Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Egocentric Gesture Recognition Using Recurrent 3D Convolutional Neural Networks with Spatiotemporal Transformer Modules

Gesture is a natural interface in interacting with wearable devices such as VR/AR helmet and glasses. The main challenge of gesture recognition in egocentric vision arises from the global camera motion caused by the spontaneous head movement of the device wearer. In this paper, we address the problem by a novel recurrent 3D convolutional neural network for end-to-end learning. We specially design a spatiotemporal transformer module with recurrent connections between neighboring time slices which can actively transform a 3D feature map into a canonical view in both spatial and temporal dimensions. To validate our method, we introduce a new dataset with sufficient size, variation and reality, which contains 83 gestures designed for interaction with wearable devices, and more than 24,000 RGB-D gesture samples from 50 subjects captured in 6 scenes. On this dataset, we show that the proposed network outperforms competing state-of-the-art algorithms. Moreover, our method can achieve state-of-the-art performance on the challenging GTEA egocentric action dataset.
Review of Air Vitiation Effects on Scramjet Ignition and Flameholding Combustion Processes

This paper offers a detailed review and analysis of more than 100 papers on the physics and chemistry of scramjet ignition and flameholding combustion processes, and the known effects of air vitiation on these processes. The paper attempts to explain vitiation effects in terms of known chemical kinetics and flame propagation phenomena. Scaling methodology is also examined, and a highly simplified Damkoehler scaling technique based on OH radical production/destruction is developed to extrapolate ground test results, affected by vitiation, to flight testing conditions. The long term goal of this effort is to help provide effective means for extrapolating ground test data to flight, and thus to reduce the time and expense of both ground and flight testing.
Contested Futures: A Sociology of Prospective Techno-Science

Contents: Foreword, Barbara Adam. Time, Temporality and the Social Construction of the Future: Introducing contested futures: from looking into the future to looking at the future, Nik Brown, Brian Rappert and Andrew Webster Futures of the present: from performativity to prehension, Mike Michael. Language and the Social Rhetoric of Technical Futures: Forceful futures: from promise to requirement, Harro van Lente The narrative shaping of a product creation process, J. Jasper Deuten and Arie Rip Organizing/disorganizing the breakthrough motif: Dolly the cloned ewe meets Astrid the hybrid pig, Nik Brown Talking about the future: metaphors of the internet, Sally Wyatt. Passed Futures: Lessons from failed technology futures: potholes in the road to the future, Frank W. Geels and Wim A. Smit Science fiction's memory of the future, Hilary Rose. Future Science, Future Policy and the Management of Uncertainty Scripts for the future: using innovation studies to design foresight tools, Bastiaan de Laat Genetics and uncertainty, Annemiek Nelis Expectations and learning as principles for shaping the future, Luis Sanz-Menendez and Cecilia Cabello Contested health futures, Tom Ling Index.
A companion to the anthropology of education

• Explores theoretical and applied approaches to cultural practice in a diverse range of educational settings around the world, in both formal and non-formal contexts • Includes contributions by leading educational anthropologists • Integrates work from and on many different national systems of scholarship, including China, the United States, Africa, the Middle East, Colombia, Mexico, India, the United Kingdom, and Denmark • Examines the consequences of history, cultural diversity, language policies, governmental mandates, inequality, and literacy for everyday educational processes
Modulation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell Immunogenicity through Forced Expression of Human Cytomegalovirus US Proteins

