Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic Temporal Segment Detection and Affect Recognition From Face and Body Display

Psychologists have long explored mechanisms with which humans recognize other humans' affective states from modalities, such as voice and face display. This exploration has led to the identification of the main mechanisms, including the important role played in the recognition process by the modalities' dynamics. Constrained by the human physiology, the temporal evolution of a modality appears to be well approximated by a sequence of temporal segments called onset, apex, and offset. Stemming from these findings, computer scientists, over the past 15 years, have proposed various methodologies to automate the recognition process. We note, however, two main limitations to date. The first is that much of the past research has focused on affect recognition from single modalities. The second is that even the few multimodal systems have not paid sufficient attention to the modalities' dynamics: The automatic determination of their temporal segments, their synchronization to the purpose of modality fusion, and their role in affect recognition are yet to be adequately explored. To address this issue, this paper focuses on affective face and body display, proposes a method to automatically detect their temporal segments or phases, explores whether the detection of the temporal phases can effectively support recognition of affective states, and recognizes affective states based on phase synchronization/alignment. The experimental results obtained show the following: 1) affective face and body displays are simultaneous but not strictly synchronous; 2) explicit detection of the temporal phases can improve the accuracy of affect recognition; 3) recognition from fused face and body modalities performs better than that from the face or the body modality alone; and 4) synchronized feature-level fusion achieves better performance than decision-level fusion.
Improving Top-N Recommendation with Heterogeneous Loss

Personalized top-N recommendation systems have great impact on many real world applications such as E-commerce platforms and social networks. Most existing methods produce personalized top-N recommendations by minimizing a specific uniform loss such as pairwise ranking loss or pointwise recovery loss. In this paper, we propose a novel personalized top-N recommendation approach that minimizes a combined heterogeneous loss based on linear self-recovery models. The heterogeneous loss integrates the strengths of both pairwise ranking loss and pointwise recovery loss to provide more informative recommendation predictions. We formulate the learning problem with heterogeneous loss as a constrained convex minimization problem and develop a projected stochastic gradient descent optimization algorithm to solve it. We evaluate the proposed approach on a set of personalized top-N recommendation tasks. The experimental results show the proposed approach outperforms a number of state-of-the-art methods on top-N recommendation.
Effect of Thermal Aging on Microstructural Evolution in Ferrite of Duplex Stainless Steel in Nuclear Power Plant Applications

Z3CN20-09M duplex steels are thermally aged at 400oC for up to 20,000 h. The mechanical properties have been characterized by Charpy V-notch impact test and nanoindentation test. It is found that the nanohardness in ferrite increases and the impact toughness decreases with aging time. Moreover, the distribution of alloying elements has been carefully characterized using atom probe tomography (APT). The results indicate that the ferrite decomposes into Cr-rich α' and Cr-lean α phase during the thermal aging and Ni-rich G-phase forms in ferrite. The effect of aging time on solute nanostructure has been investigated systematically.
A dynamic ubiquitin equilibrium couples proteasomal activity to chromatin remodeling

Protein degradation, chromatin remodeling, and membrane trafficking are critically regulated by ubiquitylation. The presence of several coexisting ubiquitin-dependent processes, each of crucial importance to the cell, is remarkable. This brings up questions on how the usage of this versatile regulator is negotiated between the different cellular processes. During proteotoxic stress, the accumulation of ubiquitylated substrates coincides with the depletion of ubiquitylated histone H2A and chromatin remodeling. We show that this redistribution of ubiquitin during proteotoxic stress is a direct consequence of competition for the limited pool of free ubiquitin. Thus, the ubiquitin cycle couples various ubiquitin-dependent processes because of a rate-limiting pool of free ubiquitin. We propose that this ubiquitin equilibrium may allow cells to sense proteotoxic stress in a genome-wide fashion.
Basic Visualization Experiments on Eutectic Reaction of Boron Carbide and Stainless Steel under Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor Conditions

This paper describes basic visualization experiments on eutectic reaction and relocation of boron carbide (B4C) and stainless steel (SS) under a high temperature condition exceeding 1,500 °C as well as the importance of such behaviors in molten core during a core disruptive accident in a Generation-IV sodium-cooled fast reactor (750MWe class) designed in Japan. At first, a reactivity history was calculated using an exact perturbation calculation tool taking into account expected behaviors. This calculation indicated the importance of a relocation behavior of the B4C-SS eutectic because the behavior has a large uncertainty in the reactivity history. To clarify this behavior, this study has carried out basic experiments to visualize the reaction of a B4C block contacted with molten SS in a high temperature-heating furnace. The experiments have indicated the eutectic reaction as well as solidification of the B4C-SS eutectic in the upper part of the solidified test section separated from the solidified SS due to the density difference.
60-GHz Statistical Channel Characterization for Wireless Data Centers

