Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variable-length lapped transforms with a combination of multiple synthesis filter banks for image coding

A class of lapped transforms for image coding, which are characterized by variable-length synthesis filters, is introduced. In this class, the synthesis filter bank (FB) is first defined with an arbitrary combination of finite impulse response synthesis filters of perfect reconstruction FBs. An analysis FB is then obtained using direct matrix inversion or iterative implementation of Neumann series expansion. Moreover, to improve compression, we introduce a unitary transform that follows the analysis FB. This class enables a greater freedom of design than previously presented variable-length lapped transforms. We illustrate several design examples and present experimental results for image coding, which indicate that the proposed transforms are promising and comparable with conventional subband transforms including wavelets.
Generational Shift in Parental Perceptions of Overweight Among School-Aged Children

BACKGROUND: Parental perceptions of child’s weight status may influence family readiness to foster healthy behaviors. This study investigated the generational shifting of parental perceptions about children’s weight. METHODS: Data were collected in the NHANES 1988–1994 (n = 2871) and 2005–2010 (n = 3202). Parents, mainly mothers, were asked whether they considered their child, ages 6 to 11 years, to be overweight, underweight, or just about the right weight. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2000 growth chart was used for reference. We ran Poisson regression to estimate the probability ratio between the 2 surveys for parents perceiving their child as overweight after controlling for actual weight. RESULTS: The 10th percentile of BMI z scores for children who were parentally perceived as overweight shifted with statistical significance from 84th percentile of reference population in the early survey to 91st percentile of reference population in the recent survey (P < .05). The mean z score of children parentally perceived as overweight also increased between surveys with the largest increase among children from poor families (from 1.60 [SE: 0.20] to 1.98 [0.08], P < .05), followed by African Americans (from 1.65 [0.09] to 2.02 [0.05], P < .05). The probability of overweight/obese children being correctly perceived as overweight by the parents declined by 24% between surveys (probability ratio = 0.76 [95% confidence interval: 0.67–0.87]). CONCLUSIONS: Overweight/obese children were less likely to be perceived as overweight in the recent survey compared with peers of similar weight but surveyed 10+ years earlier. The declining tendency among parents to perceive overweight children appropriately may indicate a generational shift in social norms related to body weight.
Dissemination of Bovine Leukemia Virus-Infected Cells from a Newly Infected Sheep Lymph Node

ABSTRACT To investigate the early establishment of bovine leukemia virus (BLV) infection, we injected BLV-infected or mock-infected allogeneic cells into the shoulder of sheep in which an efferent lymphatic duct of the draining prescapular lymph node had been cannulated. Rare mononuclear cells acting as centers of BLV infection in culture were present within 4 to 6 days in efferent lymph and within 6 to 10 days in blood. Soon after BLV injection, immunoglobulin M+ (IgM+) and CD8+ cells increased in efferent lymph and oscillated reciprocally in frequency. CD8+ blasts increased on days 4 to 6, when infectious centers increased 100-fold in lymph. On days 6 and 7, both lymph and blood were enriched with CD8+ cells that were labeled late on day 5 with an intravenous pulse of 5-bromo-2′-deoxyuridine (BrdU). Lymph, but not blood, was enriched with BrdU+ B cells on day 7. Capsid-specific antibodies became detectable in efferent lymph on days 6 to 8 and surface glycoprotein-specific antibodies on day 9, preceding their detection in serum by 9 to 14 days. Systemic dissemination of BLV-infected cells was thus accompanied by an increase in proliferating CD8+ cells and the onset of BLV-specific antibodies in lymph. Infectious centers reached maximum frequencies of 0.2% in lymph by days 11 to 13, and then their frequencies increased by 5- to 40-fold in blood cells, suggesting that many infected blood cells do not recirculate back into lymph. Beginning on days 10 to 13, a subpopulation of B cells having high levels of surface IgM increased sharply in peripheral blood. Such cells were not present in lymph. After a day 16 pulse of BrdU, recently proliferated cells that stained intensely for surface IgM appeared in blood within 15 h. Predominantly B lymphocytes contained the viral capsid protein when lymph and blood cells were cultured briefly to allow BLV expression. However, both early in lymph and later in blood, BrdU+ B cells greatly exceeded productively infected cells, indicating that new BLV infections stimulate proliferation of two different populations of B cells.
Depth of invasion, tumor budding, and worst pattern of invasion: Prognostic indicators in early-stage oral tongue cancer

