Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optic Disc Identification Methods for Retinal Images

Presented are the methods proposed by authors to identify and model the optic disc in colour retinal images. The flrst three our approaches localized the optic disc in two steps: a) in the green component of RGB image the optic disc area is detected based on texture indicators and pixel intensity variance analysis; b) on the segmented area the optic disc edges are extracted and the resulted boundary is approximated by a Hough transform. The last implemented method identifles the optic disc area by analysis of blood vessels network extracted in the green channel of the original image. In the segmented area the optic disc edges are obtained by an iterative Canny algorithm and are approximated by a circle Hough transform.
Conditional restricted Boltzmann machine for voice conversion

The conventional statistical-based transformation functions for voice conversion have been shown to suffer over-smoothing and over-fitting problems. The over-smoothing problem arises because of the statistical average during estimating the model parameters for the transformation function. In addition, the large number of parameters in the statistical model cannot be well estimated from the limited parallel training data, which will result in the over-fitting problem. In this work, we investigate a robust transformation function for voice conversion using conditional restricted Boltzmann machine. Conditional restricted Boltzmann machine, which performs linear and non-linear transformations simultaneously, is proposed to learn the relationship between source and target speech. CMU ARCTIC corpus is adopted in the experimental validations. The number of parallel training utterances is varied from 2 to 40. For these different training situations, two objective evaluation measures, mel-cepstral distortion and correlation coefficient, both show that the proposed method outperforms the main stream joint density Gaussian mixture model method consistently.
Practitioners' Perceptions of Their Knowledge, Skills and Competencies in Online Teaching of Students with and without Disabilities.

The need for skilled teachers in online learning environments is presently evident and projected to grow into the future. A survey of education practitioners (N = 127) about their knowledge and competencies in online teaching of students with and without disabilities found that they generally recognized the importance of online learning and the specialized competencies it requires. However they lacked confidence in both themselves and their colleagues to effectively use online learning environments in their teaching, and were particularly unprepared to teach students with disabilities. Although many indicated that they currently taught online or blended courses, they had low awareness of online learning platforms, which hold promise for individualizing education for students with and without disabilities. A call is issued to address this lack of knowledge, skill, and competency in online instruction among current and future educators. Practitioners’ Perceptions of Their Knowledge, Skills and Competencies in Online Teaching of Students with and without Disabilities In recent years, K-12 online and blended learning have entered the mainstream of American education, providing opportunities for students across the academic spectrum in all 50 states and the District of Columbia (Repetto, Cavanaugh, Wayer & Liu, 2010). A current report estimates that several million students, or slightly more than 5% of the U.S. K-12 population, participate in some form of online or blended learning (Watson, Murin, Vashaw, Gemin, & Rapp, 2012). To date two main reasons students are enrolling in online courses are for advance placement and credit recovery purposes (Watson et al., 2012). This enrollment trend is slowly changing, as many states are now beginning to see the importance of preparing students to take online courses before they graduate in order to prepare them for college or career readiness. Four states now require all students, with limited exceptions, to complete at least one online learning experience in order to graduate from high school (Alabama State Board of Education, 2008; Brown, 2012 [Virginia]; Florida Department of Education, 2011; State of Michigan, 2012) and some states (e.g. Georgia and Idaho) are encouraging students to have an online learning experience before graduating.
Dynamics of Bidirectional Associative Memory Networks with Processing Delays

: A mathematical model describing the dynamical interactions of the bidirectional associative memory networks, incorporating among other things processing time delays, has been proposed in this paper. The existence and stability characteristics of the equilibrium patterns have been discussed. Results on local asymptotic stability of the equilibrium patterns have been presented. Three sets of easily veriﬁable suﬃcient conditions describing the global stability of the equilibrium patterns of these networks are obtained
The Hippocampus Codes the Uncertainty of Cue–Outcome Associations: An Intracranial Electrophysiological Study in Humans

Learning to predict upcoming outcomes based on environmental cues is essential for adaptative behavior. In monkeys, midbrain dopaminergic neurons code two statistical properties of reward: a prediction error at the outcome and uncertainty during the delay period between cues and outcomes. Although the hippocampus is sensitive to reward processing, and hippocampal–midbrain functional interactions are well documented, it is unknown whether it also codes the statistical properties of reward information. To address this question, we recorded local field potentials from intracranial electrodes in human hippocampus while subjects learned to associate cues of slot machines with various monetary reward probabilities (P). We found that the amplitudes of negative event-related potentials covaried with uncertainty at the outcome, being maximal for P = 0.5 and minimal for P = 0 and P = 1, regardless of winning or not. These results show that the hippocampus computes an uncertainty signal that may constitute a fundamental mechanism underlying the role of this brain region in a number of functions, including attention-based learning, associative learning, probabilistic classification, and binding of stimulus elements.
Early Myeloid Dendritic Cell Dysregulation is Predictive of Disease Progression in Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Infection

