Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intuitive understanding of the relation between velocities and masses in simulated collisions

The participants in our experiments were asked to judge whether simulated horizontal collisions appeared to be “natural” or “unnatural”. We manipulated the implied masses and the velocity ratio of two colliding objects. Implied masses were varied through manipulations of the objects' simulated materials (Experiment 1) and sizes (Experiments 2 and 3). For each participant, we determined the interval of velocity ratios that produced “natural” responses most of the time and evaluated how this interval varied as a function of implied masses. The results revealed a fair degree of consistency between predictions of Newtonian mechanics and the participants' responses; this consistency was greater when the implied masses of the colliding objects were varied through manipulations of the simulated materials. Overall, the results support the hypothesis that the cognitive system can integrate multiple sources of stimulus information, enabling individuals to understand multidimensional mechanical events.
KSper, a pH-sensitive K+ current that controls sperm membrane potential

Mature mammalian spermatozoa are quiescent in the male reproductive tract. Upon ejaculation and during their transit through the female reproductive tract, they undergo changes that enable them to fertilize the egg. During this process of capacitation, they acquire progressive motility, develop hyperactivated motility, and are readied for the acrosome reaction. All of these processes are regulated by intracellular pH. In the female reproductive tract, the spermatozoan cytoplasm alkalinizes, which in turn activates a Ca2+-selective current (ICatSper) required for hyperactivated motility. Here, we show that alkalinization also has a dramatic effect on membrane potential, producing a rapid hyperpolarization. This hyperpolarization is primarily mediated by a weakly outwardly rectifying K+ current (IKSper) originating from the principal piece of the sperm flagellum. Alkalinization activates the pHi-sensitive IKSper, setting the membrane potential to negative potentials where Ca2+ entry via ICatSper is maximized. IKSper is one of two dominant ion currents of capacitated sperm cells.
TORUS' : a slotless, toroidal-stator, permanent-magnet generator

Indexing term: Electrical machines Abstract: TORUS is a compact electrical machine particularly suitable for use as an engine-driven generator and which, when supplied via suitable switching circuits, can operate as a brushless DC motor to start the engine. The machine is of simple and cheap construction and gives high effi- ciency. The use of Neodymium-Iron-Boron per- manent magnets gives good utilisation and small overall size and weight. Several 2.5 kW prototype machines have been built and tested, and have demonstrated all aspects of performance and capability of the TORUS configuration in the gen- erating mode.
Contributions of land-use history to carbon accumulation in U.S. forests.

Carbon accumulation in forests has been attributed to historical changes in land use and the enhancement of tree growth by CO2 fertilization, N deposition, and climate change. The relative contribution of land use and growth enhancement is estimated by using inventory data from five states spanning a latitudinal gradient in the eastern United States. Land use is the dominant factor governing the rate of carbon accumulation in these states, with growth enhancement contributing far less than previously reported. The estimated fraction of aboveground net ecosystem production due to growth enhancement is 2.0 +/- 4.4%, with the remainder due to land use.
Changing societal values and carrying capacity in park management: 50 years at Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario

All park planning and management decisions in parks are ultimately based on values. These values and meanings are translated into various forms and functions within parks. Dearden and Rollins (2009) stated that in Canada there has been a changing emphasis in park roles, and therefore changes in the underlying values and meanings over time, largely from an overt emphasis on recreation to an increased emphasis on ecological protection. This article traces the changes in values underlying the planning and management activities in Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario from 1957 to 2009. After the park establishment in 1957, increases in use reached a high of 1.2 million visitors in 1970. The recognition of problems associated with this very high use, by sectors of civil society and within the Parks Branch, led to a major evaluation of park management. New staff members were hired and a new approach to park planning and management was implemented. In 1971 a park Master Plan was approved for Pinery Provincial Park, the first of its type in Canadian park history. This plan used the concept of carrying capacity, with recreational and ecological components, as the underlying theoretical construct. This was the first time this theory had been used in park planning in Canada, and possibly anywhere. The plan and its implementation revealed that value changes, a domain change, can cause domain changes, leading into a new management regime.
Purification and assembly of thermostable Cy5 labeled γ-PNAs into a 3D DNA nanocage

