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1. The origin of blinking in both mudskippers and tetrapods is linked to life on land

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2220404120  

   Aiello, Brett R.; Bhamla, M. Saad; Gau, Jeff; Morris, John G.; Bomar, Kenji; da Cunha, Shashwati; Fu, Harrison; Laws, Julia; Minoguchi, Hajime; Sripathi, Manognya; et al (May 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Blinking, the transient occlusion of the eye by one or more membranes, serves several functions including wetting, protecting, and cleaning the eye. This behavior is seen in nearly all living tetrapods and absent in other extant sarcopterygian lineages suggesting that it might have arisen during the water-to-land transition. Unfortunately, our understanding of the origin of blinking has been limited by a lack of known anatomical correlates of the behavior in the fossil record and a paucity of comparative functional studies. To understand how and why blinking originates, we leverage mudskippers (Oxudercinae), a clade of amphibious fishes that have convergently evolved blinking. Using microcomputed tomography and histology, we analyzed two mudskipper species, Periophthalmus barbarus and Periophthalmodon septemradiatus , and compared them to the fully aquatic round goby, Neogobius melanostomus . Study of gross anatomy and epithelial microstructure shows that mudskippers have not evolved novel musculature or glands to blink. Behavioral analyses show the blinks of mudskippers are functionally convergent with those of tetrapods: P. barbarus blinks more often under high-evaporation conditions to wet the eye, a blink reflex protects the eye from physical insult, and a single blink can fully clean the cornea of particulates. Thus, eye retraction in concert with a passive occlusal membrane can achieve functions associated with life on land. Osteological correlates of eye retraction are present in the earliest limbed vertebrates, suggesting blinking capability. In both mudskippers and tetrapods, therefore, the origin of this multifunctional innovation is likely explained by selection for increasingly terrestrial lifestyles. 

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2. Beyond gaze: preliminary analysis of pupil dilation and blink rates in an fMRI study of program comprehension

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3216723.3216726  

   Peitek, Norman; Siegmund, Janet; Parnin, Chris; Apel, Sven; Brechmann, André (January 2018, Proceedings of the Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP'18))

   Researchers have been employing psycho-physiological measures to better understand program comprehension, for example simultaneous fMRI and eye tracking to validate top-down comprehension models. In this paper, we argue that there is additional value in eye-tracking data beyond eye gaze: Pupil dilation and blink rates may offer insights into programmers' cognitive load. However, the fMRI environment may influence pupil dilation and blink rates, which would diminish their informative value. We conducted a preliminary analysis of pupil dilation and blink rates of an fMRI experiment with 22 student participants. We conclude from our preliminary analysis that the correction for our fMRI environment is challenging, but possible, such that we can use pupil dilation and blink rates to more reliably observe program comprehension. 

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3. The Evolutionary Consequences of Dams and Other Barriers for Riverine Fishes

   https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac004  

   Zarri, Liam J.; Palkovacs, Eric P.; Post, David M.; Therkildsen, Nina O.; Flecker, Alexander S. (March 2022, BioScience)

   Abstract Dams and other anthropogenic barriers have caused global ecological and hydrological upheaval in the blink of the geological eye. In the present article, we synthesize 307 studies in a systematic review of contemporary evolution following reduced connectivity and habitat alteration on freshwater fishes. Genetic diversity loss was more commonly observed for small populations impounded in small habitat patches for many generations behind low-passability barriers. Studies show that impoundments can cause rapid adaptive evolution in migration timing, behavior, life history, temperature tolerance, and morphology, as well as reduce phenotypic variance, which can alter adaptive potential and ecological roles. Fish passage structures can restore migratory populations but also create artificial selection pressures on body size and migration. The accelerating pace of dam removals and the paucity of data for fishes other than salmonids, other vertebrates, invertebrates, and tropical and southern hemisphere organisms highlights the urgent need for more studies on the rapid evolutionary effects of dams. 

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4. Blink: Fast and Generic Collectives for Distributed ML

   Wang, G; Venkataraman, S; Phanishayee, A; Thelin, J; Devanur, N; Stoica, I (March 2020, Conference on Machine Learning and Systems (MLSys))

   Model parameter synchronization across GPUs introduces high overheads for data-parallel training at scale. Existing parameter synchronization protocols cannot effectively leverage available network resources in the face of ever increasing hardware heterogeneity. To address this issue, we propose Blink, a collective communication library that dynamically generates optimal communication primitives by packing spanning trees. We propose techniques to minimize the number of trees generated and extend Blink to leverage heterogeneous communication channels for hybrid, and faster, data transfers. Evaluations show that compared to the state-of-the-art (NCCL), Blink can achieve up to 8× faster model synchronization (AllReduce), and reduce end-to-end DNN training time for image classification tasks by up to 40%. 

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5. Blink Detection for Off-Angle Iris Recognition Using Deep Learning

   https://doi.org/10.1109/SoutheastCon52093.2024.10500251  

   Chavarro, David; Karakaya, Mahmut (March 2024, IEEE)

   Iris biometric systems offer non-contact authentication, particularly advantageous in controlled environments such as security checkpoints. However, challenges arise in less controlled scenarios such as standoff biometrics where captured images mostly are non-ideal including off-angle. This paper addresses the need for iris recognition models adaptable to various gaze angles by proposing a blink detection algorithm as an additional feature. The study explores different blink detection methods including involving logistic regression, random forest, and deep learning models. For the first methodology, logistic regression and a random forest model were used to classify eye images into four different blink classes. The second methodology involved labeling eye openness percentage. The ground-truth eye blink was calculated using facial landmarks detected by the MediaPipe model. For the deep learning approach, we used a pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model by replacing the output layer with a regression layer. Results show improved precision and recall when incorporating height and width features for the regression model. The AlexNet model achieves superior performance, reaching 90% accuracy with a 10 % error threshold. This research contributes valuable insights for developing robust iris recognition models adaptable to diverse gaze angles. 

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