Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Basal ganglia and cortical control of thalamic rebound spikes

Movement‐related decreases in firing rate have been observed in basal ganglia output neurons. They may transmit motor signals to the thalamus, but the effect of these firing rate decreases on downstream neurons in the motor thalamus is not known. One possibility is that they lead to thalamic post‐inhibitory rebound spikes. However, it has also been argued that the physiological conditions permitting rebound spiking are pathological, and primarily present in Parkinson's disease. As in Parkinson's disease neural activity becomes pathologically correlated, we investigated the impact of correlations in basal ganglia output on the transmission of motor signals using a Hodgkin‐Huxley model of thalamocortical neurons. We found that such correlations disrupt the transmission of motor signals via rebound spikes by decreasing the signal‐to‐noise ratio and increasing the trial‐to‐trial variability. We further examined the role of sensory responses in basal ganglia output neurons and the effect of cortical excitation of motor thalamus in modulating rebound spiking. Interestingly, both could either promote or suppress the generation of rebound spikes depending on their timing relative to the motor signal. Finally, we determined parameter regimes, such as levels of excitation, under which rebound spiking is feasible in the model, and confirmed that the conditions for rebound spiking are primarily given in pathological regimes. However, we also identified specific conditions in the model that would allow rebound spiking to occur in healthy animals in a small subset of thalamic neurons. Overall, our model provides novel insights into differences between normal and pathological transmission of motor signals.
Reconstructing feedback representations in the ventral visual pathway with a generative adversarial autoencoder

While vision evokes a dense network of feedforward and feedback neural processes in the brain, visual processes are primarily modeled with feedforward hierarchical neural networks, leaving the computational role of feedback processes poorly understood. Here, we developed a generative autoencoder neural network model and adversarially trained it on a categorically diverse data set of images. We hypothesized that the feedback processes in the ventral visual pathway can be represented by reconstruction of the visual information performed by the generative model. We compared representational similarity of the activity patterns in the proposed model with temporal (magnetoencephalography) and spatial (functional magnetic resonance imaging) visual brain responses. The proposed generative model identified two segregated neural dynamics in the visual brain. A temporal hierarchy of processes transforming low level visual information into high level semantics in the feedforward sweep, and a temporally later dynamics of inverse processes reconstructing low level visual information from a high level latent representation in the feedback sweep. Our results append to previous studies on neural feedback processes by presenting a new insight into the algorithmic function and the information carried by the feedback processes in the ventral visual pathway.
Des pseudo-sens pour améliorer l’extraction de synonymes à partir de plongements lexicaux (Pseudo-senses for improving the extraction of synonyms from word embeddings)

Au-delà des modèles destinés à construire des plongements lexicaux à partir de corpus, des méthodes de spécialisation de ces représentations selon différentes orientations ont été proposées. Une part importante d’entre elles repose sur l’utilisation de connaissances externes. Dans cet article, nous proposons Pseudofit, une nouvelle méthode de spécialisation de plongements lexicaux focalisée sur la similarité sémantique et opérant sans connaissances externes. Pseudofit s’appuie sur la notion de pseudo-sens afin d’obtenir plusieurs représentations pour un même mot et utilise cette pluralité pour rendre plus génériques les plongements initiaux. Nous illustrons l’intérêt de Pseudofit pour l’extraction de synonymes et nous explorons dans ce cadre différentes variantes visant à en améliorer les résultats.
Normalisation automatique du vocabulaire source pour traduire depuis une langue à morphologie riche (Learning Morphological Normalization for Translation from Morphologically Rich Languages)

