Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Group Behavior Modeling: Particle and Cellular Methods

Group Behavior Modeling is a subset of the simulation field that attempts to model a large system of entities and their interactions with one another. A typical entities state is dependent not only on its environment, but also on other entities within its locality. Group behavior therefore exhibits an example of emergence: where complex global behaviors can arise from the interaction of simple local rules. This technique has been applied to animal simulations, pedestrian simulations, traffic flow simulations, and computer graphics. This paper gives a history of particle and cellular based group behavior modeling, its current uses, and future possibilities.
Increased dietary NaCl intake influences lens transport properties in Sprague-Dawley rats.

Several years ago, we reported a high frequency of cataracts in Dahl salt-sensitive rats (DS) which led us to carry out a series of studies, such as longitudinal ouabain-sensitive lens 86Rb uptake measurements. Yet, throughout all of our work, we used the Dahl salt-resistant rat (DR) as our control group, despite the fact that DR is a strain resistant to even experimental hypertension such as that resulting from renal cellophane wrapping. Thus, in the present study we assessed lens short-circuit current (Isc) in adult Sprague-Dawley rats (SD) from which DS and DR were derived. Sprague-Dawley rats were studied during chronic normal vs high NaCl intake. These studies showed that basal Isc and calculated translenticular potential difference (PDt) were nearly doubled by this dietary regimen. Sequential addition of BaCl2 and ouabain to the isolated lens anterior surface bath also revealed increased BaCl2-sensitive as well as BaCl2- and ouabain-insensitive lens Isc in SD kept on a high NaCl diet. There was a statistically insignificant tendency for lens ouabain-sensitive Isc to increase in SD given a high NaCl diet. These findings were unrelated to levels of arterial blood pressure which were not altered by chronic high NaCl intake in adult SD. Our data suggest the possibility of increased lens barium and ouabain insensitive ionic permeabilities combined with possibly increased lens fiber potassium concentration, as a response to chronic high dietary NaCl in the normal rat. The nature of the barium and ouabain insensitive component of the lens Isc that rises during chronic high NaCl intake requires elucidation. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
On the characterization of canonical number systems

It is well known that each positive integer n can be expressed uniquely as a sum n = d0 + d1b + . + dhb h with an integral base number b ≥ 2, dh 6= 0 and di ∈ {0, . , b − 1}. This concept can be generalized in several directions. On the one hand the base sequence 1, b, b, . can be replaced by a sequence 1 = u0 < u1 < u2 < . to obtain representations of positive integers. Of special interest is the case where the sequence {ui}i=0 is defined by a linear recurrence. A famous example belonging to this class is the so-called Zeckendorf representation. On the other hand, one can generalize the set of numbers which can be represented. We mention two kinds of number systems belonging to this class: The so called β-expansions introduced by Rényi [27] which are representations of real numbers in the unit interval as sums of powers of a real base number β. These digit representations of real numbers are strongly related to digit representations of positive integers if β is a zero of the characteristic polynomial of a linear recurring base sequence {ui}i=0. Of special interest is the case where β is a Pisot number. These expansions have been extensively studied. We mention here the papers Berend-Frougny [6] , Frougny [12, 13], Frougny-Solomyak [14, 15] and Loraud [25] and refer to the references given there. Another kind of number systems which admit the representation of a set which is different from N are the so-called canonical number systems (for short CNS). Since CNS form the main object studied in the present paper we recall their definition (cf. Akiyama-Pethő [2]).
Retrieval of proper names: Testing the models

The predictions from two theoretical models of name retrieval were tested in three experiments. The Bruce & Young (1986) model assumes serial access, first to semantic information about a person and then to the person's name. According to this model, names are harder to recall than semantic information because access to the name occurs after, and is dependent on access to the semantic information. The architecture of the Interactive Activation and Competition model (Burton & Bruce, 1992) ensures that information which is unique or highly distinctive receives less activation. According to this model, names are harder to recall because they are more distinctive than semantic information. Experiment 1 tested the serial access assumption by comparing immediate recall of names, occupations, or both names and occupations when these were associated with unfamiliar faces. The results were difficult to reconcile with the serial access assumption. Experiment 2 tested the uniqueness assumption by manipulating the distinctiveness of the names and occupations and, contrary to the IAC model, distinctiveness was found to confer an advantage on recall of both names and occupations. Experiment 3 showed that distinctive names were learned faster and were better retained after a 48-hour delay. These results suggest that the IAC model requires modification.
A PDE based expectation maximization algorithm adapted to Poisson noise for medical image reconstruction

