Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Deep Spatial Contextual Long-Term Recurrent Convolutional Network for Saliency Detection

Traditional saliency models usually adopt hand-crafted image features and human-designed mechanisms to calculate local or global contrast. In this paper, we propose a novel computational saliency model, i.e., deep spatial contextual long-term recurrent convolutional network (DSCLRCN), to predict where people look in natural scenes. DSCLRCN first automatically learns saliency related local features on each image location in parallel. Then, in contrast with most other deep network based saliency models which infer saliency in local contexts, DSCLRCN can mimic the cortical lateral inhibition mechanisms in human visual system to incorporate global contexts to assess the saliency of each image location by leveraging the deep spatial long short-term memory (DSLSTM) model. Moreover, we also integrate scene context modulation in DSLSTM for saliency inference, leading to a novel deep spatial contextual LSTM (DSCLSTM) model. The whole network can be trained end-to-end and works efficiently when testing. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets show that DSCLRCN can achieve state-of-the-art performance on saliency detection. Furthermore, the proposed DSCLSTM model can significantly boost the saliency detection performance by incorporating both global spatial interconnections and scene context modulation, which may uncover novel inspirations for studies on them in computational saliency models.
Voting to Tell Others

Why do people vote? We design a field experiment to estimate a model of voting 'because others will ask'. The expectation of being asked motivates turnout if individuals derive pride from telling others that they voted, or feel shame from admitting that they did not vote, provided that lying is costly. In a door-to-door survey about election turnout, we experimentally vary (i) the informational content and use of a flyer pre-announcing the survey, (ii) the duration and payment for the survey, and (iii) the incentives to lie about past voting. The experimental results indicate significant social image concerns. For the 2010 Congressional election, we estimate a value of voting 'to tell others' of about $15, contributing 2 percentage points to turnout. Lastly, we evaluate a get-out-the-vote intervention in which we tell potential voters that we will ask if they voted.
Seismic Retrofit of Brittle and Low Strength RC Columns Using Fiber Reinforced Polymer and Cementitious Composites

The objective of this study is to investigate the seismic performance of reinforced concrete columns constructed with low quality of concrete and insufficient transverse reinforcement before and after retrofitting. Totally twenty nearly full size specimens with rectangular cross-section were tested under constant axial load and reversed cyclic lateral loads. Both longitudinal and transverse reinforcements were plain bars. Ten of the specimens had insufficient lap splice length of longitudinal reinforcement between stories as well. Both pre-damaged and undamaged columns with these deficiencies were retrofitted with FRP (fiber reinforced polymer) composite jackets or prefabricated HPFRCC (high performance fiber reinforced cementitious composite) panels. The test results showed that all reference specimens, which were not retrofitted, failed with a premature loss of performance either due to buckling of longitudinal reinforcement or loss of bond, while retrofitted ones exhibited a significantly superior performance, particularly in terms of ductility. It should be noted that the enhancement in performance was less remarkable for the specimens with inadequate lap splice lengths. An analytical work is also presented for prediction of the behavior of the specimens both for continuous and lap spliced longitudinal reinforcement cases.
Engineering materials properties in codimension > 0

When thin nanomaterials spontaneously deform into nonflat geometries (e.g, nanorods into nanohelices, thin sheets into ruffled forms), their properties may change by orders of magnitude. We discuss this phenomenon in terms of a formal mathematical concept: codimension c = D - d , the difference between the dimensionality of space D , and that of the object d . We use several independent examples such as the edge stress of graphene nanoribbons, the elastic moduli of nanowires, and the thermal expansion of a modified bead-chain model to demonstrate how this framework can be used to generically understand some nanomaterial properties and how these properties can be engineered by using mechanical constraints to manipulate the codimension of the corresponding structure.
Boundary layer concentrations and landscape scale emissions of volatile organic compounds in early spring