Lorsqu’ils sont traduits depuis une langue à morphologie riche vers l’anglais, les mots-formes sources contiennent des marques d’informations grammaticales pouvant être jugées redondantes par rapport à l’anglais, causant une variabilité formelle qui nuit à l’estimation des modèles probabilistes. Un moyen bien documenté pour atténuer ce problème consiste à supprimer l’information non pertinente de la source en la normalisant. Ce pré-traitement est généralement effectué de manière déterministe, à l’aide de règles produites manuellement. Une telle normalisation est, par essence, sous-optimale et doit être adaptée pour chaque paire de langues. Nous présentons, dans cet article, une méthode simple pour rechercher automatiquement une normalisation optimale de la morphologie source par rapport à la langue cible et montrons que celle-ci peut améliorer la traduction automatique.
Severe Auzdyk infection in one-month-old camel calves (Camelus dromedarius)

HOUSAWI, F. , E. ABU-ELZEIN, A. GAMEEL, M. MUSTAFA, A. AL-AFALEQ, J. GILRAY, A. AL-HULAIBI, P. NETTLETON: Severe Auzdyk infection in onemonth-old camel calves (Camelus dromedarius). Vet. arhiv 74, 467-474, 2004. ABSTRACT On 11 March 2002 two approximately one-month-old, one-humped camel calves (C. dromedarius) were presented to the University Veterinary Teaching Hospital, King Faisal University, Al-Hasa, Saudi Arabia (SA), suffering from severe lesions on the lips and hard palates. Samples were collected and virological, pathological and serological investigations were carried out. The disease was confirmed to be Auzdyk. The situation was discussed in relation to the severity of the disease, a condition seen for the first time in this country, in these very young camels,. The results confirmed that fairly young camel calves, 1-month old, can suffer a severe form of the disease.
Détection des mots non-standards dans les tweets avec des réseaux de neurones (Detecting non-standard words in tweets with neural networks)

Dans cet article, nous proposons un modèle pour détecter dans les textes générés par des utilisateurs (en particulier les tweets), les mots non-standards à corriger. Nous utilisons pour cela des réseaux de neurones convolutifs au niveau des caractères, associés à des “plongements” (embeddings) des mots présents dans le contexte du mot courant. Nous avons utilisé pour l’évaluation trois corpus de référence. Nous avons testé différents modèles qui varient suivant leurs plongements pré-entrainés, leurs configurations et leurs optimisations. Nous avons finalement obtenu une F1-mesure de 0.972 en validation croisée pour la classe des mots non-standards. Cette détection des mots à corriger est l’étape préliminaire pour la normalisation des textes non standards comme les tweets.
Editorial: Cosmeceuticals From Medicinal Plants

1 Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 2 School of Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States, 3 College of Pharmacy, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, Mysuru, India, 4 Department of Health Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Mauritius, Réduit, Mauritius, 5 Department of Animal Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, United States, 6 Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 7 Department of Biology, Science Faculty, Selcuk University, Konya, Turkey
Scaling out best fit legume technologies for soil fertility enhancement among smallholder farmers in Malawi

4WVI-Malawi, Mulonyeni ADP, Mchinji, Malawi. 5 CARE-Malawi, Lilongwe, Malawi. 6 SOFECSA Coordination Office, CIMMYT, Harare, Zimbabwe. Accepted 23 January, 2012 Maize (Zea mays L.) is a major staple food in Malawi. However, low soil fertility resulting from low and inappropriate use of fertilizer practices, continuous monocropping and inappropriate crop residues management coupled with limited resources and droughts keep yields low. This had led to a quest for sustainable solutions such as maize-legume intercropping or rotation including more efficient use of crop residues in smallholder farming systems. Innovation platforms (IP) built around learning centres (LC) located on smallholder farmers’ fields in target locations were used as an approach to disseminate integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) technologies and build capacity of farmers, extension staff and other stakeholders. Rotating maize with either groundnut or groundnut intercropped with pigeonpea increased maize grain yield (3678 and 3071 kg ha -1 respectively) compared to sole maize
A tale of two rhythms Locked clocks and chaos in biology