Myeloid dendritic cells (mDC) are lost from blood in individuals with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection but the mechanism for this loss and its relationship to disease progression are not known. We studied the mDC response in blood and lymph nodes of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-infected rhesus macaques with different disease outcomes. Early changes in blood mDC number were inversely correlated with virus load and reflective of eventual disease outcome, as animals with stable infection that remained disease-free for more than one year had average increases in blood mDC of 200% over preinfection levels at virus set-point, whereas animals that progressed rapidly to AIDS had significant loss of mDC at this time. Short term antiretroviral therapy (ART) transiently reversed mDC loss in progressor animals, whereas discontinuation of ART resulted in a 3.5-fold increase in mDC over preinfection levels only in stable animals, approaching 10-fold in some cases. Progressive SIV infection was associated with increased CCR7 expression on blood mDC and an 8-fold increase in expression of CCL19 mRNA in lymph nodes, consistent with increased mDC recruitment. Paradoxically, lymph node mDC did not accumulate in progressive infection but rather died from caspase-8-dependent apoptosis that was reduced by ART, indicating that increased recruitment is offset by increased death. Lymph node mDC from both stable and progressor animals remained responsive to exogenous stimulation with a TLR7/8 agonist. These data suggest that mDC are mobilized in SIV infection but that an increase in the CCR7-CCL19 chemokine axis associated with high virus burden in progressive infection promotes exodus of activated mDC from blood into lymph nodes where they die from apoptosis. We suggest that inflamed lymph nodes serve as a sink for mDC through recruitment, activation and death that contributes to AIDS pathogenesis.
Proactive and Adaptive Agility among Employees : the relationship with personal and situational factors

markdownabstractIn work and organizational psychology, the notion of agility, that is the capability to adapt, presently is receiving strong interest. Already at the end of the last century Harvey, Koubek and Chin worked towards a model for employee agility. They emphasized the role of internal (personal) factors, such as personality, and external (situational) factors, such as work pressure. Chonko and Jones (2005) distinguished two components within the notion of agility: an adaptive and a proactive component. Adaptive agility relates to adapting to a changing organizational context. Proactive agility relates to actively looking for changes or initiating innovation in one’s organization. The following four research questions were central to this thesis: (1) What is the relation between different needs/motives of employees and their adaptive and proactive agility; (2) How high is the agreement between others (i.e., the consensus), and how high is the agreement between one’s self-image and the image as perceived by others (i.e., the correspondence) in judging the motives of employees; (3) What is the relation between the degree to which employees trust their organization in a planned change (strategic anticipation) and in an unplanned change (a sudden change, caused by necessity) and their adaptive and proactive agility; and (4) Can a portfolio process - developing one’s own agility goals and a plan of action, and containing proof of the progression in the steps in the direction of the agility targets and a reflection during feedback moments with others on the steps in the direction of the agility targets - increase the agility of employees and increase the self-other correspondence on their agility? These research questions were studied and answered in four subsequent empirical studies.
A Recent Global Selective Sweep on the age-1 Phosphatidylinositol 3-OH Kinase Regulator of the Insulin-Like Signaling Pathway Within Caenorhabditis remanei

The discovery that genetic pathways can be manipulated to extend lifespan has revolutionized our understanding of aging, yet their function within natural populations remains poorly characterized. In particular, evolutionary theories of aging predict tradeoffs in resource investment toward somatic maintenance vs. reproductive output that should impose strong natural selection on genetic components that influence this balance. To explore such selective pressure at the molecular level, we examine population genetic variation in the insulin-like signaling pathway of the nematode Caenorhabditis remanei. We document a recent global selective sweep on the phosphoinositide-3-kinase pathway regulator, age-1, the first life-extension gene to have been identified. In particular, we find that age-1 has 5−20 times less genetic variation than any other insulin-like signaling pathway components and that evolutionary signatures of selection center on the age-1 locus within its genomic environment. These results demonstrate that critical components of aging-related pathways can be subject to shifting patterns of strong selection, as predicted by theory. This highly polymorphic outcrossing species offers high-resolution, population-level analyses of molecular variation as a complement to functional genetic studies within the self-reproducing C. elegans model system.
Generalized vector spaces model in information retrieval

