Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Push it real

With recent advances in real-time graphics technology, more realistic, believable and appealing virtual characters are needed than ever before. Both player-controlled avatars and non-player characters are now starting to interact with the environment, other virtual humans and crowds. However, simulating physical contacts between characters and matching appropriate reactions to specific actions is a highly complex problem, and timing errors, force mismatches and angular distortions are common. To investigate the effect of such anomalies on the perceived realism of two-character interactions, we captured a motion corpus of pushing animations and corresponding reactions and then conducted a series of perceptual experiments. We found that participants could easily distinguish between five different interaction forces, even when only one of the characters was visible. Furthermore, they were sensitive to all three types of anomalous interactions: timing errors of over 150ms were acceptable less than 50% of the time, with early or late reactions being equally perceptible; participants could perceive force mismatches, though over-reactions were more acceptable than under-reactions; finally, angular distortions when a character reacts to a pushing force reduce the acceptability of the interactions, but there is some evidence for a preference of expansion away from the pushing character's body. Our results provide insights to aid in designing motion capture sessions, motion editing strategies and balancing animation budgets.
Les choix comptables et financiers des dirigeants d' entreprises en difficulté : approches théorique et empirique sur le marché boursier français

Cette recherche s' interesse au comportement comptable et financier des dirigeants. Elle postule que dans un contexte d' entreprises en difficulte les dirigeants vont opter pour des choix comptables et financiers specifiques. A travers ces choix, ils publient des etats financiers optimistes pour eviter le depot de bilan (strategie defensive) ou pessimistes pour reorganiser le redressement de l' entreprise (strategie offensive). La these est organisee en deux parties. La premiere expose tout d' abord le cadre theorique. Elle passe ensuite en revue la notion d' entreprises en difficulte et propose une nouvelle definition. Elle analyse enfin les strategies des acteurs (dirigeants, actionnaires et creanciers). Apres avoir decrit la demarche de recherche, la deuxieme partie se focalise sur l' etude empirique. Dans un premier temps, elle met en evidence, a partir d' etudes de cas, des profils de reconnaissance des entreprises en difficulte et la politique comptable et financiere de leurs dirigeants. Dans un deuxieme temps, elle analyse, a partir des modeles d' accruals et des regressions, les strategies de gestion des resultats des dirigeants francais sur un echantillon de 85 entreprises en difficulte cotees a la Bourse de Paris.
New Mini-Bucket Partitioning Heuristics for Bounding the Probability of Evidence

Mini-Bucket Elimination (MBE) is a well-known approximation algorithm deriving lower and upper bounds on quantities of interest over graphical models. It relies on a procedure that partitions a set of functions, called bucket, into smaller subsets, called mini-buckets. The method has been used with a single partitioning heuristic throughout, so the impact of the partitioning algorithm on the quality of the generated bound has never been investigated. This paper addresses this issue by presenting a framework within which partitioning strategies can be described, analyzed and compared. We derive a new class of partitioning heuristics from first-principles geared for likelihood queries, demonstrate their impact on a number of benchmarks for probabilistic reasoning and show that the results are competitive (often superior) to state-of-the-art bounding schemes.
SapC–DOPS Nanovesicles as Targeted Therapy for Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the deadliest type of cancer for both men and women. In this study, we evaluate the in vitro and in vivo efficacy of a biotherapeutic agent composed of a lysosomal protein (Saposin C, SapC) and a phospholipid (dioleoylphosphatidylserine, DOPS), which can be assembled into nanovesicles (SapC–DOPS) with selective antitumor activity. SapC–DOPS targets phosphatidylserine, an anionic phospholipid preferentially exposed in the surface of cancer cells and tumor-associated vasculature. Because binding of SapC to phosphatidylserine is favored at acidic pHs, and the latter characterizes the milieu of many solid tumors, we tested the effect of pH on the binding capacity of SapC–DOPS to lung tumor cells. Results showed that SapC–DOPS binding to cancer cells was more pronounced at low pH. Viability assays on a panel of human lung tumor cells showed that SapC–DOPS cytotoxicity was positively correlated with cell surface phosphatidylserine levels, whereas mitochondrial membrane potential measurements were consistent with apoptosis-related cell death. Using a fluorescence tracking method in live mice, we show that SapC–DOPS specifically targets human lung cancer xenografts, and that systemic therapy with SapC–DOPS induces tumor apoptosis and significantly inhibits tumor growth. These results suggest that SapC–DOPS nanovesicles are a promising treatment option for lung cancer. Mol Cancer Ther; 14(2); 491–8. ©2015 AACR.
The Impact of a Researcher’s Structural Position on Scientific Performance: An Empirical Analysis