Background Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) are promising candidates for cell therapy, as they migrate to areas of injury, differentiate into a broad range of specialized cells, and have immunomodulatory properties. However, MSC are not invisible to the recipient's immune system, and upon in vivo administration, allogeneic MSC are able to trigger immune responses, resulting in rejection of the transplanted cells, precluding their full therapeutic potential. Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) has developed several strategies to evade cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) and Natural Killer (NK) cell recognition. Our goal is to exploit HCMV immunological evasion strategies to reduce MSC immunogenicity. Methodology/Principal Findings We genetically engineered human MSC to express HCMV proteins known to downregulate HLA-I expression, and investigated whether modified MSC were protected from CTL and NK attack. Flow cytometric analysis showed that amongst the US proteins tested, US6 and US11 efficiently reduced MSC HLA-I expression, and mixed lymphocyte reaction demonstrated a corresponding decrease in human and sheep mononuclear cell proliferation. NK killing assays showed that the decrease in HLA-I expression did not result in increased NK cytotoxicity, and that at certain NK∶MSC ratios, US11 conferred protection from NK cytotoxic effects. Transplantation of MSC-US6 or MSC-US11 into pre-immune fetal sheep resulted in increased liver engraftment when compared to control MSC, as demonstrated by qPCR and immunofluorescence analyses. Conclusions and Significance These data demonstrate that engineering MSC to express US6 and US11 can be used as a means of decreasing recognition of MSC by the immune system, allowing higher levels of engraftment in an allogeneic transplantation setting. Since one of the major factors responsible for the failure of allogeneic-donor MSC to engraft is the mismatch of HLA-I molecules between the donor and the recipient, MSC-US6 and MSC-US11 could constitute an off-the-shelf product to overcome donor-recipient HLA-I mismatch.
Automated application acceleration using software to hardware transformation

This paper describes an approach that allows applications to be developed in a software language, while taking advantage of hardware by facilities that automatically transform such software programs for hardware accelerators. A demonstration of this approach has been built for the C# language. Three case studies in numerical integration show that the automatically generated hardware accelerators can achieve similar speed-ups to manually optimised versions. In particular, the automatically generated accelerator running on an xc4vlx160 FPGA at 83MHz with single precision arithmetic can be more than 18 times faster and up to 143 times more power efficient than a Pentium 4 processor at 3.6GHz, while the double precision accelerator running at 64MHz is 7 times faster and 77 times more power efficient.
Analysing security and privacy issues of using e-mail address as identity

Nowadays, many websites allow or require users to use their e-mail addresses either as identity or for other purposes. Although username-based identity problems resulting from users’ behaviours have been a research focus for quite some time, the serious issues of using e-mail address as identity and the associated online behaviours of users have not been well investigated. In this paper, we discuss and analyse security and privacy problems resulting from using e-mail address as identity via well-designed user behaviour survey and by investigating websites’ design schemes. Our results illustrate that using e-mail address as identity poses high security and privacy risks. This is mainly because of the multiple usages of e-mail addresses and users’ improper online habits. Moreover, we discuss drawbacks of existing solutions for e-mail address as identity and related password problems, and present potential solutions that may be used to secure online identity management systems in future.
The Language-Aggression Hypothesis in Preschoolers: Maternal Scaffolding and Self-Regulation

In light of recent findings suggesting that physical aggression peaks during the toddler years then declines steadily beginning in preschool (e.g., Alink et al., 2006; Tremblay et al., 2004), greater emphasis has been placed on identifying early factors that might predispose children to disruptive behaviour problems as they mature. The present study investigated the effects of early language development, executive functioning, and maternal scaffolding on physically aggressive behaviour among a sample of preschoolaged children (N = 126). In step one, regression analyses revealed various preschooler language abilities negatively predicted physical aggression after controlling for potential confounding variables (e.g., children’s IQ, family structure, socioeconomic status, maternal education). The second set of analyses showed preschoolers’ executive functions (i.e., inhibitory self-control, emergent metacognition) mediated the relation between their language abilities and physical aggression. Maternal scaffolding was introduced in the third step of analyses and was found to predict preschoolers’ semantic language abilities. After separating the sample on the basis of scaffolding quality, differences were found in terms of the specific executive functions that mediated the language-aggression relation between groups. The results are interpreted from a developmental perspective, with reference to the work of Vygotsky (1962, 1978). The implications of these findings for early intervention of disruptive behaviour problems are also discussed and recommendations are made for future research in the area of self-
Temperature-sensitive mutants of herpes simplex virus type 2.

