Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Network Theory Approach to the Construction of MRI-Derived Cortical Networks

Mapping the brain’s structural connectivity is key to understanding the brain’s operation. Currently, the stateof-the art noninvasive whole-brain structural mapping technique is MRI tractography. In MRI tractography, a special type of MRI is performed which extracts the most likely direction of water diffusion at each volume of resolution (voxel) in the brain. The diffusion of water aligns roughly with the brain’s white matter fiber tracts which form long-range connections, so from this Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) data, the gross structural connectivity may be inferred. Traditional tractography algorithms are concerned not only with the connectivities between brain regions, but also the paths of the fiber tracts that link them. Network theory has been used as a tool to analyze the characteristics of the networks resulting from traditional tractography, but has played only a limited role in the construction of these networks.
Cut-Off Value for Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire in Predicting Surgical Success in Patients with Lumbar Disc Herniation

Various factors related to predict surgical success were studied; however, a standard cut-off point for the Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire (PSQ) measure has not yet been established for a favorable surgical outcome for lumbar disc herniation (LDH). This study was to find the optimal cut-off point on the PSQ to distinguish surgical success in patients with LDH. A total of 154 patients with LDH consecutively referred to our clinic were enrolled into this prospective study between February 2011 and January 2014. All participants completed the PSQ. Patients completed the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) score before surgery, and at 2 years after surgery. Surgical success was defined as a 13-point improvement from the baseline ODI scores. The cut-off value for PSQ was determined by the receiver-operating characteristic curve (ROC). The mean age of patients was 49.3±9.6 years, and there were 80 women. The mean time for follow-up assessment was 31±5 months (range 24–35). Post-surgical success was 79.9% (n = 123) at 2 years follow up. The mean score for the total PSQ, PSQ-minor, and PSQ-moderate were 6.0 (SD = 1.6), 5.4 (SD = 1.9) and 6.5 (SD = 1.7), respectively. Total PSQ score was also significantly correlated with the total scores of the ODI. The optimal total PSQ cut-off point was determined as > 5.2 to predict surgical success in LDH patients, with 80.0% sensitivity and 75.6% specificity (AUC-0.814, 95% CI 0.703–0.926). This study showed that the PSQ could be considered a parameter for predicting surgical success in patients with LDH, and can be useful in clinical practice.
ybrid preference machines based on inspiration from neuroscience Action

In the past, a variety of computational problems have been tackled with different connectionist network approaches. However, very little research has been done on a framework which connects neuroscience-inspired models with connectionist models and higher level symbolic processing. In this paper, we outline a preference machine framework which focuses on a hybrid integration of various neural and symbolic techniques in order to address how we may process higher level concepts based on concepts from neuroscience. It is a first hybrid framework which allows a link between spiking neural networks, connectionist preference machines and symbolic finite state machines. Furthermore, we present an example experiment on interpreting a neuroscience-inspired network by using preferences which may be connected to connectionist or symbolic interpretations.  2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
A hough transform based scan registration strategy for Mobile Robotic Mapping

The scan registration is the cornerstone to Mobile Robotic Mapping, and the majority of existing global registration methods are dependent on specific features. This paper presents a global feature-less scan registration strategy based on the ground surface, which is extremely common in Mobile Robotic Mapping scenarios. The 3D rotation is decoupled from 3D translation by transforming the input scans into the Hough domain, wherein Phase Only Matched Filtering (POMF) is adopted for the partially overlapped signal registration. No particular features in the input data are prerequisite to our algorithm. The algorithm is validated by the challenging scans captured by our custom-built platform and a public dataset. The result illustrates the reliability of this algorithm to align feature-less, partially overlapped and noisy scans.
Vortex glass and vortex liquid in oscillatory media.

We study the disordered, multispiral solutions of two-dimensional oscillatory media for parameter values at which the single-spiral/vortex solution is fully stable. Using the complex Ginzburg-Landau (CGLE) equation, we show that these states, heretofore believed to be static, actually evolve extremely slowly. This is achieved via a reduction of the CGLE to the evolution of the sole vortex coordinates. This true defect-mediated turbulence occurs in two distinct phases, a vortex liquid characterized by normal diffusion of spirals, and a slowly relaxing, intermittent, "vortex glass. "
A hypercube-based data structure for spatio-temporal exploration and analysis

This paper examines the opportunities existing within the multidimensional database (MDDB) approach to support spatio-temporal data exploration and analysis ( STEA ). MDDB-specific technology used for Data Warehousing and On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) is recognized for supporting easy query building, rapid query run times and simple interactive navigation within multiple displays, including maps. However, due to the lack of topological operators (spatial and temporal) in MDDBs limited STEA can be achieved. We thus propose a new data structure which implements a spatio-temporal dimension of topological operators in multidimensional databases. It involves a hierarchy of topological operators which uses the spatial and temporal relationships between instances of object classes. This hierarchy is structured according to granularity levels (4 in our example). Operators at the highest level carry general meanings while operators from the lowest levels have very specific meanings. This hierarchy also takes into consideration behavior models of spatial analysis in order to improve database usability. The topological relationships are described for each level of the hierarchy,
Development of HPTLC Method for Puerarin Estimation in Pueraria tuberosa (Roxb.ex Willd.) DC.