Computerized Tomography and Positron Emission Tomography (CT/PET) is an effective and indispensable imaging tool for the application of medical image reconstruction. The noise contained in the data measured by imaging instruments is primarily Poisson type and decreasing the noise has the potential to optimize the quality of CT/PET images. But the traditional iterative reconstruction algorithms of CT/PET cannot effectively filter the noise. Recently anisotropic diffusion (AD) based nonlinear filter is introduced into tomography reconstruction that purports to filter the noise without blurring edges. This paper introduces and evaluates a hybrid approach to regularized maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) iterative reconstruction technique with Poisson variability. Regularization is achieved by penalizing MLEM with Anisotropic diffusion (AD) filter to form hybrid method for CT/PET image reconstruction using partial differential equation (PDE) based variational framework. The aim of this paper is to impose an effective edge preserving and noise removing to optimize the quality of CT/PET reconstructed images. A comparative analysis of the proposed model with some other existing standard methods in literature is presented both qualitatively and quantitatively using simulated test phantom and standard digital image. An experimental result indicates that the proposed method yields significantly improvements in quality of reconstructed images from the projection data. The obtained results justify the applicability of the proposed method.
Primate population dynamics over 32.9 years at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda

We present census data for eight primate species spanning 32.9 years along the same transect at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda, demonstrating major changes in the composition of the primate community. Correlated with an estimated decline of ∼89% in the red colobus population was an increase in encounter rates with chimpanzee parties. Our data, along with the unusually high rates of predation by chimpanzees on red colobus at Ngogo and the fact that the chimpanzee community at Ngogo is the largest ever recorded, support the conclusion that the red colobus decline was caused primarily by chimpanzee predation. This seems to be the first documented case of predation by one nonhuman primate causing the population decline in another. We evaluated disease and interspecific competition as other possible causes of the red colobus decline, but judged them to be relatively insignificant compared with predation by chimpanzees. Notable changes in encounter rates with other primate species may have resulted from forest expansion. Those for mangabeys, redtails, and black and white colobus increased significantly. Encounter rates increased for l'Hoest's monkeys too, but the increased sightings may have been an artifact of increased habituation. Sightings of blue monkey and baboon groups declined. There was no significant change in encounter rates for all species combined. The Ngogo primate community seemed to be in a nonequilibrium state, changing from one dominated by two species, a folivore (red colobus) and a frugivorous omnivore (redtails), to one dominated by three species of frugivorous omnivores (redtails, mangabeys, and chimpanzees). This study demonstrates the importance of long‐term monitoring in understanding population dynamics and the role of intrinsic variables in shaping the species composition of a community. Am. J. Primatol. 73:997–1011, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Determination of the efficiency of diets for larval development in mass rearing Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae)

Abstract Larval diet quality and rearing conditions have a direct and irreversible effect on adult traits. Therefore, the current study was carried out to optimize the larval diet for mass rearing of Aedes aegypti, for Sterile Insect Technique (SIT)-based applications in Sri Lanka. Five batches of 750 first instar larvae (L1) of Ae. aegypti were exposed to five different concentrations (2–10%) of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recommended the larval diet. Morphological development parameters of larva, pupa, and adult were detected at 24 h intervals along with selected growth parameters. Each experiment was replicated five times. General Linear Modeling along with Pearson's correlation analysis were used for statistical treatments. Significant differences (P < 0.05) among the larvae treated with different concentrations were found using General Linear Modeling in all the stages namely: total body length and the thoracic length of larvae; cephalothoracic length and width of pupae; thoracic length, thoracic width, abdominal length and the wing length of adults; along with pupation rate and success, sex ratio, adult success, fecundity and hatching rate of Ae. aegypti. The best quality adults can be produced at larval diet concentration of 10%. However, the 8% larval diet concentration was most suitable for adult male survival.
Four functionally distinct C-type natriuretic peptides found in fish reveal evolutionary history of the natriuretic peptide system

Natriuretic peptides (NPs) are major cardiovascular and osmoregulatory hormones in vertebrates. Although tetrapods generally have three subtypes, atrial NP (ANP), B-type NP (BNP), and C-type NP (CNP), some teleosts lack BNP, and sharks and hagfish have only one NP. Thus, NPs have diverged during fish evolution, possibly reflecting changes in osmoregulatory systems. In this study, we found, by cDNA cloning, four distinct CNPs (1 through 4) in the medaka (Oryzias latipes) and puffer fish (Takifugu rubripes), although to our knowledge no more than two CNPs have been isolated from a vertebrate species. Predicted mature CNP-1 was most similar, and CNP-4 was most dissimilar, to mammalian CNPs. However, synthetic CNP-4 most potently activated OlGC1, a medaka CNP-specific receptor (NPR-B) expressed in cultured cells, whereas CNP-1 and CNP-3 most activated OlGC7 and OlGC2, two medaka homologues of the ANP/BNP receptor (NPR-A), respectively. Linkage mapping in medaka followed by comparative genomic analyses among fishes and humans located four CNP genes in separate medaka chromosomes corresponding to human chromosomes 1, 2, 12, and 17. From conserved synteny, the following evolutionary history of NPs was evoked: (i) four CNP genes were generated by chromosomal duplications before the divergence of elasmobranchs; (ii) the CNP-3 gene generated ANP and BNP genes through tandem duplication before the divergence of tetrapods and teleosts; (iii) CNP-1 and -2 genes were retained in the teleost lineage but not in the tetrapod lineage; (iv) the CNP-3 gene disappeared from the tetrapod lineage after divergence of amphibians; and (v) the CNP-4 gene is retained in humans as CNP.
Multi-Pinhole SPECT Calibration: Influence of Data Noise and Systematic Orbit Deviations

