Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social lives of adult mysore slender lorises (Loris lydekkerianus lydekkerianus)

Despite the persistent use of the word “solitary” to describe nocturnal primate social behavior, increasing numbers of studies are revealing sophisticated levels of social interactions among nocturnal primates. This study explores the relationships among 11 adult Mysore slender lorises (Loris lydekkerianus lydekkerianus) studied over 101/2 months in Tamil Nadu, India. When all observations regarding dependent offspring are excluded, the animals spent on average 38% of their activity in various forms of neutral, affiliative, and agonistic behaviors. Affiliative behaviors were the most common type of social interaction, and males in general were more social than females. Low values for Cole's index (CI) of association emphasize that females rarely interacted with same‐sex conspecifics, but commonly interacted with males. In turn, males also formed strong affiliative relationships with other adult males. This index also indicates that levels of affiliation are strongest among animals that share sleeping sites. The Hinde index (HI) suggests that males control proximity to females more than the reverse. A female's tolerance of multiple males in her home range and at a sleeping site may be related to high spatial variability of food resources. Such resources may constrain females with costly reproductive strategies (up to two sets of twins per annum) to a small home range. With their larger home ranges, males may be able to monopolize females by initiating social interactions, and also provide a benefit to females by contributing to parental care. Am. J. Primatol. 68:1171–1182, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Changes of Hand Switching Costs during Bimanual Sequential Learning

Many tasks in our daily life demand not only the use of different fingers of one hand in a serial fashion, but also to alternate from one hand to the other. Here, we investigated performance in a bimanual serial reaction time task (SRTT) with particular emphasis on learning-related changes in reaction time (RT) for consecutive button presses for homologous index- and middle fingers. The bimanual SRTT consisted of sequential button presses either with the left or right index- and middle-finger to a series of visual letters displayed on a computer screen. Each letter was assigned a specific button press with one of four fingers. Two outcome measures were investigated: (a) global sequence learning as defined by the time needed to complete a 15-letter SRTT sequence and (b) changes in hand switch costs across learning. We found that bimanual SRTT resulted in a global decrease in RT during the time course of learning that persisted for at least two weeks. Furthermore, RT to a button press showed an increase when the previous button press was associated with another hand as opposed to the same hand. This increase in RT was defined as switch costs. Hand switch costs significantly decreased during the time course of learning, and remained stable over a time of approximately two weeks. This study provides evidence for modulations of switch costs during bimanual sequence learning, a finding that might have important implications for theories of bimanual coordination and learning.
Sulfate Transport in Penicillium chrysogenum: Cloning and Characterization of the sutAand sutB Genes

ABSTRACT In industrial fermentations, Penicillium chrysogenumuses sulfate as the source of sulfur for the biosynthesis of penicillin. By a PCR-based approach, two genes, sutA andsutB, whose encoded products belong to the SulP superfamily of sulfate permeases were isolated. Transformation of a sulfate uptake-negative sB3 mutant of Aspergillus nidulans with the sutB gene completely restored sulfate uptake activity. The sutA gene did not complement the A. nidulans sB3 mutation, even when expressed under control of the sutB promoter. Expression of both sutA and sutB in P. chrysogenum is induced by growth under sulfur starvation conditions. However, sutA is expressed to a much lower level than is sutB. Disruption of sutB resulted in a loss of sulfate uptake ability. Overall, the results show that SutB is the major sulfate permease involved in sulfate uptake byP. chrysogenum.
Dynamics of alpine ranges and areas utilized by introduced caribou populations on the

Alpine vegetation in the Kenai Peninsula, southcentral Alaska, was studied in relation to the winter grazing of introduced caribou populations. Vegetation structure differed more from area to area than did the measured environmental variables. Thus, biotic differences (including presence of caribou) may play a more important role in vegetation variation than does the physical environment. Lichens varied more from area to area than did vascular plants. Increased caribou density is associated with a decrease in preferred lichen species and increasing dominance of vascular plants. These results were also compared in a 10-year trends study involving a portion of these ranges.
Hierarchical Variational Models ( Appendix )

Relationship to empirical Bayes and RL. The augmentation with a variational prior has strong ties to empirical Bayesian methods, which use data to estimate hyperparameters of a prior distribution (Robbins, 1964; Efron & Morris, 1973). In general, empirical Bayes considers the fully Bayesian treatment of a hyperprior on the original prior—here, the variational prior on the original meanfield—and proceeds to integrate it out. As this is analytically intractable, much work has been on parametric estimation, which seek point estimates rather than the whole distribution encoded by the hyperprior. We avoid this at the level of the hyperprior (variational prior) via the hierarchical ELBO; however, our procedure can be viewed in this framework at one higher level. That is, we seek a point estimate of the "variational hyperprior" which governs the parameters on the variational prior.
Impact of Energy Consumption on Multipath TCP Enabled Mobiles