In information retrieval, it is common to model index terms and documents as vectors in a suitably defined vector space. The main difficulty with this approach is that the explicit representation of term vectors is not known a priori. For this reason, the vector space model adopted by Salton for the SMART system treats the terms as a set of orthogonal vectors. In such a model it is often necessary to adopt a separate, corrective procedure to take into account the correlations between terms. In this paper, we propose a systematic method (the generalized vector space model) to compute term correlations directly from automatic indexing scheme. We also demonstrate how such correlations can be included with minimal modification in the existing vector based information retrieval systems. The preliminary experimental results obtained from the new model are very encouraging.
Academic learning time and teacher interaction behavior patterns in an elementary physical education unit : comparisons among high-skilled, average-skilled, and low-skilled students

The interaction behavior patterns of a physical educaEion teacher with high-skilled, average-ski11ed, and low-skilled students and a comparison of the Academic Learning Time in Physical Education of the high-skil1ed, average-skil1ed, and 1ow-ski1led students on a day-to-day basis for an entire unit were investigated. The subject was a male physical education teacher from the Albany, New York area. The teacher was asked to classify his students as high-skilled, average-skilled, and low-skilled students. Six students, two high-skil'led, two average-skilled, 'and two low-skilled were randomly selected to be observed'for this studyl The teactier wore a wireless microphone and was videotaped for an entire uni! , 12 classes. The interaction patEerns between the teacher and a specific group of students were coded using the Dyadic AdapEation of Cheffers t Adaptation of Flandersr Interaction Analysis System (DAC). The data obtained from these codings were Eransferred onto computer cards for computer analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to determine if differences existed in the teaching behavior patterns of the teacher with his high-skilled, average-skilled, and low-skiIled students. The computer scoring of DAC yielded percentages for ealh of t.he 17 variables. Visual analysis of the DAC rdsults indicated" that the teacher gave more information and.praise to and accepted the ideas and actions of the high-skilled students more than the average-ski11ed and low-skilled students. He also tended to criticize and give directions to the average-skil1ed and low-skilled students -more than the high-skilled st.udents. The high-ski1led students were characterized by interpretive behavior, whereas the average-skilled and 1ow-ski1led students vrere characterized by predictable and self-initiated responses. This 1ed to a reiection of the nu1l hypothesis that no differences would exist in the interaction patterns of the teacher with high-skil1ed, average-skilled, and 1ow-skil1ed students. This study also compared the Academic Learning Time in Physical Education (ALT-PE) of high-ski1led, average-skilled, and 1ow-ski11ed students. The videotapes were coded using the Academic Learning Time in Physical Education (Siedentop, Tousignant, & Parker, 1982) instrument. The data collected were computed manually and were compiled into percentagds and ratios for the ALT-PE parameters. Visual analysis of the ALT-PE data resulted in the high-skilled students spending more time in activiEy, game play, and ski11 practice uhan the average-ski11ed and low-skil1ed students. The average-skilled and low-skilled students were characterized by spending more time inactive'and off-task than the high-ski1led students. This 1ed to the rejection of the nul1 hypothesi's. that no significant difference would be found in Ehe ALT-PE of high-skilled, average-skilled, and, 1owskilled students. / ́
FlexSlot: Moving Hadoop Into the Cloud with Flexible Slot Management

Load imbalance is a major source of overhead in Hadoop where the uneven distribution of input data among tasks can significantly delays the job completion. Running Hadoop in a private cloud opens up opportunities for mitigating data skew with elastic resource allocation, where stragglers are expedited with more resources, yet introduces problems that often cancel out the performance gain: (1) performance interference from co running jobs may create new stragglers, (2) there exist a semantic gap between Hadoop task management and resource pool-based virtual cluster management preventing efficient resource usage. We present FlexSlot, a user-transparent task slot management scheme that automatically identifies map stragglers and resizes their slots accordingly to accelerate task execution. FlexSlot adaptively changes the number of slots on each virtual node to promote efficient usage of resource pool. Experimental results with representative benchmarks show that FlexSlot effectively reduces job completion time by 46% and achieves better resource utilization.
The Ramification Problem in the Event Calculus