The geometry of a single pinhole SPECT system with circular orbit can be uniquely determined from a measurement of three point sources, provided that at least two inter-point distances are known. In contrast, it has been shown mathematically that, for a multi-pinhole SPECT system with circular orbit, only two point sources are needed, and the knowledge of the distance between them is not required. In this paper, we report that this conclusion only holds if the motion of the camera is perfectly circular. In reality, the detector heads systematically slightly deviate from the circular orbit, which may introduce non-negligible bias in the estimated parameters and degrade the reconstructed image. An analytical linear model was extended to estimate the influence of both data noise and systematic deviations on the accuracy of the calibration and on the image quality of the reconstruction. It turns out that applying the knowledge of the distances greatly reduces the reconstruction error, especially in the presence of systematic deviations. In addition, we propose that instead of using the information about the distances between the point sources, it is more straightforward to use the knowledge about the distances between the pinhole apertures during multi-pinhole calibration. The two distance-fixing approaches yield similar reconstruction accuracy. Our theoretical results are supported by reconstruction images of a Jaszczak-type phantom scan.
UbiControl: Providing New and Easy Ways to Interact with Various Consumer Devices *

This paper describes a system for using a PDA to easily control consumer devices found in our environment. By attaching a laser-pointer to the PDA, the user can simply point to a device in sight and request a user interface description. The user can then control the selected device in a web browser like fashion that facilitates spontaneous interaction with consumer devices.
Data Hiding in MPEG Video Files Using Multivariate Regression and Flexible Macroblock Ordering

This paper proposes two data hiding approaches using compressed MPEG video. The first approach hides message bits by modulating the quantization scale of a constant bitrate video. A payload of one message bit per macroblock is achieved. A second order multivariate regression is used to find an association between macroblock-level feature variables and the values of a hidden message bit. The regression model is then used by the decoder to predict the values of the hidden message bits with very high prediction accuracy. The second approach uses the flexible macroblock ordering feature of H.264/AVC to hide message bits. Macroblocks are assigned to arbitrary slice groups according to the content of the message bits to be hidden. A maximum payload of three message bits per macroblock is achieved. The proposed solutions are analyzed in terms of message extraction accuracy, message payload, excessive bitrate and quality distortion. Comparisons with previous work reveal that the proposed solutions are superior in terms of message payload while causing less distortion and compression overhead.
Performance Analysis of Relay Subset Selection for Amplify-and-Forward Cognitive Relay Networks

Cooperative communication is regarded as a key technology in wireless networks, including cognitive radio networks (CRNs), which increases the diversity order of the signal to combat the unfavorable effects of the fading channels, by allowing distributed terminals to collaborate through sophisticated signal processing. Underlay CRNs have strict interference constraints towards the secondary users (SUs) active in the frequency band of the primary users (PUs), which limits their transmit power and their coverage area. Relay selection offers a potential solution to the challenges faced by underlay networks, by selecting either single best relay or a subset of potential relay set under different design requirements and assumptions. The best relay selection schemes proposed in the literature for amplify-and-forward (AF) based underlay cognitive relay networks have been very well studied in terms of outage probability (OP) and bit error rate (BER), which is deficient in multiple relay selection schemes. The novelty of this work is to study the outage behavior of multiple relay selection in the underlay CRN and derive the closed-form expressions for the OP and BER through cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the SNR received at the destination. The effectiveness of relay subset selection is shown through simulation results.
Recommender Systems for Banking and Financial Services

In this work we demonstrate the usefulness of the application of Recommender Systems in the financial domain. Specifically we investigate a dataset, made available by a major European bank, containing the purchases of a large set of investment assets by 200k investors. We also present some preliminary results of the application of network analysis via statistical validation to identify clusters of investment assets.
Toward Fairness in Assessing Student Groupwork: A Protocol for Peer Evaluation of Individual Contributions

