Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ego-Motion Estimation and 3D Model Refinement in Scenes with Varying Illumination

We present an iterative algorithm for robustly estimating the ego-motion and refining and updating a coarse depth map using surface parallax and a generalized dynamic image (GDI) model. Given a coarse depth map acquired by a range-finder or extracted from a Digital Elevation Map (DEM), we first estimate the ego-motion by combining a global ego-motion constraint and a local GDI model. Using the estimated camera motion and the available depth estimate, motion of the 3D points is compensated. We utilize the fact that the resulting surface parallax field is an epipolar field and constrain its direction using the previous motion estimates. We then estimate the magnitude of the parallax field and the GDI model parameters locally and use them to refine the depth map estimates. We use a tensor based approach to formulate the depth refinement procedure as an eigen-value problem and obtain confidence measures for determining the accuracy of the estimated depth values. These confidence measures are used to remove regions with potentially incorrect depth estimates for robustly estimating ego-motion in the next iteration. Experimental results using both synthetic and real data are presented. Comparisons with results obtained using a brightness constancy (BC) model show that the proposed algorithm works significantly better when time-varying illumination changes are present in the scene.
A GPU‐based Streaming Algorithm for High‐Resolution Cloth Simulation

We present a GPU‐based streaming algorithm to perform high‐resolution and accurate cloth simulation. We map all the components of cloth simulation pipeline, including time integration, collision detection, collision response, and velocity updating to GPU‐based kernels and data structures. Our algorithm perform intra‐object and inter‐object collisions, handles contacts and friction, and is able to accurately simulate folds and wrinkles. We describe the streaming pipeline and address many issues in terms of obtaining high throughput on many‐core GPUs. In practice, our algorithm can perform high‐fidelity simulation on a cloth mesh with 2M triangles using 3GB of GPU memory. We highlight the parallel performance of our algorithm on three different generations of GPUs. On a high‐end NVIDIA Tesla K20c, we observe up to two orders of magnitude performance improvement as compared to a single‐threaded CPU‐based algorithm, and about one order of magnitude improvement over a 16‐core CPU‐based parallel implementation.
Remifentanil for Sedation of Children With Traumatic Brain Injury

Objective: To determine whether remifentanil would provide adequate sedation while allowing frequent and reproducible neurologic assessments in children admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) with traumatic brain injury (TBI) during mechanical ventilation. Design: Retrospective review. Setting: Tertiary care PICU. Patients: Thirty-eight patients over a 30-month period. Measurements and Main Results: Median age was 9 years (interquartile range [IQR] 2.25-12 years). The median Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) was 9 (IQR: 8-10). All patients were tracheally intubated and receiving mechanical ventilation. A continuous infusion of remifentanil was started at 0.1 μg/kg/min, and bolus doses of 0.25 to 1 μg/kg were administered every 3 to 5 minutes as needed to reach the desired sedation level. Infusions were stopped at least hourly to perform neurologic examinations. The median remifentanil dose was 0.25 μg/kg/min with an IQR of 0.1 and 0.6 μg/kg/min. The maximum dose for any patient in the cohort was 2 μg/kg/min. Median duration of therapy with remifentanil was 20 hours (IQR: 8-44 hours). Adequate sedation was achieved with sedation scores (State Behavioral Scale) meeting target levels with a median value of 100% of the time (IQR: 79%-100%). Neurologic examinations were able to be performed within a median of 9 minutes (IQR: 5-14 minutes) of pausing the infusion. No serious safety events occurred. In 68% of the patients, neurologic examinations remained reassuring during remifentanil infusion, and patients were extubated. The remaining patients were transitioned to traditional sedative agents for long-term management of their traumatic injuries once the neurologic status was deemed stable. Conclusion: This data suggest that remifentanil is a suitable sedative agent for use in children with TBI. It provides a rapid onset of sedation with recovery that permits reliable and reproducible clinical examination.
Multistability and metastability: understanding dynamic coordination in the brain