This letter presents 60-GHz radio channel measurements and characterization in a productivity data center. Path loss and delay spread are statistically modeled for possible use-cases corresponding to potential deployment scenarios in a wireless data center (WDC). Models behaviors are then used to highlight the propagation differences across use-cases. It was found that most use-cases are characterized by a rich scattering channel and sub-free-space path loss exponent values. Compared to common indoor environments, delay spread and path loss values suggest a better link budget at higher distances and possibly higher interference in dense deployment scenarios. The reported models and key propagation behaviors are useful for practical system design and evaluation of WDC millimeter-wave links.
Theta Cordance in the Prediction of Treatment Outcome to Prefrontal Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or Venlafaxine ER in Patients With Major Depressive Disorder

The aims of this double-blind study were to assess and compare the efficacy of quantitative electroencephalographic (QEEG) prefrontal theta band cordance in the prediction of response to 4-week, right, prefrontal, 1-Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) or venlafaxine ER in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Prefrontal QEEG cordance values of 50 inpatients (25 subjects in each group) completing 4 weeks of the study were obtained at baseline and after 1 week of treatment. Depressive symptoms were assessed using Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) at baseline and at week 1 and 4. Treatment response was defined as a ≥50% reduction in baseline MADRS total score. All responders (n = 9) and 6 of 16 nonresponders in the rTMS group had reduced cordance at week 1 (P < .01). Reduction of theta cordance value at week 1 was detected in all responders (n = 10) to venlafaxine ER, but only in 4 of 15 nonresponders (P = .005). The comparison of the areas under the curve of cordance change for prediction of response between rTMS (0.75) and venlafaxine ER (0.89) treated groups yielded no significant difference (P = .27). Our study indicates that prefrontal QEEG cordance is a promising tool not only for predicting the response to certain antidepressants but also to rTMS treatment, with comparable predictive efficacy for both therapeutic interventions.
Disturbance suppression via robust MPC using prior disturbance data application to flight controller design for Gust Alleviation

This paper addresses disturbance suppression problem for uncertain plant systems using prior disturbance data which contain some measurement errors. We tackle optimal control input design problem using Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme in which a priori measured disturbance data are exploited. We show that if the uncertainties of the plant systems are expressed by bounded but time-invariant uncertain delays at the control input, then we only have to consider finitely many plant models instead of the original uncertain plant systems. Furthermore, we also show that if the measurement errors in prior disturbance data are expressed as affine with respect to some constant uncertain vector, whose elements are bounded, then we only have to evaluate the measurement errors at the vertices of the vector. Using these, we propose a robust MPC design with finitely many conditions for our addressed problem. Finally, we apply our proposed method to flight controller design problem for suppressing the vertical acceleration driven by turbulence, i.e. Gust Alleviation (GA) flight controller design problem.
Analysis of Software Testing Strategies Through Attained Failure Size

This paper discusses efficacy issues in software testing strategies through attained failure size. Failure size is the probability of finding an input that causes a failure in the input domain. As testing progresses, failure size decreases due to debugging. The failure size at the termination of testing is called the attained failure size. Using this measure, we compare the efficacies of partition testing and random testing, derive conditions that lead to the superiority of partition testing, and obtain optimal time allocations in partition testing. The core findings are presented in a decision tree to assist testers in test management.
Bayesian SegNet: Model Uncertainty in Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architectures for Scene Understanding

We present a deep learning framework for probabilistic pixel-wise semantic segmentation, which we term Bayesian SegNet. Semantic segmentation is an important tool for visual scene understanding and a meaningful measure of uncertainty is essential for decision making. Our contribution is a practical system which is able to predict pixel-wise class labels with a measure of model uncertainty. We achieve this by Monte Carlo sampling with dropout at test time to generate a posterior distribution of pixel class labels. In addition, we show that modelling uncertainty improves segmentation performance by 2-3% across a number of state of the art architectures such as SegNet, FCN and Dilation Network, with no additional parametrisation. We also observe a significant improvement in performance for smaller datasets where modelling uncertainty is more effective. We benchmark Bayesian SegNet on the indoor SUN Scene Understanding and outdoor CamVid driving scenes datasets.
Online Japanese Character Recognition Using Trajectory-Based Normalization and Direction Feature Extraction

This paper describes an online Japanese character recognition system using advanced techniques of pattern normalization and direction feature extraction. The normalization of point coordinates and the decomposition of direction elements are directly performed on online trajectory, and therefore, are computationally efficient. We compare one-dimensional and pseudo two-dimensional (pseudo 2D) normalization methods, as well as direction features from original pattern and from normalized pattern. In experiments on the TUAT HANDS databases, the pseudo 2D normalization methods yielded superior performance, while direction features from original pattern and from normalized pattern made little difference.
The Reliability and Advantages of the Sentinel Vein as a Microsurgical Recipient Vessel