A simple, precise, and rapid HPTLC method has been established for analysis of puerarin from ethanolic ex- tract of tubers of Pueraria tuberosa. The method involves densitometric evaluation of puerarin after their resolution on pre-coated silica gel 60F254 plates with chloroform- methanol 9:1 (v/v) as mobile phase. Detection was at 254 nm. Good resolution was achieved with Rf 0.71 for puerarin. The method was validated for specificity, linearity, precision, accuracy, and repeatability. The method was linear in the range 10-60 μg/mL per band. Study of puerarin was found 99.90% by this method. The method is simple, specific, precise, accurate and reproducible for estimation of puerarin in pueraria species and its formulations.
Survivable virtual topology design in multi-domain optical networks

We consider the problem of survivable virtual network mapping in a multi-domain optical network with the objective of minimizing total network link cost for a given virtual traffic demand. The survivability constraint guarantees the connectivity of virtual nodes after any single optical link failure. We propose a hierarchical software-defined networking-based control plane to exchange information between domains, and we propose heuristic approaches for mapping virtual links onto multi-domain optical links using partition and contraction mechanisms on the virtual topology. We provide an integer linear programming formulation to compare with our heuristic approaches. Numerical results show that our heuristic approach is effective in reducing total network cost and increasing the successful mapping rate.
Connectionism, Symbol Grounding, and Autonomous Agents

In this position paper we would like to lay out our view on the importance of grounding and situatedness for cognitive science. Furthermore we would like to suggest that both aspects become relevant almost automatically if one consequently pursues the original ideas from connectionism. Finally we discuss the relevance of grounding for theories of meaning and the possible contribution of symbol grounding for autonomous agents. What is grounding and why is it useful? Grounding of concepts and symbols is an important perspective for cognitive science. This perspective concentrates on two things: First it points out that in any cognitive agent there are important pathways between the sensors and eeectors on one side, and the agent's concepts and symbols on the other side. Neglecting those pathways leads to neglecting the very essence of the concepts that make them part of the agent's mental processes. Secondly, it explains how concepts can be developed through interactive behavior in an environment and thus puts emphasis on the history and subjective context behind any conceptual scheme. Grounding in this sense is not limited to linking concepts to sensors and eeectors, but also to any other internal mental state thus constituting the context for concept formation. What the former aspect is concerned it is often argued that any classical symbol system in AI can be envisioned as being linked to sensors and eeectors, and therefore any AI system is or can be grounded. What the second aspect is concerned, it is sometimes argued that if, for instance, someone copied all mental states from one agent into another one would get a functioning systems while being able to forget about any history or subjective experiences (Minsky, personal communication). From a certain perspective, both points are true. Of course, when copying someone's brain into a functionally equivalent computer program or the like (let's suppose for the moment we really could) one could no longer really say that this new agent has had experiences which helped it to ground its symbols. This is not the point. What the symbol grounding problem suggests is that one cannot merely copy that agent's concepts and its use of symbols 1 into another agent without losing some or all of their functionality. In other words, in order to get the new agent to make use of the symbols in exactly the same way as the original 1 For the further discussion we want …
A miniaturized millimeter-wave bandpass filter with LTCC technology

This paper presents the design and simulation result of a miniaturized millimeter-wave bandpass filter realized by low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology. The bandpass filter with a central frequency of 60 GHz and a 6 GHz pass-band is designed as a three-dimensional (3-D) structure based on distributed components. A distinct feature of this filter is the smaller size and lower in sertion loss than conventional filter at such a high frequency. With the assistance of the cross coupling which is implemented by a Z-shaped metal layer, a transmission zero is produced above the pass-band. The insertion loss is 1.6 dB and return loss is better than 20 dB within the pass-band. The overall size of the miniaturized filter is only 1.6mm×0.8mm×0.6mm.
Topology-Oriented Boolean Operations

This technical report discusses an efficient, topologyoriented method for Boolean operations on polyhedral manifolds. A new spatial hashing technique is proposed for detecting intersections of primitive pairs in linear time complexity. A topology-oriented technique is proposed that classifies the type of intersection using robust geometric predicates. Boolean results are built using finite-precision computations with guarantee that its topology is the same as that obtained by exact geometric computations. Arithmetic errors are only introduced when creating new vertices, but do not invalidate topological consistency. Degenerate intersections are identified explicitly but handled in the topological routines. Since topology changes in our method are local operations, our method has low cost in both time and space complexities.
A survey of Hopf bifurcation analysis in nonlinear railway wheelset dynamics