Oral (mobile) tongue squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is characterized by a highly variable prognosis in early‐stage disease (T1/T2 N0M0). The ability to classify early oral tongue SCCs into low‐risk and high‐risk categories would represent a major advancement in their management.
Subduction initiation dynamics along a transform fault control trench curvature and ophiolite ages

Understanding how new subduction zones form is essential for complete articulation of plate tectonic theory. Formation of new subduction zones by collapse of oceanic transform faults or fracture zones is suggested on the basis of empirical evidence. This process has heretofore been investigated with two-dimensional (2-D) numerical models, which thus ignore its intrinsic three-dimensional (3-D) geometry, lateral propagation, and dynamics. Here, we investigate a 3-D thermomechanical model, in which old and thick oceanic lithosphere (plate) is separated by a transform fault from a thinner and younger oceanic plate containing a transform-orthogonal spreading ridge. The results suggest that the older plate starts to sink spontaneously at the ridge–transform fault junction, and then subduction initiation laterally propagates along the transform away from the ridge. Two key factors control the 3-D subduction initiation (SI) dynamics in nature: (1) the age of the sinking plate, which controls its negative buoyancy; and (2) the thermal structure of the overriding plate, which reflects its spreading history. Our numerical models not only shed new light on the SI dynamics of Cenozoic subduction zones (e.g., the Izu-Bonin-Mariana zone in the Pacific Ocean), but also have implications for fossil convergent plate margins (e.g., the Bitlis-Zagros suture zone, west of the Strait of Hormuz). In the latter case, systematic variations in ages of supra–subduction zone ophiolites may reflect diachronous SI and its lateral propagation.
Sensitivity to Sampling in Bayesian Word Learning

We report a new study testing our proposal that word learning may be best explained as an approximate form of Bayesian inference (Xu & Tenenbaum, in press). Children are capable of learning word meanings across a wide range of communicative contexts. In different contexts, learners may encounter different sampling processes generating the examples of word–object pairings they observe. An ideal Bayesian word learner could take into account these differences in the sampling process and adjust his/her inferences about word meaning accordingly. We tested how children and adults learned words for novel object kinds in two sampling contexts, in which the objects to be labeled were sampled either by a knowledgeable teacher or by the learners themselves. Both adults and children generalized more conservatively in the former context; that is, they restricted the label to just those objects most similar to the labeled examples when the exemplars were chosen by a knowledgeable teacher, but not when chosen by the learners themselves. We discuss how this result follows naturally from a Bayesian analysis, but not from other statistical approaches such as associative word-learning models.
From Requirements to Architectural Design –Using Goals and Scenarios

To strengthen the connection between requirements and design during the early stages of architectural design, a designer would like to have notations to help visualize the incremental refinement of an architecture from initially abstract descriptions to increasingly concrete components and interactions, all the while maintaining a clear focus on the relevant requirements at each step. We propose the combined use of a goal-oriented language GRL and a scenarios-oriented architectural notation UCM. Goals are used in the refinement of functional and non-functional requirements, the exploration of alternatives, and their operationalization into architectural constructs. The scenario notation is used to depict the incremental elaboration and realization of requirements into architectural design. The approach is illustrated with an example from the telecom domain.
A Simulation-Based Methodology for Evaluating the DPA-Resistance of Cryptographic Functional Units with Application to CMOS and MCML Technologies

