Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Through their eyes: selective attention in peahens during courtship

SUMMARY Conspicuous, multicomponent ornamentation in male animals can be favored by female mate choice but we know little about the cognitive processes females use to evaluate these traits. Sexual selection may favor attention mechanisms allowing the choosing females to selectively and efficiently acquire relevant information from complex male display traits and, in turn, may favor male display traits that effectively capture and hold female attention. Using a miniaturized telemetric gaze-tracker, we show that peahens (Pavo cristatus) selectively attend to specific components of peacock courtship displays and virtually ignore other, highly conspicuous components. Females gazed at the lower train but largely ignored the head, crest and upper train. When the lower train was obscured, however, females spent more time gazing at the upper train and approached the upper train from a distance. Our results suggest that peahens mainly evaluate the lower train during close-up courtship but use the upper train as a long-distance attraction signal. Furthermore, we found that behavioral display components (train rattling and wing shaking) captured and maintained female attention, indicating that interactions between display components may promote the evolution of multicomponent displays. Taken together, these findings suggest that selective attention plays a crucial role in sexual selection and likely influences the evolution of male display traits.
Escape Time Fractals of Inverse Tangent Function

The generation of fractals and study of the dynamics of transcendental function is one of emerging and interesting field of research nowadays. We introduce in this paper the complex dynamics of inverse tangent function for 2 n and applied Ishikawa iteration to generate new Relative Superior Mandelbrot sets and Relative Superior Julia sets. Our results are entirely different from those existing in the literature of transcendental function.
Band Alignment Engineers Faradaic and Capacitive Photostimulation of Neurons Without Surface Modification

Photovoltaic substrates have attracted signiﬁcant attention for neural photostimulation. The control of the Faradaic and capacitive (non-Faradaic) charge transfer mechanisms by these substrates are critical for safe and eﬀective neural photostimulation. We demonstrate that the intermediate layer can directly control the strength of the capacitive and Faradaic processes under physiological conditions. To resolve the Faradaic and capacitive stimulations, we enhance photogenerated charge density levels by incorpo-rating PbS quantum dots into a poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl):([6,6]-Phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PCBM) blend. This enhancement stems from the simultaneous increase of absorption, well matched band alignment of PbS quantum dots with P3HT:PCBM, and smaller intermixed phase-separated domains with better homogeneity and roughness of the blend. These improvements lead to the photostimulation of neurons at a low light intensity level of 1 mW cm − 2 , which is within the retinal irradiance level. These ﬁndings open up an alternative approach toward superior neural prosthesis.
Theoretical Model and Experimental Validation of the estimated proportions of common and independent input to motor neurons

Motor neurons in the spinal cord receive synaptic input that comprises common and independent components. The part of synaptic input that is common to all motor neurons is the one regulating the production of force. Therefore, its quantification is important to assess the strategy used by Central Nervous System (CNS) to control and regulate movements, especially in physiological conditions such as fatigue. In this study we present and validate a method to estimate the ratio between strengths of common and independent inputs to motor neurons and we apply this method to investigate its changes during fatigue. By means of coherence analysis we estimated the level of correlation between motor unit spike trains at the beginning and at the end of fatiguing contractions of the Tibialis Anterior muscle at three different force targets. Combining theoretical modeling and experimental data we estimated the strength of the common synaptic input with respect to the independent one. We observed a consistent increase in the proportion of the shared input to motor neurons during fatigue. This may be interpreted as a strategy used by the CNS to counteract the occurrence of fatigue and the concurrent decrease of generated force.
Solving unbalanced problems in similarity learning using SVM ensemble

Similarity learning is one of the most fundamental notions in machine learning and pattern recognition. In real-world problems, the number of the paired-samples in similarity set is far less than the ones in dissimilarity set. In other word, there is an unbalanced problem in the paired-samples of similarity learning. This paper presents a scheme of SVM ensemble to solve it. In our scheme, we randomly select some of samples to construct paired-samples, not producing all the paired-samples, and introduces multiple classifiers to obtain higher stability and reliability. As a result, the SVM ensemble can effectively decrease the number of paired-samples in similarity learning and solve the unbalanced data learning to some degree. In the experiments, the SVM ensemble is compared with some classic unbalanced learning algorithms. The results on classification tasks show that the SVM ensemble gains better performance.
Doppler tissue imaging quantitates regional wall motion during myocardial ischemia and reperfusion.

