Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global environment interpretation from a new Mobile Mapping System

We present in this article different algorithms designed for automatic road environment interpretation, from a large amount of data, acquired by embedded sensors. Road markings and traffic signs are extracted then interpreted by means of original image processing techniques whereas road geometry is computed through lidar range data analysis. The outputs of all these algorithms are gathered into a single tool, which manages a precise and global geographic database in order to produce advanced maps. These maps can further be used for intelligent navigation.
The Structural Biology and Critical Evaluation of Bacterial Proteases as Targets in New Drug Design

Bacteria produce a range of proteolytic enzymes (for which a number human equivalent or structurally similar examples exist) and the primary focus of this study was to analyse the published literature to find proteolytic enzymes, specifically endoproteses and to examine the similarity in the substrates that they act on so as to predict a suitable structural motif which can be used as the basis for preparation of useful prodrug carriers against diseases caused by specific bacteria like Salmonella. Also, the similarities between the bacterial proteases and the action of human matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), together with the MMP-like activity of bacterial endoproteases to activate human MMPs, were also analysed. This information was used to try to identify substrates on which the MMPs and bacterial proteases act, to aid the design of oligopeptide prodrug carriers to treat cancer and its metastatic spread. MMPs are greatly involved in cancer growth and progression, a few MMPs and certain proteases share a similar type of activity in degrading the extra cellular matrix (ECM) and substrates including gelatin. Our primary targets of study were to identify the proteases and MMPs that facilitate the migration of bacteria and growth of tumour cells respectively. The study was thus a two-way approach to study the substrate specificity of both bacterial proteases and MMPs, thereby to help in characterisation of their substrates. a Various bioinformatics’ tools were used in the characterisation of the proteases and substrates as well as in the identification of possible binding sites and conserved regions in a range of candidate proteins. Central to this project was the salmonella derived PgtE surface protease that has been shown recently to act upon the pro-forms of human MMP-9.
Free Vibration Analysis of DWCNTs Using CDM and Rayleigh-Schmidt Based on Nonlocal Euler-Bernoulli Beam Theory

The free vibration response of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) is investigated. The DWCNTs are modelled as two beams, interacting between them through the van der Waals forces, and the nonlocal Euler-Bernoulli beam theory is used. The governing equations of motion are derived using a variational approach and the free frequencies of vibrations are obtained employing two different approaches. In the first method, the two double-walled carbon nanotubes are discretized by means of the so-called “cell discretization method” (CDM) in which each nanotube is reduced to a set of rigid bars linked together by elastic cells. The resulting discrete system takes into account nonlocal effects, constraint elasticities, and the van der Waals forces. The second proposed approach, belonging to the semianalytical methods, is an optimized version of the classical Rayleigh quotient, as proposed originally by Schmidt. The resulting conditions are solved numerically. Numerical examples end the paper, in which the two approaches give lower-upper bounds to the true values, and some comparisons with existing results are offered. Comparisons of the present numerical results with those from the open literature show an excellent agreement.
Intertester Agreement in Refractive Error Measurements

Purpose To determine the intertester agreement of refractive error measurements between lay and nurse screeners using the Retinomax Autorefractor and the SureSight Vision Screener. Methods Trained lay and nurse screeners measured refractive error in 1452 preschoolers (3 to 5 years old) using the Retinomax and the SureSight in a random order for screeners and instruments. Intertester agreement between lay and nurse screeners was assessed for sphere, cylinder, and spherical equivalent (SE) using the mean difference and the 95% limits of agreement. The mean intertester difference (lay minus nurse) was compared between groups defined based on the child’s age, cycloplegic refractive error, and the reading’s confidence number using analysis of variance. The limits of agreement were compared between groups using the Brown-Forsythe test. Intereye correlation was accounted for in all analyses. Results The mean intertester differences (95% limits of agreement) were −0.04 (−1.63, 1.54) diopter (D) sphere, 0.00 (−0.52, 0.51) D cylinder, and −0.04 (1.65, 1.56) D SE for the Retinomax and 0.05 (−1.48, 1.58) D sphere, 0.01 (−0.58, 0.60) D cylinder, and 0.06 (−1.45, 1.57) D SE for the SureSight. For either instrument, the mean intertester differences in sphere and SE did not differ by the child’s age, cycloplegic refractive error, or the reading’s confidence number. However, for both instruments, the limits of agreement were wider when eyes had significant refractive error or the reading’s confidence number was below the manufacturer’s recommended value. Conclusions Among Head Start preschool children, trained lay and nurse screeners agree well in measuring refractive error using the Retinomax or the SureSight. Both instruments had similar intertester agreement in refractive error measurements independent of the child’s age. Significant refractive error and a reading with low confidence number were associated with worse intertester agreement.
The Patient-Reported Incident in Hospital Instrument (PRIH-I): assessments of data quality, test–retest reliability and hospital-level reliability

