Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disentangling perceptual awareness from nonconscious processing in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Significance Many animals perform complex intelligent behaviors, but the question of whether animals are aware while doing so remains a long debated but unanswered question. Here, we develop a new approach to assess whether nonhuman animals have awareness by utilizing a well-known double dissociation of visual awareness—cases in which people behave in completely opposite ways when stimuli are processed consciously versus nonconsciously. Using this method, we found that a nonhuman species—the rhesus monkey—exhibits the very same behavioral signature of both nonconscious and conscious processing. This opposite double dissociation of awareness firstly allows stripping away the long inherent ambiguity when interpreting the processes governing animal behavior. Collectively, it provides robust support for two distinct awareness modes in nonhuman animals. Scholars have long debated whether animals, which display impressive intelligent behaviors, are consciously aware or not. Yet, because many complex human behaviors and high-level functions can be performed without conscious awareness, it was long considered impossible to untangle whether animals are aware or just conditionally or nonconsciously behaving. Here, we developed an empirical approach to address this question. We harnessed a well-established cross-over double dissociation between nonconscious and conscious processing, in which people perform in completely opposite ways when they are aware of stimuli versus when they are not. To date, no one has explored if similar performance dissociations exist in a nonhuman species. In a series of seven experiments, we first established these signatures in humans using both known and newly developed nonverbal double-dissociation tasks and then identified similar signatures in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). These results provide robust evidence for two distinct modes of processing in nonhuman primates. This empirical approach makes it feasible to disentangle conscious visual awareness from nonconscious processing in nonhuman species; hence, it can be used to strip away ambiguity when exploring the processes governing intelligent behavior across the animal kingdom. Taken together, these results strongly support the existence of both nonconscious processing as well as functional human-like visual awareness in nonhuman animals.
P ARETO -F RONTIER - AWARE N EURAL A RCHITECTURE S EARCH

Designing feasible and effective architectures is essential for deploying deep models to real-world scenarios. In practice, one has to consider multiple objectives (e.g., model performance and computational cost) and diverse constraints incurred by different computation resources. To address this, most methods seek to find promising architectures via optimizing a well pre-defined utility function. However, it is often non-trivial to design an ideal function that could well trade-off different objectives. More critically, in many real scenarios, even for the same platform, we may have different applications with various latency budgets. It would be fantastic if we can produce multiple promising architectures to fulfill each budget in the same search process. However, existing methods may have to perform an independent search for each budget, which is very inefficient and unnecessary. In this paper, we propose a Pareto-Frontier-aware Neural Architecture Search (PFNAS) method which seeks to learn the Pareto frontier (i.e., the set of Pareto optimal architectures) w.r. t. multiple objectives. Here, we formulate the Pareto frontier learning problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). Relied on the MDP, we transform and absorb the objectives other than model performance into the constraints. To learn the whole Pareto frontier, we propose to find a set of Pareto optimal architectures which are uniformly distributed on the range of budget to form a frontier. Based on the learned frontier, we are able to easily find multiple promising architectures to fulfill all considered constraints in the same search process. Extensive experiments on three hardware platforms (i.e., mobile, CPU, and GPU) show that the searched architectures by our PFNAS outperform the ones obtained by existing methods under different budgets.
Diffusion of a disordered protein on its folded ligand

Significance Flexibility in complexes between intrinsically disordered proteins and folded ligands is widespread in nature. However, timescales and spatial amplitudes of such dynamics remained unexplored for most systems. Our results show that the disordered cytoplasmic tail of the cell adhesion protein E-cadherin diffuses across the entire surface of its folded binding partner β-catenin at fast submillisecond timescales. The nanometer amplitude of these motions could allow kinases to access their recognition motifs without requiring a dissociation of the complex. We expect that the rugged energy landscape found in the E-cadherin/β-catenin complex is a defining feature of dynamic and partially disordered protein complexes. Intrinsically disordered proteins often form dynamic complexes with their ligands. Yet, the speed and amplitude of these motions are hidden in classical binding kinetics. Here, we directly measure the dynamics in an exceptionally mobile, high-affinity complex. We show that the disordered tail of the cell adhesion protein E-cadherin dynamically samples a large surface area of the protooncogene β-catenin. Single-molecule experiments and molecular simulations resolve these motions with high resolution in space and time. Contacts break and form within hundreds of microseconds without a dissociation of the complex. The energy landscape of this complex is rugged with many small barriers (3 to 4 kBT) and reconciles specificity, high affinity, and extreme disorder. A few persistent contacts provide specificity, whereas unspecific interactions boost affinity.
Highly reliable and delay bound wireless sensor network protocol for oil and gas plants