This paper explores the resistance of MOS current mode logic (MCML) against differential power analysis (DPA) attacks. Circuits implemented in MCML, in fact, have unique characteristics both in terms of power consumption and the dependency of the power profile from the input signal pattern. Therefore, MCML is suitable to protect cryptographic hardware from DPA and similar side-channel attacks. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of different logic styles against power analysis attacks, the non-linear bijective function of the Kasumi algorithm (known as substitution box S7) was implemented with CMOS and MCML technology, and a set of attacks was performed using power traces derived from SPICE-level simulations. Although all keys were discovered for CMOS, only very few attacks to MCML were successful.
Exploring goodness of prosody by diverse matching templates

In automatic speech grading systems, rare research is followed through addressing the issue of GOR (Goodness Of pRosody). In this paper we propose a novel method by taking the advantage of our QBH (Query By Humming) techniques in 2008 MIREX evaluation task. A set of standard samples related to the top-cream students are initially picked up as templates, a cascade QBH structure is then taken from two metrics: the MOMEL stylization followed by DTW distance; the Fujisaki model followed by EMD distance. Sentence GOR is obtained by the fused confidence between target and each template, and forms a weighted sum as the goodness in the passage level. Experiment results indicate that performance increases with the count of template, and Fujisaki-EMD metric outperforms MOMEL-DTW one in terms of correlation. Their combination can be treated as template based GOR score, compensated with our previous feature based GOR score, the approach can achieve 0.432 in correlation and 17.90% in EER in our corpus. Index Terms: speech prosody, query by humming
Measurement of late-night salivary cortisol with an automated immunoassay system

Abstract Background: Measurement of late-night salivary cortisol concentrations is increasingly used as a screening test in suspected Cushing's syndrome. Cortisol concentrations are typically extremely low in late-night samples and discordant assay-specific reference ranges have been reported. Therefore, the aim of our study was to assess the analytical performance of the first automated cortisol immunoassay specified for salivary measurements and to establish late-night sampling reference-range data for this test. Methods: Salivary cortisol was measured using the Roche Cobas Cortisol assay (Roche Diagnostics). Five salivary pools in different concentration ranges were used to assess the inter-assay imprecision of this test in a two-centre evaluation protocol including two reagent lots. Linearity was tested by serial dilution. Salivary samples were obtained at 23:00h from 100 apparently healthy volunteers using a commercially available salivary sampling device (Salivette, Sarstedt). A subset of 20 samples was used for method comparison with isotope dilution liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Results: Inter-assay coefficients of variation (n=20) between 11.6% and 40.4% were found for mean cortisol concentrations between 12.9 and 2.6nmol/L, with an estimated functional sensitivity of approximately 5.0nmol/L. The test also gave linear results in the lowest concentration range between 1.0 and 8.3nmol/L. Mean late-night salivary cortisol of 5.0nmol/L was found for healthy individuals; the absolute range was 1.4–16.7nmol/L, and the 95th percentile was 8.9nmol/L. Substantially lower concentrations were found with isotope dilution LC-MS/MS compared to immunoassay results (mean concentrations 1.8 and 4.4nmol/L, respectively). Conclusions: The automated assay investigated was found to offer acceptable analytical performance in the very low concentration range required for late-night salivary cortisol, despite a very short turn-around time. Using this assay, late-night salivary cortisol concentrations below 8.9nmol/L are typically found in healthy volunteers. Clin Chem Lab Med 2006;44:1441–5.
Community Collectivism: A social dynamic approach to conceptualizing culture