Boundary layer concentrations of several volatile organic compounds (VOC) were measured during two cam- paigns in springs of 2003 and 2006. The measurements were conducted over boreal landscapes near SMEAR II measure- ment station in Hyyti¨¨ a, Southern Finland. In 2003 the measuremens were performed using a light aircraft and in 2006 using a hot air balloon. Isoprene concentrations were low, usually below detection limit. This can be explained by low biogenic production due to cold weather, phenolog- ical stage of the isoprene emitting plants, and snow cover. Monoterpenes were observed frequently. The average to- tal monoterpene concentration in the boundary layer was 33 pptv. Many anthropogenic compounds such as benzene, xylene and toluene, were observed in high amounts. Ecosys- tem scale surface emissions were estimated using a simple mixed box budget methodology. Total monoterpene emis- sions varied up to 80µg m 2 h 1 , -pinene contributing typ- ically more than two thirds of that. These emissions were somewhat higher that those calculated using emission algo- rithm. The highest emissions of anthropogenic compounds were those of p/m xylene.
The Kaldi Speech Recognition Toolkit

We describe the design of Kaldi, a free, open-source toolkit for speech recognition research. Kaldi provides a speech recognition system based on finite-state automata (using the freely available OpenFst), together with detailed documentation and a comprehensive set of scripts for building complete recognition systems. Kaldi is written is C++, and the core library supports modeling of arbitrary phonetic-context sizes, acoustic modeling with subspace Gaussian mixture models (SGMM) as well as standard Gaussian mixture models, together with all commonly used linear and affine transforms. Kaldi is released under the Apache License v2.0, which is highly nonrestrictive, making it suitable for a wide community of users.
Therapeutic management of botulism in dairy cattle

Aim: To report the successful recovery of few dairy cattle from botulism in response to a modified therapeutic strategy. Materials and Methods: Seventy four naturally-occurring clinical cases of bovine botulism encountered during the period of 2012-2014 which were confirmed by mouse lethality test became material for this study. Affected animals were made into three groups based on the treatment modifications made during the course of study. Results and Discussion: With the modified therapeutic regimen, 17 animals recovered after 7-10 days of treatment. Clinical recovery took 2-30 days. Animals which were not given intravenous fluid and calcium recovered uneventfully. Cattle which were already treated with intravenous fluids, calcium borogluconate, and antibiotics did not recover. They were either died or slaughtered for salvage. Conclusion: In cattle with botulism, administration of Vitamin AD3E and activated charcoal aid the clinical recovery. Besides, strictly avoiding anti-clostridial antibiotics, fluid therapy, and calcium therapy may facilitate the clinical recovery. Upon fluid administration, the pulmonary congestion existed in the ailing cattle might have worsened the anoxia. Administration of antibiotics like penicillin, aminoglycosides, and tetracyclines further worsen the neuronal paralysis by increasing the availability of botulinum neurotoxin. Cattle in early botulism have fair chances of recovery with the modified therapy.
Performance of piled foundations used as heat exchangers

In closed loop ground energy systems, used to provide renewable heat energy to buildings, heat is transferred between a heat pump and the ground via ground heat exchangers. Fluid is circulated through pipes within the heat exchanger. Including these pipes within the concrete of piled foundations can give economies of excavation and materials. However, there remain few validated design approaches for determining the heating and cooling capacity of pile heat exchangers. There have also been concerns that inappropriate operation may cause extreme temperatures to develop in the ground, leading to loss of geotechnical performance. As a result most current design is conservative and does not fully utilise the thermal capacity of the pile-ground system. To permit validation of new design methods, instrumentation has been installed within a pile heat exchanger at a site in London. Initial results are showing the pile concrete to be making a substantial contribution to the short term storage of thermal energy. This is significant, as most design methods assume that the pile concrete merely acts to transfer heat to the surrounding ground. This heat storage also acts to protect the ground against larger fluctuations in the fluid temperature and is therefore beneficial for geotechnical performance. RÉSUMÉ : Dans les systèmes de transfert d’énergie du sol en circuit fermé, utilisés pour la fourniture d’énergie thermique durable aux immeubles, les échangeurs thermiques transmettent la chaleur du sol à une pompe à chaleur. On peut obtenir des économies lors de l’installation si les tuyaux de l’échangeur thermique se trouvent dans le béton des fondations sur pieux. Il n’existe cependant guère d’approches conceptuelles validées pour la détermination des capacités thermiques des pieux à échangeurs thermiques et des préoccupations existent sur leur utilisation inappropriée ; la plupart des conceptions actuelles est donc conservative. Pour la validation de nouvelles méthodes de conception, on a installé de l’instrumentation dans un pieu à échangeur thermique sur un chantier à Londres. Les premiers résultats démontrent que le béton du pieu offre une contribution substantielle sur l’accumulation à courte durée de l’énergie thermique. Ceci est important pour l’amélioration de la performance géotechnique.
Growth and Specialized Growth Charts of Children with Congenital Hypothyroidism Detected by Neonatal Screening in Isfahan, Iran