Multistable coordination dynamics exists at many levels, from multifunctional neural circuits in vertebrates and invertebrates to large-scale neural circuitry in humans. Moreover, multistability spans (at least) the domains of action and perception, and has been found to place constraints upon, even dictating the nature of, intentional change and the skill-learning process. This paper reviews some of the key evidence for multistability in the aforementioned areas, and illustrates how it has been measured, modelled and theoretically understood. It then suggests how multistability—when combined with essential aspects of coordination dynamics such as instability, transitions and (especially) metastability—provides a platform for understanding coupling and the creative dynamics of complex goal-directed systems, including the brain and the brain–behaviour relation.
The SNARE Protein SNAP23 and the SNARE-Interacting Protein Munc18c in Human Skeletal Muscle Are Implicated in Insulin Resistance/Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE Our previous studies suggest that the SNARE protein synaptosomal-associated protein of 23 kDa (SNAP23) is involved in the link between increased lipid levels and insulin resistance in cardiomyocytes. The objective was to determine whether SNAP23 may also be involved in the known association between lipid accumulation in skeletal muscle and insulin resistance/type 2 diabetes in humans, as well as to identify a potential regulator of SNAP23. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We analyzed skeletal muscle biopsies from patients with type 2 diabetes and healthy, insulin-sensitive control subjects for expression (mRNA and protein) and intracellular localization (subcellular fractionation and immunohistochemistry) of SNAP23, and for expression of proteins known to interact with SNARE proteins. Insulin resistance was determined by a euglycemic hyperinsulinemic clamp. Potential mechanisms for regulation of SNAP23 were also investigated in the skeletal muscle cell line L6. RESULTS We showed increased SNAP23 levels in skeletal muscle from patients with type 2 diabetes compared with that from lean control subjects. Moreover, SNAP23 was redistributed from the plasma membrane to the microsomal/cytosolic compartment in the patients with the type 2 diabetes. Expression of the SNARE-interacting protein Munc18c was higher in skeletal muscle from patients with type 2 diabetes. Studies in L6 cells showed that Munc18c promoted the expression of SNAP23. CONCLUSIONS We have translated our previous in vitro results into humans by showing that there is a change in the distribution of SNAP23 to the interior of the cell in skeletal muscle from patients with type 2 diabetes. We also showed that Munc18c is a potential regulator of SNAP23.
A Novel Model for the Prediction of Drug-Drug Interactions in Humans Based on in Vitro Cytochrome P450 Phenotypic Data

Ketoconazole has generally been used as a standard inhibitor for studying clinical pharmacokinetic drug-drug interactions (DDIs) of drugs that are primarily metabolized by CYP3A4/5. However, ketoconazole at therapeutic, high concentrations also inhibits cytochromes P450 (P450) other than CYP3A4/5, which has made the predictions of DDIs less accurate. Determining the in vivo inhibitor concentration at the enzymatic site is critical for predicting the clinical DDI, but it remains a technical challenge. Various approaches have been used in the literature to estimate the human hepatic free concentrations of this inhibitor, and application of those to predict DDIs has shown some success. In the present study, a novel approach using cryopreserved human hepatocytes suspended in human plasma was applied to mimic the in vivo concentration of ketoconazole at the enzymatic site. The involvement of various P450s in the metabolism of compounds of interest was quantitatively determined (reactive phenotyping). Likewise, the effect of ketoconazole on various P450s was quantitated. Using this information, P450-mediated change in the area under the curve has been predicted without the need of estimating the inhibitor concentrations at the enzyme active site or the Ki. This approach successfully estimated the magnitude of the clinical DDI of an investigational compound, MLX, which is cleared by multiple P450-mediated metabolism. It also successfully predicted the pharmacokinetic DDIs for several marketed drugs (theophylline, tolbutamide, omeprazole, desipramine, midazolam, alprazolam, cyclosporine, and loratadine) with a correlation coefficient (r2) of 0.992. Thus, this approach provides a simple method to more precisely predict the DDIs for P450 substrates when coadministered with ketoconazole or any other competitive P450 inhibitors in humans.
Phonetic and lexical processing in a second language