Culture shapes individuals, but the measurement of cultural differences has proven a challenge. Traditional measures of cultural values focus on individual perceptions. We suggest that values are established and maintained within social communities of proximate others, such as the family and its social environment. Within such communities, values serve to maintain collective harmony whilst preserving individual agency. From a social-dynamic analysis of communities, we infer that community values of loyalty regulate individual commitment, values of honor regulate norm compliance, and values of group hierarchy maintain a division of labor. In addition, communities may regulate the ways in which individuals have independent agency. A new scale to measure these values was validated in four studies (N = 398, 112, 465 and 111) among Dutch (religious and non-religious), Turkish-Dutch, Surinamese and Turkish groups. Values and practices were measured at the level of the individual (‘What do you value? ’) and at the level of the perceived community (‘What does your community value? ’). Results show that, unlike individual-level measures of individualism/collectivism, this scale has excellent reliability, differentiates between cultural groups, and has predictive validity for future (voting) behavior. This approach provides a new way of conceptualizing culture, a new measure of collectivism and new insights into the role of proximate others in shaping culture.
Dynamics of enhancer chromatin signatures mark the transition from pluripotency to cell specification during embryogenesis

The generation of distinctive cell types that form different tissues and organs requires precise, temporal and spatial control of gene expression. This depends on specific cis-regulatory elements distributed in the noncoding DNA surrounding their target genes. Studies performed on mammalian embryonic stem cells and Drosophila embryos suggest that active enhancers form part of a defined chromatin landscape marked by histone H3 lysine 4 mono-methylation (H3K4me1) and histone H3 lysine 27 acetylation (H3K27ac). Nevertheless, little is known about the dynamics and the potential roles of these marks during vertebrate embryogenesis. Here, we provide genomic maps of H3K4me1/me3 and H3K27ac at four developmental time-points of zebrafish embryogenesis and analyze embryonic enhancer activity. We find that (1) changes in H3K27ac enrichment at enhancers accompany the shift from pluripotency to tissue-specific gene expression, (2) in early embryos, the peaks of H3K27ac enrichment are bound by pluripotent factors such as Nanog, and (3) the degree of evolutionary conservation is higher for enhancers that become marked by H3K27ac at the end of gastrulation, suggesting their implication in the establishment of the most conserved (phylotypic) transcriptome that is known to occur later at the pharyngula stage.
Pathogenesis of the erythroid failure in Diamond Blackfan anaemia

Diamond Blackfan anaemia (DBA) is a severe congenital failure of erythropoiesis. Despite mutations in one of several ribosome protein genes, including RPS19, the cause of the erythroid specificity is still a mystery. We hypothesized that, because the chromatin of late erythroid cells becomes condensed and transcriptionally inactive prior to enucleation, the rapidly proliferating immature cells require very high ribosome synthetic rates. RNA biogenesis was measured in primary mouse fetal liver erythroid progenitor cells; during the first 24 h, cell number increased three to fourfold while, remarkably, RNA content increased sixfold, suggesting an accumulation of an excess of ribosomes during early erythropoiesis. Retrovirus infected siRNA RPS19 knockdown cells showed reduced proliferation but normal differentiation, and cell cycle analysis showed a G1/S phase delay. p53 protein was increased in the knockdown cells, and the mRNA level for p21, a transcriptional target of p53, was increased. Furthermore, we show that RPS19 knockdown decreased MYB protein, and Kit mRNA was reduced, as was the amount of cell surface KIT protein. Thus, in this small hairpin RNA murine model of DBA, RPS19 insufficient erythroid cells may proliferate poorly because of p53‐mediated cell cycle arrest, and also because of decreased expression of the key erythroid signalling protein KIT.
Diagnosis of single stuck-at faults and multiple timing faults in scan chains

A diagnosis technique to locate single stuck-at faults and multiple timing faults in scan chains is presented. This technique applies single excitation (SE) patterns, in which only one bit is flipped in the presence of multiple faults. With SE patterns, the problem of unknown values in scan chains is eliminated. The diagnosis result is therefore deterministic, not probabilistic. In addition to the first fault, this technique also diagnoses the remaining timing faults by applying multiple excitation patterns. Experiments on benchmark circuits show that average diagnosis resolutions are mostly less than five, even for the tenth fault in the scan chain.
Micro-policies for Web Session Security