Abstract. This article attempts to analyze the Hopf bifurcati on behavior of a railway wheelset in the presence of dead-zone and yaw damper nonline arities. A model that is more precise than Yang and Ahmadian is investigated. Using Bogoliubov -Mitropolsky averaging method and critical speed, the amplitude of the limit cycle in the presence of the mentioned nonlinearities is taken into consideration. To solve these nonlinear equations analytically, the integration interval has been divided into three sub-domains. Two-dimens ional bifurcation diagrams are provided to illustrate the mechanism of formation of Hopf bifur cation. These diagrams can be used for design of stable wheelset systems.
Mobile agents point the WAY: context sensitive service delivery through mobile lightweight agents

This paper introduces the Where Are You (WAY) system, a simple, yet effective application for assisting mobile users in the location, tracking and rendezvousing with a variety of moving entities. System functionality is delivered through a collection of mobile lightweight intentional agents, which take cognizance of the memory and processing restriction of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).
Research of integrated algorithm establishment of a spam detection system

Nowadays, more and more people are getting engaged in the construction of the Internet, consciously or not, by posting their individual comments on it. In today's big data era, opinion mining on customer's opinions has become one of the most effective ways to roundly use the great amount of information. Opinion mining, a brand new section of unstructured information mining, is mainly related to emotional analysis, features digging and subjective comments recognition and so on. It is also an important part of knowledge discovery, often used to extract hidden information from unstructured or semi-structured data. In the field of key algorithm for opinion mining and integrating, opinion integration algorithm means a calculating method, which ignores the non-significant internal parts of the comments. That is, skipping the minor issues from the users' comments, and focusing on the section of useful information, then summing up with some valuable conclusions for practical application. The research of opinion integration algorithm consists of four parts, namely, opinion spam detection opinion summarization, opinion visualization and opinion assessment. This paper focuses on opinion spam detection methods. Spam refers to fake user reviews, which means well-designed fake comments targeted at enhancing or damaging a specific product by an individual or an organization. Therefore, identifying spam comments becomes an important task for improving the authenticity and accuracy of opinion mining. We regard this task a classification problem. With the use of wed crawlers, segmentation system and artificial labeling methods, we acquired a big amount of online comments. By training these data and selecting the relevant features, we finally build a classifier. The results from this experiment show that the methods provided herein can achieve the purpose of preliminary comment spam detection.
Access of Quaternary Ammonium Blockers to the Internal Pore of Cyclic Nucleotide-gated Channels: Implications for the Location of the Gate

Cyclic nucleotide-gated (CNG) channels play important roles in the transduction of visual and olfactory information by sensing changes in the intracellular concentration of cyclic nucleotides. We have investigated the interactions between intracellularly applied quaternary ammonium (QA) ions and the α subunit of rod cyclic nucleotide-gated channels. We have used a family of alkyl-triethylammonium derivatives in which the length of one chain is altered. These QA derivatives blocked the permeation pathway of CNG channels in a concentration- and voltage-dependent manner. For QA compounds with tails longer than six methylene groups, increasing the length of the chain resulted in higher apparent affinities of ∼1.2 RT per methylene group added, which is consistent with the presence of a hydrophobic pocket within the intracellular mouth of the channel that serves as part of the receptor binding site. At the single channel level, decyltriethyl ammonium (C10-TEA) ions did not change the unitary conductance but they did reduce the apparent mean open time, suggesting that the blocker binds to open channels. We provide four lines of evidence suggesting that QA ions can also bind to closed channels: (1) the extent of C10-TEA blockade at subsaturating [cGMP] was larger than at saturating agonist concentration, (2) under saturating concentrations of cGMP, cIMP, or cAMP, blockade levels were inversely correlated with the maximal probability of opening achieved by each agonist, (3) in the closed state, MTS reagents of comparable sizes to QA ions were able to modify V391C in the inner vestibule of the channel, and (4) in the closed state, C10-TEA was able to slow the Cd2+ inhibition observed in V391C channels. These results are in stark contrast to the well-established QA blockade mechanism in Kv channels, where these compounds can only access the inner vestibule in the open state because the gate that opens and closes the channel is located cytoplasmically with respect to the binding site of QA ions. Therefore, in the context of Kv channels, our observations suggest that the regions involved in opening and closing the permeation pathways in these two types of channels are different.
An accurate and flexible early memory system power evaluation approach using a microcomponent method