Communication networks for oil and gas plants predominantly employ wired communication infrastructure. The wired communication infrastructure is used to carry control and monitoring data used for plant process control and automation. Data carried on plants networks are of critical nature and thus require strict Quality of Services (QoS) treatment. The existing wired communication protocols provide required reliability and delay bound performance. However, wired communication infrastructure imposes high cost and lack flexibility. The advancements in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) make it an attractive alternative for wire based plant networks because of WSN low cost and flexibility. However, WSN suffers from error prone wireless medium, limited resources and lack of central control which make it challenging to meet plant networks QoS strict requirements. In this thesis, we propose a novel WSN architecture protocol called HARD for oil and gas plant networks which meet the strict QoS requirements. We have formulated the design guidelines for plant network WSN topology to meet the given QoS requirements. The maximum delay bound and the reliability performance have been formulated. Simulation results confirmed the analysis of the HARD protocol delay bound of 40ms and showed reliability performance of near 100% for experiments with failure probability of 60% and below.
Free energy: alternative designs for awareness and choice

Energy is an invisible and increasingly valuable resource. However in the design of everyday environments and things, electricity and energy use is not often made explicit – wiring, electrical meters, outlets and batteries are hidden away in boxes, inside walls and in distant basements. We have been investigating design as both a means of enquiry into perceptions of energy and as a vehicle for making energy more explicit in everyday environments. In the Interactive Institute’s ‘Static! ’ project, we investigate ‘energy as design material’. Taking energy as a design problem from the point of view of human and personal experience, our approach is to examine design as a means for increasing the visibility – and thus choices available – with regards to personal energy use.
“Sagittal Crest”: Definition, Stepwise Dissection, and Clinical Implications From a Transorbital Perspective

BACKGROUND: The recent development of the superior eyelid endoscopic transorbital approach (SETOA) offered a new route for the management of cavernous sinus and middle cranial fossa tumors. As a result, a constant anatomic landmark of the surgical pathway after drilling the medial edge of the greater sphenoid wing (GSW) is represented by a triangular-shaped bone ridge appearing as a “crest. ” OBJECTIVE: To perform an anatomic study to define this surgical landmark, named the “sagittal crest” (SC) as seen from the transorbital endoscopic view. METHODS: Four adult cadaveric specimens (8 sides) were dissected performing an endoscopic transorbital approach to the middle fossa and the SC was removed to perform interdural opening of the cavernous sinus. Computed tomography scans were made before and after removal of the SC to perform quantitative analysis and building a 3-dimensional model of the bone resection of the GSW via the SETOA. RESULTS: The SC is a bone ridge triangle shaping dorsally the superior orbital fissure resulting as the residual fragment after drilling the lateral aspect of the greater sphenoid wing. Predissection and postdissection computed tomography scans allowed to objectively assess SC features and dimensions (mean 1.08 ± 0.2 cm). CONCLUSION: The SC is a constant anatomic landmark constituted of the residual medial portion of the GSW. Complete resection of this key landmark provides adequate working space and appears to be mandatory during SETOA to guide the subsequent interdural dissection of the lateral wall of cavernous sinus.
Nearest Neighbor Method for Discriminating Aftershocks and Duplicates When Merging Earthquake Catalogs

Early aftershocks contain important information about the physics of earthquake occurrence and postseismic relaxation processes. However, the standard catalogs of early aftershocks are usually incomplete. Many events can be missed in the main shock coda, some of which are strong enough due to the extremely high noise level. Under these conditions, the process of event identification becomes largely stochastic. Due to different network configurations and record processing methods, different agencies may register/miss different events, thus merging catalogs can improve the completeness of the aftershock sequence. When merging catalogs, the problem of identifying duplicates (records related to the same seismic event) arises. The main difficulty is discriminating aftershocks and duplicates, since both are events close in space and time. The problem is analogous to the problem of discriminating aftershocks and independent events. The solution methods are usually similar too. In this paper, we apply the nearest neighbor method modified for our problem. This method has become widespread in recent years in the problem of identifying aftershocks, and a probabilistic metric in the space of network errors in determining the epicenters and times of seismic events. It is applied for automatic identification of duplicates when merging catalogs of aftershocks for the Tohoku earthquake. An analysis of the space-time structure of duplicates and aftershocks shows their significant difference, which makes it possible to successfully solve the problem. In a sample from the global Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) catalog ( M > 4 ), were found more than 700 events missed by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) seismic network, which is one of the best in the world. Among the misses, there are several events with M > 6 in the first hours after the main shock. Duplicate identification reliability is >97%. The method can be used to improve the completeness of aftershock sequences. The reliable identification of duplicates allows, in addition, to study the correspondence of the magnitudes determined by different agencies. Therefore the present method is an effective tool for creating merged catalogs of earthquakes with a uniform magnitude.
GyroidOS: Packaging Linux with a Minimal Surface