Objectives. The aim of the current study was to investigate the growth status of CH, generate specialized growth charts of CH infants, and compare them with their counterparts of regional normal infants. Methods. In this prospective cohort study, 760 (345 girls and 415 boys) neonates born in 2002–2009 diagnosed by neonatal CH screening program in Isfahan were followed up from the time of diagnosis. 552 healthy children were recruited as a control group. The empirical 3rd, 15th, 50th, 85th, and 97th percentiles for height, weight, and head circumference of both sexes were determined and compared with their counterpart values of the control group. The relative frequency of patients with impaired growth for each studied variable was determined. Also, specialized growth charts of CH patients were generated. Results. The percentiles of weight, height, and head circumference of studied patients are significantly different from regional healthy children (P < 0.001). The relative frequency of impaired head circumference was decreased to less than 3% at the 3rd year of age and for height it reached gradually 3% and 9% at the 5th year of age for boys and girls, respectively (P < 0.05); however for weight still it was statistically more than 3% in both sexes. Conclusion. CH patients had impaired growth development which was improved during follow up, but the catch-up time was earlier for head circumference and later for weight.
Micro-checkpointing: checkpointing for multithreaded applications

In this paper we introduce an efficient technique for checkpointing multithreaded applications. Our approach makes use of processes constructed around the ARMOR (Adaptive Reconfigurable Mobile Objects of Reliability) paradigm implemented in our Chameleon testbed. ARMOR processes are composed of disjoint elements (objects) with controlled manipulation of element state. These characteristics of ARMORS allow the process state to be collected during runtime in an efficient manner and saved to disk when necessary. We call this approach micro-checkpointing. We demonstrate micro-checkpointing in the Chameleon testbed, an environment for developing reliable distributed applications. Our results show that the overhead ranges from between 39% to 141% with an aggressive checkpointing policy, depending upon the degree to which the process conforms to our ARMOR paradigm.
Understanding Continuance Intention of Knowledge Creation in Online Communities from a Social-Psychological Perspective

Grounded on both social cognitive theory and expectation-disconfirmation theory (EDT), this study aims to investigate how individuals' continuance intention of knowledge creation and satisfaction are affected by their perceived identity verification (PIV) and performance expectancy. In addition, we also explore how the foregoing relationships are contingent on trust-affective trust and cognitive trust. To assess the theoretical model, we surveyed two online communities-Baidu (China) and Yahoo knowledge+ (Taiwan), including 213 and 216 useful responses respectively. Both PIV and performance expectancy are positively associated with continuance intention of knowledge creation. While performance expectancy has a significant impact on satisfaction, in Baidu community, PIV affects satisfaction indirectly (through performance expectancy) rather than directly. Finally, neither the relationships between PIV and continuance intention nor those between performance and continuance intention are contingent on trust based on our findings. This study provides a new insight into how knowledge creation can be facilitated by PIV and performance expectancy, and how the foregoing relationships are contingent on trust. Our findings have implications for both practice and theory.
Correcting over-exposure in photographs