This article discusses the nature and structure of scientific collaboration as well as the association between academic collaboration networks and scientific productivity. Based on empirical data gathered from the CVs of 73 researchers affiliated with an academic research network in Canada, this study used social network analysis (SNA) to examine the association between researchers’ structural position in the network and their scientific performance. With reference to Granovetter’s and Burt’s theories on weak ties and structural holes, we argue it is the bridging position a researcher holds in a scientific network that matters most to improve scientific performance. The results of correlation scores between network centrality and two different indicators of scientific performance indicate there is a robust association between researchers’ structural position in collaboration networks and their scientific performance. We believe this finding, and the method we have developed, could have implications for the way research networks are managed and researchers are supported.
Adaptive space-time equalisation for multiple-antenna assisted multiple-input multiple-output systems

This paper investigates an adaptive space-time equalisation (STE) assisted multiuser detection scheme for multiple-antenna aided multiuser systems. A minimum bit error rate (MBER) design is compared with the standard minimum mean square error (MMSE) design. It is shown that the MBER design provides significant performance enhancement, in terms of achievable system bit error rate, over the MMSE design for the multiple-antenna assisted multiple-input multiple-output communication scenario. Adaptive implementation of the MBER STE is realised using a stochastic gradient based least bit error rate algorithm, which is demonstrated to consistently outperform the adaptive least mean square based STE.
Integrated Enrichment Analysis of Variants and Pathways in Genome-Wide Association Studies Indicates Central Role for IL-2 Signaling Genes in Type 1 Diabetes, and Cytokine Signaling Genes in Crohn's Disease

Pathway analyses of genome-wide association studies aggregate information over sets of related genes, such as genes in common pathways, to identify gene sets that are enriched for variants associated with disease. We develop a model-based approach to pathway analysis, and apply this approach to data from the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC) studies. Our method offers several benefits over existing approaches. First, our method not only interrogates pathways for enrichment of disease associations, but also estimates the level of enrichment, which yields a coherent way to promote variants in enriched pathways, enhancing discovery of genes underlying disease. Second, our approach allows for multiple enriched pathways, a feature that leads to novel findings in two diseases where the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a major determinant of disease susceptibility. Third, by modeling disease as the combined effect of multiple markers, our method automatically accounts for linkage disequilibrium among variants. Interrogation of pathways from eight pathway databases yields strong support for enriched pathways, indicating links between Crohn's disease (CD) and cytokine-driven networks that modulate immune responses; between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and “Measles” pathway genes involved in immune responses triggered by measles infection; and between type 1 diabetes (T1D) and IL2-mediated signaling genes. Prioritizing variants in these enriched pathways yields many additional putative disease associations compared to analyses without enrichment. For CD and RA, 7 of 8 additional non-MHC associations are corroborated by other studies, providing validation for our approach. For T1D, prioritization of IL-2 signaling genes yields strong evidence for 7 additional non-MHC candidate disease loci, as well as suggestive evidence for several more. Of the 7 strongest associations, 4 are validated by other studies, and 3 (near IL-2 signaling genes RAF1, MAPK14, and FYN) constitute novel putative T1D loci for further study.
Managing Priorities in Atomic Multicast Protocols

Group communication and atomic multicast (i.e., total-order multicast) topics have been studied for more than two decades from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. Most of this work is concerned about the classical definition of total order (informally, all the messages are received in the same order). However, in some cases additional guarantees are needed, like priority-based delivery, which allows a user application to prioritize the sending and delivery of certain messages. In this paper, we present several techniques to modify an existing total order protocol to take into account message priorities and show how existing total order algorithms can be modified according to these techniques.
Regulation of Virus Neutralization and the Persistent Fraction by TRIM21

ABSTRACT Despite a central role in immunity, antibody neutralization of virus infection is poorly understood. Here we show how the neutralization and persistence of adenovirus type 5, a prevalent nonenveloped human virus, are dependent upon the intracellular antibody receptor TRIM21. Cells with insufficient amounts of TRIM21 are readily infected, even at saturating concentrations of neutralizing antibody. Conversely, high TRIM21 expression levels decrease the persistent fraction of the infecting virus and allows neutralization by as few as 1.6 antibody molecules per virus. The direct interaction between TRIM21 and neutralizing antibody is essential, as single-point mutations within the TRIM21-binding site in the Fc region of a potently neutralizing antibody impair neutralization. However, infection at high multiplicity can saturate TRIM21 and overcome neutralization. These results provide insight into the mechanism and importance of a newly discovered, effector-driven process of antibody neutralization of nonenveloped viruses.
Sensory discrimination: decision process.