BACKGROUND Quantification of regional myocardial function is a major unresolved issue in cardiology. We evaluated the accuracy of pulsed Doppler tissue imaging (DTI), a new echocardiographic technique, to quantify regional myocardial dysfunction induced by acute ischemia and reperfusion. METHODS AND RESULTS In nine open-chest anesthetized pigs, various degrees of regional wall motion abnormalities were induced by graded reduction of left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) blood flow. Pulsed Doppler tissue imaging was performed from an epicardial apical four-chamber view with the sample placed within the middle part of the septal wall. Peak septal velocities were calculated during systole, isovolumic relaxation, and early and late diastole. Regional myocardial blood flow and systolic and diastolic dysfunctions were assessed by radioactive microspheres and ultrasonic crystals, respectively. Ischemia resulted in a significant rapid reduction of systolic velocities and an early decrease in the ratio of early to late diastolic velocities. Both changes were detected by pulsed DTI within 5 seconds of coronary artery occlusion. The decrease in systolic velocity significantly correlated with both systolic shortening (r=.90, P<.0001) and regional myocardial blood flow (r=.96, P<.0001) during reduction of LAD blood flow. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that DTI may be a promising new tool for the quantification of ischemia-induced regional myocardial dysfunction.
Elevation of Internal Auditory Canal Pressure by Vestibular Schwannomas

Objective The exact mechanism of hearing loss, the most common presenting symptom in patients with vestibular schwannomas, remains unclear. To test whether increased pressure in the internal auditory canal from tumor growth is responsible for this clinical finding, the intracanalicular pressure in patients harboring these tumors was measured. Study Design Prospective study. Setting Tertiary referral hospital. Patients Fifteen consecutive patients undergoing a retrosigmoid approach for resection of vestibular schwannomas were included in the study. Intervention The intracanalicular pressure in every patient was measured by introducing a pressure microsensor into the internal auditory canal. The pressure readings, which were performed before tumor resection, were then correlated with tumor size and respective preoperative hearing status. Results Placement of the pressure monitor into the internal auditory canal revealed a biphasic waveform in every patient. Whereas the mean intracanalicular pressure was 20 mm Hg, there was significant variability among patients (range, 1–45 mm Hg). The intracanalicular pressure directly correlated with the amount of tumor in the internal auditory canal (r > 0.63, p < 0.012) but not with the total tumor size (r ≤ 0.40, p > 0.075). Furthermore, eight patients with class A preoperative hearing (American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery classification) had lower intracanalicular pressures than did five patients with class B hearing (16 ± 5 vs. 28 ± 4). Although this observation suggested an inverse correlation between the intracanalicular pressure and hearing function, the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant (p = 0.14). Conclusion Pressure on the cochlear nerve as a result of tumor growth in the internal auditory canal may be responsible for hearing loss in patients with vestibular schwannomas. Modification of surgical techniques to address the elevated intracanalicular pressure may be beneficial in improving hearing preservation in these patients.
Chronic Wound Repair and Healing in Older Adults: Current Status and Future Research