Multiple accesses are common for most mobile devices today. This technological advance opens up a new design space for improving the communication performance of mobile devices. Multipath TCP is a TCP extension that enables using multiple network paths between two end systems for a single TCP connection, increasing performance and reliability. Meanwhile, when operating multiple active interfaces, multipath-TCP also consumes substantial more power and drains out bettery faster than using one interface. Thus, enabling Multipath TCP on mobile devices brings in new challenges. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the underlying design choices given by the Multipath TCP. In particular, we theoretically formulate the rela- tion between performance (throughput) and energy consumption for Multipath TCP. We find that sometime the throughput and energy consumption can be concurrently improved.
Use of Polya distributions in approximate solutions to nonstationary M/M/s queues

which implement his algorithm in detail. Our approach departs from Nutt's in its basis in discrete-event simulation. As in sequential simulation there are cases where discrete-event approaches are preferable to time driven simulations and there are cases where the reverse is true. The running time of the distributed algorithm depends upon the model being simulated. It is known empirically [15] that the distributed scheme approaches ideal performance when there are no multiple loops in the network. Extensive experimentation with various models is necessary in order to predict the performance of the proposed algorithm.
A CAD tool for an array of differential oscillators coupled through a broadband network

A new expression of the equations describing the locked states of two oscillators coupled through a resistor is presented in this article. This theory has led to the elaboration of a CAD tool which provides, in a short simulation time, the frequency locking region of two coupled differential oscillators. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2012.
An SC-FDMA inter-cell interference suppression method based on a time-varying filter

In an SC-FDMA uplink network, where the universal frequency reuse factor is one, heavy inter-cell interference in the same sub-band between adjacent cells is induced and it significantly degrades the system performance. Current interference suppression methods focus on power control and resource allocation without considering the signal's time-frequency distribution characteristics. Different from previous works, this paper proposes an SC-FDMA inter-cell interference suppression method based on the time-frequency distribution of the SC-FDMA signal. The proposed method adopts a linear time-varying filter to process the received signal, and the pass region of the filter could be obtained from the time frequency distribution of the received signal with the interference power threshold constraints. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the SINR performance of the network.
Publication and non-publication of drug trial results: a 10-year cohort of trials in Norwegian general practice

Objectives Previously, we identified a 10-year cohort of protocols from applications to the Norwegian Medicines Agency 1998–2007, consisting of 196 drug trials in general practice. The aim of this study was to examine whether trial results were published and whether trial funding and conflicts of interest were reported. Design Cohort study of trials with systematic searches for published results. Setting Clinical drug trials in Norwegian general practice. Methods We performed systematic literature searches of MEDLINE, Embase and CENTRAL to identify publications originating from each trial using characteristics such as test drug, comparator and patient groups as search terms. When no publication was identified, we contacted trial sponsors for information regarding trial completion and reference to any publications. Main outcome measures We determined the frequency of publication of trial results and trial characteristics associated with publication of results. Results Of the 196 trials, 5 were never started. Of the remaining 191 trials, 71% had results published in a journal, 11% had results publicly available elsewhere and 18% of trials had no results available. Publication was more common among trials with an active comparator drug (χ2 test, p=0.040), with a larger number of patients (total sample size≥median, p=0.010) and with a longer trial period (duration≥median, p=0.025). Trial funding was reported in 85% of publications and increased over time, as did reporting of conflicts of interest among authors. Among the 134 main journal articles from the trials, 60% presented statistically significant results for the investigational drug, and the conclusion of the article was favourable towards the test drug in 78% of papers. Conclusions We did not identify any journal publication of results for 29% of the general practice drug trials. Trials with an active comparator, larger and longer trials were more likely to be published.
A quality-of-service architecture for future grid computing applications

The next generation grid applications demand grid middleware for a flexible negotiation mechanism supporting various ways of quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. In this context, a QoS guarantee covers simultaneous allocations of various kinds of different resources, such as processor runtime, storage capacity, or network bandwidth, which are specified in the form of service level agreements (SLA). Currently, a gap exists between the capabilities of grid middleware and the underlying resource management systems concerning their support for QoS and SLA negotiation. In this paper we present an approach which closes this gap. Introducing the architecture of the virtual resource manager, we highlight its main QoS management features like run-time responsibility, co-allocation, and fault tolerance.
Parallel-Bit Stream for Securing Iris Recognition