Herpes simplex virus type 2 differs from type 1 virus in the sites it affects and in certain biological and serological properties (Schneweis, 1962; Plummer, 1964; Hutfield, 1967; Figueroa & Rawls, 1969). Temperature-sensitive mutants of type 1 virus have been isolated and characterized (Subak-Sharpe, 1969; Schaffer et al. 1971; Brown, Ritchie & Subak-Sharpe, 1971). This report describes the isolation and preliminary classification of temperature-sensitive mutants of type 2 virus. BHK 21 clone 13 cells (Macpherson & Stoker, 1962) and Eagles medium with 10% (v/v) calf serum and 10% (v/v) tryptose phosphate broth were used throughout. Virus was titrated in suspended cells by the method described by Russell (1962); titrations at 38° were incubated for 2 days and those at 31° for 3 days. For assays under agar — which were always carried out at 31° — virus was adsorbed to cell monolayers in 60 mm. diameter Petri plates for 1 hr before addition of medium containing 0.9% (w/v) Difco Bacto agar; plates were stained with neutral red after 6 days.
An attempt to estimate the effective size of the ancestral species common to two extant species from which homologous genes are sequenced.

When DNA sequence data on various kinds of homologous genes sampled from two related species are available, there is a way to infer the effective size of their ancestral species, which is a simple consequence of gene genealogical considerations. This method, when applied to the common ancestral species of human and rat, human and mouse, human and bovine, or rodents and bovine estimates their effective sizes all to be of the order of 10 7 , supporting the view that these species indeed shared, around 75 million years ago, a common ancestral species from which they are descended. The effective size thus estimated would imply that the ancestral species was abundant enough to have ample opportunity for adaptive radiation. The extent of silent polymorphism in that species might have been very large, possibly comparable to the number of silent substitutions accumulated in a gene after the mammalian divergence. Some causes that may alter these results and require a more elaborated statistical analysis are discussed.
Determining Realistic Parameters for the  Double Exponential Law that Models Transient Current Pulses

We calculated Single Event Upset (SEU) cross-section as well as the neutron Soft Error Rate (SER) at ground level for three SRAMs (90 nm, 65 nm an 40 nm). For this purpose, we first investigate the transient current pulse induced at each drain electrode, by using the diffusion model for the transient current pulses. Then, we performed the same simulations by replacing each transient current by a simple double exponential law model, for which the parameters were set in order to keep the same fundamental parameters of the diffusion model such as total charge, maximum value of current and its corresponding occurrence time. Our results show a little systematic increase of the cross section while using the double exponential law. Moreover, we showed that only two parameters of the double exponential law are actually required to investigate Single Event Upsets. Finally, we provided for the 90-nm some analytical expression in order to estimate the distribution of parameters that appear in the double exponential law.
The Bacterial Cytoskeleton

SUMMARY In recent years it has been shown that bacteria contain a number of cytoskeletal structures. The bacterial cytoplasmic elements include homologs of the three major types of eukaryotic cytoskeletal proteins (actin, tubulin, and intermediate filament proteins) and a fourth group, the MinD-ParA group, that appears to be unique to bacteria. The cytoskeletal structures play important roles in cell division, cell polarity, cell shape regulation, plasmid partition, and other functions. The proteins self-assemble into filamentous structures in vitro and form intracellular ordered structures in vivo. In addition, there are a number of filamentous bacterial elements that may turn out to be cytoskeletal in nature. This review attempts to summarize and integrate the in vivo and in vitro aspects of these systems and to evaluate the probable future directions of this active research field.
A 480-MHz to 1-GHz sub-picosecond clock generator with a fast and accurate automatic frequency calibration in 0.13-µm CMOS