A key challenge for management instructors using graded groupwork with students is to find ways to maximize student learning from group projects while ensuring fair and accurate assessment methods. This article presents the Groupwork Peer-Evaluation Protocol (GPEP) that enables the assessment of individual contributions to graded student groupwork. The GPEP is designed to achieve the three objectives of providing accurate and fair assessment, supporting student learning, and enabling group self-management. This article discusses instructor experiences with and student reactions to the protocol, opportunities for customization, and potential limitations of the protocol.
Human-inspired compliant strategy for peg-in-hole assembly using environmental constraint and coarse force information

Automated assembly, especially peg-in-hole insertion, is a common task in manufacturing. In particular, the high-precision assembly is achieved by high-precision manipulator and sensing system. However, uncertainty and various parts for assembly are still challenges for robotic assembly, especially for low-precision robot and sensors. It is noteworthy that human can implement assembly tasks although the precision of the arm and hand is not comparable with a common industrial robot, in which process compliance is the key characteristic of their motion. In this paper, we present a human-inspired compliant strategy for peg-in-hole assembly task using the environmental constraint and coarse force information. In the proposed strategy, a constraint region is designed for motion planning and utilized for eliminating the uncertainty of the initial positioning error of the peg. Force sensor is applied to sense the contact force of which the direction is used to adjust the movement of the peg. Therefore, high-precision sensor is not necessarily required. Inspired by human compliant assembly, a from coarse to fine adjustment strategy is executed. The contribution of our strategy is that high precision assembly task can be solved by low precision system. The constraint region and force guided directional adjustment have increased the robustness of the system. The strategy is carried out in simulation for round peg-in-hole assembly task. The experimental results show that the assembly task can be successfully completed and demonstrate the effectiveness of our strategy.
Astrocytes regulate cortical state switching in vivo

Significance Astrocytes—a type of glial cell—and neurons function together in neural circuits, but how astrocytes affect circuit function remains poorly understood. By measuring the fluorescent calcium activity of astrocytes while recording the electrophysiological oscillations in the mouse cortex, we find that astrocytes, through regulation of extracellular glutamate, are involved in triggering a slow neuronal rhythm in the brain that has been shown to be important in sleep and memory formation. The role of astrocytes in neuronal function has received increasing recognition, but disagreement remains about their function at the circuit level. Here we use in vivo two-photon calcium imaging of neocortical astrocytes while monitoring the activity state of the local neuronal circuit electrophysiologically and optically. We find that astrocytic calcium activity precedes spontaneous circuit shifts to the slow-oscillation–dominated state, a neocortical rhythm characterized by synchronized neuronal firing and important for sleep and memory. Further, we show that optogenetic activation of astrocytes switches the local neuronal circuit to this slow-oscillation state. Finally, using two-photon imaging of extracellular glutamate, we find that astrocytic transients in glutamate co-occur with shifts to the synchronized state and that optogenetically activated astrocytes can generate these glutamate transients. We conclude that astrocytes can indeed trigger the low-frequency state of a cortical circuit by altering extracellular glutamate, and therefore play a causal role in the control of cortical synchronizations.
Scalable image coding with projection-based context modeling

Many state-of-the-art wavelet image coders use nonorthogonal transforms for both lossy and lossless wavelet image coding. In this paper, a projection prediction is described that capitalizes on the non-orthogonality of wavelet transform basis vectors to improve the prediction of high-frequency coefficients. For lossy wavelet coders, the prediction yields improved context modeling and up to . 2 dB coding improvement. For lossless integer wavelet coders, the prediction can be used as an extra lifting step during the transform, and results in a lower first-order entropy of wavelet coefficients and lower subsequent coding rate than current integer wavelet transforms.
Inhibition of morphine withdrawal by the NMDA receptor antagonist MK‐801 in rat is age‐dependent

This study investigated the effects of the NMDA receptor antagonist MK‐801 on the development of morphine dependence in 7‐, 14‐, and 21‐day‐old rat pups. For 6.5 days, starting at 1, 8, or 15 days of age, rats were pretreated with MK‐801 (0.03 or 0.1 mg/kg, bid) or saline; 15 min later, morphine sulfate (10 mg/kg) or saline was injected to induce opiate dependence. On the afternoon of the seventh day, pups were injected with MK‐801 (0.1 mg/kg) or saline and 15 min later with naltrexone (1 mg/kg) to precipitate withdrawal. Pups were then placed in a warm chamber with the litter and their behavior scan‐sampled every 15 sec for a total of 15 min. MK‐801 failed to inhibit morphine withdrawal in the 7‐day‐old rat, but did attenuate the development of morphine dependence in both the 14‐ and 21‐day‐old rats. These results suggest that the NMDA receptor is not functionally active in opiate withdrawal until around the second to third week of postnatal life in the rat and that there exists a transition period for the NMDA receptor to play a role in the development of opiate dependence and withdrawal. Synapse 40:282–293, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.