Speech comprehension is more difficult in a second language than in one's native language. This dissertation examines the recognition of speech sounds and the recognition of words in a second language. First, Dutch and English listeners' perception of the British English vowels /ae/-/E/, was investigated, a contrast which does not occur in Dutch. Further, perception of English /z/-/s/, /v/-/f/, /b/-/p/, and /d/-/t/ in word-final position was investigated. These contrasts are similar to Dutch contrasts, but they do not occur word-finally in Dutch. Dutch listeners found the vowel contrast difficult to distinguish. Although they did not use vowel duration as a cue for the word-final voicing contrasts in a native-like manner, they categorized the contrasts as accurately as English listeners did. Thus, phonetic processing does not have to be native-like for nonnative listeners to recognize sounds as accurately as native listeners do. Second, the recognition of words containing these contrasts was investigated. Listeners were presented with 'near-words', differing from real words in one phoneme, e.g., 'daf' ('deaf'), 'lemp' ('lamp') and 'glite' ('glide'). Near-words were taken from an embedding context, e.g., 'DAFfodil' for 'daf', 'eviL EMPire' for 'lemp', and 'biG LIGHT' for 'glite'. Near-words caused more lexical activation for Dutch listeners than for English listeners. For Dutch listeners, near-words often caused as much lexical activation as real words did. Further, the recognition of words with partially overlapping onsets (e.g., 'DAFFOdil'-'DEFIcit'), and of minimal pairs (e.g., 'flash'-'flesh', 'robe'-'rope') was investigated. Hearing one word of these pairs caused more lexical activation of the other member of the pair for Dutch listeners than for English listeners. Thus, lexical processing was less efficient in nonnative listening: there was increased lexical activation for nonnative listeners as compared to native listeners, and this increased activation was not restricted to stimuli that were perceptually ambiguous for the nonnative listeners.
Crosslinguistic and crosscultural aspects of language addressed to children

Introduction Just as systematic individual differences between children learning the same language have to be accounted for by theories of language development, so differences between languages and between language-learning environments will condition the claims of any theory of language development to universality. Our theories of how children learn language are largely based on the acquisition of English by children from middle-class or upper-middle-class environments in the United States or the United Kingdom. These need to be tested against studies of language development in cultural settings other than those of the middle classes in advanced industrial societies and for languages other than English. There are two “straw positions'” which can be used to characterize the extremes in approach to crosscultural studies of language development. First is the idea that child-centered “motherese” is universal and therefore, ipso facto , of central importance in children's learning of language. The second is that there are cultures in which speech is never addressed to language-learning children and that therefore it must be possible to learn to talk simply by listening to adults talking to each other. Even if the empirical parts of these two positions were true, the conclusions drawn from them need not be, and, as I shall show in this chapter, they are in fact false. Probably nobody subscribes fully to either position, but stated in this way they demonstrate why looking at language development in a very wide range of cultures is an essential constraint on theory building.
Francisella tularensis T-Cell Antigen Identification Using Humanized HLA-DR4 Transgenic Mice

