Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Visually Imperceptible and Robust Image Watermarking Scheme in Contourlet Domain

This paper proposes a new blind spread spectrum image watermarking method in Contourlet domain, where watermark is embedded through PN sequences in the selected Contourlet coefficients of the cover image. Data embedding is performed in selected sub bands, providing higher resiliency through better spectrum spreading compared to other sub bands. It has been observed that, in comparison with other Contourlet based and wavelet based methods, the proposed method leads to higher imperceptibility and robustness against several common watermarking attacks such as compression, adding noise, filtering and scaling. This property of the proposed method is thanks to its capability in directional selectivity.
A set of genes critical to development is epigenetically poised in mouse germ cells from fetal stages through completion of meiosis

Significance Germ cells, meaning the mature sperm and egg and their developmental precursors, carry the DNA that is passed from one generation to the next. Although the sperm and egg are highly specialized, differentiated cells, they meet at fertilization to produce a totipotent zygote, a cell that can generate any other cell type. We report the finding that a set of developmentally important genes is kept in a “poised” state in the germ cells: although these genes are never expressed in the germ cells themselves, they maintain a chromatin state usually associated with the potential for rapid gene activation. We propose that maintenance of this poised state in the germ cells contributes to the generation of totipotency in the fertilized zygote. In multicellular organisms, germ cells carry the hereditary material from one generation to the next. Developing germ cells are unipotent gamete precursors, and mature gametes are highly differentiated, specialized cells. However, upon gamete union at fertilization, their genomes drive a totipotent program, giving rise to a complete embryo as well as extraembryonic tissues. The biochemical basis for the ability to transition from differentiated cell to totipotent zygote is unknown. Here we report that a set of developmentally critical genes is maintained in an epigenetically poised (bivalent) state from embryonic stages through the end of meiosis. We performed ChIP-seq and RNA-seq analysis on flow-sorted male and female germ cells during embryogenesis at three time points surrounding sexual differentiation and female meiotic initiation, and then extended our analysis to meiotic and postmeiotic male germ cells. We identified a set of genes that is highly enriched for regulators of differentiation and retains a poised state (high H3K4me3, high H3K27me3, and lack of expression) across sexes and across developmental stages, including in haploid postmeiotic cells. The existence of such a state in embryonic stem cells has been well described. We now demonstrate that a subset of genes is maintained in a poised state in the germ line from the initiation of sexual differentiation during fetal development and into postmeiotic stages. We propose that the epigenetically poised condition of these developmental genes is a fundamental property of the mammalian germ-line nucleus, allowing differentiated gametes to unleash a totipotent program following fertilization.
Joint-Family: Enabling adaptive bitrate streaming in peer-to-peer video-on-demand

We propose Joint-Family, a protocol that combines peer-to-peer (P2P) and adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming for video-on-demand (VoD). While P2P for VoD and ABR have been proposed previously, they have not been studied together because they attempt to tackle problems with seemingly orthogonal goals. We motivate our approach through analysis that overcomes a misconception resulting from prior analytical work, and show that the popularity of a P2P swarm and seed staying time has a significant bearing on the achievable per-receiver download rate. Specifically, our analysis shows that popularity affects swarm efficiency when seeds stay “long enough”. We also show that ABR in a P2P setting helps viewers achieve higher playback rates and/or fewer interruptions. We develop the Joint-Family protocol based on the observations from our analysis. Peers in Joint-Family simultaneously participate in multiple swarms to exchange chunks of different bitrates. We adopt chunk, bitrate, and peer selection policies that minimize occurrence of interruptions while delivering high quality video and improving the efficiency of the system. Using traces from a large-scale commercial VoD service, we compare Joint-Family with existing approaches for P2P VoD and show that viewers in Joint-Family enjoy higher playback rates with minimal interruption, irrespective of video popularity.
Validating Wordscores: The Promises and Pitfalls of Computational Text Scaling

ABSTRACT Wordscores is a popular computational text analysis method with numerous applications in communication research. Wordscores claims to scale documents on specified dimensions without requiring researchers to read or even understand the language of the input text. We investigate whether Wordscores delivers this claim by scaling the Euromanifestos of 117 political parties across 23 countries on 4 salient dimensions of political conflict. We assess validity by comparing the Wordscores estimates to expert surveys and other judgmental measures, and by examining the Wordscores’s estimates ability to predict party membership in the European Parliament groups. We find that the Wordscores estimates correlate poorly with expert and judgmental measures of party positions, while the latter outperform Wordscores in the predictive validity test. We conclude that Wordscores does not live up to its original claim of a “quick and easy” language blind method, and urge researchers to demonstrate the validity of the method in their domain of interest before any empirical analysis.
The New England Research Institutes, Inc. (NERI) Nocturia Advisory Conference 2012: focus on outcomes of therapy

