Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unconstrained Fashion Landmark Detection via Hierarchical Recurrent Transformer Networks

Fashion landmarks are functional key points defined on clothes, such as corners of neckline, hemline, and cuff. They have been recently introduced [18]as an effective visual representation for fashion image understanding. However, detecting fashion landmarks are challenging due to background clutters, human poses, and scales. To remove the above variations, previous works usually assumed bounding boxes of clothes are provided in training and test as additional annotations, which are expensive to obtain and inapplicable in practice. This work addresses unconstrained fashion landmark detection, where clothing bounding boxes are not provided in both training and test. To this end, we present a novel Deep LAndmark Network (DLAN), where bounding boxes and landmarks are jointly estimated and trained iteratively in an end-to-end manner. DLAN contains two dedicated modules, including a Selective Dilated Convolution for handling scale discrepancies, and a Hierarchical Recurrent Spatial Transformer for handling background clutters. To evaluate DLAN, we present a large-scale fashion landmark dataset, namely Unconstrained Landmark Database (ULD), consisting of 30K images. Statistics show that ULD is more challenging than existing datasets in terms of image scales, background clutters, and human poses. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of DLAN over the state-of-the-art methods. DLAN also exhibits excellent generalization across different clothing categories and modalities, making it extremely suitable for real-world fashion analysis.
Unstrained InAlN/GaN HEMT structure

InAlN has been investigated as barrier layer material for GaN-HEMT structures, potentially offering higher sheet charge densities (Kuzmik, 2002) and higher breakdown fields (Kuzmik, 2001). Lattice matched growth of the barrier layer can be achieved with 17% in content, avoiding piezo polarization. In this configuration the sheet charge density is only induced by spontaneous polarization. First experimental results of unpassivated undoped samples realized on 111-Si substrate exceed a DC output current density of 1.8 A/mm for a gate length of 0.5 /spl mu/m. Small signal measurements yield a f/sub t/ = 26 GHz and f/sub max/ = 14 GHz, still limited by the residual conductivity of the Si-substrate. A saturated output power at 2 GHz in class A bias point yielded a density of 4.1W/mm at V/sub DS/ = 24 V.
Disruption of functional connectivity of M1 and cerebellum in Multiple sclerosis: a long-range functional dysconnection?

ID: 2794 that showed decreased connectivity to aCBL with increasing disability. Fig.5. rsfMRI using ROI-ROIs analysis where the seeds are the ones used in the PPI and target areas are identified with the PPI results. The figure shows results in HV (top row) and MS (bottom row). A t-value bar is also provided.
Resolving and exploiting the k-CFA paradox: illuminating functional vs. object-oriented program analysis

Low-level program analysis is a fundamental problem, taking the shape of "flow analysis" in functional languages and "points-to" analysis in imperative and object-oriented languages. Despite the similarities, the vocabulary and results in the two communities remain largely distinct, with limited cross-understanding. One of the few links is Shivers's k-CFA work, which has advanced the concept of "context-sensitive analysis" and is widely known in both communities. Recent results indicate that the relationship between the functional and object-oriented incarnations of k-CFA is not as well understood as thought. Van Horn and Mairson proved k-CFA for k ≥ 1 to be EXPTIME-complete; hence, no polynomial-time algorithm can exist. Yet, there are several polynomial-time formulations of context-sensitive points-to analyses in object-oriented languages. Thus, it seems that functional k-CFA may actually be a profoundly different analysis from object-oriented k-CFA. We resolve this paradox by showing that the exact same specification of k-CFA is polynomial-time for object-oriented languages yet exponential-time for functional ones: objects and closures are subtly different, in a way that interacts crucially with context-sensitivity and complexity. This illumination leads to an immediate payoff: by projecting the object-oriented treatment of objects onto closures, we derive a polynomial-time hierarchy of context-sensitive CFAs for functional programs.
LANGUAGE OUTCOMES IN SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN ADOPTED FROM EASTERN EUROPEAN ORPHANAGES

