Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Retrosplenial Cortex Codes for Permanent Landmarks

Landmarks are critical components of our internal representation of the environment, yet their specific properties are rarely studied, and little is known about how they are processed in the brain. Here we characterised a large set of landmarks along a range of features that included size, visual salience, navigational utility, and permanence. When human participants viewed images of these single landmarks during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), parahippocampal cortex (PHC) and retrosplenial cortex (RSC) were both engaged by landmark features, but in different ways. PHC responded to a range of landmark attributes, while RSC was engaged by only the most permanent landmarks. Furthermore, when participants were divided into good and poor navigators, the latter were significantly less reliable at identifying the most permanent landmarks, and had reduced responses in RSC and anterodorsal thalamus when viewing such landmarks. The RSC has been widely implicated in navigation but its precise role remains uncertain. Our findings suggest that a primary function of the RSC may be to process the most stable features in an environment, and this could be a prerequisite for successful navigation.
SpaceSensor: Real-time Gesture Tracking for I-NEXT

In this paper, we propose a real-time gesture tracking technique for the personalized user interface exploiting non-contact 3D vision technique. We first separate a user of interest as precisely as possible from the acquired natural background scenes and then estimate the disparity of the segmented user with a multi-view camera. Given the depth information of the user, we construct SpaceSensor, 3D box-based space sensor, around the user. Using the proposed SpaceSensor, the user can express his/her intension with natural gestures. The proposed technique overcomes the constraints of gesture tracking based on 2D vision techniques. In addition, the computation complexity is reduced when it compare to those of traditional real-time gesture tracking techniques. According to the experimental results, the proposed gesture tracking technique can be applied to various applications requiring real-time interaction, without loss of generality.
Moving verbs in agrammatic production

Brocas aphasics with agrammatism suffer from a severe deficit in their ability to handle verbs. Until the early eighties, the accepted account was that verb inflections are omitted in agrammatism. This was probably due to the fact that in English, patients produce bare verbs. In 1984, Grodzinsky looked at cross-linguistic data, and showed that the appropriate description of the data is substitution rather than omission of inflections: in languages in which the bare verb is well formed, the inflection is substituted by a zero morpheme; In languages in which a bare verb is not an option, substitution with a different inflection occurs. This ends up in inflection omission in languages like English, and in inflection substitution in languages like Hebrew.
Examining the stability derivatives of a compound helicopter

ABSTRACT Some helicopter manufacturers are exploring the compound helicopter design as it could potentially satisfy the new emerging requirements placed on the next generation of rotorcraft. It is well understood that the main benefit of the compound helicopter is its ability to reach speeds that significantly surpass the conventional helicopter. However, it is possible that the introduction of compounding may lead to a vehicle with significantly different flight characteristics when compared to a conventional helicopter. One method to examine the flight dynamics of an aircraft is to create a linearised mathematical model of the aircraft and to investigate the stability derivatives of the vehicle. The aim of this paper is to examine the stability derivatives of a compound helicopter through a comparison with a conventional helicopter. By taking this approach, some stability, handling qualities and design issues associated with the compound helicopter can be identified. The paper features a conventional helicopter and a compound helicopter. The conventional helicopter is a standard design, featuring a main rotor and a tail-rotor. The compound helicopter configuration features both lift and thrust compounding. The wing offloads the main rotor at high speeds, whereas two propellers provide additional propulsive thrust as well as yaw control. The results highlight that the bare airframe compound helicopter would require a larger tailplane surface to ensure acceptable longitudinal handling qualities in forward flight. In addition, without increasing the size of the bare airframe compound helicopter’s vertical fin, the Dutch roll mode satisfies the ADS-33 level 1 handling qualities category for the majority of the flight envelope.
Rigid Prices: Evidence from U.S. Scanner Data

This paper is part of the growing literature that uses micro-data to distinguish among alternative price behavior models and provide some measurements essential for calibration exercises. We use weekly grocery US scanner data and attempt to distinguish among three types of models: State dependent menu cost models, time dependent sticky price models and sequential trade models. Our main findings are: 1. The probability that a store will change its price is increasing in the distance from the mean price charged by other stores and is decreasing in the time since the last price change; 2. The time between price changes is negatively autocorrelated; 3. There is a positive relationship between the standard deviation of transaction prices (across units) and the surprise in sales. State dependent menu cost models say that only the level of the real price matters. Our first finding is that the probability of repricing does depend on the relative price but unlike the prediction of the theory other variables also matter. State dependent models suggest that stores whose (S,s) band is relatively wide will make large nominal price jumps relatively infrequently. This suggests that the time between price changes should exhibit positive serial correlation. We actually find a negative autocorrelation. Time dependent models assume that a store change its price every N periods. This suggests that the probability of making a price change should increase with the time since the last change. We find that the probability actually decreases with the time since the last change. The uncertain and sequential trade model says that when the realization of demand is low only low priced goods are sold, but when the realization of demand is high both low priced and high priced goods are sold. This suggests a positive relationship between the standard deviation of transaction prices (across units) and the surprise in the number of units sold. The correlations in the data are consistent with this prediction.
Socket preservation using freeze-dried bone allograft with and without plasma rich in growth factors in dogs