Separation of privilege domains is crucial when building secure system architectures for Cyber-Physical systems. The bar for a successful attack can be raised significantly and the consequences of an attack can be contained. As Cyber-physical systems often comprise devices with limited resources, container virtualization provides an ideal base technology to construct secure architectures for CPS. However, the provided isolation guarantees entirely depend on one, shared kernel. Therefore, it is crucial to protect this kernel against attacks. Recent research proposed solutions to this issue. However, these approaches incurred performance penalties hindering their practical applicability. Therefore, we created GyroidOS, an architecture to shrink the kernel attack surface available to an attacker inside a container. To achieve this, we exploit redundancy in the Linux syscall interface to restrict access to syscalls without reducing the functionality available to user space binaries. Thereby, we aim to achieve maximum compatibility and applicability in real world scenarios. At the same time, GyroidOS aims to minimize the imposed performance penalty to avoid performance-related issues in the applicability of which previous approaches suffered.
Remediation of metals and plastic from e-waste by iron mine indigenous acidophilic bacteria

The growing consumption of electrical and electronic equipment leads to high amounts of electronic waste (e-waste), which is now considered the fastest-growing waste stream at the national and international levels. As well as being a potential secondary resource due to its precious metals content, e-waste also contains strategic metals and plastics. For instance, mobile phones have about 25–55% plastic substances. A few studies have been performed to investigate the potential of indigenous bacteria in metals’ bioleaching from the polluted environment. Heterotrophic bioleaching potential in acidic conditions had been preliminarily investigated. Two soil types of iron ore were considered the source of indigenous bacteria. Despite the acidophilic nature of the bacterial consortium, they continued their leaching activity regardless of alkaline conditions. Maximum biorecovery rate related to copper (4%) responding to the main soil, owing to the higher copper content of mobile phone waste. Chromium had the least recovery rate (⩽0.002%). Overall, the maximum metal recovery rate was 4.7%, achieved by tailing heterotrophs at an e-waste loading of 10 g l−1. Statistical analysis had shown that there was no significant difference between the metal recovery rates and soil type or even the solid-liquid ratio (p > 0.05). Although acidophilic indigenous heterotrophs could not be an appropriate alternative for a large amount of metal recovery process, they might have considerable potential in the bioremediation of e-waste plastic fractions and metals in low concentrations simultaneously.
Grounding Meaning Representation for Situated Reasoning

As natural language technology becomes ever-present in everyday life, people will expect artificial agents to understand language use as humans do. Nevertheless, most advanced neural AI systems fail at some types of interactions that are trivial for humans (e.g., ask a smart system “What am I pointing at? ”). One critical aspect of human language understanding is situated reasoning, where inferences make reference to the local context, perceptual surroundings, and contextual groundings from the interaction. In this cutting-edge tutorial, we bring to the NLP/CL community a synthesis of multimodal grounding and meaning representation techniques with formal and computational models of embodied reasoning. We will discuss existing approaches to multimodal language grounding and meaning representations, discuss the kind of information each method captures and their relative suitability to situated reasoning tasks, and demon- strate how to construct agents that conduct situated reasoning by embodying a simulated environment. In doing so, these agents also represent their human interlocutor(s) within the simulation, and are represented through their virtual embodiment in the real world, enabling true bidirectional communication with a computer using multiple modalities.
A Carrier-comparison-based Implementation Strategy of A 24-sector-based SVPWM Technique of Asymmetrical Six-phase Machine in Overmodulation Region

An asymmetrical six-phase machine (ASPM) with two isolated neutral points is analyzed in two orthogonal planes-one of these planes is associated with electromagnetic energy transfer. The energy-transferring plane of ASPM has two regions-linear and overmodulation (OVM). Unlike the linear region, the average voltage injected in the non-energy transferring plane of the OVM region is non-zero. The efficacy of carrier-based implementation of an equivalent space-vector PWM (SVPWM) technique to reduce the computational burden is well-known in three-phase inverter literature. Although carrier-based implementations of popular SVPWM techniques of ASPM are researched for the linear region, such carrier-based implementation doesn’t exist for the OVM region. Moreover, a direct extension of the carrier-based strategy in the linear region to the OVM region isn’t possible because it requires the calculation of non-zero voltages in the non-energy transferring plane. This paper presents a carrier-based implementation of one of the SVPWM techniques in the OVM region, resulting in minimum RMS harmonic voltage. The proposed technique is a natural extension of an important known PWM technique applied in the linear region. The proposed algorithm generalizes the duty signals in terms of maximum, middle, and minimum of three intermediate signals. These duty signals are then compared with two carrier signals to generate the required gating pulses. The proposed algorithm is validated through simulation and experiment on a hardware prototype at a maximum power of 4.5 kW.
The physics of liquid crystals

