Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary Technology and Phenotype Plasticity : The FATINT System

This is a comprehensive summary paper of works done by the authors in 2004-7 but never published as a single narrative. Our works address various aspects of an Evolutionary Technology. We present the challenge, the approach (using simulated interactions from phenotype plasticity called ’fat interactions’) and the first results. On the road, we develop and test a platform for the general agent-based modeling of biological populations, which serves as the evolutionary engine behind our FATINT system.
Detecting and gettering chromium impurities in photovoltaic crystalline silicon

Photovoltaic (PV) modules provide a source of renewable electricity by harnessing solar energy. Currently, crystalline silicon dominates the PV market with an approximate market share of 90% and record solar cell efficiencies greater than 20%. However, the PV market must decrease the cost to the consumer to maintain growth and meet global electricity demands. Increasing the solar-to-electricity conversion efficiency is one of the most significant cost levers. Transition metal impurities can degrade silicon wafer-based solar cell efficiencies at concentrations as low as 1010 cm 3 . By removing interstitial metals from the bulk and/or collecting interstitial metals at heterogeneous nucleation sites, phosphorous diffusion gettering renders them less detrimental in the final solar cell. While they exist for iron, kinetics process simulation tools do not yet exist for chromium, which has higher capture cross-sections for minority carriers and is therefore more detrimental in both pand n-type materials. In this thesis, I employ synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence microscopy to study chromium (Cr) distributions in multicrystalline silicon in as-grown material and after two phosphorous diffusion profiles. I complement quantified precipitate size and spatial distribution with interstitial Cr concentration and minority carrier lifetime measurements to provide insight into chromium gettering kinetics and offer suggestions for minimizing the device impacts of chromium. The data presented in this thesis can be used in development of kinetics process simulation tools for chromium gettering. Finally, I describe a new technique for detecting low concentrations of impurities in nand ptype silicon. The development of high-performance silicon materials, including n-type, necessitates more sensitive impurity detection techniques, capable of measuring interstitial contaminations below 1010 cm-3. I propose the development of a free-carrier absorption-based technique that incorporates a temperature stage. By measuring injection-dependent lifetimes at a wide range of sample temperatures, the identifying parameters of lifetime-limiting defects can be deduced. Thesis Supervisor: Tonio Buonassisi Title: Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Recovering sparse signals with non-convex penalties and DC programming

The invention relates to covalently cross-linked mammalian hemoglobins, to which polyalkylene oxides are covalently linked. Such hemoglobins are surprisingly compatible with proteins of human and animal plasma, under all the possible conditions within the vascular system of the body. The invention furthermore relates to the production of these cross-linked hemoglobins linked with polyalkylene oxides, as well as to their use as artificial intravasal oxygen carriers in the human or animal organism or in individual organs.
Strategy and the Strategist: How It Matters Who Develops the Strategy

This paper addresses primarily two questions. First, when (and why) should a company’s strategy be developed by its CEO versus by some outside analyst or other insider? Second, how does strategy interact with vision (in the sense of a strong belief about the right course of action)? The paper studies these questions using a functional definition of strategy as “the smallest set of choices to optimally guide other choices. ” Among other things, the paper shows that strategy formulation by the CEO leads to both better strategy and better execution, and that a strategist’s vision may improve execution. In the process, the paper also identifies criteria that make a decision strategic and derives explanations why strategies often reflect the background of the strategist. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.
Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness: Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education, and Society

Musician, educator, and author Edward W. Sarath is among the first to implement contemplative practices and Integral Theory into higher education, facilitating a conceptualized understanding of the human condition and the phenomenon of consciousness. His book Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness: Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education, and Society offers a deep insight into his vision and concepts, which link artistic studies and music education with personal growth and societal change.
Managing Limited Sensing Resources for Mobile Robots Obstacle Avoidance