As energy efficiency has become a primary concern, system designers have greater need for a flexible and highly accurate power estimation method for evaluating different architecture options. Since memory is an increasingly dominant power consumer, we reexamine existing memory power models and propose a highly efficient microcomponent-based approach with data-aware refinement for accurate system-level power estimations. The key contribution of our approach is that the proposed microcomponent method allows designers to use flexible architecture compositions. Our approach identifies the common microcomponents used by internal memory commands and accurately pre-calibrates the power consumption pattern of each microcomponent. We decompose target design architectures into these microcomponents to easily derive accurate power estimates. To achieve very high accuracy, we consider the data variation effect by leveraging the fact that memory circuit is mainly doing data passing and hence a simple interpolation technique can further boost accuracy. Our experiments show that the proposed approach produces accurate results of less than 2% error rate in average for system power analysis.
Hippocampal Dysregulation of Neurofibromin-Dependent Pathways Is Associated with Impaired Spatial Learning in Engrailed 2 Knock-Out Mice

Genome-wide association studies indicated the homeobox-containing transcription factor Engrailed-2 (En2) as a candidate gene for autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Accordingly, En2 knock-out (En2−/−) mice show anatomical and behavioral “ASD-like” features, including decreased sociability and learning deficits. The molecular pathways underlying these deficits in En2−/− mice are not known. Deficits in signaling pathways involving neurofibromin and extracellular-regulated kinase (ERK) have been associated with impaired learning. Here we investigated the neurofibromin-ERK cascade in the hippocampus of wild-type (WT) and En2−/− mice before and after spatial learning testing. When compared with WT littermates, En2−/− mice showed impaired performance in the Morris water maze (MWM), which was accompanied by lower expression of the activity-dependent gene Arc. Quantitative RT-PCR, immunoblotting, and immunohistochemistry experiments showed a marked downregulation of neurofibromin expression in the dentate gyrus of both naive and MWM-treated En2−/− mice. ERK phosphorylation, known to be induced in the presence of neurofibromin deficiency, was increased in the dentate gyrus of En2−/− mice after MWM. Treatment of En2−/− mice with lovastatin, an indirect inhibitor of ERK phosphorylation, markedly reduced ERK phosphorylation in the dentate gyrus, but was unable to rescue learning deficits in MWM-trained mutant mice. Further investigation is needed to unravel the complex molecular mechanisms linking dysregulation of neurofibromin-dependent pathways to spatial learning deficits in the En2 mouse model of ASD.
Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol Treatment Suppresses Immunity and Early IFN-γ, IL-12, and IL-12 Receptor β2 Responses to Legionella pneumophila Infection1

The marijuana cannabinoid, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), suppresses immunity to Legionella pneumophila and development of Th1 activity and cell-mediated immunity. In the current study, THC effects on cytokines regulating the development of Th1 cells were examined. BALB/c mice showed significant increases in serum IL-12 and IFN-γ within hours of infection; however, the levels of these Th1-promoting cytokines as well as resistance to a challenge infection were suppressed by THC (8 mg/kg) injected 18 h before priming. The Th2-promoting cytokine, IL-4, was increased within hours of a Legionella infection and was further increased by THC treatment. These results suggested that THC injection suppressed the cytokine environment promoting Th1 immunity. In additional experiments, THC pretreatment and infection of IL-4 knockout mice showed that serum IL-12 and IFN-γ were suppressed equally in both knockout and normal mice. This suggested that the drug-induced increase in IL-4 was not responsible for the decreases in serum IL-12 and IFN-γ. However, THC treatment was shown to suppress the expression of IL-12 receptor β2 mRNA, indicating that, in addition to suppression of IL-12, THC injection suppressed the expression of IL-12 receptors. Finally, the role of cannabinoid receptors in Th1-promoting cytokine suppression was examined, and results with receptor antagonists showed that both cannabinoid receptors 1 and 2 were involved. It is suggested that suppression of Th1 immunity to Legionella is not due to an increase in IL-4 production but to a decrease in IFN-γ and IL-12. Furthermore, both types of cannabinoid receptors are involved.
Coming Out of the Penumbras: World Culture and Cross-National Variation in Divorce Rates

Abstract:This paper extends the comparative literature on divorce by theorizing how international institutions and norms influence societal divorce rates. Drawing on developmental idealism and world society theory, the paper argues that global institutions legitimize cultural principles such as individualism, human rights, and gender equality, which reshape “modern” understandings of marriage and family relations. Formal international institutions and treaties do not explicitly proclaim or codify the right to divorce, but we suggest that new norms regarding divorce emerge from the “penumbras” of world culture and diffuse globally. Panel regression models covering 84 countries between 1970 and 2008 find a strong association between global cultural influence and divorce rates, controlling for other factors. Results highlight the effects of world society on the private lives of individuals, and suggest that world society affects a wider set of outcomes than the conventional literature would predict.