine learning research are designing efficient methods for complex prediction domains, and leveraging new forms of training data or feedback. Broadly speaking, complex prediction refers to any task beyond simple binary classification or regression (e.g., predicting a ranking over a list of documents, a parse tree for a sentence, or an alignment between a pair of proteins). Efficient approaches typically leverage the inherent structure embedded within these prediction domains. With regards to leveraging new feedback, I am interested in developing systems that can efficiently adapt to new domains by learning through human interaction. This is an attractive approach since observed user behavior (e.g., clicks on search results, movement patterns tracked by cell phones, or behavioral patterns observed in “smart” homes) is both cheap to collect and naturally representative of the target user population (e.g., web users, individuals, or family-sized groups). My dissertation demonstrates new progress in both of these areas, and I am confident that this line of research has not only high intellectual merit, but also great potential for applications in information access and beyond.
Late-Neoproterozoic ferroan granitoids of the Transversal subprovince, Borborema Province, NE Brazil: petrogenesis and geodynamic implications

ABSTRACT Ferroan granites (585–530 Ma) have been described in the Transversal subprovince of the Borborema Province (BP) and in Pan-African counterparts. They comprise two groups: Group 1 – slightly peraluminous to metaluminous, alkali-calcic rocks, with low Fe# mica and crystallized under intermediate fO2 (Aroeiras Complex and Serra Branca – Coxixola dike swarms); Group 2 metaluminous to slightly peraluminous, alkalic to alkali-calcic rocks, with high Fe# mica and crystallized under low fO2 (Queimadas and Prata intrusions). Group 1 marks transition from collision to transcurrence (ca. 585 Ma), or from transcurrence to uplift and transtension (ca. 545 Ma). Group 2 – represents granitoids intruded during extensional tectonics in transcurrent setting (ca. 550 Ma), or coeval with deposition of transtensional intracratonic basins (ca. 530 Ma). Hf and Nd model ages are older than 2.0 Ga, suggesting that the ferroan granitoids involved partial melting of Paleoproterozoic rocks. The data presented in this paper show that the ferroan magmatism was widespread in the BP and its counterparts in Africa in pre-drift reconstructions.
The Simple4All entry to the Blizzard Challenge 2013

We describe the synthetic voices entered into the 2013 Blizzard Challenge by the SIMPLE4ALL consortium. The 2013 Blizzard Challenge presents an opportunity to test and benchmark some of the tools we have been developing to address two problems of interest: 1) how best to learn from plentiful ‘found’ data, and 2) how to produce systems in arbitrary new languages with minimal annotated data and language-specific expertise on the part of the system builders. We here explain how our tools were used to address these problems on the different tasks of the challenge, and provide some discussion of the evaluation results. Index Terms: statistical parametric speech synthesis, speech alignment, speech segmentation, style diarisation, unsupervised learning, vector space model, audiobook data, glottal inverse filtering, glottal flow pulse library
A Guide to Conducting a Systematic Literature Review of Information Systems

Levy and Ellis (2006) and Webster and Watson (2002) lament the fact that information systems (IS) scholars tend to be unaware of the need for structure in literature reviews. Even today, the rigorous, standardized methodology for conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) that has developed from the health sciences and other fields is virtually unknown in IS research. In this paper, we adapt Fink's (2005, p. 3) definition of a research literature review as our operative definition of a systematic literature review: "a systematic, explicit, [comprehensive, (p. 17)] and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners. " Although there exists an abundance of guides to conducting such reviews in other research fields, none entirely meet the unique needs of IS researchers. In response to this shortage of guides, we present here the features and value of a systematic literature review, and adapt the methodology to the particular context of IS research.
Design of a Resilient Information System for Disaster Response : Lessons from municipal government systems under the Great East Japan Earthquake crisis(本文)

A structured field surveys of ICT divisions in 13 municipalities in areas devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami on March 11, 2011 revealed 1) lack of ICT business continuity plans (BCP), 2) importance (and lack of) comprehensive data backup policy, 3) necessity to deal with diverse situations, 4) importance of organizing collaborative network among governments and private sectors, 5) importance of securing power and network supply among many other observations. Recommendations are made based on the findings on how to formulate BCP that can deal with diverse range of situations, and policies in creating collaborative network of diverse range of organizations to protect vital information infrastructure in crisis. Strong interests were shown toward the use of cloud technologies for future backup purposes. Appendix-2: Working paper of the interviews to municipalities on the Great East Japan Earthquake