Older adults are more likely to have chronic wounds than younger people, and the effect of chronic wounds on quality of life is particularly profound in this population. Wound healing slows with age, but the basic biology underlying chronic wounds and the influence of age‐associated changes on wound healing are poorly understood. Most studies have used in vitro approaches and various animal models, but observed changes translate poorly to human healing conditions. The effect of age and accompanying multimorbidity on the effectiveness of existing and emerging treatment approaches for chronic wounds is also unknown, and older adults tend to be excluded from randomized clinical trials. Poorly defined outcomes and variables; lack of standardization in data collection; and variations in the definition, measurement, and treatment of wounds also hamper clinical studies. The Association of Specialty Professors, in conjunction with the National Institute on Aging and the Wound Healing Society, held a workshop, summarized in this article, to explore the current state of knowledge and research challenges, engage investigators across disciplines, and identify research questions to guide future study of age‐associated changes in chronic wound healing.
“It's the computer's fault”: reasoning about computers as moral agents

Typicrdly tool use poses few confusions about who we understand to be the moral agent for a given act. But when the “tool” becomes a computer, do people attribute moral agency and responsibility to the technology (“it’s the computer’s fault”)? Twenty-nine mate undergraduate computer science majors were interviewed. Results showed that most students (83%) attributed aspects of agency either deckion-making and/or intentions -- to computers. In addition, some students (21 %) consistent y held computers morally responsible for error. Discussion includes implications for computers ystem design.
Estimating Instantaneous Irregularity of Neuronal Firing

Cortical neurons in vivo had been regarded as Poisson spike generators that convey no information other than the rate of random firing. Recently, using a metric for analyzing local variation of interspike intervals, researchers have found that individual neurons express specific patterns in generating spikes, which may symbolically be termed regular, random, or bursty, rather invariantly in time. In order to study the dynamics of firing patterns in greater detail, we propose here a Bayesian method for estimating firing irregularity and the firing rate simultaneously for a given spike sequence, and we implement an algorithm that may render the empirical Bayesian estimation practicable for data comprising a large number of spikes. Application of this method to electrophysiological data revealed a subtle correlation between the degree of firing irregularity and the firing rate for individual neurons. Irregularity of firing did not deviate greatly around the low degree of dependence on the firing rate and remained practically unchanged for individual neurons in the cortical areas V1 and MT, whereas it fluctuated greatly in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus. This indicates the presence and absence of autocontrolling mechanisms for maintaining patterns of firing in the cortex and thalamus, respectively.
A Compositional Coalgebraic Model of Monadic Fusion Calculus

We propose a compositional coalgebraic semantics of the Fusion calculus of Parrow and Victor in the version with explicit fusions by Gardner and Wischik. We follow a recent approach developed by the same authors and previously applied to the pi-calculus for lifting calculi with structural axioms to bialgebraic models. In our model, the unique morphism to the final bialgebra induces a bisimilarity relation which coincides with hyperequivalence and which is a congruence with respect to the operations. Interesting enough, the explicit fusion approach allows to exploit for the Fusion calculus essentially the same algebraic structure used for the pi-calculus.
A Computational Study of the Effects of Syk Activity on B Cell Receptor Signaling Dynamics

The kinase Syk is intricately involved in early signaling events in B cells and is required for proper response when antigens bind to B cell receptors (BCRs). Experiments using an analog-sensitive version of Syk (Syk-AQL) have better elucidated its role, but have not completely characterized its behavior. We present a computational model for BCR signaling, using dynamical systems, which incorporates both wild-type Syk and Syk-AQL. Following the use of sensitivity analysis to identify significant reaction parameters, we screen for parameter vectors that produced graded responses to BCR stimulation as is observed experimentally. We demonstrate qualitative agreement between the model and dose response data for both mutant and wild-type kinases. Analysis of our model suggests that the level of NF-κB activation, which is reduced in Syk-AQL cells relative to wild-type, is more sensitive to small reductions in kinase activity than Erkp activation, which is essentially unchanged. Since this profile of high Erkp and reduced NF-κB is consistent with anergy, this implies that anergy is particularly sensitive to small changes in catalytic activity. Also, under a range of forward and reverse ligand binding rates, our model of Erkp and NF-κB activation displays a dependence on a power law affinity: the ratio of the forward rate to a non-unit power of the reverse rate. This dependence implies that B cells may respond to certain details of binding and unbinding rates for ligands rather than simple affinity alone.
Role of Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Assessment of Myocardial Viability