PNA is hybrid molecule ideally suited for bridging the functional landscape of polypeptides with the structural diversity that can be engineered with DNA nanostructures. However, PNA can be more challenging to work with in aqueous solvents due to its hydrophobic nature. A solution phase method using strain promoted, copper free click chemistry was developed to conjugate the fluorescent dye Cy5 to 2 bifunctional PNA strands as a first step toward building cyclic PNA-polypeptides that can be arranged within 3D DNA nanoscaffolds. A 3D DNA nanocage was designed with binding sites for the 2 fluorescently labeled PNA strands in close proximity to mimic protein active sites. Denaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) is introduced as an efficient method for purifying charged, dye-labeled PNA conjugates from large excesses of unreacted dye and unreacted, neutral PNA. Elution from the gel in water was monitored by fluorescence and found to be more efficient for the more soluble PNA strand. Native PAGE shows that both PNA strands hybridize to their intended binding sites within the DNA nanocage. Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) with a Cy3 labeled DNA nanocage was used to determine the dissociation temperature of one PNA-Cy5 conjugate to be near 50°C. Steady-state and time resolved fluorescence was used to investigate the dye orientation and interactions within the various complexes. Bifunctional, thermostable PNA molecules are intriguing candidates for controlling the assembly and orientation of peptides within small DNA nanocages for mimicking protein catalytic sites.
Camera Viewpoint Control with the {Interaction Table}

The Interaction Table has initially been developed to answer the question: “how to allow several participants to quickly and easily modify the camera viewpoint when facing large immersive displays? ” The Interaction Table is a 6 DOF device mixing iotonic and isometric information. A fixed tablet on the top enables the use of 2D techniques while keeping immersed in the 3D environment. We have developed several interaction techniques to control the camera viewpoint using the Interaction Table. These techniques are based on scene manipulation, direct camera viewpoint manipulation, and target selection. The appropriate technique to choose depends on the task to be accomplished. Early tests have shown that the device can be used for an efficient camera viewpoint control after a very short learning period.
A randomized trial of laparoscopic versus open surgery for rectal cancer.

BACKGROUND Laparoscopic resection of colorectal cancer is widely used. However, robust evidence to conclude that laparoscopic surgery and open surgery have similar outcomes in rectal cancer is lacking. A trial was designed to compare 3-year rates of cancer recurrence in the pelvic or perineal area (locoregional recurrence) and survival after laparoscopic and open resection of rectal cancer. METHODS In this international trial conducted in 30 hospitals, we randomly assigned patients with a solitary adenocarcinoma of the rectum within 15 cm of the anal verge, not invading adjacent tissues, and without distant metastases to undergo either laparoscopic or open surgery in a 2:1 ratio. The primary end point was locoregional recurrence 3 years after the index surgery. Secondary end points included disease-free and overall survival. RESULTS A total of 1044 patients were included (699 in the laparoscopic-surgery group and 345 in the open-surgery group). At 3 years, the locoregional recurrence rate was 5.0% in the two groups (difference, 0 percentage points; 90% confidence interval [CI], -2.6 to 2.6). Disease-free survival rates were 74.8% in the laparoscopic-surgery group and 70.8% in the open-surgery group (difference, 4.0 percentage points; 95% CI, -1.9 to 9.9). Overall survival rates were 86.7% in the laparoscopic-surgery group and 83.6% in the open-surgery group (difference, 3.1 percentage points; 95% CI, -1.6 to 7.8). CONCLUSIONS Laparoscopic surgery in patients with rectal cancer was associated with rates of locoregional recurrence and disease-free and overall survival similar to those for open surgery. (Funded by Ethicon Endo-Surgery Europe and others; COLOR II ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00297791.).
Neurotrophins and the immune system

The neurotrophins are a family of polypeptide growth factors that are essential for the development and maintenance of the vertebrate nervous system. In recent years, data have emerged indicating that neurotrophins could have a broader role than their name might suggest. In particular, the putative role of NGF and its receptor TrkA in immune system homeostasis has become a much studied topic, whereas information on the other neurotrophins is scarce in this regard. This paper reviews what is known about the expression and possible functions of neurotrophins and their receptors in different immune tissues and cells, as well as recent data obtained from studies of transgenic mice in our laboratory. Results from studies to date support the idea that neurotrophins may regulate some immune functions. They also play an important role in the development of the thymus and in the survival of thymocytes.
Segmentation and appearance model building from an image sequence

In this paper we explore the problem of accurately segmenting a person from a video given only approximate location of that person. Unlike previous work which assumes that the appearance model is known in advance, we developed an iterative expectation-sampling (ES) algorithm for solving segmentation and appearance modeling simultaneously The appearance model is encoded with a kernel-based PDF defined in a joint color/path-length space. This appearance model remains unchanged during a short time period, although the object can articulate. Thus, we can perform the ES iteration not only for a single frame but also for an image sequence. The algorithm is iterative, but simple, efficient and gives visually good results.
Genetic Regulation of the Growth Plate