Obstacle avoidance is a sensor-based task designed to steer a mobile robot towards intermediate goals while avoiding unexpected local obstacles in the robot’s surroundings. Responsiveness requires that the task is computed in short time intervals, fast enough to deal with the robot inertia and dynamics limitations. Simultaneously it has to guarantee detection by gathering enough information to allow the robot to react adequately to any potential danger. However, throughput and detection guarantee are opposite demands. If we try to assure the latter by augmenting the scanned area in the robot’s surroundings, it will increase the time taken to process the sensor data, proportionally decreasing the reactivity to the external world. On the other hand, scanning smaller areas can endanger the robot if some possible trajectories of motion are not swept by the sensors (e.g. the tunnel–vision problem). The previous trade-off can be addressed in different ways. Some obstacle avoidance algorithms are designed supposing that fixed sensorial information of the robot’s surroundings will be available when needed, e.g. range measures in a circular or rectangular robot-centered area (Lumelsky and Skewis, 1990), (Ulrich and Borenstein, 2001). Furthermore, others restrict the required information to the limits imposed by the robot’s actual motion, its dynamics and kinematics (Brock and Khatib, 2000). But the assumption that certain sensorial information will be available when required is not always realistic. For example, the particular field of view of conventional range sensors such as stereovision, sonar or laser, cannot adjust adequately to the specific perception requirements (Laubach and Burdick, 2000). Or the time needed for sensor data processing can have an impact on the real-time motion performance, making some sense modalities more recommendable than others (Kelly and Stentz, 1998). Finally, the availability of each specific sensing device can be an issue whenever the robot’s task solicitations exceed the robot’s computing capabilities, for example in robots with complex missions or with massive sensorial information. For these cases, treating sensing as an isolated phenomena leads to bottlenecks both oinn computational demand and in real-time performance. Our approach to the problem of making the required information available when needed is based on two ideas: 1) to define what the (minimum) information required is in order to guarantee the safety of motion for a given motion strategy, and 2) to use sensor management to obtain only the required info. Scanning only the essential area around the robot helps us to adapt to the real time demands about motion reactivity, and managing
Analysis of mouse EphA knockins and knockouts suggests that retinal axons programme target cells to form ordered retinotopic maps

I present a novel analysis of abnormal retinocollicular maps in mice in which the distribution of EphA receptors over the retina has been modified by knockin and/or knockout of these receptor types. My analysis shows that in all these cases, whereas the maps themselves are discontinuous, the graded distribution of EphA over the nasotemporal axis of the retina is recreated within the pattern of axonal terminations across rostrocaudal colliculus. This suggests that the guiding principle behind the formation of ordered maps of nerve connections between vertebrate retina and superior colliculus, or optic tectum, is that axons carrying similar amounts of Eph receptor terminate near to one another on the target structure. I show how the previously proposed marker induction model embodies this principle and predicts these results. I then describe a new version of the model in which the properties of the markers, or labels, are based on those of the Eph receptors and their associated ligands, the ephrins. I present new simulation results, showing the development of maps between two-dimensional structures, exploring the role of counter-gradients of labels across the target and confirming that the model reproduces the retinocollicular maps found in EphA knockin/knockout mice. I predict that abnormal distributions of label within the retina lead to abnormal distributions of label over the target, so that in each of the types of knockin/knockout mice analysed, there will be a different distribution of labels over the target structure. This mechanism could be responsible for the flexibility with which neurons reorganise their connections during development and the degree of precision in the final map. Activity-based mechanisms would play a role only at a later stage of development to remove the overlap between individual retinal projection fields, such as in the development of patterns of ocular dominance stripes.
Requirement of Cul3 for Axonal Arborization and Dendritic Elaboration in Drosophila Mushroom Body Neurons

Cul3 belongs to the family of cullin proteins, which function as scaffold proteins of E3 ubiquitin ligase complexes. Here we show cell-autonomous involvement of Cul3 in axonal arborization and dendritic elaboration of Drosophila mushroom body neurons. Cul3 mutant neurons are defective in terminal morphogenesis of neurites. Interestingly, mutant axons often terminate around branching points. In addition, dendritic elaboration is severely affected in Cul3 mutant neurons. However, loss of Cul3 function does not affect extension of the axons that rarely arborize. Function of cullin-type proteins has been shown to require covalent attachment of Nedd8 (neural precursor cell-expressed developmentally downregulated), a ubiquitin-like protein. Consistent with this notion, Cul3 is inactivated by a mutation in its conserved neddylation site, and Nedd8 mutant neurons exhibit similar neuronal morphogenetic defects. Together, Cul3 plays an essential role in both axonal arborization and proper elaboration of dendrites and may require neddylation for its proper function.
Perception of pain after resistance exercise.