Biometrics-based authentication schemes have usability advantages over traditional password-based authentication schemes. However, biometrics raises several privacy concerns, it has disadvantages comparing to traditional password in which it is not secured and non revocable. In this paper, we propose a fast method for securing revocable iris template using parallel-bit stream watermarking to overcome these problems. Experimental results prove that the proposed method has low computation time and is available to protect iris template and enhance the security of the iris recognition system.
Capture numbers in the presence of repulsive adsorbate interactions

Capture numbers are used in models of nucleation and growth on surfaces, and have been widely applied to predict nucleation densities and other quantities via rate equations. In conventional nucleation theory, much effort has historically been expended on obtaining good expressions for capture numbers in the diffusion-limited case. However, recent experiments and calculations have shown that weak repulsive interactions between adsorbate atoms on relatively smooth (e.g., close-packed metal) surfaces may shift nucleation kinetics towards the attachment-limited case. This paper clarifies the distinctions between diffusion- and attachment-limited kinetics, and emphasizes the increased importance of the transient nucleation regime in the latter case, which is due to a combination of delayed nucleation and reduced capture. The consequences of long-range repulsive adsorbate interactions for the form and values of the capture numbers are explored, and the effects of attachment-limited kinetics in relation to low-temperature deposition and annealing experiments are demonstrated. An approximate interpolation scheme between attachment- and diffusion-limited kinetics is proposed, and tested against kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. Using this scheme to interpret recent scanning-tunneling microscopy results on Cu/Cu(111), lower and upper bounds on the maximum adatom-adatom potential repulsive energy of 10 and 14 meV are deduced.
Inflow forecasting models based on artificial intelligence

This paper shows inflow forecasting models in the Sobradinho hydroelectric plant which are based on artificial intelligence tools: ANN and fuzzy logic. In the first models two ANNs were chosen to forecast the monthly inflow in the period of one year ahead; in the second, an ANN and an ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System) were used to accomplish the forecasting in the period of one and two months ahead; in the third, an hybrid system in which an ANN provides the annual forecasting in the period of one year ahead and the ANFIS disaggregates it monthly; finally, other hybrid system similar to the previous one was developed, but instead of an ANFIS to provide the disaggregation, the fragmentation method was used to disaggregate the annual forecasting into monthly forecasting. The inflow data used were collected from the ONS (National Power System Operator) in the period from 1931 to 2004. The performance of the models was assessed on the inflow data in the period from 2005 to 2008. The models results show to be very powerful.
Proteomics Characterization of Cytoplasmic and Lipid-Associated Membrane Proteins of Human Pathogen Mycoplasma fermentans M64

Mycoplasma fermentans is a potent human pathogen which has been implicated in several diseases. Notably, its lipid-associated membrane proteins (LAMPs) play a role in immunomodulation and development of infection-associated inflammatory diseases. However, the systematic protein identification of pathogenic M. fermentans has not been reported. From our recent sequencing results of M. fermentans M64 isolated from human respiratory tract, its genome is around 1.1 Mb and encodes 1050 predicted protein-coding genes. In the present study, soluble proteome of M. fermentans was resolved and analyzed using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. In addition, Triton X-114 extraction was carried out to enrich amphiphilic proteins including putative lipoproteins and membrane proteins. Subsequent mass spectrometric analyses of these proteins had identified a total of 181 M. fermentans ORFs. Further bioinformatics analysis of these ORFs encoding proteins with known or so far unknown orthologues among bacteria revealed that a total of 131 proteins are homologous to known proteins, 11 proteins are conserved hypothetical proteins, and the remaining 39 proteins are likely M. fermentans-specific proteins. Moreover, Triton X-114-enriched fraction was shown to activate NF-kB activity of raw264.7 macrophage and a total of 21 lipoproteins with predicted signal peptide were identified therefrom. Together, our work provides the first proteome reference map of M. fermentans as well as several putative virulence-associated proteins as diagnostic markers or vaccine candidates for further functional study of this human pathogen.
Features of deformation grids: an approach via singularity theory

