Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Approximate analytical solutions to the initial data problem of black hole binary systems

We present approximate analytical solutions to the Hamiltonian and momentum constraint equations, corresponding to systems composed of two black holes with arbitrary linear and angular momentum. The analytical nature of these initial data solutions makes them easier to implement in numerical evolutions than the traditional numerical approach of solving the elliptic equations derived from the Einstein constraints. Although in general the problem of setting up initial conditions for black hole binary simulations is complicated by the presence of singularities, we show that the methods presented in this work provide initial data with l 1 and l ‘ norms of violation of the constraint equations falling below those of the truncation error ~residual error due to discretization! present in finite difference codes for the range of grid resolutions currently used. Thus, these data sets are suitable for use in evolution codes. Detailed results are presented for the case of a head-on collision of two equal-mass M black holes with specific angular momentum 0.5M at an initial separation of 10M. A straightforward superposition method yields data adequate for resolutions of h5M/4, and an ‘‘attenuated’’ superposition yields data usable to resolutions at least as fine as h5M/8. In addition, the attenuated approximate data may be more tractable in a full ~computational! exact solution to the initial value problem.
Multichannel DYPSA for estimation of glottal closure instants in reverberant speech

Identification of glottal closure instants (GCIs) is important in speech applications which benefit from larynx-synchronous processing. In modern telecommunication applications, speech signals are often obtained inside office rooms, with one or more microphones placed at a distance from the talker. Such speech signals are affected by reverberation due to the reflections from surrounding walls and objects, which distort the observed speech signals and degrade the performance of speech processing algorithms. This paper presents a study of the identifiability of GCIs from reverberant speech using the Dynamic Programming Projected Phase-Slope Algorithm (DYPSA) and new extensions to the multimicrophone case. Two multichannel algorithms are proposed and evaluated; in both cases, considerable performance gains over a single microphone are obtained, with detection rates improved by up to 29% in highly reverberant environments.
Georeferencing of terrestrial laserscanner data for applications in architectural modeling

Commonly several measurements originating from different sensor systems and stations are combined in order to completely model an architectural site. An important step preceding data fusion is the geometric alignment of the measurements with a geodetic coordi-nate system, or in other words georeferencing the measurements. This paper investigates methods for the georeferencing of terrestrial laserscanning data. Both sensor- and data-driven methods are considered. We propose the integration of a GPS receiver and a digital compass for automated georeferencing. We detail on how virtual city models and aerial LIDAR data can be utilized for georeferenc-ing by point cloud matching. The proposed methods are evaluated in practical experiments and compared to conventional methods. The results obtained are presented and illustrated.
Firing properties of Renshaw cells defined by Chrna2 are modulated by hyperpolarizing and small conductance ion currents Ih and ISK

Renshaw cells in the spinal cord ventral horn regulate motoneuron output through recurrent inhibition. Renshaw cells can be identified in vitro using anatomical and cellular criteria; however, their functional role in locomotion remains poorly defined because of the difficulty of functionally isolating Renshaw cells from surrounding motor circuits. Here we aimed to investigate whether the cholinergic nicotinic receptor alpha2 (Chrna2) can be used to identify Renshaw cells (RCsα2) in the mouse spinal cord. Immunohistochemistry and electrophysiological characterization of passive and active RCsα2 properties confirmed that neurons genetically marked by the Chrna2‐Cre mouse line together with a fluorescent reporter mouse line are Renshaw cells. Whole‐cell patch‐clamp recordings revealed that RCsα2 constitute an electrophysiologically stereotyped population with a resting membrane potential of −50.5 ± 0.4 mV and an input resistance of 233.1 ± 11 MΩ. We identified a ZD7288‐sensitive hyperpolarization‐activated cation current (Ih) in all RCsα2, contributing to membrane repolarization but not to the resting membrane potential in neonatal mice. Additionally, we found RCsα2 to express small calcium‐activated potassium currents (ISK) that, when blocked by apamin, resulted in a complete attenuation of the afterhyperpolarisation potential, increasing cellular firing frequency. We conclude that RCsα2 can be genetically targeted through their selective Chrna2 expression and that they display currents known to modulate rebound excitation and firing frequency. The genetic identification of Renshaw cells and their electrophysiological profile is required for genetic and pharmacological manipulation as well as computational simulations with the aim to understand their functional role.
Exploring Audience Response in Performing Arts with a Brain-Adaptive Digital Performance System