Complete kinetic models are pervasive in chemistry but lacking in biological systems. We encoded the complete kinetics of infection for coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3), a compact and fast-acting RNA virus. The model consists of separable, detailed modules describing viral binding-delivery, translation-replication, and encapsidation. Speciﬁc module activities are dampened by the type I interferon response to viral double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs), which is itself disrupted by viral proteinases. The experimentally validated kinetics uncov-ered that cleavability of the dsRNA transducer mitochondrial antiviral signaling protein (MAVS) becomes a stronger determinant of viral outcomes when cells receive supplemental interferon after infection. Cleavability is naturally altered in humans by a common MAVS polymorphism, which removes a proteinase-targeted site but paradoxically elevates CVB3 infectivity. These observations are reconciled with a simple nonlinear model of MAVS regulation. Modeling complete kinetics is an attainable goal for small, rapidly infecting viruses and perhaps viral pathogens more broadly. A record of this paper’s transparent peer review process is included in the Supplemental information.
Regulated distribution of mitochondria in touch receptor neurons of C. elegans influences touch response

Density of mitochondria and their localization at specific sub-cellular regions of the neurons is regulated by molecular motors, their adaptors and the cytoskeleton. However, the regulation of the mitochondrial density, the positioning of mitochondria along the neuronal process and the role of axonal mitochondria in neuronal function remain poorly understood. This study shows that the density of mitochondria in C. elegans touch receptor neuron processes remains constant through development. Simulations show that mitochondrial positioning along parts of the neuronal process that are devoid of synapses is regulated. Additionally, we also demonstrate that axonal mitochondria are necessary for maintaining touch responsiveness.
Normalisation de termes complexes par sémantique distributionnelle guidée par une ontologie (Normalization of complex terms with distributional semantics guided by an ontology)

Nous proposons dans cet article une méthode semi-supervisée originale pour la création de représentations vectorielles pour des termes (complexes ou non) dans un espace sémantique pertinent pour une tâche de normalisation de termes désignant des entités dans un corpus. Notre méthode s’appuie en partie sur une approche de sémantique distributionnelle, celle-ci générant des vecteurs initiaux pour chacun des termes extraits. Ces vecteurs sont alors plongés dans un autre espace vectoriel construit à partir de la structure d’une ontologie. Pour la construction de ce second espace vectoriel ontologique, plusieurs méthodes sont testées et comparées. Le plongement s’effectue par entraînement d’un modèle linéaire. Un calcul de distance (en utilisant la similarité cosinus) est enfin effectué pour déterminer la proximité entre vecteurs de termes et vecteurs de concepts de l’ontologie servant à la normalisation. La performance de cette méthode a atteint un rang honorable, ouvrant d’encourageantes perspectives.
CA-GAN: Class-Condition Attention GAN for Underwater Image Enhancement

Underwater images suffer from serious color distortion and detail loss because of the wavelength-dependent light absorption and scattering, which seriously influences the subsequent underwater object detection and recognition. The latest methods for underwater image enhancement are based on deep models, which focus on finding a mapping function from the underwater image subspace to a ground-truth image subspace. They neglect the diversity of underwater conditions which leads to different background colors of underwater images. In this paper, we propose a Class-condition Attention Generative Adversarial Network (CA-GAN) to enhance an underwater image. We build an underwater image dataset which contains ten categories generated by the simulator with different water attenuation coefficient and depth. Relying on the underwater image classes, CA-GAN creates a many-to-one mapping function for an underwater image. Moreover, in order to generate the realistic image, attention mechanism is utilized. In the channel attention block, the feature maps in the front-end layers and the back-end layers are fused along channels, and in the spatial attention block, feature maps are pixel-wise fused. Extensive experiments are conducted on synthetic and real underwater images. The experimental results demonstrate that CA-GAN can effectively recover color and detail of various scenes of underwater images and is superior to the state-of-the-art methods.
A 0.3-V to 1.8–3.3-V Leakage-Biased Synchronous Level Converter for ULP SoCs