Biological shape differences often are represented as diffeomorphisms of a Cartesian coordinate grid. Typically such maps are encoded in a spatially distributed parameteriaation, such as a list of paired point,-locat,ions. The problem addressed here is the ext,ract,ion of spat.ially discret,e, localized features of such t,ransformat.ion grids. This paper suggests that the feabuses ulbimat.ely intere&ing to a biomedical scientist, for instrance the details t,hat suggest underlying developmental or pat,hological processes, can often be identified 1vit.h variants of the singularity (z, y) + (z, z2y + #) that. are visually evident, in estrapolations. This is a nongeneric singularity at which a pair of cusps appears 35 a funct.ion of a parameter for “magnification. ” I introduce canonical coordinat,es for such singularibies and show how they may be used to make sense out of thin-plate splines depict.ing effects of two different types of brain disease, schizophrenia and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, on brain form in the midsagittal plane (plane of symmetry).
Cellular Scale Anisotropic Topography Guides Schwann Cell Motility

Directed migration of Schwann cells (SC) is critical for development and repair of the peripheral nervous system. Understanding aspects of motility specific to SC, along with SC response to engineered biomaterials, may inform strategies to enhance nerve regeneration. Rat SC were cultured on laminin-coated microgrooved poly(dimethyl siloxane) platforms that were flat or presented repeating cellular scale anisotropic topographical cues, 30 or 60 µm in width, and observed with timelapse microscopy. SC motion was directed parallel to the long axis of the topography on both the groove floor and the plateau, with accompanying differences in velocity and directional persistence in comparison to SC motion on flat substrates. In addition, feature dimension affected SC morphology, alignment, and directional persistence. Plateaus and groove floors presented distinct cues which promoted differential motility and variable interaction with the topographical features. SC on the plateau surfaces tended to have persistent interactions with the edge topography, while SC on the groove floors tended to have infrequent contact with the corners and walls. Our observations suggest the capacity of SC to be guided without continuous contact with a topographical cue. SC exhibited a range of distinct motile morphologies, characterized by their symmetry and number of extensions. Across all conditions, SC with a single extension traveled significantly faster than cells with more or no extensions. We conclude that SC motility is complex, where persistent motion requires cellular asymmetry, and that anisotropic topography with cellular scale features can direct SC motility.
Increasing Intuitive Decision Making Speed and Accuracy by Further Understanding Intuitive Decision Making Using Emotional Means

Up to this point, the role of intuition in decision making (instantaneous decisions without conscious awareness) has not received adequate attention by those outside the field of psychology (Hodgkinson, Langan-Fox, & Sasler-Smith, 2008). Herein, we argue that many important decisions are made within organizations without the use of the conscious mind. For instance, if an individual encounters a situation, they simply react in a way that has worked in the past without thinking, such as responding to anger with anger. Affect (i.e., emotion) has been shown to play an important role in this intuitive decision making (Lieberman, 2000, 2007). Intuitive ability can be increased by training individuals to implicitly recognize affective environmental cues and rapidly match them to commonly recurring emotional patterns, which lead to effective problem solving and decision making (Hodgkinson et al., 2008). We present a model of intuitive decision making that outlines how pattern matching is used by the brain to make decisions without our awareness. The result of this study can assist organizations in how to train their members to make better intuitive decisions.
A Novel approach to super resolution image reconstruction algorithm from low resolution panchromatic images

A Novel super resolution reconstruction algorithm from several low resolution images is proposed in this paper. Conventional super resolution image reconstruction techniques degrade the fidelity of the original digital image by populating a smaller portion of the available range of digital values with low pixel density, introducing noise in the reconstruction. The proposed system applies two stage decomposition of Discrete Wavelet Transform and combines the non-redundant information contained in multiple low-resolution images with different sub pixel shifts to produce more precise detailed information delivering high pixel density to generate a high-resolution image. Experimental results demonstrate high quality recovery of the image with better quantitative measures.
Variations on the Gallager bounds, connections, and applications

There has been renewed interest in deriving tight bounds on the error performance of specific codes and ensembles, based on their distance spectrum. We discuss many reported upper bounds on the maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding error probability and demonstrate the underlying connections that exist between them. In addressing the Gallager bounds and their variations, we focus on the Duman and Salehi (see IEEE Trans. Commun., vol.46, p.717-723, 1998)variation, which originates from the standard Gallager bound. A large class of efficient bounds (or their Chernoff versions) is demonstrated to be a special case of the generalized second version of the Duman and Salehi bounds. Implications and applications of these observations are pointed out, including the fully interleaved fading channel, resorting to either matched or mismatched decoding. The proposed approach can be generalized to geometrically uniform nonbinary codes, finite-state channels, bit interleaved coded modulation systems, and it can be also used for the derivation of upper bounds on the conditional decoding error probability.