Dysfunctional myocardium that remains viable has the potential for contractile recovery after reperfusion.1 Dysfunctional but viable myocardium has been broadly divided into 2 closely linked pathophysiological states, myocardial hibernation and stunning. Stunned myocardium is the result of an ischemic insult leading to contractile dysfunction despite adequate reperfusion. Hibernating myocardium describes downregulation of myocyte metabolism as a result of prolonged reduction in perfusion, or, in some cases, repetitive episodes of myocardial stunning.2 The exact nature of structural changes in hibernating myocardium remains controversial.3 However, a spectrum of histological alterations has been noted, ranging from cellular dedifferentiation (fetal phenotype) to cellular degeneration (with more extensive fibrosis) with loss of contractile and cytoskeletal proteins. Worsening histological perturbations correlate with increasing duration of chronically low perfusion. Thus, accurate and early detection of viable myocardium has become an increasingly important guide to prognosis and therapy. Until recently, scintigraphic techniques and stress echocardiography were the mainstay of diagnosis.4,5 The focus of the present article is on the rapidly emerging clinical role of cardiovascular MRI (CMR) in the detection of viable myocardium. In patients with chronic ischemic left ventricular dysfunction, improvements in ejection fraction and exercise capacity after revascularization have been well documented.6–10 The prognostic importance of detecting myocardial viability hinges on 2 major considerations. First, medically treated viable myocardium is a harbinger of further nonfatal ischemic events and higher overall mortality. In patients with significant viable myocardium, the annual mortality rate is more than 4-fold greater in those treated medically compared with those patients who have had successful revascularization.11 Second, discrimination between viable and nonviable dysfunctional myocardium allows patients to avoid the risks associated with revascularization when they are unlikely to benefit. Although limited by the lack of large randomized studies, a recent meta-analysis indicated that the annual mortality rate …
Average Performance of the Sparsest Approximation Using a General Dictionary

Let A be a matrix of size N × M (a dictionary) and let ‖·‖ be a norm on ℝ N . For any data d ∈ ℝ N , we consider the sparsest vector (i.e., the one with the smallest number of nonzero entries) u ∈ ℝ M such that ‖Au − d‖ ≤ τ, for a parameter τ > 0. We say that u is a K-sparse solution if it has less than K ∈ ℕ nonzero entries. In this article, we give a precise geometrical description of the data sets d ∈ ℝ N yielding a K-sparse solution. We parameterize and measure these sets. More precisely, we measure their intersection with a ball defined by any given norm δ and a radius θ. These measures are expressed in terms of the constituents of the optimization problem—namely A, ‖·‖, τ, δ and θ—and they enable these constituents to be rated. This is the core of a new methodology, called Average Performance in Approximation (APA), inaugurated in this work. By way of application, we give the probability of obtaining a K-sparse solution, when d is uniformly distributed in the δ-ball of radius θ. Analyzing the obtained formulas reveals what are the most important features of the dictionary and the norm defining the data fidelity, to obtain sparse solutions. This crucial question is largely discussed. We also provide an example when both ‖·‖ and δ are the Euclidian norm. Some among the wide-ranging perspectives raised by the new APA methodology are described as well.
Cancer Mortality Among Recipients of Solid-Organ Transplantation in Ontario, Canada.