This letter proposes a robust synchronous wide-range clocked level converter (LC) that converts subthreshold input signals to high I/O voltages for ultra-low power (ULP) SoCs. By biasing the circuit using nMOS leakage current, the design offers robust operation across a wide range of low- and high-supply voltages as well as PVT variations. The design was fabricated in 55-nm CMOS process and shows 60.5-fJ (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$V_{\mathrm{ DDH}}=2.5$ </tex-math></inline-formula> V) switching energy, marking a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.6\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> improvement over prior works.
The Performance of Broiler Chicks During and Following a Severe Feed Restriction at an Early Age

Abstract Growth, feed efficiency, and abdominal fat were evaluated in broiler chicks that had been subjected to a severe feed restriction at the age of 1 week. The restriction period lasted 6 to 28 days, during which time the birds received 30 to 45 kcal/day in the different experiments. Feed restriction was followed by a period of refeeding which continued up to the age of 8 to 9 weeks. In the restricted birds, weight gain was lower during the first 2 weeks of refeeding but later exceeded that of the controls. In some cases this growth pattern resulted in an almost complete compensation for the weight gain lost during restriction. An improved feed efficiency in restricted groups was observed during refeeding, due in part to their lower body weight. Plots of cumulative feed efficiency vs. body weight indicate that with body weight over 1500 g, cumulative efficiency was improved over the controls. The extent of improvement at final weights was 2 to 3%, 2 to 4%, 5 to 9%, and 5% in the less severe restriction groups of trials 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. Abdominal fat at 8 weeks of age was reduced by the early, energy restriction. The possible practical benefit of an early energy restriction regimen is discussed.
Service-driven coded forward scheme based on streaming transmission model for lunar space communication networks

With the rapid development of lunar exploration, a large amount of scientific data and media stream service needs to be transmitted through Lunar Space Communication Networks (LSCNs). Due to limited transmitter power and intermittent, long delay and packet loss connections, the reliable and efficient multi-priority services' transmission in LSCNs becomes an urgent problem. Firstly, we propose a Streaming Transmission Model (STM) based on temporal and spatial topology graph to describe the delay and energy consumption for data transmission in LSCNs. Then, we further devise a Coded Forward Scheme based on STM, termed CFS-STM, to achieve multi-priority service in two steps: i). Link Stability Function (LSF) is established by solving an optimization problem to choose the appropriate single-hop path. ii). Raptor code is employed to further save delay and energy with adjustable code-rate according to the different channel conditions. Experiment results show that, CFS-STM can significantly improve the transmission efficiency of multi-service priority streaming delivery in LSCNs.
Multi UAV Cluster Control Method Based on Virtual Core in Improved Artificial Potential Field

In this paper, a method of multi UAV cluster control based on improved artificial potential field (APF) is proposed. The k-means method is used to integrate and optimize the attractive force between UAVs, and the concept of virtual core is introduced to realize the cluster control and adaptive formation flight of multiple UAVs. The attractive disturbance component of the target point is introduced and the backtracking-filling method is proposed to solve the local minimum problem in the APF. The repulsion force in the APF can realize obstacle avoidance and collision avoidance, and the virtual core can control the UAV cluster to fly to the target point under the attractive force of potential field, so as to realize the track planning and multi aircraft cooperative task. In the process of cluster flight when the UAV fails, merges or dispatches, the method can realize cluster reconfiguration and the cluster control effect and task execution success rate can be improved. The simulation experiments in virtual APF and urban environment APF show the effectiveness of this method.
Can operational profile coverage explain post‐release bug detection?