1. This paper and a following paper deal with problems, such as the following, that arise in experimental studies of the neural mechanisms underlying sensory discrimination: What measures of neural activity are relevant in such a study? How can sample data from the responses of single neurons be combined to represent the information relayed by a population of neurons? How can neural data be compared with results from psychophysical studies? What assumptions are implicit in any such comparison? What are the implications of assumptions that neurons respond independently or that they have homogeneous response properties? How can neural codes be assessed in a systematic way? Can psychophysical and neurophysiological observations be combined to infer mechanisms or relationships in the processes underlying discrimination? All of these questions require some theoretical framework before they can be answered. These papers set out such a framework, they deal with most of those questions, and they provide practicable formulas for relating sample data from neurophysiological experiments to behavioral measures derived from psychophysical experiments. 2. The processes that intervene between a relatively peripheral array of neural activity and a subject's decision in a discrimination task are split into two sections: a) the ascending sensory processes that provide the final patterns of neural activity on which discrimination is based, and b) a process that yields decisions of the type required by the experimental design used in the psychophysical study. The approach is to develop a theory of the decision process in this paper, and then to expand it to incorporate the ascending processes in the following paper. 3. The decision theory deals with a class of experimental designs in which a subject is required to make a decision about two stimuli S1 and S2 (e.g., S1 is larger than S2, S2 is the same as S1, S2 was the modified stimulus, and so on). A mathematical representation for experimental designs of this type is developed. 4. The decision process is analyzed in two forms: a) a multivariate form in which the discrimination decision results directly from multidimensional neural representation of the two stimuli, and b) a vivariate form in which the final representation of each stimulus is a unidimensional variable. Conditions required for equivalence of these formulations are examined. 5. The theory includes as explicit variables a) the experimental design, b) the subject's discrimination strategy, c) bias, d) memory variance, e) bias variance, f) variance in the final neural representations of the stimuli, and g) their functional dependence on the stimuli that they represent. 6. Formulas are developed for the expected values of commonly used psychophysical measures such as the classical psychometric function, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) functions, discriminatory separation index (d'), and the difference limen. 7. Optimum discrimination behavior is analyzed.
Dual-task decrements in gait: contributing factors among healthy older adults.

BACKGROUND The factors that contribute to the dual tasking (DT) changes in performance that occur when older adults walk while simultaneously performing other tasks are not well known. We hypothesized that cognitive and motor reserve (e.g., executive function [EF], postural control, and walking abilities) and affect (e.g., anxiety, depressive symptoms) influence the DT decrements (DTDs) in gait. METHODS Two hundred twenty-eight community-living, healthy older adults (mean: 76.2 +/- 4.2 years; 59% women) walked with and without DT, for example, subtracting 7s and phoneme monitoring. Mobility (e.g., the Dynamic Gait Index), cognitive function (e.g., memory, EF), and affect (e.g., Geriatric Depression Scale) were quantified. Bivariate and multivariate analyses identified factors associated with the DTD in gait speed (a general measure of locomotor function), swing time, (reflecting balance during gait), and swing time variability (a measure of stride-to-stride consistency). RESULTS Gait speed and swing time decreased (p <.001) and swing time variability increased (became worse) (p <.001) during all DTs. The DTD in gait speed was correlated with comfortable walking gait speed, but not with tests of mobility or cognitive function. The DTD in swing time variability was correlated with EF, mobility, and affect (e.g., depressive symptoms). Much of the variance in the DTDs was unexplained. CONCLUSIONS Usual walking abilities and cognitive function contribute to the DT effects on gait, but these relationships depend on specifics of the DT, the gait feature being studied, and the particulars of the cognitive domain. Meeting the everyday challenges of walking while dual tasking apparently relies on multiple factors including a consistent gait pattern and EF.
A RRT based path planning algorithm for Rehabilitation robots

This paper presents a new approach called Cell based Bi-directionall Rapidly exploring Random Trees (CellBiRRT) for manipulator motion that is able to handle pose constraints and to operate in difficult environments with high probability of collisions. The approach uses the idea of bi-directional RRT (Bi-RRT) and creates an algorithm that uses configuration (C-Space) and Cartesian space. It is achieved by decomposing the Cartesian space into cells, which will be used later as basis in order to reduce the free C-Space by generating N-dimensional cuboid regions. The results show that the method can be an acceptable solution to path planning problem, allowing a 7 Degrees of Freedom (DoF) robot arm to perform household? s activities, like moving and placing bottles or keeping horizontally a meal tray in order to serve handicapped people.
Interacting with learning objects in a distributed environment

Learning objects are gaining an increasing interest in the e-learning community. Their availability in a distributed Web-based environment represents an opportunity for further developments generated by a richer context of interaction that permits to different stakeholders to use, comment and evolve available objects, thus providing each other with suggestions and insights. In this paper, we propose a distributed scenario in which users may express their comments about learning objects, point out relationships among them, and evolve a learning object in the sense of specialization. The implementation of such environment in a super peer network is outlined together with basic exploration facilities.
Fuzzy Technique-based Identification of Close and Distant Clusters in Clustering