Background The objective of this study was to test the data quality, test–retest reliability and hospital-level reliability of the Patient-Reported Incident in Hospital Instrument (PRIH-I). Methods 13 incident questions were included in a national patient-experience survey in Norway during the spring of 2011. All questions and a composite incident index were assessed by calculating missing-item rates, test–retest reliability and hospital-level reliability. A multivariate linear regression on a global item regarding incorrect treatment was used to assess the main sources of variation in patient-perceived incorrect treatment at hospitals. Results Five of the 13 patient-incident questions had a missing-item rate of >20%. Only one item met the criterion of 0.7 for test–retest reliability (wrong or delayed diagnosis), seven items had a score of >0.5, while the remainder had a reliability score of <0.5. However, the reliability was >0.7 for six of 10 items tested at the hospital level, and >0.6 for the remaining four items. A patient-incident index based on 12 of the incident items had no missing data, the test–retest reliability was 0.6 and the hospital-level reliability was 0.85. Conclusions The PRIH-I comprises 13 questions about patient-perceived incidents in hospitals, and can be easily and cost-effectively included in national patient-experience surveys with an acceptable increase in respondent burden. Although the missing-item rate and test–retest reliability were poor for several items, the hospital-level reliability was satisfactory for most of the items. The incident items contribute to a patient-reported incident index, with excellent data quality and hospital-level reliability.
HIV/AIDS and Food and Nutrition Security: From Evidence to Action

One major group of impacts of HIV/AIDS relates to the ability of households and communities to ensure food and nutrition security. In this book we highlight the main interactions between HIV/AIDS and food and nutrition insecurity and suggest effective responses. An earlier paper by one of the authors (Loevinsohn and Gillespie 2003a) proposed a framework to facilitate a more holistic understanding of these interactions and ultimately to improve the means of responding at different levels. This review intends to put flesh on this framework as evidence continues to emerge both of the impacts and (albeit more slowly) of effective solutions. The review thus has the following objectives: 1) Demonstrate the need to take a fully comprehensive and holistic approach to investigating how HIV/AIDS is affecting (and affected by) people communities and governments in order to better understand the various risks impacts and responses; 2) Review the evidence behind the "upstream" factors and processes that contribute to HIV spread as well as the various "downstream" impacts of AIDS and premature death; and 3) Review the responses to these risks and impacts at different levels from individuals and households up to national governments along with the implications for international agencies.
Dealing with occlusions in face recognition by region-based fusion

The last research efforts made in the face recognition community have been focusing in improving the robustness of systems under different variability conditions like change of pose, expression, illumination, low resolution and occlusions. Occlusions are also a manner of evading identification, which is commonly used when committing crimes or thefts. In this work we propose an approach based on the fusion of non occluded facial regions that is robust to occlusions in a simple and effective manner. We evaluate the region-based approach in three face recognition systems: Face++ (a commercial software based on CNN) and two advancements over LBP systems, one considering multiple scales and other considering a larger number of facial regions. We report experiments based on the ARFace database and prove the robustness of using only non-occluded facial regions, the effectiveness of a large number of regions and the limitations of the commercial system when dealing with occlusions.
Two Large-Scale Surveys of Electronic Publication in the United Kingdom

The Department of Information Science at Loughborough University has carried out several user studies on electronic journals in recent years, including the ELVYN and Cafe Jus projects. We now report on two large-scale surveys carried out in mid 1998 to early 1999, with which this department was associated. The first was conducted under contract to the UK governments Department of Trade and Industry between April and December 1998, and involved a questionnaire survey to all UK-based publishing enterprises, to investigate their intentions and expectations about electronic publishing; over 1,000 responses were achieved. These results provide an authoritative picture of the British publishing industrys views about the potential commercial prospects for electronic publishing. A subset survey looked specifically at the responses that came from scholarly journal publishers, and the results from this group are compared and contrasted with those from the overall group of publishers. The second is a study by the (UK) Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, who conducted a large-scale survey of authors of papers in the scholarly journals published by the associations member societies. This survey investigated the attitudes and opinions of learned journal authors towards electronic publishing; it was thought that the interests of authors might be quite different from those of publishers. Questionnaires were sent out by the individual societies to their own authors, and over 3000 responses were received. Although the journals are all UK-published, the authors surveyed came from all parts of the world. This paper compares and contrasts the results from publishers with those from authors, and considers them in the context of this departments earlier results from users, and other recent studies.
Thyroid hormone regulates muscle function during cold acclimation in zebrafish (Danio rerio)