In this paper, an ultra-low jitter clock generator that employs a novel automatic frequency calibration (AFC) technique is presented. To achieve low jitter, the clock generator uses an LC-VCO with S-bit switched tuning scheme. The clock output is taken from the output of a multi-modulus divider, which increases the output frequency range with small variation in the loop bandwidth. The capacitor array of the the VCO is controlled by a novel AFC technique that performs binary search for fast calibration and fine search to select an optimum tuning curve. A prototype chip implemented in 0.13-mum CMOS process achieves 480 MHz to 1 GHz of output frequency while consuming 22 mW from a 1.2 V supply. The measured tins jitter and calibration time of the proposed clock generator are 940 fs at 600 MM/, and 350 ns, respectively. These numbers are the fastest calibration time and one of the lowest jitter that have been reported in a clock generator.
Metabolic Factors in Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis – A Review of Clinical Data

Objectives: We aimed to review the literature linking metabolic factors to Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis (DISH), in order to assess associations between growth factors and DISH. Method: We identified studies in our personal database and PubMed using the following keywords in various combinations: “diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis”, “ankylosing hyperostosis”, “Forestier’s disease”, “diabetes”, “insulin”, “obesity”, “metabolic”, “growth factors”, “adipokines”, “glucose tolerance” and “chondrocytes”. Results: We were not able to do a systematic review due to variability in methodology of studies. We found positive associations between obesity (especially abdominal obesity), Type 2 diabetes mellitus, glucose intolerance, hyperinsulinemia and DISH. Conclusion: Current research indicates that certain metabolic factors associate with DISH. More precise studies deriving from these findings on these and other newly identified bone-growth factors are needed.
Rhes Deletion Is Neuroprotective in the 3-Nitropropionic Acid Model of Huntington's Disease

Although the mutated protein causing Huntington's disease (HD) is expressed throughout the body, the major pathology of HD is localized to the striatum of the brain. We previously reported that the striatal-enriched protein Rhes binds the mutated huntingtin protein and enhances its cytotoxicity. We now demonstrate that Rhes-deleted mice are dramatically protected from neurotoxicity and motor dysfunction in a striatal-specific model of HD elicited by 3-nitropropionic acid. This finding suggests that Rhes may, in part, determine the striatal selectivity of HD.
Computed tomographic features of incomplete ossification of the canine humeral condyle.

OBJECTIVES To describe computed tomographic (CT) features of canine elbows with incomplete ossification of the humeral condyle (IOHC) and investigate co-existing incongruence in the elbow joint. STUDY DESIGN Case control study. ANIMALS Dogs with IOHC (n=20; 38 elbows) and 25 normal elbows. METHODS Elbows with IOHC and normal elbows were assessed by CT. Standardized dorsal and sagittal reconstructions were created at 3 levels using image analysis software to obtain single measurements of the humero-radial and humero-ulnar joint spaces. On dorsal plane reconstructions, joint space measurements were obtained at the center point of the humero-radial and humero-ulnar articulations. Joint incongruity was defined as the difference between the humero-radial and the humero-ulnar joint spaces. RESULTS Nineteen dogs (95%), all Spaniel breeds, had either bilateral IOHC demonstrable as a saw-toothed intercondylar complete or incomplete hypoattenuating defect with hyperattenuating margins, or IOHC with contralateral humeral condylar fracture (HCF). Joint incongruity values for IOHC were compared with those of normal elbows. Significant differences were noted at the levels of the medial coronoid apex (P<.0001) and base (P<.004) indicative of humero-ulnar incongruence. Evidence of medial coronoid disease in 10 elbows (26%) and degenerative joint disease in 30 elbows (79%) was also found. CONCLUSIONS Presence of elbow incongruence may be an underlying factor in failure of ossification centers to fuse leading to IOHC. CLINICAL RELEVANCE IOHC is clearly defined by CT, and it should be considered in larger Spaniel breeds, with a chronic forelimb lameness or HCF.
An SVM classifier to separate false signals from microcalcifications in digital mammograms