The epiphyseal growth plate consists of a layer of cartilage present only during the growth period and vanishes soon after puberty in long bones. It is divided to three well-defined zones, from epiphyses; resting, proliferative, and hypertrophic zones. Chondrocyte proliferation and differentiation and subsequent bone formation in this cartilage are controlled by various endocrine, autocrine, and paracrine factors which finally results into elimination of the cartilaginous tissue and promotion of the epiphyseal fusion. As chondrocytes differentiate from round, quiescent, and single structure to flatten and proliferative and then large and terminally differentiated, they experience changes in their gene expression pattern which allow them to transform from cartilaginous tissue to bone. This review summarizes the literature in this area and shortly describes different factors that affect growth plate cartilage both at the local and systemic levels. This may eventually help us to develop new treatment strategies of different growth disorders.
An Experiment in Distributed Visual Attention

Attention mechanisms of biological vision have been applied to machine vision for several applications, like visual search and object detection. Most of the proposed models are centred on a unique way of attention, mainly stimulus-driven or bottom-up attention. We propose a visual attention system that integrates several attentional behaviours. To get a real-time implementation, we have designed a distributed software architecture that exhibits an efficient and flexible structure. We describe some implementation details and real experiments performed in a mobile robot endowed with a stereo vision head.
Contextual Variation of the Vowel Voice Source as a Function of Adjacent Consonants

The contextual effects of voiced/voiceless stops on the voice source of an adjacent vowel were examined for the first vowel in ‘CVCV utterances in German, English, Swedish, French, and Italian. The principal analysis technique involved interactive inverse filtering and parameterisation of the glottal waveform in terms of a four-parameter voice source model (the LF-model). This analysis procedure was supplemented by measures from narrowband spectral sections of the speech output and by oral airflow recordings which allow inferences about the relative timing of glottal and supraglottal gestures. Results indicated that the voiced/voiceless nature of the consonant does yield differences in the voice source of the vowel. The most striking effects were found in the context of voiceless consonants, and cross-language differences did emerge in terms of directionality and degree. Extensive anticipatory effects were found for Swedish and for some speakers of English. Preceding the voiceless stop the vowel becomes increasingly breathy-voiced, and it would appear that the glottal abduction gesture is anticipated very early in the course of the vowel. Italian exhibited a similar tendency, though to a considerably lesser degree. The German data, on the other hand, showed certain strong carryover effects: Following the voiceless aspirated stop there was extensive breathy voicing. French showed little contextual variation in either direction. Rather surprisingly, the observed effects were not directly correlated with, or predictable from, the phonetic categories involved (voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless postaspirated). These results yield insights into the control parameters which may be involved in regulating voicing oppositions in these languages. Whereas the anticipatory effects observed might be consistent with a “timing” model of glottal control, the carryover effects cannot be explained in terms of timing alone and suggest that differences in tension settings of the laryngeal musculature may also be implicated.
Participation in practice: making it meaningful, effective and sustainable

Children's participation in decision-making is complex: it is undertaken for different purposes and is reflected in different levels of involvement, different contexts and different activities. This paper reviews the current state of participation and, drawing on practice and research literature, highlights several aspects of practice where further consideration is needed if participation is to develop positively. This suggests that, if participation is to be more meaningful to children and effective in influencing change, it is necessary to move beyond one-off or isolated participation and consider how participation becomes embedded as an integral part of our relationship with children.
Multivoicedness in Language Learning and Communication

The ontological and empirical parameters of the field of second and foreign language learning have shifted from cognitive and mentalistic orientations (Chomsky, 1957) to social contextual orientations to language (Firth & Wagner, 1997), and language learning is seen as directly concerned with the development of language-based knowledge and communicative competencies (Hymes, 1971) that are altered and extended by second and foreign language acquisition (Tarone & Bigelow, 2005). Communicative competence is always developed within networks of multivoiced social interactions regardless of the speaker’s native speech community; the traditional distinction between native speakers as opposed to nonnatives is becoming less and less relevant for researchers in the field of second and foreign language learning. The development of communicative competence enables humans to communicate by deploying strategies drawing upon these multivoiced environments where speakers’ performance variations are a way of negotiating meaning and creating language.
An Evaluation of Level of Detail Degradation in Head-Mounted Display Peripheries

A paradigm for the design of systems that manage level of detail in virtual environments is proposed. As an example of the prototyping step in this paradigm, a user study was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of high-detail insets used with head-mounted displays. Ten subjects were given a simple search task that required the location and identification of a single target object. All subjects used seven different displays (the independent variable), varying in inset size and peripheral detail, to perform this task Frame rate, target location, subject input method, and order of display use were all controlled. Primary dependent measures were search time on trials with correct identification, and the percentage of all trials correctly identified. ANOVAs of the results showed that insetless, high-detail displays did not lead to significantly different search times or accuracies than displays with insets. In fact, only the insetless, low-detail display returned significantly different results. Further research is being performed to examine the effect of varying task complexity, inset size, and level of detail.
Visual control of flight speed in honeybees