Audience response is an important indicator of the quality of performing arts. Psychophysiological measurements enable researchers to perceive and understand audience response by collecting their bio-signals during a live performance. However, how the audience respond and how the performance is affected by these responses are the key elements but are hard to implement. To address this issue, we designed a brain-computer interactive system called Brain-Adaptive Digital Performance (BADP) for the measurement and analysis of audience engagement level through an interactive three-dimensional virtual theater. The BADP system monitors audience engagement in real time using electroencephalography (EEG) measurement and tries to improve it by applying content-related performing cues when the engagement level decreased. In this article, we generate EEG-based engagement level and build thresholds to determine the decrease and re-engage moments. In the experiment, we simulated two types of theatre performance to provide participants a high-fidelity virtual environment using the BADP system. We also create content-related performing cues for each performance under three different conditions. The results of these evaluations show that our algorithm could accurately detect the engagement status and the performing cues have a positive impact on regaining audience engagement across different performance types. Our findings open new perspectives in audience-based theatre performance design.
Recursive fusion of noisy depth and position measurements for surface reconstruction

We propose an algorithm to combine both depth and position measurements when estimating a continuous surface. Position measurements originate from a fixed point on the surface, whereas depth measurements are determined by the intersection of the surface with a line originating from the depth sensor. Through fusion of both types of measurements, it is possible to benefit from the advantages of different sensors. The surface is obtained through interpolation of control points with splines, which allows a compact representation of the surface. In order to simplify the problem of intersecting the surface with lines originating from the depth sensor, we propose the use of polar or spherical coordinates in surface parameterization. The presented algorithm can be applied in both 2D and 3D settings and is independent of the particular choice of sensors. Our method can recursively include new information as it is obtained by using nonlinear filtering and it considers uncertainties associated with the measurements.
Mechanisms of cell injury and death in hyperoxia: role of cytokines and Bcl-2 family proteins.

Prevailing concepts of pulmonary oxygen toxicity pathogenesis and hyperoxic tolerance have evolved over the past two decades. The “free radical” theory stating that lung cells poison themselves by producing an endogenous excess of reactive oxygen species (ROS) within various organelles had garnered considerable experimental support in the 1980s (1). The possible role of inflammation in compounding or propagating injury during sublethal hyperoxic exposure was also acknowledged. Subsequently, considerable evidence was obtained to support an association between increasing lung antioxidant enzyme activities and acquired tolerance to hyperoxia. Studies using pharmacologic supplementation and genetically altered mice have provided additional support for the importance of antioxidant enzymes, particularly the mitochondrial MnSOD. Nonetheless, certain inevitable intramitochondrial events, such as inactivation of aconitase with concomitant liberation of ferrous iron from the active site in the matrix and an associated decline in respiration (2), cannot be prevented by MnSOD induction via cytokines or genetic manipulation (3).
Dynamic Data Capture from Social Media Streams: A Contextual Bandit Approach

Social Media usually provide streaming data access that enable dynamic capture of the social activity of their users. Leveraging such APIs for collecting social data that satisfy a given pre-defined need may constitute a complex task, that implies careful stream selections. With user-centered streams, it indeed comes down to the problem of choosing which users to follow in order to maximize the utility of the collected data w.r. t. the need. On large social media, this represents a very challenging task due to the huge number of potential targets and restricted access to the data. Because of the intrinsic non-stationarity of user's behavior, a relevant target today might be irrelevant tomorrow, which represents a major difficulty to apprehend. In this paper, we propose a new approach that anticipates which profiles are likely to publish relevant contents - given a predefined need - in the future, and dynamically selects a subset of accounts to follow at each iteration. Our method has the advantage to take into account both API restrictions and the dynamics of users' behaviors. We formalize the task as a contextual bandit problem with multiple actions selection. We finally conduct experiments on Twitter, which demonstrate the empirical effectiveness of our approach in real-world settings.
Cardiovascular pharmacology of anandamide.

The fatty acid amide anandamide produces hypotension and a decrease in systemic vascular resistance in vivo. A drop in blood pressure is also seen with synthetic cannabinoid (CB) receptor agonists. The hypotensive responses to anandamide and synthetic cannabinoids are absent in CB1 receptor gene knockout mice. In isolated arteries and perfused vascular beds, anandamide induces vasodilator responses, which cannot be mimicked by synthetic cannabinoids. Instead, vanilloid receptors on perivascular sensory nerves play a key role in these effects of anandamide. Activation of vanilloid receptors by anandamide triggers the release of sensory neuropeptides such as the vasodilator calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP). Anandamide is detected in blood and in many cells of the cardiovascular system, and macrophage-derived anandamide may be involved in several hypotensive clinical conditions. Interestingly, cannabinoid and vanilloid receptors display an overlap in ligand recognition properties, and the frequently used CB1 receptor antagonist SR141716A also inhibits vanilloid receptor-mediated responses. The presence of anandamide in endothelial cells, neurones and activated macrophages (monocytes), and its ability to activate CB and vanilloid receptors make this lipid a potential bioregulator in the cardiovascular system.
Cross-cultural studies in curriculum : eastern thought, educational insights