OBJECTIVES: The main objective was to assess the influence of resistance exercise on pain threshold and pain ratings. Secondary objectives included measuring state anxiety, body awareness, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate responses. METHODS: Pressure (3 kg force) was applied to the middle digit of the left hand for two minutes using a Forgione-Barber pain stimulator before and after (five minute and 15 minutes) resistance exercise and quiet rest. Resistance exercise consisted of 45 minutes of lifting three sets of 10 repetitions at 75% of an individual's one repetition maximum. Quiet rest consisted of sitting quietly in a room free from distractions. RESULTS: Data were analysed by repeated measures analysis of variance for multifactor experiments. Pain threshold was significantly higher (p<0.05) and pain ratings were significantly lower (p<0.05) five minutes after resistance exercise. Changes in pain perception were accompanied by changes in heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and body awareness after exercise. CONCLUSION: A single bout of resistance exercise is capable of modifying the sensation of experimentally induced pain.
Research Plan

1. Subject description and scientific background 1.1. Approximation algorithms and hardness of approximation. The well known conjecture P = N P implies that NPC problems do not admit a polynomial solution. It is therefore of interest to study how well a problem can be approximated, i.e., to devise efficient algorithms that can produce solutions not too far from the optimal ones, and also to establish approximation thresholds for specific problems. The theoretical framework for these questions has been well developed in the past three decade. The books [89] and [90] provide an excellent starting point for a tour of results in this area. Formally, let opt(I) be the optimal solution value to instance I of an optimization problem Π. We say that an algorithm for a problem Π achieves an approximation ratio α 1, or that it is an α-approximation algorithm, if for every instance I of Π the algorithm runs in time polynomial in the size of I and produces a solution of value at most α · opt(I) if Π is a minimization problem or at least opt(I)/α if Π is a maximization problem (for the sake of uniformity, all the ratios in the proposal are numbers larger than 1). An algorithm in this framework must provide a provable performance guarantee, that is, it should be supplemented with a proof that the value of the solution it finds is not too far from the optimum. Recent work on numerous classes of optimization problems has addressed both sides of the issue of approximability. From the point of view of upper bounds, the idea is to design an appropriate algorithm that achieves a certain provable approximation ratio. Equally important is to explore whether designing an approximation algorithm with a given ratio for a specific problem is as hard as solving an NP-complete problem. Such a proof is referred to as proving a hardness of approximation result. Indeed, some of the most notable and beautiful results in this area have shown that certain problems are provably inapproximable under reasonable assumptions of intractability. A large contribution to the lower bounds area is due to the so called PCP theorem [7, 6]. In the Max-3SAT problem we are giving a collection of clauses, each clause being a conjunction of three literals. The goal is to assign true values to the variables and maximize the satisfied clauses. This theorem implied that certain problems like …
Using Neural Imaging and Cognitive Modeling to Infer Mental States while Using an Intelligent Tutoring System

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were collected while students worked with a tutoring system that taught an algebra isomorph. A cognitive model predicted the distribution of solution times from measures of problem complexity. Separately, a linear discriminant analysis used fMRI data to predict whether or not students were engaged in problem solving. A hidden Markov algorithm merged these two sources of information to predict the mental states of students during problem-solving episodes. The algorithm was trained on data from one day of interaction and tested with data from a later day. In terms of predicting what state a student was in during any 2 second period, the algorithm achieved 87% accuracy on the training data and 83% accuracy on the test data. Further, the prediction accuracy using combined cognitive model and fMRI signal showed superadditivity of accuracies when using either cognitive model or fMRI signal alone.
Antenna Downselection for Co-Channel Interference Mitigation in a Mobile-to-Mobile Channel

The performance of multi-antenna receivers in co-channel interference is investigated for narrow-band links in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and line-of-sight (LOS) mobile-to-mobile channels. A novel architecture utilizing antenna down-selection is analyzed in simulation and compared with the performance of a conventional array architecture. Various down-selection criteria are proposed and analyzed. The simulation results show excellent performance enhancement for an MMSE selection algorithm. Several other methods are also analyzed and compared with promising results using the simple method of maximum power selection. Results are compared in terms of estimated complementary cumulative distribution functions of output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) derived from Monte Carlo simulations.
An investigation on the use of acoustic sub-word units for automatic speech recognition