Background: Plasma rich in growth factors (PRGF) and freeze-dried bone allograft (FDBA) are shown to promote bone healing. This study was aimed to histologically and histomorphometrically investigate the effect of combined use of PRGF and FDBA on bone formation, and compare it to FDBA alone and control group. Materials and Methods: The distal roots of the lower premolars were extracted bilaterally in four female dogs. Sockets were randomly divided into FDBA + PRGF, FDBA, and control groups. Two dogs were sacrificed after 2 weeks and two dogs were sacrificed after 4 weeks. Sockets were assessed histologically and histomorphometrically. Data were analyzed by Kruskal-Wallis test followed by Mann-Whitney U-tests utilizing the SPSS software version 20. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: While the difference in density of fibrous tissue in three groups was not statistically significant (P = 0.343), the bone density in grafted groups was significantly higher than the control group (P = 0.021). The least decrease in all socket dimensions was observed in the FDBA group. However, these differences were only significant in coronal portion at week 4. Regarding socket dimensions and bone density, the difference between FDBA and FDBA+PRGF groups was not significant in middle and apical portions. Conclusion: The superiority of PRGF+FDBA overFDBA in socket preservation cannot be concluded from this experiment.
Differential regulation of phagosome maturation in macrophages and dendritic cells mediated by Rho GTPases and ezrin–radixin–moesin (ERM) proteins

Deletion of apoptotic cells from tissues involves their phagocytosis by macrophages, dendritic cells, and tissue cells. Although much attention has been focused on the participating ligands, receptors, and mechanisms of uptake, little is known of the disposition of the ingested cell within the phagosome. Here we show that uptake of apoptotic cells by macrophages or fibroblasts results in rapid phagosome maturation, whereas macrophage phagosomes containing Ig-opsonized target cells mature at a slower rate. The early maturation was shown to depend on activation of Rho acting through Rho kinase on ezrin–radixin–moesin proteins. Blockade of Rho signaling or inhibition of moesin both delayed maturation rates to those seen with opsonized targets. By contrast, phagosome maturation in dendritic cells was slower, similar between apoptotic and opsonized target cells, and unaffected by Rho inhibition. These observations have direct implications for the clearance of dying cells and the roles played by different phagocytes in antigen digestion and presentation.
Personas is not applicable: local remedies interpreted in a wider context

One of the major problems with participatory design is that it is extremely difficult to apply it to current developments. Software development for the mass market is one aspect of current developments which has been addressed. The problem of how to apply participatory design invariably leads to questioning its relevance to present-day circumstances. It is suggested that new patterns of dominance must be revealed. The usability method known as 'personas' has been demonstrated to remedy the problems of including social and political issues in mass market software developments. This paper demonstrates how the application of personas to a mass market software development project failed because of patterns of dominance in the telecom branch which were unrecognised at the time. The identifying of these patterns of dominance contributes to a better understanding of some of the new patterns of power and domination in mass-market software developments that PD stands before.
A Process-Driven and Ontology Based Software Product Line Variability Modeling Approach

Service-oriented software engineering emphasizes the discovery and reuse of existing service resources and aggregate them to meet user needs. This paper proposes a service-oriented and process-driven approach to modeling variability in software product line. In this approach, variability analysis and modeling as a means, domain ontology model as a starting point, process ontology model as the center, service ontology model as the purpose, which organize the family core-assets to identify and model variability from perspectives of domain, process and service. Summarily, the whole modeling process of the approach is discussed completely through a real software family on business hotel.
Does oxidative stress shorten telomeres?