Contents: D. Jardine, Foreword: "The Sickness of the West". Preface: Openings Into a Curriculum of the Way. D.G. Smith, ". the Farthest West Is But the Farthest East": The Long Way of Oriental / Occidental Engagement. H. Bai, A. Cohen, Breathing Qi (Ch'i), Following Tao: Transforming This Violence-Ridden World. C. Eppert, Fear, (Educational) Fictions of Character, & Buddhist Insights for an Arts-Based Witnessing Curriculum. R. Hattam, Socially-Engaged Buddhism as a Provocation for Critical Pedagogy in "Unsettling Times". j. jagodzinski, The Gaze of the Teacher: Eye-to-Eye With Lacan, Derrida and the Zen of Dogen and Nishitani. T. Kaneda, Shanti, Peacefulness of Mind. X. Li, My Lived Stories of Poetic Thinking and Taoist Knowing. P.M. Hendry, Engendering Wisdom: Listening to Kuan Yin and Julian of Norwich. Y. Nakagawa, Eastern Wisdom and Holistic Education: Multidimensional Reality and the Way of Awareness. J. Piirto, Krishnamurti and Me: Meditations on His Philosophy of Curriculum and on India. K. Roy, Radical Times: Perspectives on the Qualitative Character of Duration. D. Vokey, Hearing, Contemplating, Meditating: In Search of the Transformative Integration of Heart and Mind. H. Wang, The Strength of the Feminine, the Lyrics of the Chinese Woman's Self and the Power of Education. H. Zhang, Toward a Confucian Vision of Curriculum. M.A. Doll, Afterword: Teaching Along the Way.
Identification of the Social and Cognitive Processes Underlying Human Cumulative Culture

Acquire and Share Few would argue with the stance that human social cognition supports an unequaled capacity to acquire knowledge and to share it with others. Dean et al. (p. 1114; see the Perspective by Kurzban and Barrett) compared the extent to which these social and cognitive psychological processes can be elicited in children, capuchins, and chimpanzees through the use of a three-level puzzlebox task. Incentivized by improving rewards, 3- to 4-year-old children progressed from the first to the third level by imitating observed actions, taught other members of their social group how to solve the problem, and shared the rewards obtained. By contrast, neither the capuchins nor chimpanzees, very few of which ever reached the third level, exhibited these charactertistics. Humans not only watch and imitate each other but also learn from each other in multiple ways. The remarkable ecological and demographic success of humanity is largely attributed to our capacity for cumulative culture, with knowledge and technology accumulating over time, yet the social and cognitive capabilities that have enabled cumulative culture remain unclear. In a comparative study of sequential problem solving, we provided groups of capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees, and children with an experimental puzzlebox that could be solved in three stages to retrieve rewards of increasing desirability. The success of the children, but not of the chimpanzees or capuchins, in reaching higher-level solutions was strongly associated with a package of sociocognitive processes—including teaching through verbal instruction, imitation, and prosociality—that were observed only in the children and covaried with performance.
Bargains With Chaos: Sex Addicts and Addiction Interaction Disorder

This paper proposes a theoretical framework by way of exploring addiction interaction in terms of addressing the following key questions: What happens when a patient population of sex addicts is assessed for other comorbid disorders? What conceptual foundations might we look to in terms of possible etiology and clinical intervention? Are there ways these addictions interact making the whole more than just the “sum” of the addictions themselves? Can we explain these interactions from what is known from neurobiology? Finally, are these interactions comprehensible to patients? In order for the paradigm to be useful to patients, they have to be able to recognize them. Clinicians who achieve a basic understanding of addiction interactions and relevant neurobiological background will be in a better position to serve the needs of their client.
The development of face processing

Contents - Contributors - Foreword - Preface Part I: Visual Cognitive Abilities in Infancy - S. Johnson: Development of fragmented versus holistic object perception - R. Sireteanu: Infants' preference for texture-defined targets of different saliency: Evidence for local processing - M. Kavsek: The development of depth and object perception in infancy Part II: Face Processing from Infancy to Adulthood - G. Schwarzer, N. Zauner & M. Korell: Face processing during the first decade of life - H. Leder, G. Schwarzer & S. Langton: Development of face processing in early adulthood - A. Schwaninger, C. Carbon & H. Leder. Expert face processing: Specialization and constraints Part III: Applied Research on Face Processing in the Course of Development - J. Tanaka, S. Lincoln & L. Hegg: A framework for the study and treatment of face processing deficits in autism - K. Seitz: Face processing and person processing - C. Roebers: Remembering faces in social contexts
Superfast Vocal Muscles Control Song Production in Songbirds