SUMMARY Thyroid hormone (TH) is a universal regulator of growth, development and metabolism during cold exposure in mammals. In zebrafish (Danio rerio), TH regulates locomotor performance and metabolism during cold acclimation. The influence of TH on locomotor performance may be via its effect on metabolism or, as has been shown in mammals, by modulating muscle phenotypes. Our aim was to determine whether TH influences muscle phenotypes in zebrafish, and whether this could explain changes in swimming capacity in response to thermal acclimation. We used propylthiouracil and iopanoic acid to induce hypothyroidism in zebrafish over a 3-week acclimation period to either 18 or 28°C. To verify that physiological changes following hypothyroid treatment were in fact due to the action of TH, we supplemented hypothyroid fish with 3,5-diiodothryronine (T2) or 3,5,3′-triiodothyronine (T3). Cold-acclimated fish had significantly greater sustained swimming performance (Ucrit) but not burst speed. Greater Ucrit was accompanied by increased tail beat frequency, but there was no change in tail beat amplitude. Hypothyroidism significantly decreased Ucrit and burst performance, as well as tail beat frequency and SERCA activity in cold-acclimated fish. However, myofibrillar ATPase activity increased in cold-acclimated hypothyroid fish. Hypothyroid treatment also decreased mRNA concentrations of myosin heavy chain fast isoforms and SERCA 1 isoform in cold-acclimated fish. SERCA 1 mRNA increased in warm-acclimated hypothyroid fish, and SERCA 3 mRNA decreased in both cold- and warm-acclimated hypothyroid fish. Supplementation with either T2 or T3 restored Ucrit, burst speed, tail beat frequency, SERCA activity and myosin heavy chain and SERCA 1 and 3 mRNA levels of hypothyroid fish back to control levels. We show that in addition to regulating development and metabolism in vertebrates, TH also regulates muscle physiology in ways that affect locomotor performance in fish. We suggest that the role of TH in modulating SERCA1 expression during cold exposure may have predisposed it to regulate endothermic thermogenesis.
Prudential Supervision: Why is it Important and What are the Issues?

This paper outlines what problems asymmetric information creates for the financial system and shows and shows that the presence of asymmetric information explains why banks are so important. The paper then goes on to explain why prudential supervision of these institutions is needed, and what forms it takes. The paper ends by outlining the key issues in the design of prudential supervision and uses them to organize a general discussion of the papers in this conference volume, providing a brief overview of their content. The linkages between these papers are explored, which highlights some general conclusions.
Supply Chain Lending and Accounting Conservatism

Economic interdependence between suppliers and customers generates proprietary information useful for credit risk assessment. Such proprietary information can mitigate information asymmetry between borrowers and lenders, and substitutes for conservative accounting numbers in debt contracting. We hypothesize that a pre-existing lending relationship with a borrower’s customer(s) grants the lender access to proprietary supply-chain information and reduces the lender’s demand for, and therefore the supply of, accounting conservatism by the borrowing supplier. Consistently, we document a negative effect of the pre-existing lendercustomer lending relationship on the borrowing suppliers’ accounting conservatism at loan origination. This negative effect is robust to instrumental variable estimation, propensity score matching approach, and a placebo test. Further, this negative effect becomes stronger when the suppliers and customers operate in an opaque information environment, when the customers represent important business partners and have long-lasting relationship with their lenders, and when the suppliers extend sizeable trade credit to their customers. In additional analysis, we find less use of accounting-based covenants when lenders have a pre-existing lending relationship with the borrower’s customer(s). Our findings demonstrate the informational value of proprietary supply-chain information for lenders and its impact on borrowers’ reporting practices.
UTILISATION OF QUASI-FIXED INPUTS AND ESTIMATION OF COST FUNCTIONS : AN APPLICATION TO AIRLINE COSTS