A consensus statement published in 2011 summarised current research, clinical approaches, and treatment options for nocturia. Since that time, new research has refined our understanding of nocturia in clinically important ways and new evidence has been presented on the efficacy and outcomes of several treatment methods for this underreported, infrequently recognised, and undertreated problem in adults. This paper provides updated guidance to clinicians in light of recent advances in the field.
MedChatBot: An UMLS based Chatbot for Medical Students

use of natural dialog has great significance in the design of interactive tutoring systems. The nature of student queries can be confined to a small set of templates based on the task domain. This paper describes the development of a chatbot for medical students, that is based on the open source AIML based Chatterbean. We deploy the widely available Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) as the domain knowledge source for generating responses to queries. The AIML based chatbot is customized to convert natural language queries into relevant SQL queries. The SQL queries are run against the knowledge base and results returned to the user in natural dialog. Student survey was carried out to identify various queries posed by students. The chatbot was designed to address common template queries. Knowledge inference techniques were applied to generate responses for queries for which knowledge was not explicitly encoded. Query responses were rated by three experts on a 1-5 point likert scale, who agreed among themselves with Pearson Correlation Coefficient of 0.54 and p < 0.05. The overall average rating assigned by experts was 3.4.
Path independent multiplicatively decomposable inequality measures

Foster and Shneyerov (2000) explore an additive decomposition property for inequality measures that they call path independent decomposition. They characterise the class of measures that have this property. Taking their results as a reference, we seek here to generalise the notion of decomposability, and to characterise inequality measures that admit path independent multiplicative decomposition. It is shown that all the measures in this family can be generated on the basis of Atkinson’s index for value 1 of the inequality aversion parameter. (Copyright: Fundacion SEPI)
Fermionic T-Duality, Dual Superconformal Symmetry, and the Amplitude/Wilson Loop Connection

We show that tree level superstring theories on certain supersymmetric backgrounds admit a symmetry which we call ``fermionic T-duality''. This is a non-local redefinition of the fermionic worldsheet fields similar to the redefinition we perform on bosonic variables when we do an ordinary T-duality. This duality maps a supersymmetric background to another supersymmetric background with different RR fields and a different dilaton. We show that a certain combination of bosonic and fermionic T-dualities maps the full superstring theory on AdS5 × S5 back to itself in such a way that gluon scattering amplitudes in the original theory map to something very close to Wilson loops in the dual theory. This duality maps the ``dual superconformal symmetry'' of the original theory to the ordinary superconformal symmetry of the dual model. This explains the dual superconformal invariance of planar scattering amplitudes of N = 4 super Yang Mills and also sheds some light on the connection between amplitudes and Wilson loops. In the appendix, we propose a simple prescription for open superstring MHV tree amplitudes in a flat background.
TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY: USING COORIENTATION TO MEASURE DIRECT AND META-PERSPECTIVES OF BOTH PARTIES IN ORGANIZATION-PUBLIC RELATIONSHIPS

A hydraulic control device which may be used in a number of applications, including with a fuel injector, includes a control valve having a first and a second independently shiftable valve member, the control member being configurable to define a plurality of actuating fluid flow paths for controlling hydraulic flow therethrough. A fuel injector includes the aforementioned control valve. A method of hydraulic control includes a number of steps, including independently controlling the shifting of two valves in a control valve assembly to selectively control the flow of actuating fluid to an actuator.
Global Applied General Equilibrium Analysis using the GTAP Framework

Contributed Chapter for Peter B. Dixon and Dale W. Jorgenson (eds.) This chapter provides an overview of the first two decades of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) – an effort to support a standardized data base and CGE modeling platform for international economic analysis. It characterizes GTAP in four different dimensions: institutional innovation, a network, a database and a standardized modeling platform. Guiding principles for the GTAP modeling framework include flexibility, ease of use, transparency, and symmetric treatment of production and utility fundamentals across regions. The chapter reviews core modeling assumptions relating to the regional household, private consumption behavior, welfare decomposition, the “global bank”, treatment of the international trade and transport sector, and imports. Model validation and sensitivity analysis, as well as software issues receive attention as well. The chapter also offers brief overviews of the two major areas of application: international economic integration and global environmental issues. It closes with a discussion of future directions for the Project.
Friends don't lie: inferring personality traits from social network structure