IMPORTANCE Solid-organ transplant recipients (SOTRs) are at greater risk of developing some cancers than the general population; however, because they are also at increased risk of mortality from noncancer causes, the effect of transplantation on cancer mortality is unclear. OBJECTIVE To describe cancer mortality in SOTRs and to assess whether SOTRs are at increased risk of cancer mortality compared with the general population. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Population-based cohort study of patients who underwent solid-organ transplantation in Ontario, Canada, between 1991 and 2010 with 85 557 person-years of follow-up through December 31, 2011. Solid-organ transplantation was identified using the national transplant register and linked to the provincial cancer registry and administrative databases. The analysis was conducted between November 2013 and February 2015. EXPOSURE Solid-organ transplantation. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Cancer mortality for SOTRs was compared with that of the general population using standardized mortality ratios (SMRs). Mortality and cause of death were ascertained by record linkage between the Canadian Organ Replacement Register, the Ontario Cancer Registry, and the Office of the Registrar General of Ontario death database. RESULTS A total of 11 061 SOTRs were identified, including 6516 kidney, 2606 liver, 929 heart, and 705 lung transplantations. Recipients had a median (interquartile range) age of 49 (37-58) years, and 4004 (36.2%) were women. Of 3068 deaths, 603 (20%) were cancer related. Cancer mortality in SOTRs was significantly elevated compared with the Ontario population (SMR, 2.84 [95% CI, 2.61-3.07]). The risk remained elevated when patients with pretransplant malignant neoplasms (n = 1124) were excluded (SMR, 1.93 [95% CI, 1.75-2.13]). The increased risk was observed irrespective of transplanted organ. The SMR for cancer death after solid-organ transplantation was higher in children (SMR, 84.61 [95% CI, 52.00-128.40]) and lower in patients older than 60 years (SMR, 1.88 [95% CI, 1.62-2.18]) but remained elevated compared with the general population at all ages. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Cancer death rate in SOTRs was increased compared with that expected in the general population; cancer was the second leading cause of death in these patients. Advances in prevention, clinical surveillance, and cancer treatment modalities for SOTRs are needed to reduce the burden of cancer mortality in this population.
2 Sports elimination problems

In klassischen Netzwerkflußmodellen wird die Zeit, die für die Flußverschickung über Kanten benötigt wird, nicht berücksichtigt. Das Konzept von dynamischen Flüssen (dynamic flows, flows over time) nimmt sich dieser Schwachstelle an. Für jede Kante (i, j) wird neben den aus dem klassischen Modell bekannten Kapazitäten uij die Durchflusszeit (transit time) τij angegeben, die bestimmt wielange der Fluss von i nach j benötigt. Ferner ist ein Zeithorizont T gegeben. Ein maximaler dynamischer Fluss ist ein dynamischer Fluss, der innerhalb des Zeithorizonts die maximal mögliche Flussmenge versendet. Ein earliest arrival flow (EAF) maximiert die verschickte Flussmenge nicht nur zur Zeit T , sondern auch zur Zeit T − 1, T − 2 etc. EAFs finden Anwendungen z.B. in Evakuierungsproblemen. Bereits seit den 1960-ern weiss man, dass für den Fall einer Quelle und einer Senke stets ein EAF existiert und dass sich ein solcher in pseudopolynomialer Zeit berechnen läßt (siehe Gale [12] bzw. Minieka [28]). Hoppe und Tardos [22] gaben ein FPTAS für diesen Spezialfall an, der auf einer Skalierungsidee beruht. Für serielle parallele Graphen kann ein EAF in polynomialer Zeit gefunden werden [33].
A design of one-dimensional Euler equations for Fluid Dynamics on FPGA

Modeling, simulation and optimization using computing tools are the core approach nowadays in science complementary to experiment and theory. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has evolved many years ago to simulate fluid physics by solving Navier-Stokes equations, or its simple variants, Euler equations. However, most problems spend many hours to get solutions even with expensive supercomputers or clusters. The long computation time required for fluid dynamics simulations has lead the industry to look for some alternatives. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are becoming more and more attractive for high precision scientific computations. FPGA holds the potential to alleviate this situations. It is possible for an FPGA to configure hundreds of multipliers working concurrently. In this paper, the authors explain the design on implementing the one-dimensional Euler equations in hardware. Two designs with single and double floating-point arithmetic are developed in an FPGA. Synthesis results show that a single floating-point arithmetic design is consumed less area and memory usage, also operating at higher frequency. However, double-precision design is crucial for give a better accuracy of the result.