An approach to automatic speech recognition is described which attempts to link together ideas from pattern recognition such as dynamic time warping and hidden Markov modeling, with ideas from linguistically motivated approaches. In this approach, the basic sub-word units are defined acoustically, but not necessarily phonetically. An algorithm was developed which automatically decomposed speech into multiple sub-word segments, based solely upon strict acoustic criteria, without any reference to linguistic content. By repeating this procedure on a large corpus of speech data we obtained an extensive pool of unlabeled sub-word speech segments. Then using well defined clustering techniques, a small set of representative acoustic sub-word units (e.g. an inventory of units) was created. This process is fast, easy to use, and required no human intervention. The interpretation of these sub-word units, in a linguistic sense, in the context of word decoding is an important issue which must be addressed for them to be useful in a large vocabulary system. We have not yet addressed this issue; instead a couple of simple experiments were performed to determine if these acoustic sub-word units had any potential value for speech recognition. For these experiments we used a connected digits database from a single female talker. A 25 sub-word unit codebook of acoustic segments was created from about 1600 segments drawn from 100 connected digit strings. A simple isolated digit recognition system, designed using the statistics of the codewords in the acoustic sub-word unit codebook had a recognition accuracy of 100%. In another experiment a connected digit recognition system was created with representative digit templates created by concatenating the sub-word units in an appropriate manner. The system had a string recognition accuracy of 96%.
Shear-Based Spatial Transformation to Protect Proximity Attack in Outsourced Database

Due to the rapid advancement of location based services (LBS), the spatial data has been increased dramatically. Consequently, cloud computing has boost up its importance. Nowadays it is a common practice to upload data into the third party service provider. However, the most important challenge in cloud computing is how to meet the privacy requirements and guarantee the integrity of the query result as well. Unfortunately, until now most of existing techniques couldn't support proper data privacy with reasonable execution cost. To carry on data privacy with rational execution cost for the cloud spatial data, we put forward spatial transformation that use shear transformation with rotation and shifting. We describe most important attack model measuring the data privacy of our transformation scheme. In addition, we devise a technique to evaluate the execution cost by the spatial range query. Finally, extensive experiments have demonstrated that our method has excellent performance against attack model for the data privacy with low communication cost.
A fusion-based method for 3D facial gender classification

In this paper, we propose a novel fusion-based gender classification method for 3D frontal neutral expression facial shape. Face landmarks, extracted from 3D face shape based on profiles and curvature, are separated as four regions. Experimental investigation to evaluate the significance of different facial regions in the task of gender classification is performed. The classification is performed by using Support Vector Machines (SVMs) based on the feature of regions. Classification results show that the upper region of face contains the highest amount of gender information. Matcher weighting fusion method is also applied to fusion the classification result of four regions. Experimental results demonstrate that fusing multiple facial features can achieve highest correct classification rate to 94.3%.
A Syntactic Language Computer Analysis of Depressed Versus Non-Depressed Females.

Mechanisms of Cognition . 9 Cognition and Language . 12 Cognitive Development and Language „ 13 L a n g u a g e . 15 Cognition and Depression . 20 Cognition and Syntax, SLCA-III . 32 Cognition of Depression in Language Syntax . 35 P r e d i c t i o n s . 39 Method . 42 S u b j e c t s . 42 C o d e r . 42 In s truments. 43 P r o c e d u r e . 46 Statistical Analysis . 50 R e s u l t s . 51 D i s c u s s i o n . 60 R e f e r e n c e s . 72
Cellular pharmacokinetics and intracellular activity of torezolid (TR-700): studies with human macrophage (THP-1) and endothelial (HUVEC) cell lines.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Optimal treatment of infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes and Legionella pneumophila requires antibiotics with intracellular activity. Linezolid accumulates poorly within cells. Torezolid (TR-700) is a novel methyltetrazolyl oxazolidinone with potentially different cellular pharmacokinetic properties. Our aim was to examine the accumulation and intracellular activities of torezolid in this context. METHODS Measurement of torezolid cell content and antibacterial activity in comparison with linezolid using human macrophages (THP-1) and human endothelial cells [human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs)], applying models allowing for the quantitative evaluation of the pharmacodynamics of antibiotics towards intracellular bacteria. RESULTS Torezolid accumulated rapidly in THP-1 macrophages, reaching a stable intracellular to extracellular ratio of approximately 10 (compared with approximately 1-2 for linezolid) within 15 min. On a weight concentration basis (mg/L), torezolid was approximately 5- to 10-fold more potent intracellularly (lower concentration needed to achieve a bacteriostatic effect) than linezolid against phagocytosed S. aureus, L. monocytogenes and L. pneumophila, with no change in maximal efficacy (approximately 1 log(10) reduction of the original, post-phagocytosis inoculum). When drugs were compared at equipotent concentrations (multiples of the MIC), no difference was seen between linezolid and torezolid, but the higher potency of torezolid allowed control of intracellular infections caused by linezolid-resistant S. aureus. CONCLUSIONS Torezolid exerts intracellular activity at lower extracellular concentrations than linezolid because of its greater potency independent of its greater intracellular accumulation. This may confer an advantage to torezolid in vivo if the drug can be used at dosages creating serum concentrations similar to those achieved with linezolid.