Oxidative stress shortens telomeres in cell culture, but whether oxidative stress explains variation in telomere shortening in vivo at physiological oxidative stress levels is not well known. We therefore tested for correlations between six oxidative stress markers and telomere attrition in nestling birds (jackdaws Corvus monedula) that show a high rate of telomere attrition in early life. Telomere attrition was measured between ages 5 and 30 days, and was highly variable (average telomere loss: 323 bp, CV = 45%). Oxidative stress markers were measured in blood at age 20 days and included markers of oxidative damage (TBARS, dROMs and GSSG) and markers of antioxidant protection (GSH, redox state, uric acid). Variation in telomere attrition was not significantly related to these oxidative stress markers (|r| ≤ 0.08, n = 87). This finding raises the question whether oxidative stress accelerates telomere attrition in vivo. The accumulation of telomere attrition over time depends both on the number of cell divisions and on the number of base pairs lost per DNA replication and, based on our findings, we suggest that in a growing animal cell proliferation, dynamics may be more important for explaining variation in telomere attrition than oxidative stress.
A Cyclic Contrastive Divergence Learning Algorithm for High-Order RBMs

The Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM), a special case of general Boltzmann Machines and a typical Probabilistic Graphical Models, has attracted much attention in recent years due to its powerful ability in extracting features and representing the distribution underlying the training data. A most commonly used algorithm in learning RBMs is called Contrastive Divergence (CD) proposed by Hinton, which starts a Markov chain at a data point and runs the chain for only a few iterations to get a low variance estimator. However, when referring to a high-order RBM, since there are interactions among its visible layers, the gradient approximation via CD learning usually becomes far from the log-likelihood gradient and even may cause CD learning to fall into an infinite loop with high reconstruction error. In this paper, a new algorithm named Cyclic Contrastive Divergence (CCD) is introduced for learning high-order RBMs. Unlike the standard CD algorithm, CCD updates the parameters according to each visible layer in turn, by borrowing the idea of Cyclic Block Coordinate Descent method. To evaluate the performance of the proposed CCD algorithm, regarding to high-order RBMs learning, both algorithms CCD and standard CD are theoretically analyzed, including convergence, estimate upper bound and both biases comparison, from which the superiority of CCD learning is revealed. Experiments on MNIST dataset for the handwritten digit classification task are performed. The experimental results show that CCD is more applicable and consistently outperforms the standard CD in both convergent speed and performance.
Confidence intervals for half-life deviations from Purchasing Power Parity in a nonlinear model

This paper provides point estimates for half-life deviations from Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and quantifies the uncertainty of these estimates through a delta method approximation and simulations in the context of an exponential smooth transition autoregressive (ESTAR) model. The main findings highlight the nonlinear mean reversion in PPP deviations from the long run equilibrium with half-lives and 95% confidence intervals varying with the size of the deviations. The half-life estimates and confidence intervals reveal possibility of both fast and slow deviations from PPP, depending on where the nominal exchange rates are relative
Reducing software overheads in parallel linear algebra libraries

A list of technical reports, including some abstracts and copies of some full reports may be found at: Abstract. Software overheads can be a signiicant cause of performance degradation in parallel numerical libraries. This paper examines the nature and extent of software overheads in an implementation of parallel LAPACK on distributed memory multiprocessors, where block-partitioned algorithms with a general block-cyclic matrix distribution scheme present special challenges. It then describes various techniques that have been used to reduce these overheads, and evaluates their eeectiveness. While there is a tradeoo between the software engineering properties of high data and procedural abstraction, modularity and portability (which are particularly important in parallel programming) and achieving low software overheads, it is shown that a good balance can be achieved in the case of parallel LAPACK, at least for important classes of computations.
Superfast quantum algorithms for coin weighing and binary search problems

We present a class of superfast quantum algorithms that retrieve the entire contents of a quantum database Y in a single query. The class includes binary search problems and coin-weighing problems. Our methods far exceed the efficiency of classical algorithms which are bounded by the classical information-theoretic bound. We show the connection between classical algorithms based on linear hashing codes and our quantum-mechanical method. PACS: 03.65. Bz 89.70. +c Typeset using REVTEX 1 Quantum computers have been shown recently to be able to solve certain problems faster than any known algorithm running on a classical computer [1–3]. These problems include factoring, which can be performed in polynomial time on a quantum computer [2], but is widely believed to be exponentially difficult on a classical computer, and database lookup which is provably faster on a quantum computer [3]. Understanding the power of quantum algorithms and developing new algorithms is of major interest as the building of a quantum computer will require a huge investment. In this letter we present quantum algorithms for binary search and coin-weighing problems in which the information in a quantum database is retrieved with a single query. This is a new illustration of the power of quantum computation. Information theory is a useful tool for analyzing the efficiency of classical algorithms. Problems involving information retrieval from a database are particularly amenable to such analysis. Consider this database search problem: we have a database Y contains n items, of which a single one is marked. This database is represented as a bit string y of length n with Hamming weight one. One would like to locate the marked item in as few queries to the database as possible. The queries are bit strings x of length n such that the database returns the answer a(x, y) = x · y ≡ ( n
Differential Proteomics Analysis of Synaptic Proteins Identifies Potential Cellular Targets and Protein Mediators of Synaptic Neuroprotection Conferred by the Slow Wallerian Degeneration (Wlds) Gene*S