Birdsong is a widely used model for vocal learning and human speech, which exhibits high temporal and acoustic diversity. Rapid acoustic modulations are thought to arise from the vocal organ, the syrinx, by passive interactions between the two independent sound generators or intrinsic nonlinear dynamics of sound generating structures. Additionally, direct neuromuscular control could produce such rapid and precisely timed acoustic features if syringeal muscles exhibit rare superfast muscle contractile kinetics. However, no direct evidence exists that avian vocal muscles can produce modulations at such high rates. Here, we show that 1) syringeal muscles are active in phase with sound modulations during song over 200 Hz, 2) direct stimulation of the muscles in situ produces sound modulations at the frequency observed during singing, and that 3) syringeal muscles produce mechanical work at the required frequencies and up to 250 Hz in vitro. The twitch kinematics of these so-called superfast muscles are the fastest measured in any vertebrate muscle. Superfast vocal muscles enable birds to directly control the generation of many observed rapid acoustic changes and to actuate the millisecond precision of neural activity into precise temporal vocal control. Furthermore, birds now join the list of vertebrate classes in which superfast muscle kinetics evolved independently for acoustic communication.
Epidemiology of food allergy

Epidemiologic research is concerned with the frequency of illness and health-related phenomena in the general population. The utility and comparability of epidemiologic studies obviously depend upon an acceptance of strict criteria for diagnosing a specific disorder. Well-designed epidemiologic studies can provide the physician with a variety of information useful for hisher clinical practice: prevalence rates, changing attack rates, possible pathogenic factors, the course and natural history, and potential prophylactic measures to avoid development of various disorders. Although a form of adverse food reaction was recognized nearly 4,500 years ago by the Chinese emperor, Shen Nung, it was not until 75 years ago that the first scientific evidence was presented attempting to explain these disorders. Prausnitz & Kustner demonstrated that a serum-borne factor (later proven to be IgE) was capable of transferring Kustner ’s fish allergy to his non-allergic collaborator, Prausnitz (1). Shortly after ingesting fish, Prausnitz developed a wheal and flare at the site where Kustner’s serum had been injected 24 h earlier. In 1950, Loveless established the unreliability of patients’ historical reports of food allergy and advocated the use of blinded, placebo-controlled food trials for diagnosing food allergy (2). Twentyfive years later May (3) demonstrated the utility of double-blind placebo-controlled oral food challenges (DBPCFC) for diagnosing food allergy, the procedure now considered the “gold standard” for diagnosing food allergic disorders. Utilizing more stringent criteria of diagnosis and study design, epidemiologic studies in the past two decades have begun to delineate the diversity, prevalence and natural history of food allergic disorders.
Strain‐specific quantification of Wolbachia density in Aedes albopictus and effects of larval rearing conditions

The density of the endosymbiont Wolbachia can influence the expression of the crossing sterilities known as cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), and also its rate of maternal transmission. Aedes albopictus mosquitoes contain a superinfection with the Wolbachia strains wAlbA and wAlbB. A strain‐specific real‐time quantitative PCR assay was developed and used to quantify relative Wolbachia strain densities within individual mosquitoes. The wAlbB strain was consistently found to be at higher density than wAlbA, which can explain a slightly lower rate of maternal transmission reported for wAlbA. The effects of larval crowding and nutritional stress were also examined. Larval crowding always reduced adult size, but reduced the density of Wolbachia strains relative to uncrowded conditions only if crowding was accompanied by restricted nutrient availability. Crowded rearing conditions never resulted in strain segregation or in a reduction in the penetrance of CI, however. The rate of maternal transmission and the penetrance of CI are the two most important variables that determine relative Wolbachia population invasion dynamics, and both are considerably higher here than have been reported in the Drosophila simulans model system.
Manufacturing employment in China

In recent decades, China has become a manufacturing powerhouse. The country’s official data showed 83 million manufacturing employees in 2002, but that figure is likely to be understated; the actual number was probably closer to 109 million. By contrast, in 2002, the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialized countries had a total of 53 million manufacturing workers. In the late 1990s through the year 2000, China saw declining numbers of manufacturing workers, caused by restructuring and the privatization of state-owned and urban collective-owned factories in the cities. Both massive layoffs of urban manufacturing workers and sharp increases in manufacturing labor productivity ensued. Since then, private-sector manufacturing has thrived in both urban and rural areas of China. The reorganized factories are more productive than state-owned and collective-owned factories and are competitive in the domestic and global economies. China’s manufacturing employment began to rise again after 2000, regaining the upward trend of the period from 1980 to 1995. This article begins with an overview of China’s statistical system, including a description of the sources of data used in the analysis presented. Three main sources of statistics on China’s manufacturing employment are compared and contrasted, and a hybrid data series is derived that helps evaluate Chinese manufacturing employment levels and trends from 1990 through 2002. The probable biases in China’s statistics on the country’s numbers of manufacturing workers are asThe scale of manufacturing employment in China dwarfs the numbers of manufacturing workers in other countries; China’s manufacturing sector has shed surplus workers from inefficient state-owned factories, while increasing employment in the private sector