This paper introduces a method to correct over-exposure in an existing photograph by recovering the color and lightness separately. First, the dynamic range of well exposed region is slightly compressed to make room for the recovered lightness of the over-exposed region. Then the lightness is recovered based on an over-exposure likelihood. The color of each pixel is corrected via neighborhood propagation and also based on the confidence of the original color. Previous methods make use of ratios between different color channels to recover the over-exposed ones, and thus can not handle regions where all three channels are over-exposed. In contrast, our method does not have this limitation. Our method is fully automatic and requires only one single input photo. We also provide users with the flexibility to control the amount of over-exposure correction. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in correcting over-exposure.
DNA testing for parentage verification in a conservation nucleus of Pantaneiro horse

We investigated the genealogy of the in situ conservation nucleus of the Pantaneiro horse using DNA microsatellites by evaluating 101 horses, the group consisting of 71 adult horses (3 stallions, 40 male and 31 mares) and 27 foals (14 colts and 13 fillies). Genomic DNA was extracted from hair roots and genotyped using 12 microsatellite markers (AHT4, AHT5, ASB2, ASB17, ASB23, HMS3 HMS6, HMS7, HTG4, HTG10, LEX33 and VHL20). The number of alleles per locus varied from 6 to 13, with a mean of 7.8 and the expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.544 to 0.734 (mean 0.644). The VLH20, ASB2, HTG10, ASB23 markers had a high (> 0.8) polymorphism information content and the total exclusion probability of the 12 microsatellite loci was 0.99. The genealogical study of the Pantaneiro horse using genetic markers was efficient in detecting mistakes during paternity and maternity designation and is an important tool which can be used together with traditional systems of animal identification. The use of genetic markers is recommended in the systematic control of the genealogical registrations and conservation plans to improve genetic aspects of the Pantaneiro horse.
Effects of blend on the properties, performance and emission of palm kernel oil biodiesel

The properties of different blends of palm kernel oil (PKO) biodiesel obtained from base catalyzed transesterification with diesel fuel were measured based on the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards. The performance and emission analysis of diesel, PKO biodiesel and its blends with diesel were also carried out using a 2-cylinder in-line, water cooled naturally aspirated RD270 Ruggerini diesel engine at constant load. Diesel fuel produced maximum power and maximum torque of 18.16 kW and 64.30 NM at 3200 rpm and 2400 rpm, respectively. Similarly, the blend B20 gave a maximum power of 18.44 kW at 3600 rpm and maximum torque of 63.90 NM at 2400 rpm. However, the maximum power and torque of other blends were slightly lower than that of diesel. Also the concentration of CO and HC emissions for pure biodiesel (B100) and its blends were significantly lower than that of diesel. The cetane number, calorific value, kinematic viscosity at 40°C and pour point of the PKO biodiesel is 52.3, 32.50 MJ/Kg, 4.87 mm2/s and -1°C, respectively. The calorific value of diesel decreased from 44.218 MJ/Kg to 38.162 MJ/Kg with a blend of 20% PKO biodiesel. Also the cetane number, kinematic viscosity and pour point of diesel increased from 44.7, 4.35 mm2/s and −19.5°C to 47.3, 4.46 mm2/s and −10.3°C with a blend of 20% PKO biodiesel, respectively. Generally, the addition of biodiesel to diesel increases the cetane number, density, kinematic viscosity, flash point and pour point but on the other hand reduces the calorific value of the produced blend.
Analysis of the Internal Pressure in Tube Hydroforming and Its Experimental Investigation

这个过程的内部压力理论上并且试验性地被学习。 外部负担特性和形成的试管水疗院的内部压力特性首先被讨论。 根据字符的意见，然后，内部压力的函数和分类一般来说被介绍。 压力分析，它收益标准上的效果和计算公式上的底也被研究并且发源。 验证理论分析和导出的公式的修正，有不同内部压力的实验被执行，结果被比较并且讨论。 它证明内部压力在这篇论文讨论并且发源的形成的试管水疗院和理论和公式起一个重要作用在实践是可行的。
Readers vs. Writers vs. Texts: Coping with Different Perspectives of Text Understanding in Emotion Annotation