In this work, we investigate the relationships between social network structure and personality; we assess the performances of different subsets of structural network features, and in particular those concerned with ego-networks, in predicting the Big-5 personality traits. In addition to traditional survey-based data, this work focuses on social networks derived from real-life data gathered through smartphones. Besides showing that the latter are superior to the former for the task at hand, our results provide a fine-grained analysis of the contribution the various feature sets are able to provide to personality classification, along with an assessment of the relative merits of the various networks exploited.
Assessing experiential augmentation of the environment in the valuation of wine: Evidence from an economic experiment in Mt. Etna, Italy

Correspondence Gioacchino Pappalardo, Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Di3A), University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 98‐100, 95123 Catania, Italy. Email: gioacchino.pappalardo@unict.it Abstract In this study, we conducted an experimental auction to determine the impacts that “experiential augmentation,” a phenomenon in which a physical location impacts decision‐making, has on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for wine. The experiment elicited subjects’ valuation under experiential augmentation conditions for three types of wine grown in the Mt. Etna area in Sicily, Italy. Our findings indicate that experiential augmentation increased consumers’ WTP for wine. Our results suggest that experiential marketing practices explicitly related to the environment where the wine is produced and consumed can lead to increased valuation for wine.
Purkinje Cell NMDA Receptors Assume a Key Role in Synaptic Gain Control in the Mature Cerebellum

A classic view in cerebellar physiology holds that Purkinje cells do not express functional NMDA receptors and that, therefore, postsynaptic NMDA receptors are not involved in the induction of long-term depression (LTD) at parallel fiber (PF) to Purkinje cell synapses. Recently, it has been demonstrated that functional NMDA receptors are postsynaptically expressed at climbing fiber (CF) to Purkinje cell synapses in mice, reaching full expression levels at ∼2 months after birth. Here, we show that in the mature mouse cerebellum LTD (induced by paired PF and CF activation), but not long-term potentiation (LTP; PF stimulation alone) at PF to Purkinje cell synapses is blocked by bath application of the NMDA receptor antagonist D-2-amino-5-phosphonovaleric acid (D-APV). A blockade of LTD, but not LTP, was also observed when the noncompetitive NMDA channel blocker MK-801 was added to the patch-pipette saline, suggesting that postsynaptically expressed NMDA receptors are required for LTD induction. Using confocal calcium imaging, we show that CF-evoked calcium transients in dendritic spines are reduced in the presence of D-APV. This observation confirms that NMDA receptor signaling occurs at CF synapses and suggests that NMDA receptor-mediated calcium transients at the CF input site might contribute to LTD induction. Finally, we performed dendritic patch-clamp recordings from rat Purkinje cells. Dendritically recorded CF responses were reduced when D-APV was bath applied. Together, these data suggest that the late developmental expression of postsynaptic NMDA receptors at CF synapses onto Purkinje cells is associated with a switch toward an NMDA receptor-dependent LTD induction mechanism.
Hearing Abilities at Ultra-High Frequency in Patients with Tinnitus

Objectives To compare tinnitus patients who have normal hearing between 250 Hz and 8 kHz with normal controls with regard to the ability of each group to hear extended high-frequency pure tone thresholds. Methods We enrolled 18 tinnitus patients, each of whom had a threshold of HL <25 dB and threshold differences of <10 dB between ears at frequencies of 250 and 500 Hz and 1, 2, 4, and 8 kHz. We also enrolled age- and gender-matched normal volunteers (10 ears), for each patient. Extended high frequency pure tone audiometry was performed, and the mean hearing thresholds at 10, 12, 14, and 16 kHz of each tinnitus ear were compared with those of the 10 age- and sex-matched normal ears. Results Of the 18 patients with tinnitus, 12 had significantly increased hearing thresholds at more than one of the four high frequencies, compared with the normal group. When we assessed results according to frequency, we found that 8 patients had decreased hearing ability at 10 kHz, 10 at 12 kHz, 8 at 14 kHz, and 4 at 16 kHz. Conclusion Some patients with tinnitus who have normal hearing below 8 kHz have decreased hearing ability at extended high-frequencies. Thus, the proportion of patients with tinnitus who have normal hearing over the entire audible range is smaller than in previous reports.
ESSAYS ON FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND FIRMS IN CHINA

Title of dissertation: ESSAYS ON FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND FIRMS IN CHINA Jianzhi Zhao, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation directed by: Professor Phillip Lee Swagel School of Public Policy A key factor behind China’s spectacular economic growth over the past thirty years has been the transformation from a planned economy to one featuring a booming private sector. This transition is not complete, however, as State-owned enterprises (SOEs) remain extraordinarily powerful in important aspects of Chinese economic activities. While manufacturing is primarily carried out by private firms, for example, China’s financial system remains dominated by large government-owned banks and lending activity heavily influenced by non-economic considerations such as government directives to support favored activities. These enterprises tend to invest excessively in poor quality projects that jeopardize their ability to pay back their debt and thus hinder long term growth. Therefore, understanding how China’s financial system, especially its banking sector, interacts with the real economy is critical to understanding China’s future economic prospects. This dissertation thus will investigate questions pertaining to the interactions between financial institutions
Malaria parasitaemia among long distance truck drivers in the Niger delta of Nigeria.