Micro-policies, originally proposed to implement hardware-level security monitors, constitute a flexible and general enforcement technique, based on assigning security tags to system components and taking security actions based on dynamic checks over these tags. In this paper, we present the first application of micro-policies to web security, by proposing a core browser model supporting them and studying its effectiveness at securing web sessions. In our view, web session security requirements are expressed in terms of a simple, declarative information flow policy, which is then automatically translated into a micro-policy enforcing it. This leads to a browser-side enforcement mechanism which is elegant, sound and flexible, while being accessible to web developers. We show how a large class of attacks against web sessions can be uniformly and effectively prevented by the adoption of this approach. We also develop a proof-of-concept implementation of a significant core of our proposal as a Google Chrome extension, Michrome: our experiments show that Michrome can be easily configured to enforce strong security policies without breaking the functionality of websites.
c‐kit proto‐oncogene exon 8 in‐frame deletion plus insertion mutations in acute myeloid leukaemia

Genomic DNA from 60 cases of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) was screened for mutations in the c‐kit gene. DNA from all 21 exons was subjected to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and analysis by conformation sensitive gel electrophoresis (CSGE); exons showing altered CSGE patterns were then sequenced. Mutations were identified only in those patients with inv(16) (3/7 cases) or t(8;21) (1/2 cases) and comprised three in‐frame deletion plus insertion mutations (exon 8) and one point mutation (exon 10, GTA → ATA, Val530Ile). Exons 8 and 10 were then analysed in 31 further cases of inv(16) (n = 14) and t(8;21) (n = 17), revealing four additional exon 8 in‐frame deletion plus insertion mutations, all of which were in cases of inv(16). All exon 8 in‐frame deletion plus insertion mutations (n = 7) involved the loss or repacement of the codon for Asp419 which is highly conserved cross species and is located in the receptor's extracellular domain. The high frequency of the c‐kit proto‐oncogene exon 8 deletion plus insertion mutations in AML suggests an essential role for this region of the receptor's extracellular domain. The association with inv(16) invites speculation as to the link between these two changes in the pathogenesis of AML.
A 10-bit 64MS/s SAR ADC using variable clock period method

This paper presents a low-power 10-bit 64MS/s successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for Built-In Self Test (BIST) that uses a monotonic capacitor switching and variable clock period method for single input condition. To achieve high speed, a non-fixed clock time technique is used to reduce not only peak current but also die area. The technique removes conversion time waste and extends the SAR operation speed over 64MHz easily. Compared to the converters that use the conventional procedure, maximum peak current and DAC driver's area are reduced by about 33.8% and 25.2%, respectively. Single input ADC generally limits the resolution unlike the differential input ADC. However, the proposed ADC in this paper achieves high resolution and accuracy with a single input signal. The prototype was designed using 0. 13μm single poly 6 metal standard CMOS technology. Using 1.2V supply and the sampling rate of 64 MS/s, the ADC achieves a SNDR of 50.2 dB and consumes 1.325 mW. The ADC core occupies an active area of only 185μm×210μm.
Realization of Low Scattering for a High-Gain Fabry–Perot Antenna Using Coding Metasurface

We present a novel method to design a conventional Fabry–Perot (F-P) antenna but with low scattering. Combining a coding metasurface and an F-P antenna together could effectively reduce the scattering and keep high gain simultaneously. The coding element consists of two layers of square metallic patches printed on both sides of a dielectric substrate. The bottom metallic patch helps form a partially reflecting surface (PRS) for the F-P antenna, while the upper metallic patch is utilized to construct the coding metasurface with an optimized coding sequence, aiming to reduce the scattering of the F-P antenna by redirecting electromagnetic energies in all directions. Based on the specially designed coding metasurface, a good scattering reduction without degrading the radiation performance of the F-P antenna is achieved. Both simulated and experimental results demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed antenna, with a peak measured gain of 19.8 dBi and a significant scattering reduction in the frequency range of 8–12 GHz.