Non-somatic synaptic and axonal compartments of neurons are primary pathological targets in many neurodegenerative conditions, ranging from Alzheimer disease through to motor neuron disease. Axons and synapses are protected from degeneration by the slow Wallerian degeneration (Wlds) gene. Significantly the molecular mechanisms through which this spontaneous genetic mutation delays degeneration remain controversial, and the downstream protein targets of Wlds resident in non-somatic compartments remain unknown. In this study we used differential proteomics analysis to identify proteins whose expression levels were significantly altered in isolated synaptic preparations from the striatum of Wlds mice. Eight of the 16 proteins we identified as having modified expression levels in Wlds synapses are known regulators of mitochondrial stability and degeneration (including VDAC1, Aralar1, and mitofilin). Subsequent analyses demonstrated that other key mitochondrial proteins, not identified in our initial screen, are also modified in Wlds synapses. Of the non-mitochondrial proteins identified, several have been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases where synapses and axons are primary pathological targets (including DRP-2 and Rab GDP dissociation inhibitor β). In addition, we show that downstream protein changes can be identified in pathways corresponding to both Ube4b (including UBE1) and Nmnat1 (including VDAC1 and Aralar1) components of the chimeric Wlds gene, suggesting that full-length Wlds protein is required to elicit maximal changes in synaptic proteins. We conclude that altered mitochondrial responses to degenerative stimuli are likely to play an important role in the neuroprotective Wlds phenotype and that targeting proteins identified in the current study may lead to novel therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases in humans.
Decentralised cooperative localisation for heterogeneous teams of mobile robots

This paper presents a distributed algorithm for performing joint localisation of a team of robots. The mobile robots have heterogeneous sensing capabilities, with some having high quality inertial and exteroceptive sensing, while others have only low quality sensing or none at all. By sharing information, a combined estimate of all robot poses is obtained. Inter-robot range-bearing measurements provide the mechanism for transferring pose information from well-localised vehicles to those less capable. In our proposed formulation, high frequency egocentric data (e.g., odometry, IMU, GPS) is fused locally on each platform. This is the distributed part of the algorithm. Inter-robot measurements, and accompanying state estimates, are communicated to a central server, which generates an optimal minimum mean-squared estimate of all robot poses. This server is easily duplicated for full redundant decentralisation. Communication and computation are efficient due to the sparseness properties of the information-form Gaussian representation. A team of three indoor mobile robots equipped with lasers, odometry and inertial sensing provides experimental verification of the algorithms effectiveness in combining location information.
Design properties and object-oriented software changeability

The assessment of the changeability of software systems is of major concern for buyers of the large systems found in fast-moving domains such as telecommunications. One way of approaching this problem is to investigate the dependency between the changeability of the software and its design, with the goal of finding design properties that can be used as changeability indicators. In our research, we defined a model of software changes and change impacts, and implemented it for the C++ language. Furthermore, we identified a set of nine object-oriented (OO) design metrics, four of which are specifically geared towards changeability detection. The model and the metrics were applied to three test systems of industrial size. The experiment showed a high correlation, across systems and across changes, between changeability and the access to a class by other classes through method invocation or variable access. On the other hand, no result could support the hypothesis that the depth of the inheritance tree has some influence on changeability. Furthermore, our results confirm the observation of others that the use of inheritance is rather limited in industrial systems.
ESTADO DE HUMOR E PERIODIZAÇÃO DE TREINAMENTO: UM ESTUDO COM ATLETAS FUNDISTAS DE ALTO RENDIMENTO MOOD STATES AND TRAINING PROGRAM: A STUDY WITH HIGH PERFORMANCE DEEP RUNNERS ATHLETES

Nowadays literature shows a gap when involving long-term studies that evaluate impact of training program over athlete’s mood states. This study’s objective was to analyze mood states in relation to the training program from high performance deep runners. Seven male deep runner athletes (age: 25.57 ± 4.61 years; beginning age in the athletic sport: 17.54 ± 3.41 years; practice time: 8.00 ± 3.00 years), answered to the POMS questionnaire during three training periods (pre competitive, competitive and transition), totalizing 12 weeks. Data analysis was performed by the Shapiro Wilk test and the KruskalWallis test, adopting p<0,05. It was verified that the athletes presented an iceberg profile during the entire training program and none significant differences between the training periods for no mood state dimensions. These results indicate that the athletes maintained their emotional stability independently of the analyzed training periods.