BACKGROUND Malaria is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of malaria among long distance truck drivers in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. METHODS A total of one hundred consecutively recruited long distance truck drivers aged 21-60 years, with a mean age of 42.36 ± 5.23 years were screened for the presence of malaria parasitaemia. RESULTS Out of the 100 truck drivers screened, 35 (35%) were positive for malaria while 65 (65%) were negative. Plasmodium falciparum was responsible for all cases of malaria infection. The highest prevalence of malaria occurred among drivers in the 51-60 years age group (40.5%). The mean and standard deviation (SD) of parasite load was 1 020 (125) parasites/ìl in subjects positive for malaria. The mean CD4 count was significantly higher among non-parasitized truck drivers compared to P. falciparum parasitized drivers 820 ± 42.0 (731-902 cells/ µl) and 570 ± 30.0 (510-630 cells/ µl) respectively (chi square = 74.00; p = 0.03). We observed a significant negative correlation between plasmodial infection and CD4 lymphocyte count among Plasmodium falciparum-infected subjects with r = - 0.56 (p= 0.001). CONCLUSION Preventative strategies including regular chemoprophylaxis, intermittent preventive treatment with antimalarials and provision of insecticide-treated bed nets should be implemented.
Universal doublet-singlet Higgs couplings and phenomenology at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

We consider a minimal extension of the standard model where a real, gauge singlet scalar field is added to the standard spectrum. Introducing the Ansatz of universality of scalar couplings, we are led to a scenario which has a set of very distinctive and testable predictions: (i) the mixing between the standard model Higgs and the new state is near maximal, (ii) the ratio of the two Higgs mass eigenstates is fixed ({approx}{radical}(3)), (iii) the decay modes of each of the two eigenstates are standard model like. We also study how electroweak precision tests constrain this scenario. We predict the lighter Higgs to lie in the range of 114 and 145 GeV, and hence the heavier one between 198 and 250 GeV. The predictions of the model can be tested at the upcoming LHC.
Length-converted catch curves and the seasonal growth of fishes

A brief review of studies on the seasonal growth of fish is presented, followed by an equally brief review of length-converted catch curves. A new method for constructing catch curves from representative length-frequency data is presented. This new method explicitly accounts for seasonal growth and thus eliminates the bias in Z caused by such growth. Some practical and theoretical implications of the new method are discussed.
Framework and Research Agenda for Master Data Management in Distributed Environments

Master data is the foundation for relating business transactions with business entities such as customers, products, locations etc. In master data literature these entities are also referred to as domains. The integrity, availability and timeliness of master data both as single-domain and as multi-domain combinations is crucial for business transactions in general and especially to distributed eBusiness transactions in the network of stakeholders over the Internet, or in the cloud. Distributed environments set additional challenges for the management of master data. In this idea paper, we first describe master data in the context of various data types and processes, the responsibilities on master data management as well as other typical master data management practices used to improve master data quality. We combine them into a framework, which provides a generic background description over the master data phenomenon, that is, a classification over practical means to solve shortcomings in master data. We argue that although these means are able to support the improvement of master data quality and master data management they are insufficient to capture the underlying causes of master data problems. We then and therefore investigate master data management from the IS theoretical viewpoint and finally propose a research agenda for most critical issues in master data management. We suggest that enterprise architecting could serve as a coherent framework in identifying common and specific master data management research themes for global businesses and networked governments.
Simultaneous pitches are encoded separately in auditory cortex: an MMNm study

This study examined whether two simultaneous pitches have separate memory representations or an integrated representation in preattentive auditory memory. Mismatch negativity fields were examined when a pitch change occurred in either the higher-pitched or the lower-pitched tone at 25% probability each, thus making the total deviation rate of the two-tone dyad 50%. Clear MMNm was obtained for deviants in both tones confirming separate memory traces for concurrent tones. At the same time, deviants to the lower-pitched, but not higher-pitched, tone within the two-tone dyad elicited a reduced MMNm compared to when each tone was presented alone, indicating that the representations of two pitches are not completely independent.