Abstract Free flaps to the scalp, calvaria, and anterior and middle cranial fossae are typically transferred to the superficial temporal artery and vein. Occasionally the superficial temporal vein is unsuitable for microvascular anastomosis. In such cases, we have had success using the sentinel vein, a perforating vein located in the anterior aspect of the deep temporal fat pad. This article describes the pertinent anatomy, our clinical experience, and the advantages of the sentinel vein as a microsurgical recipient vessel.
Mechanism of prolactin inhibition of miR‐135b via methylation in goat mammary epithelial cells

Prolactin is an important endocrine activator of lactogenesis. This study investigated the function and mechanism of miR‐135b in the enhancement of lactation by prolactin in goat mammary epithelial tissue. We utilized S‐Poly (T) sequencing to evaluate changes in gene regulation in the goat mammary gland after incubation with 2.5 μg/ml prolactin and 2.5 μg/ml IGF‐1 by examining highly expressed miRNAs during early lactation and late‐lactation. The results illustrated that miR‐135b is highly expressed in the goat mammary gland during early lactation and late‐lactation, and also after treatment with 2.5 μg/ml prolactin and 2.5 μg/ml IGF‐1. We used Q‐RT PCR, Western Blot, immunofluorescence, and luciferase reporter assay analysis, and found that PRL was significantly down‐regulated in response to the expression of miR‐135b in a manner that was functionally related to TAG synthesis via the large tumor suppressor 2 gene (Lats2), an important regulator of adipocyte proliferation via Hippo Signaling. Furthermore, using bisulfite‐sequencing PCR (BSP), Q‐PCR, and Western Blot we discovered an increase in expression of DNMT I (DNA methyl transferase I) in goat mammary epithelial cells with the 2.5 μg/ml PRL incubation, which led to DNA methylation of the CpG island upstream of miR‐135b and inhibited the transcription and expression of miR‐135b.
Acute Renal Replacement Therapy

© Springer-Verlag London 2014.The decision when to initiate replacement therapy (RRT) in patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) is extremely variable and tends to be based on empiricism, depending upon the immediate and projected trajectory of the clinical situation, clinician experience and local institutional practices and resources. For example, RRT is typically initiated for oliguria, acidosis and correction of volume overload in the intensive care unit (ICU), whereas in the renal ward azotaemia and hyperkalaemia are more common triggers to initiate RRT.
Thermoresponsive Magnetic Hydrogels as Theranostic Nanoconstructs

We report the development of thermoresponsive magnetic hydrogels based on poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) encapsulation of Fe3O4 magnetic nanostructures (MNS). In particular, we examined the effects of hydrogels encapsulated with poly-ethylene glycol (PEG) and polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) surface modified Fe3O4 MNS on magnetic resonance (MR) T2 (transverse spin relaxation) contrast enhancement and associated delivery efficacy of absorbed therapeutic cargo. The microstructural characterization reveal the regular spherical shape and size (∼200 nm) of the hydrogels with elevated hydrophilic to hydrophobic transition temperature (∼40 °C) characterized by LCST (lower critical solution temperature) due to the presence of encapsulated MNS. The hydrogel-MNS (HGMNS) system encapsulated with PEG functionalized Fe3O4 of 12 nm size (HGMNS-PEG-12) exhibited relaxivity rate (r2) of 173 mM–1s–1 compared to 129 mM–1s–1 obtained for hydrogel-MNS system encapsulated with POSS functionalized Fe3O4 (HGMNS-POSS-12) of the same size. Further studies with HGMNS-PEG-12 with absorbed drug doxorubicin (DOX) reveals approximately two-fold enhance in release during 1 h RF (radio-frequency) field exposure followed by 24 h incubation at 37 °C. Quantitatively, it is 2.1 μg mg–1 (DOX/HGMNS) DOX release with RF exposure while only 0.9 μg mg–1 release without RF exposure for the same period of incubation. Such enhanced release of therapeutic cargo is attributed to micro-environmental heating in the surroundings of MNS as well as magneto-mechanical vibrations under high frequency RF inside hydrogels. Similarly, RF-induced in vitro localized drug delivery studies with HeLa cell lines for HGMNS-PEG-12 resulted in more than 80% cell death with RF field exposures for 1 h. We therefore believe that magnetic hydrogel system has in vivo theranostic potential given high MR contrast enhancement from encapsulated MNS and RF-induced localized therapeutic delivery in one nanoconstruct.
Expression of Measurement Uncertainty in a Very Limited Knowledge Context: A Possibility Theory-Based Approach