Part 1 Liquid crystals - main types and properties: introduction - what is a liquid crystal? the building blocks nematics and cholesterics smectics columnar phases more on long-, quasi-long and short-range order remarkable features of liquid crystals. Part 2 Long- and short-range order in nematics: definition of an order parameter statistical theories of the nematic order phenomonological description of the nematic-isotopic mixtures. Part 3 Static distortion in a nematic single crystal: principles of the continuum theory magnetic field effects electric field effects in an insulating nematic fluctuations in the alignment hydrostatics of nematics. Part 4 Defects and textures in nematics: observations disclination lines point disclinations walls under magnetic fields umbilics surface disclinations. Part 5 Dynamical properties of nematics: the equations of "nematodynamics" experiments measuring the Leslie co-efficients convective instabilities under electric fields molecular motions. Part 6 Cholesterics: optical properties of an ideal helix agents influencing the pitch dynamical properties textures and defects in cholesterics. Part 7 Smectics: symmetry of the main smectic phases continuum description of smectics A and C remarks on phase and precritical phenomena.
The Entry Strategy of Retail Firms into Transition Economies

International entries into transition economies occur infrequently and involve considerable uncertainty. This raises the question whether managers, who have limited own experience, take their competitors' prior decisions into account when deciding on their own entry timing and size and whether there is value in doing so. To address these questions, the authors estimate a sequential hazard/Poisson regression model on the top 75 European grocery retailers' decisions to enter the Eastern European market. Indeed, firms pay close attention to prevailing practices in their industry. Prior entries first serve as legitimation but eventually become a deterring factor. Moreover, rather than just imitating the most popular or modal decision when determining the own entry timing and size, managers pay closer attention to the actions of their home competitors, react to prior entries of same-format competitors differently from those of different-format competitors, and adjust the observed industry practice for the specificity of their own resources. The authors show that managers are justified in taking the combined industry wisdom into account; deviations from prevailing industry practice, in terms of both timing and size, hurt the efficiency of their operations in subsequent years. Thus, attempts to develop own, distinct entry rules tend to be dysfunctional. Moreover, corrective actions are easier to implement along the size than along the time dimension; the detrimental effects of entering at a different time from the industry norm persist and even become amplified over time, whereas the negative impact of size deviations is temporary.
Gputerasort: High Performance Graphics Coprocessor Sorting for Large Database Management

Sorting large datasets is often limited by I/O bandwidth in terms of memory and disk. The traditional von Neumann architecture results in high cache misses within L1-L3 cache levels. The authors realized that the highly parallelized processors and the fast memory interconnects inside commodity GPUs can help to work around the limitations that arise when sorting is done solely on the CPU. Specifically, the limitation is that most sorting performance is limited by cache misses. Although main memory sizes have gotten larger, so that disk I/O is reduced, memory access itself is a bottleneck. Utilizing the GPU is advantageous in that it may have 10 times the bandwidth for memory that a CPU has. In dealing with a large number of records, two pass sorting usually has to be done, because all the data cannot fit into main memory at the same time. The relationship between disk and memory says that memory grows as the square root of the input size, which means terabyte files can be processed with gigabyte main memory. Unfortunately, peak performance is not achieved with traditional CPU based algorithms. There are too many cache misses, peak I/O throughput is never reached and SMT hardware has too much contention for memory between threads. Instead, GPUs can be utilized in non-obvious way. First, they have much more inherent parallelism than SMT CPUs (by using fragment processors and instruction level parallelism with multiple ALUs) and second, the memory interface is designed to have high bandwidth and low latency compared to the CPUs. The GPUTeraSort algorithm has a number steps which use the strengths of the CPU and the GPU to achieve higher performance. For instance, sorting is done on the GPU so that it can interface with memory quickly, but data loading and key generation is done through the CPU. Writing back to disk is done directly through a DMA. The input to be sorted must be mapped into a form recognizable by the GPU, which operates on 2-D arrays of pixels. A bitonic sequence is thus partitioned and inputted as pixels to the GPU. Calculations are performed which compare the pixels, reorder and merge them. Care needs to be expressed to avoid too many cache misses even in the GPU, so the algorithm uses blocking in order to ensure the data being used is in the same spatial area. The measured performance is impressive compared to other methods, …