SUMMARY Visual control of flight speed in honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) was investigated by training them to fly through a specially constructed tunnel in which the motion, contrast and texture of the patterns lining the walls could be varied. Manipulation of pattern motion revealed that the speed of flight is controlled by regulating the image motion that is experienced by the eyes. Flight speed is surprisingly robust to changes in the contrast and/or spatial texture of the visual environment, suggesting that the underlying movement-detecting mechanisms estimate the speed of image motion in the eye largely independently of these parameters. This ensures that flight speed depends primarily on the distances to nearby surfaces and not upon their particular visual properties, such as contrast or visual texture. The removal of image motion cues drastically compromises the regulation of flight speed, underscoring their role in this function.
Intercistronic Region Required for Polycistronic Pre-mRNA Processing in Caenorhabditis elegans

ABSTRACT In Caenorhabditis elegans, polycistronic pre-mRNAs are processed by cleavage and polyadenylation at the 3′ ends of the upstream genes and trans splicing, generally to the specialized spliced leader SL2, at the 5′ ends of the downstream genes. Previous studies have indicated a relationship between these two events in the processing of a heat shock-induced gpd-2–gpd-3polycistronic pre-mRNA. Here, we report mutational analysis of the intercistronic region of this operon by linker scan analysis. Surprisingly, no sequences downstream of the 3′ end were important for 3′-end formation. In contrast, a U-rich (Ur) element located 29 bp downstream of the site of 3′-end formation was shown to be important for downstream mRNA biosynthesis. This ∼20-bp element is sufficient for SL2 trans splicing and mRNA accumulation when transplanted to a heterologous context. Furthermore, when the downstream gene was replaced by a gene from another organism, no loss of trans-splicing specificity was observed, suggesting that the Ur element may be the primary signal required for downstream mRNA processing.
Ethnic Preferences and Ethnic Perceptions in Multi-Ethnic Settings

Racism is a still a central topic in current debates about multiculturalism, but there is increasing evidence that appeals to racism—as the explanation for urban behaviors and the current patterns of residential separation—are overly simplistic. In a multi-ethnic/racial context in which groups have different agendas, it is no longer useful to cast societal divisions as issues of Black versus White. This is especially true for the residential mosaic. Survey responses from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality about racial attitudes reveal strongly held own-race preferences across quite different mixes of ethnic and racial groups. The evidence from the analysis reported in this paper suggests that these strongly held ethnocentric positions will continue to have important influences on the patterns of residential separation in urban areas. To argue that White preferences and White discrimination alone are the major forces in creating behaviors and patterns of separation in the urban fabric ignores the forces for separation, which are embedded in these ethnic differences and ethnocentrism more generally. The evidence from this study reaffirms the complex ethnocentric responses not only of Whites but also of other ethnic groups.
Older and Wiser? Integrating Results on the Relationship between Age and Wisdom-related Performance

Evidence from a psychological approach to the study of wisdom is reviewed with regard to the relationship between age and wisdom. Between 20 and 75 years, age has been demonstrated to show a zero relation with wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. A complex pattern of person characteristics and experiential features have to coalesce in order for wisdom to emerge. However, it is not only growing experience that (on average) comes with age but also decreases in basic intellectual functioning and changes in the personality make-up that seem to undermine rather than facilitate the development of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement. However, there is also some evidence indicating that under certain supportive conditions it may indeed be older people who hold the greatest potential for wisdom.
Eliminating memory bottlenecks for a JPEG encoder through distributed logic-memory architecture and computation-unit integrated memory

Several application domains, including multimedia and network processing, are highly memory intensive, making memory a bottleneck to designing higher performance and lower power application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Design methodologies based on innovative architectures, namely distributed logic-memory architectures and computation-unit integrated memories, have been shown to improve circuit performance significantly. In this paper, these design methodologies are discussed and evaluated through the implementation of an ASIC for the JPEG still image compression standard. The implemented system is capable of stand-alone image compression, and has been synthesized using the TSMC 0.13/spl mu/m 1.20V eight-layer metal CMOS process. A four-way distributed implementation can achieve an execution time of 2.23ms (a speed-up of 2.87/spl times/) for a 128 /spl times/ 128 input image at the cost of chip area overhead of 51.4% while the energy-delay product is reduced by 2.35/spl times/. Design metrics of various other implementations are also compared.