At the application level, it is important to be able to define, around the measurement result, an interval which will contain an important part of the distribution of the measured values, that is, a confidence interval. This practice, which is acknowledged by the ISO Guide, is a major shift from the probabilistic representation as a confidence interval represents a set of possible values for a parameter associated with a confidence level. It can be considered as a probability-possibility transformation by viewing possibility distribution as encoding confidence intervals. In this paper, we extend previous works concerning the possibility expression of measurement uncertainty applied to situations where only very limited knowledge is available: one single measurement and unknown unimodal probability density
Hormonal and transcriptional profiles highlight common and differential host responses to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and the regulation of the oxylipin pathway

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbioses are mutualistic associations between soil fungi and most vascular plants. The symbiosis significantly affects the host physiology in terms of nutrition and stress resistance. Despite the lack of host range specificity of the interaction, functional diversity between AM fungal species exists. The interaction is finely regulated according to plant and fungal characters, and plant hormones are believed to orchestrate the modifications in the host plant. Using tomato as a model, an integrative analysis of the host response to different mycorrhizal fungi was performed combining multiple hormone determination and transcriptional profiling. Analysis of ethylene-, abscisic acid-, salicylic acid-, and jasmonate-related compounds evidenced common and divergent responses of tomato roots to Glomus mosseae and Glomus intraradices, two fungi differing in their colonization abilities and impact on the host. Both hormonal and transcriptional analyses revealed, among others, regulation of the oxylipin pathway during the AM symbiosis and point to a key regulatory role for jasmonates. In addition, the results suggest that specific responses to particular fungi underlie the differential impact of individual AM fungi on plant physiology, and particularly on its ability to cope with biotic stresses.
An FPGA Implementation of MML-DFE for Spatially Multiplexed MIMO Systems

Although the maximum-likelihood decision-feedback equalization (ML-DFE) detection method for multi-input multi- output (MIMO) system leads to a good compromise between the performance and the complexity, the computational complexity of the ML part in the ML-DFE is still large. This paper describes a modified maximum-likelihood (MML) algorithm, which reduces the computational complexity of the original ML algorithm significantly without degrading the performance. Then, based on the MML algorithm, we propose the MML-DFE, which has the same performance as the ML-DFE but has much lower complexity. Both the ML-DFE block and MML-DFE block for 4times4 MIMO system have been implemented in field-programmable gate array to verify the functional correctness and the complexity advantage.
10-year survival of total ankle arthroplasties

Background and purpose There is an ongoing need to review large series of total ankle replacements (TARs) for monitoring of changes in practice and their outcome. 4 national registries, including the Swedish Ankle Register, have previously reported their 5-year results. We now present an extended series with a longer follow-up, and with a 10-year survival analysis. Patients and methods Records of uncemented 3-component TARs were retrospectively reviewed, determining risk factors such as age, sex, and diagnosis. Prosthetic survival rates were calculated with exchange or removal of components as endpoint—excluding incidental exchange of the polyethylene meniscus. Results Of the 780 prostheses implanted since 1993, 168 (22%) had been revised by June 15, 2010. The overall survival rate fell from 0.81 (95% CI: 0.79–0.83) at 5 years to 0.69 (95% CI: 0.67–0.71) at 10 years. The survival rate was higher, although not statistically significantly so, during the latter part of the period investigated. Excluding the STAR prosthesis, the survival rate for all the remaining designs was 0.78 at 10 years. Women below the age of 60 with osteoarthritis were at a higher risk of revision, but age did not influence the outcome in men or women with rheumatoid arthritis. Revisions due to technical mistakes at the index surgery and instability were undertaken earlier than revisions for other reasons. Interpretation The results have slowly improved during the 18-year period investigated. However, we do not believe that the survival rates of ankle replacements in the near future will approach those of hip and knee replacements—even though improved instrumentation and design of the prostheses, together with better patient selection, will presumably give better results.
Transition in Specification of Embryonic Metazoan DNA Replication Origins

In early Xenopus embryos, in which ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) are not transcribed, rDNA replication initiates and terminates at 9- to 12-kilobase pair intervals, with no detectable dependence on specific DNA sequences. Resumption of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) synthesis at late blastula and early gastrula is accompanied by a specific repression of replication initiation within transcription units; the frequency of initiation within intergenic spacers remains as high as in early blastula. These results demonstrate that for rRNA genes, circumscribed zones of replication initiation emerge in intergenic DNA during the time in metazoan development when the chromatin is remodeled to allow gene transcription.
Nosocomial Outbreak of Carbapenem-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa with a New blaIMP Allele, blaIMP-7

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates from an outbreak in Canada were highly resistant to carbapenems and ceftazidime but not piperacillin. They produced a novel integron-associated metallo-β-lactamase, designated IMP-7, with 91% identity to IMP-1. blaIMP-7 was not detected with standard blaIMP-specific primers, owing to mismatches in the forward primer.