Finding a solution to the frame problem that is robust in the presence of actions with indirect effects has proven to be a difficult task. Examples that feature the instantaneous propagation of interacting indirect effects are particularly taxing. This article shows that an already widely known predicate calculus formalism, namely the event calculus, can handle such examples with only minor enhancements.
Emerging Pathways: A Teacher/Researcher's Reflexive Journey Implementing Literacy-Based Science Interventions With Adolescent English Language Learners

This study explored the impact of instructional interventions with four Middle School English Language Learners in Science. The initial focus was to determine the impact of explicit academic vocabulary instruction, including cognates, and small-group guided discussions in order to facilitate the acquisition of cognates, academic vocabulary, and comprehension of scientific concepts. To accomplish this, various methods were implemented to gather data: observational and reflective field notes, a cognate-circling task, along with group and individual interviews. Upon the initial data analysis, an emerging question surfaced which added an additional dimension to the research, and shed light on the complexity of the teacher/research role. Thus, data analyzed and reflected both original and emerging questions, uncovering various patterns that impacted students’ learning. It also provided insight into how a researcher’s roles can affect the types and quality of data. Implications are provided for researchers, classroom teachers, bilingual teachers, professional development providers, and university programs developing new teachers.
Hierarchical Conditional Random Fields for Outlier Detection: An Application to Detecting Epileptogenic Cortical Malformations

We cast the problem of detecting and isolating regions of abnormal cortical tissue in the MRIs of epilepsy patients in an image segmentation framework. Employing a multiscale approach we divide the surface images into segments of different sizes and then classify each segment as being an outlier, by comparing it to the same region across controls. The final classification is obtained by fusing the outlier probabilities obtained at multiple scales using a tree-structured hierarchical conditional random field (HCRF). The proposed method correctly detects abnormal regions in 90% of patients whose abnormality was detected via routine visual inspection of their clinical MRI. More importantly, it detects abnormalities in 80% of patients whose abnormality escaped visual inspection by expert radiologists.
Patient-reported outcome measures in a population of medically indigent patients with systemic lupus erythematosus in Puerto Rico

Objective: To determine patient-reported outcomes measures in indigent patients with systemic lupus erythematosus receiving their healthcare through the Puerto Rico government managed care system and compare these measures with non-indigent patients treated in a private fee-for-service setting. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a cohort of 98 Puerto Ricans with systemic lupus erythematosus. Patients from the public group (n = 40) were treated in a university-based specialized systemic lupus erythematosus clinic and the private group (n = 58) in a community-based rheumatology practice. Demographic and clinical features and patient-reported outcomes measures per LupusPRO instrument were determined. LupusPRO captures quality-of-life measures in 12 domains. Differences among study groups were examined using chi-square, Fisher’s exact, t-tests, and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: The mean (standard deviation) age of the study population was 44.9 (12.0) years; 94 (95.9%) were women. Patients in the public setting were younger and were more likely to have renal disease and elevated anti-double-stranded DNA antibodies, and being treated with azathioprine and cyclophosphamide. Patients from the public sector were more likely to have better quality-of-life measures in the LupusPRO domains of pain/vitality and coping. No significant differences were observed for the domains of lupus symptoms, physical health, emotional health, body image, cognition, procreation, lupus medications, desires/goals, social support, and satisfaction with medical care. Conclusion: Despite having a lower socioeconomic status and worse clinical status, systemic lupus erythematosus patients from the public sector had equal or better patient-reported outcomes measures than those treated in the private setting. This favorable outcome may be associated with the comprehensive healthcare received by these patients in a specialized lupus clinic.
Estimation of subjective age based on facial images of others: Comparative studies of the Americans and the Japanese

We designed a method for estimating the subjective age of a person; using this method, one evaluates one's own age by estimating whether a person shown in a facial image looks older or younger than oneself. Thus far, experiments have shown that Japanese people tend to underestimate their subjective age. In this study, we conducted an international comparative study to focus on the socio-psychological effects that may influence the underestimation of subjective age. Experiments were performed in which American and Japanese participants viewed American facial images; in addition, the American participants viewed Japanese facial images. Through these experiments, it was confirmed that the underestimation of age occurs despite differences in Japanese and American societies and cultures; however, the tendency of underestimation of age is not related to facial images but to social and cultural factors that influence the participants. Moreover, we carried out experiments of conventional look age estimates and compared the results to those of the subjective age estimates.