Due to advances in hardware performance, user-friendly interfaces are becoming one of the major concerns in information systems. Linguistic conversation is a very natural way of human communications. Fuzzy techniques have been employed to liaison the discrepancy between the qualitative linguistic terms and quantitative computerized data. This paper deals with linguistic queries using clustering results on data sets, which are intended to retrieve the close clusters or distant clusters from the clustering results. In order to support such queries, a fuzzy technique-based method is proposed. The method introduces distance membership functions, namely, close and distant membership functions which transform the metric distance between two objects into the degree of closeness or farness, respectively. In order to measure the degree of closeness or farness between two clusters, both cluster closeness measure and cluster farness measure which incorporate distance membership function and cluster memberships are considered. For the flexibility of clustering, fuzzy clusters are assumed to be formed. This allows us to linguistically query close or distant clusters by constructing fuzzy relation based on the measures.
Counting glomeruli and podocytes: rationale and methodologies

Purpose of reviewThere is currently much interest in the numbers of both glomeruli and podocytes. This interest stems from a greater understanding of the effects of suboptimal fetal events on nephron endowment, the associations between low nephron number and chronic cardiovascular and kidney disease in adults, and the emergence of the podocyte depletion hypothesis. Recent findingsObtaining accurate and precise estimates of glomerular and podocyte number has proven surprisingly difficult. When whole kidneys or large tissue samples are available, design-based stereological methods are considered gold standard because they are based on principles that negate systematic bias. However, these methods are often tedious and time consuming, and oftentimes inapplicable when dealing with small samples such as biopsies. Therefore, novel methods suitable for small tissue samples, and innovative approaches to facilitate high throughput measurements, such as MRI to estimate glomerular number and flow cytometry to estimate podocyte number, have recently been described. SummaryThis review describes current gold-standard methods for estimating glomerular and podocyte number, as well as methods developed in the past 3 years. We are now better placed than ever before to accurately and precisely estimate glomerular and podocyte number, and examine relationships between these measurements and kidney health and disease.
A personalised information retrieval tool

Industry professionals and everyday users of the Internet have long accepted that due to both the size and growth of this ubiquitous repository, new tools are needed to assist with the finding and extraction of very specific resources relevant to a user's task. Previously, this definition of relevance has been based on the extremely generic matching between resources and query terms, but recently the emphasis is shifting towards a more personalised model based on the relevance of a particular resource for one specific user. We introduce a prototype, \tt Fetch, which adopts this concept within an information-seeking environment specifically designed to provide users with the means to better describe a problem (s)he doesn't understand.
Transcriptomic Profiling Analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana Treated with Exogenous Myo-Inositol

Myo-insositol (MI) is a crucial substance in the growth and developmental processes in plants. It is commonly added to the culture medium to promote adventitious shoot development. In our previous work, MI was found in influencing Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. In this report, a high-throughput RNA sequencing technique (RNA-Seq) was used to investigate differently expressed genes in one-month-old Arabidopsis seedling grown on MI free or MI supplemented culture medium. The results showed that 21,288 and 21,299 genes were detected with and without MI treatment, respectively. The detected genes included 184 new genes that were not annotated in the Arabidopsis thaliana reference genome. Additionally, 183 differentially expressed genes were identified (DEGs, FDR ≤0.05, log2 FC≥1), including 93 up-regulated genes and 90 down-regulated genes. The DEGs were involved in multiple pathways, such as cell wall biosynthesis, biotic and abiotic stress response, chromosome modification, and substrate transportation. Some significantly differently expressed genes provided us with valuable information for exploring the functions of exogenous MI. RNA-Seq results showed that exogenous MI could alter gene expression and signaling transduction in plant cells. These results provided a systematic understanding of the functions of exogenous MI in detail and provided a foundation for future studies.
On the applicability of an MILP solution for signal packing in CAN-FD

The new CAN-FD standard for automotive communication provides support for real-time predictability at an increased rate and with a larger payload than the existing CAN standard. The adoption of CAN-FD requires the migration and possibly the redesign of the existing message sets to exploit the features of the protocol, by repacking the application signals in the new larger frames. Previous works provided algorithms that consider timing constraints and try to reduce the required bandwidth. The state of the art solutions are however based on two-step heuristics. A single-step formulation, with a suitable set of (optional) bound relaxation techniques has the potential to provide better solutions (with lower bus utilization) and also be more easily adapted to the consideration of the constraints and limitations that typically apply to the signal remapping.