In this paper we investigate the feasibility of using an SVM (support vector machine) classifier in our automatic system for the detection of clustered microcalcifications in digital mammograms. SVM is a technique for pattern recognition which relies on the statistical learning theory. It minimizes a function of two terms: the number of misclassified vectors of the training set and a term regarding the generalization classifier capability. We compare the SVM classifier with an MLP (multi-layer perceptron) in the false-positive reduction phase of our detection scheme: a detected signal is considered either microcalcification or false signal, according to the value of a set of its features. The SVM classifier gets slightly better results than the MLP one (Az value of 0.963 against 0.958) in the presence of a high number of training data; the improvement becomes much more evident (Az value of 0.952 against 0.918) in training sets of reduced size. Finally, the setting of the SVM classifier is much easier than the MLP one.
NC-Audit: Auditing for network coding storage

Network coding-based storage has recently received a lot of attention in the network coding community. Independently, another body of work has proposed integrity checking schemes for cloud storage, none of which, however, is customized for network coding storage or can efficiently support repair. In this work, we bridge the gap between these currently disconnected bodies of work, and we focus on the (novel) advantage of network coding for integrity checking. We propose NC-Audit - a remote data integrity checking scheme, designed specifically for network coding-based storage cloud. NC-Audit provides a unique combination of desired properties: (i) efficient checking of data integrity (ii) efficient support for repairing failed nodes (iii) full support for modification of outsourced data and (iv) protection against information leakage when checking is performed by a third party. The key ingredient of the design of NC-Audit is a novel combination of SpaceMac, a homomorphic MAC scheme for network coding, and NCrypt, a novel CPA-secure encryption scheme that is compatible with SpaceMac. Our evaluation of a Java implementation of NC-Audit shows that an audit costs the storage node and the auditor only a few milliseconds of computation time, and lower bandwidth than prior work.
The relationship amongst locus of control, self-determination and job satisfaction in call centres

Call centres across the globe experience high levels of absenteeism and labour turnover. The reason being: job dissatisfaction. South African call centres are also facing the same problem where absenteeism and labour turnover is on the increase. Job satisfaction is influenced not only by situational aspects of the job environment but by dispositional personality factors of the individual as well. The aim of the study was to determine the possible relationship among locus of control, self-determination and job satisfaction. The study population consisted of (N= 187) call centre agents from a Municipality in Gauteng. The results of the empirical study indicate there is a relationship between locus of control and job satisfaction. Oproepsentrums oral ter wereld ervaar hoe vlakke van afwesigheid en arbeidsomset. Die rede hiervoor is werksonvergenoegdheid. Suid-Afrikaanse oproepsentrums staar dieselfde probleem in die gesig omdat afwesigheid en arbeidsomset besig is om toe te neem. Werksbevrediging word nie slegs deur die situasionele aspekte van die werksomgewing beinvloed nie, maar ook deur die persoonlike-ingesteldheidsfaktore van die individu. Die doel van die studie was om die moontlike verhouding tussen lokus van beheer, selfbeskikking en werksbevrediging te bepaal. Die studiegroep het uit (N= 187) oproepsentrum-agente van 'n Gautengse munisipaliteit bestaan. Die resultate van die empiriese studie wys dat daar 'n verband tussen beheerlokus en werksbevrediging is.
War-related psychological stressors and risk of psychological disorders in Australian veterans of the 1991 Gulf War

Background Questions remain about the long-term health impacts of the 1991 Gulf War on its veterans. Aims To measure psychological disorders in Australian Gulf War veterans and a military comparison group and to explore any association with exposure to Gulf War-related psychological stressors. Method Prevalences of DSM–IV psychological disorders were measured using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Gulf War-related psychological stressors were measured using a service experience questionnaire. Results A total of 31% of male Gulf War veterans and 21% of the comparison group met criteria for a DSM–IVdisorder first present in the post-Gulf War period. The veterans were at greater risk of developing post-Gulf War anxiety disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder, affective disorders and substance use disorders. The prevalence of such disorders remained elevated a decade after deployment. The findings can be explained partly as a ‘war-deployment effect‘. There was a strong dose–response relationship between psychological disorders and number of reported Gulf War-related psychological stressors. Conclusions Service in the 1991 Gulf War is associated with increased risk of psychological disorders and these are related to stressful experiences.