We here examine how different perspectives of understanding written discourse, like the reader’s, the writer’s or the text’s point of view, affect the quality of emotion annotations. We conducted a series of annotation experiments on two corpora, a popular movie review corpus and a genre- and domain-balanced corpus of standard English. We found statistical evidence that the writer’s perspective yields superior annotation quality overall. However, the quality one perspective yields compared to the other(s) seems to depend on the domain the utterance originates from. Our data further suggest that the popular movie review data set suffers from an atypical bimodal distribution which may decrease model performance when used as a training resource.
Increased Risk of Cognitive Impairment in Patients With Diabetes Is Associated With Metformin

OBJECTIVE To investigate the associations of metformin, serum vitamin B12, calcium supplements, and cognitive impairment in patients with diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Participants were recruited from the Primary Research in Memory (PRIME) clinics study, the Australian Imaging, Biomarkers and Lifestyle (AIBL) study of aging, and the Barwon region of southeastern Australia. Patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) (n = 480) or mild cognitive impairment (n = 187) and those who were cognitively intact (n = 687) were included; patients with stroke or with neurodegenerative diseases other than AD were excluded. Subgroup analyses were performed for participants who had either type 2 diabetes (n = 104) or impaired glucose tolerance (n = 22). RESULTS Participants with diabetes (n = 126) had worse cognitive performance than participants who did not have diabetes (n = 1,228; adjusted odds ratio 1.51 [95% CI 1.03–2.21]). Among participants with diabetes, worse cognitive performance was associated with metformin use (2.23 [1.05–4.75]). After adjusting for age, sex, level of education, history of depression, serum vitamin B12, and metformin use, participants with diabetes who were taking calcium supplements had better cognitive performance (0.41 [0.19–0.92]). CONCLUSIONS Metformin use was associated with impaired cognitive performance. Vitamin B12 and calcium supplements may alleviate metformin-induced vitamin B12 deficiency and were associated with better cognitive outcomes. Prospective trials are warranted to assess the beneficial effects of vitamin B12 and calcium use on cognition in older people with diabetes who are taking metformin.
Perchlorate Chemistry: Implications for Analysis and Remediation

Since the discovery of perchlorate in the ground and surface waters of several western states, there has been increasing interest in the health effects resulting from chronic exposure to low (parts per billion [ppb]) levels. With this concern has come a need to investigate technologies that might be used to remediate contaminated sites or to treat contaminated water to make it safe for drinking. Possible technologies include physical separation (precipitation, anion exchange, reverse osmosis, and electrodialysis), chemical and electrochemical reduction, and biological or biochemical reduction. A fairly unique combination of chemical and physical properties of perchlorate poses challenges to its analysis and reduction in the environment or in drinking water. The implications of these properties are discussed in terms of remediative or treatment strategies. Recent developments are also covered.
Single-cell cloning of colon cancer stem cells reveals a multi-lineage differentiation capacity

Colon carcinoma is one of the leading causes of death from cancer and is characterized by a heterogenic pool of cells with distinct differentiation patterns. Recently, it was reported that a population of undifferentiated cells from a primary tumor, so-called cancer stem cells (CSC), can reconstitute the original tumor on xenotransplantation. Here, we show that spheroid cultures of these colon CSCs contain expression of CD133, CD166, CD44, CD29, CD24, Lgr5, and nuclear β-catenin, which have all been suggested to mark the (cancer) stem cell population. More importantly, by using these spheroid cultures or freshly isolated tumor cells from multiple colon carcinomas, we now provide compelling evidence to indicate that the capacity to propagate a tumor with all differentiated progeny resides in a single CSC. Single-cell-cloned CSCs can form an adenocarcinoma on xenotransplantation but do not generate the stroma within these tumors. Moreover, they can self-renew and are capable of multilineage differentiation. Further analysis indicated that the lineage decision is dictated by phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling in CSCs. These data support the hypothesis that tumor hierarchy can be traced back to a single CSC that contains multilineage differentiation capacity, and provides clues to the regulation of differentiation in colon cancers in vivo.