ABSTRACT There is no licensed vaccine against the intracellular pathogen Francisella tularensis. The use of conventional mouse strains to screen protective vaccine antigens may be problematic, given the differences in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) binding properties between murine and human antigen-presenting cells. We used engineered humanized mice that lack endogenous MHC class II alleles but that express a human HLA allele (HLA-DR4 transgenic [tg] mice) to identify potential subunit vaccine candidates. Specifically, we applied a biochemical and immunological screening approach with bioinformatics to select putative F. tularensis subsp. novicida T-cell-reactive antigens using humanized HLA-DR4 tg mice. Cell wall- and membrane-associated proteins were extracted with Triton X-114 detergent and were separated by fractionation with a Rotofor apparatus and whole-gel elution. A series of proteins were identified from fractions that stimulated antigen-specific gamma interferon (IFN-γ) production, and these were further downselected by the use of bioinformatics and HLA-DR4 binding algorithms. We further examined the validity of this combinatorial approach with one of the identified proteins, a 19-kDa Francisella tularensis outer membrane protein (designated Francisella outer membrane protein B [FopB]; FTN_0119). FopB was shown to be a T-cell antigen by a specific IFN-γ recall assay with purified CD4+ T cells from F. tularensis subsp. novicida ΔiglC-primed HLA-DR4 tg mice and cells of a human B-cell line expressing HLA-DR4 (DRB1*0401) functioning as antigen-presenting cells. Intranasal immunization of HLA-DR4 tg mice with the single antigen FopB conferred significant protection against lethal pulmonary challenge with an F. tularensis subsp. holarctica live vaccine strain. These results demonstrate the value of combining functional biochemical and immunological screening with humanized HLA-DR4 tg mice to map HLA-DR4-restricted Francisella CD4+ T-cell epitopes.
Covering Partial Cubes with Zones

A partial cube is a graph having an isometric embedding in a hypercube. Partial cubes are characterized by a natural equivalence relation on the edges, whose classes are called zones. The number of zones determines the minimal dimension of a hypercube in which the graph can be embedded. We consider the problem of covering the vertices of a partial cube with the minimum number of zones. The problem admits several special cases, among which are the problem of covering the cells of a line arrangement with a minimum number of lines, and the problem of finding a minimum-size fibre in a bipartite poset. For several such special cases, we give upper and lower bounds on the minimum size of a covering by zones. We also consider the computational complexity of those problems, and establish some hardness results.
On the evolutionary relationship between chondrocytes and osteoblasts

Vertebrates are the only animals that produce bone, but the molecular genetic basis for this evolutionary novelty remains obscure. Here, we synthesize information from traditional evolutionary and modern molecular genetic studies in order to generate a working hypothesis on the evolution of the gene regulatory network (GRN) underlying bone formation. Since transcription factors are often core components of GRNs (i.e., kernels), we focus our analyses on Sox9 and Runx2. Our argument centers on three skeletal tissues that comprise the majority of the vertebrate skeleton: immature cartilage, mature cartilage, and bone. Immature cartilage is produced during early stages of cartilage differentiation and can persist into adulthood, whereas mature cartilage undergoes additional stages of differentiation, including hypertrophy and mineralization. Functionally, histologically, and embryologically, these three skeletal tissues are very similar, yet unique, suggesting that one might have evolved from another. Traditional studies of the fossil record, comparative anatomy and embryology demonstrate clearly that immature cartilage evolved before mature cartilage or bone. Modern molecular approaches show that the GRNs regulating differentiation of these three skeletal cell fates are similar, yet unique, just like the functional and histological features of the tissues themselves. Intriguingly, the Sox9 GRN driving cartilage formation appears to be dominant to the Runx2 GRN of bone. Emphasizing an embryological and evolutionary transcriptomic view, we hypothesize that the Runx2 GRN underlying bone formation was co-opted from mature cartilage. We discuss how modern molecular genetic experiments, such as comparative transcriptomics, can test this hypothesis directly, meanwhile permitting levels of constraint and adaptation to be evaluated quantitatively. Therefore, comparative transcriptomics may revolutionize understanding of not only the clade-specific evolution of skeletal cells, but also the generation of evolutionary novelties, providing a modern paradigm for the evolutionary process.
Theoretical understanding of the early visual processes by data compression and data selection