Studies of industrial organisation and regulatory policy analysis have commonly estimated a production function or its dual cost function, in order to measure the key indicators of production technology such as returns to firm size, returns to output density (for firms with a spatial network such as airlines and railways), and economies of scope (henceforth referred to as "cost structure"). These meas ures play a key role in the determination of industry and regulatory policies. Therefore, it is important that these key indicators of cost structure be measured as accurately as possible. It is well known that the parameter estimates for conventional production or cost functions will be biased if some firms in the sample are in disequilibria in their input choices. There is even wider recognition of the problem of the proper treatment of capital in empirical studies of production technology. For this reason, some economists treat the firm's behaviour as a two-stage process. In the first stage it minimises the user cost of capital by endogenising capacity utilisation (or, equivalently, choosing rate of depreciation as in Auerbach (1981) and/or rate of maintenance as in Parks (1977)). In the second stage the firm is assumed to make optimal input choice, given the "adjusted" user cost of capital (see Kim, (1986)). On the other hand, as a means to avoid the bias existing in estimation of the total cost functions, a growing number of economists have estimated variable cost functions where the capital stock is treated as exogenously given. For example, in
Retrofitted Bridge Fragility Analysis for Typical Classes of Multispan Bridges

Retrofitted bridge fragility curves provide a powerful tool for assessing the effect of retrofit measures on the seismic performance of different bridge types under a range of loading levels. Traditional methods for retrofit assessment typically evaluate the effectiveness of retrofit based on the performance of individual components. However, the use of fragility curves for retrofitted bridges has the ability to capture the impact of retrofit on the bridge system vulnerability. Using three-dimensional nonlinear analysis, fragility curves are developed for four common classes of multispan bridges and five retrofit methods. The results show that the effectiveness of retrofit is a function of bridge type and damage state. General conclusions of the influence of the different retrofit measures on the fragility of each class of typical bridges in the Central and Southeastern United States, as well as the fragility parameters, are presented. The results from this work can be used to enhance regional seismic risk assessment and can form the basis for retrofit cost-benefit studies.
Optical Quantal Analysis Indicates That Long-Term Potentiation at Single Hippocampal Mossy Fiber Synapses Is Expressed through Increased Release Probability, Recruitment of New Release Sites, and Activation of Silent Synapses

It is generally believed that long-term potentiation (LTP) at hippocampal mossy fiber synapses between dentate granule and CA3 pyramidal cells is expressed through presynaptic mechanisms leading to an increase in quantal content. The source of this increase has remained undefined but could include enhanced probability of transmitter release at existing functional release sites or increases in the number of active release sites. We performed optical quantal analyses of transmission at individual mossy fiber synapses in cultured hippocampal slices, using confocal microscopy and intracellular fluorescent Ca2+ indicators. Our results indicate that LTP is expressed at functional synapses by both increased probability of transmitter release and recruitment of new release sites, including the activation of previously silent synapses here visualized for the first time.
Genomic conflict drives patterns of X‐linked population structure in Drosophila neotestacea

Intragenomic conflict has the potential to cause widespread changes in patterns of genetic diversity and genome evolution. In this study, we investigate the consequences of sex‐ratio (SR) drive on the population genetic patterns of the X‐chromosome in Drosophila neotestacea. An SR X‐chromosome prevents the maturation of Y‐bearing sperm during male spermatogenesis and thus is transmitted to ~100% of the offspring, nearly all of which are daughters. Selection on the rest of the genome to suppress SR can be strong, and the resulting conflict over the offspring sex ratio can result in the accumulation of multiple loci on the X‐chromosome that are necessary for the expression of drive. We surveyed variation at 12 random X‐linked microsatellites across 16 populations of D. neotestacea that range in SR frequency from 0% to 30%. First, every locus was differentiated between SR and wild‐type chromosomes, and this drives genetic structure at the X‐chromosome. Once the association with SR is accounted for, the patterns of differentiation among populations are similar to the autosomes. Second, within wild‐type chromosomes, the relative heterozygosity is reduced in populations with an increased prevalence of drive, and the heterozygosity of SR chromosomes is higher than expected based on its prevalence. The combination of the relatively high prevalence of SR drive and the structuring of polymorphism between the SR and wild‐type chromosomes suggests that genetic conflict because of SR drive has had significant consequences on the patterns of X‐linked polymorphism and thus also probably affects the tempo of X‐chromosome evolution in D. neotestacea.
Do Neighborhoods Affect Hours Worked? Evidence from Longitudinal Data

Using a confidential version of the NLSY79, we estimate large effects of neighborhood social characteristics and job proximity on labor market activity. A variety of neighborhood social characteristics are associated with less market work. Social characteristics have nonlinear effects, with the greatest impact in the worst neighborhoods. Social characteristics are also more important for less‐educated workers. Exploiting the panel aspects of our data, we find that estimates that do not account for neighborhood selection on the basis of time‐invariant and time‐varying unobserved individual characteristics substantially overstate the social effects of neighborhoods but understate the effects of job access.