To deliver reliable software, developers may rely on the fault detection capability of test suites. To evaluate this capability, they can apply code coverage metrics before a software release. However, recent research results have shown that these metrics may not provide a solid basis for this evaluation. Moreover, the fixing of a fault has a cost, and not all faults have the same impact regarding software reliability. In this sense, operational testing aims at assessing parts of the system that are more valuable for users. The goal of this work is to investigate whether traditional code coverage and code coverage merged with operational information can be related to post‐release bug detection. We focus on the scope of proprietary software under continuous delivery. We performed an exploratory case study where code branch and statement coverage metrics were collected for each version of a proprietary software together with real usage data of the system. We then measured the ability to explain the bug‐fixing activity after version release using code coverage levels. We found that traditional statement coverage has a moderate negative correlation with bug‐fixing activities, whereas statement coverage merged with the operational profile has a large negative correlation with higher confidence. Developers can consider operational information as an important factor of influence that should be analysed, among other factors, together with code coverage to assess the fault detection capability of a test suite.
A 112–134-Gb/s PAM4 Receiver Using a 36-Way Dual-Comparator TI-SAR ADC in 7-nm FinFET

This letter describes a 112–134-Gb/s PAM-4 wireline receiver (Rx) designed and fabricated in 7-nm CMOS FinFET technology. The Rx includes a T-Coil-assisted on-die termination (ODT), an adaptable continuous-time linear equalizer (ACTLE), a time-interleaved ADC (TI-ADC), clock generation, clock distribution, feed-forward equalizer (FFE), decision feedback equalizer (DFE), and calibration. The TI-ADC is implemented as a 56–67-GSa/s, 36-way arrangement of dual-comparator SAR ADCs (SAR subADCs). The Rx achieves BER better than 1e-4 for a data rate as high as 127 Gb/s, with 3.2e-4 BER at 134.4 Gb/s, over a 15-dB die-to-die loss channel and achieves 3e-6 BER over a 33-dB die-to-die channel loss at 28-GHz Nyquist while consuming 5.1 pJ/b of power, excluding DSP power.
Motion Sickness in Virtual Reality: An Empirical Evaluation

Due to rapid growth in Virtual Reality (VR) technology, the industry of VR is expected to grow around $26.89 billion by 2022. However, with its extensive growth and immersive inclusion in human life, health-related issues are reported including, but not limited to nauseated feeling, vomiting, dizziness and cold sweats. These issues introduce a well-known side effect termed as motion sickness in VR users. Consequently, motion sickness limits the VR community in the full adaptation of this immersive technology. Since there is no lack of literature investigating motion sickness caused by VR, yet researches on the effect of VR on human’s physiology is still in its infancy. This study presents novel findings, by comparing different factors such as gender, motion sickness experience, 3D games experience and VR experience. Furthermore, it reports the impact of concerning factors in a within-subjects design (46 participants participated in an experiment) under different virtual environment genres. The key findings of this article report that there is a significant difference in the amount of motion sickness when shifting from pleasant to the horror genre of the environment and having a strong dependence on gender. Moreover, the type of virtual environment is an essential factor that has a notable effect on the user’s blood pressure, blood sugar and heart rate. However, past experiences with motion sickness and 3D games show no significant impact on the user’s level of motion sickness.
Review of Non-Destructive Civil Infrastructure Evaluation for Bridges: State-of-the-Art Robotic Platforms, Sensors and Algorithms

The non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of civil infrastructure has been an active area of research in recent decades. The traditional inspection of civil infrastructure mostly relies on visual inspection using human inspectors. To facilitate this process, different sensors for data collection and techniques for data analyses have been used to effectively carry out this task in an automated fashion. This review-based study will examine some of the recent developments in the field of autonomous robotic platforms for NDE and the structural health monitoring (SHM) of bridges. Some of the salient features of this review-based study will be discussed in the light of the existing surveys and reviews that have been published in the recent past, which will enable the clarification regarding the novelty of the present review-based study. The review methodology will be discussed in sufficient depth, which will provide insights regarding some of the primary aspects of the review methodology followed by this review-based study. In order to provide an in-depth examination of the state-of-the-art, the current research will examine the three major research streams. The first stream relates to technological robotic platforms developed for NDE of bridges. The second stream of literature examines myriad sensors used for the development of robotic platforms for the NDE of bridges. The third stream of literature highlights different algorithms for the surface- and sub-surface-level analysis of bridges that have been developed by studies in the past. A number of challenges towards the development of robotic platforms have also been discussed.