Early vision is best understood in terms of two key information bottlenecks along the visual pathway — the optic nerve and, more severely, attention. Two effective strategies for sampling and representing visual inputs in the light of the bottlenecks are () data compression with minimum information loss and () data deletion. This paper reviews two lines of theoretical work which understand processes in retina and primary visual cortex (V1) in this framework. The first is an efficient coding principle which argues that early visual processes compress input into a more efficient form to transmit as much information as possible through channels of limited capacity. It can explain the properties of visual sampling and the nature of the receptive fields of retina and V1. It has also been argued to reveal the independent causes of the inputs. The second theoretical tack is the hypothesis that neural activities in V1 represent the bottom up saliencies of visual inputs, such that information can be selected for, or discarded from, detailed or attentive processing. This theory links V1 physiology with pre-attentive visual selection behavior. By making experimentally testable predictions, the potentials and limitations of both sets of theories can be explored.
The Alliance of Gastronomy & Negotiation: A Historical Approach

The Art of Gastronomy implements the connection of senses and delights in the most complete and highest standard manner for an extraordinary experience. Despite a broad tourism and hospitality approach of gastronomy study, to our knowledge, no research has been undertaken on the role of gastronomy in negotiation.The 17th and 18th centuries saw numerous works published about international negotiation and the activities of ambassadors by diplomats like Hotman de Villiers, Mazarin, Wicquefort, Callieres, Pecquet, de Wicquefort or Barthelemy de Felice. These texts describe how an ambassador should act as a representative for his Prince and the use of gastronomy. Gastronomy was always central to Talleyrand’s negotiations. With Careme behind him, Talleyrand conclusively proved a theory he had long held: eating was a form of government and thanks to his team (chef, butler, and darling) he created a better relationship with the negotiators and coalitions.This paper looks at the alliance of gastronomy and negotiation with an historical approach. Talleyrand’s use of the gastronomic dinner as an influential context for negotiation, and dining as a metaphor for negotiation. In conclusion, the paper will examine the limits of this approach but also the interest to use gastronomy for negotiations in order to create a special kind of relationship and emotions.
The single- and multichannel audio recordings database (SMARD)

A new single- and multichannel audio recordings database (SMARD) is presented in this paper. The database contains recordings from a box-shaped listening room for various loudspeaker and array types. The recordings were made for 48 different configurations of three different loudspeakers and four different microphone arrays. In each configuration, 20 different audio segments were played and recorded ranging from simple artificial sounds to polyphonic music. SMARD can be used for testing algorithms developed for numerous application, and we give examples of source localisation results.
International Conference on Integrated Circuit and Technology Design Aspects of a Microprocessor Data Cache using 3 D Die Interconnect Technology

I This paper explores an implementation of a new technology called 3D die stacking. 30 die stucking is the bonding of two die either face-to$ace or face-tuback in order to construct a 3 0 strtrcttrre. In this work a face-to-face bonding is utilized becalm it yields a higher density die-to-die inter-connect than is possible with face-to-back. With suficiently dense die-to-die interconnect, devices as contplex as nn iA32 niicroprocessor can be repartilioned or split between two die in order to simultaneously improve peifornzaiice wdpower. The 3 0 structure of this emerging technology is exumined and applied in this paper to a conventional 2D 32KB data cache. In this study, it is shown that a 3 0 implmeniation can potentially improve the silicon area, complexity, pevfomance and power of a 2 0 ciraiiit simiilfmeously .
Biophysics of DNA: Circular DNA

In 1963 by Dulbecco and Vogt (1963) and Weil and Vinograd (1963) discovered that doublestranded DNA of the polyoma virus exists in a closed circular form. At present it is generally acknowledged that this form is typical of bacterial DNA and of cytoplasmic DNA in animals. Furthermore, giant DNA molecules in higher organisms form loop structures held together by protein fasteners in which each loop is largely analogous to closed circular DNA. The distinctive feature of closed circular molecules is that its topological state cannot be altered by any conformational rearrangement short of breaking DNA strands. This topological constraint is the basis for the characteristic properties of closed circular DNA which have fascinated biologists, physicists and mathematicians for the past 40 years. In this chapter we concentrate our attention on physical properties of circular DNA which understanding is necessary for the successful analysis of the biological effects connected with this form of the molecule.