Developmental studies by pediatricians and surveys of adoptive parents of children that have been adopted to the United States from foreign countries indicate that many of these children are experiencing substantial difficulties with the acquisition of their new language. Language difficulties may compromise the adopted child's abilities to understand, negotiate, and adjust to a new family and environment (Jenista, 1993). Reports range from 100% of the children having difficulties (Willig, 1995) to 34% (Groza,1995), with the majority of researchers reporting incidences in the 30-50% range (Johnson et al. 1996; Hough, 1996). These figures are in-line with research from countries such as Norway (Dalen, 2001a; Saetersdal & Dalen, 1987), Denmark (Rorbech, 1997) and Holland (Hoksbergen, 1997). To date, no studies directly assessing the language skills, long-term outcomes, or the types of language difficulties experienced by these children after experiencing an abrupt language switch have been completed. This study evaluated the language skills of a group of 44 school-aged, post-institutionalized Eastern European adoptees (EEA-PI) to determine the extent, and the types, of problems present in the areas of semantics, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, and reading, and explored the factors of institutionalization that might predict language development. Results showed that as a group, EEA-PI children, in comparison to the normative data on the standardized and spontaneous speech measures, performed lower than age expectations on all of the measures, with the exception of measures of listening (receptive language). The disparity within the group's performance was notable. Though institutional factors of time in institution, age of adoption, and time in U.S. did not correlate with measures of receptive and expressive language, they were significant for reading and nonword repetition scores. This research furthers our professional knowledge regarding long-term language outcomes and the selection of appropriate diagnostic measures for these children and other children experiencing early neglect in our country.
Pocket Switched Networks: Real-world mobility and its consequences for opportunistic forwarding

Opportunistic networks make use of human mobility and local forwarding in order to distribute data. Information can be stored and passed, taking advantage of the device mobility 1 , or forwarded over a wireless link when an appropriate contact is met 2 . Such networks fall into the (cid:2)elds of mobile ad-hoc networking and delay-tolerant networking. In order to evaluate forwarding algorithms for these networks, accurate data is needed on the intermit-tency of connections. In this paper, the inter-contact time between two transmission opportunities is observed empirically using four distinct sets of data, two having been speci(cid:2)cally collected for this work, and two provided by other research groups. We discover that the distribution of inter-contact time follows an approximate power law over a large time range in all data sets. This observation is at odds with the exponential decay expected by many currently used mobility models. We demonstrate that opportunistic transmission schemes designed around these current models have poor performance under approximate power-law conditions, but could be signi(cid:2)cantly improved by using limited redundant transmissions.
Plasma Processing with Fluorine Chemistry for Modification of Surfaces Wettability

Using plasma in conjunction with fluorinated compounds is widely encountered in material processing. We discuss several plasma techniques for surface fluorination: deposition of fluorocarbon thin films either by magnetron sputtering of polytetrafluoroethylene targets, or by plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition using tetrafluoroethane as a precursor, and modification of carbon nanowalls by plasma treatment in a sulphur hexafluoride environment. We showed that conformal fluorinated thin films can be obtained and, according to the initial surface properties, superhydrophobic surfaces can be achieved.
Telling the truths : truth telling and peace building in post-conflict societies

This important collection examines the contributions of truth-telling mechanisms, such as truth commissions, to long-term sustainable peace. The question of whether and how truth brings peace is under examined in scholarly literature on conflict resolution, conflict transformation, and transitional justice. This book argues that to ensure a future that does not reiterate the past, the atrocities of war and conflict must be brought to light and addressed. Contributors to this interdisciplinary volume from the fields of political science, law, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and theology closely examine the conditions under which various forms of truth telling in post-conflict societies contribute to a sustainable peace. This volume is the first to highlight the intersection of peace building and transitional justice and will be an invaluable resource.
Institutions and Ecosystem-Based Development Potentials of the Elephant Marsh, Malawi

The Elephant Marsh, a wetland in Southern Malawi, is important for fishing, agriculture, hunting and the collection of natural resources for the livelihoods of local communities. However, there has been increasing pressure driven by a changing climate, population growth, rural poverty and agricultural conversion, all of which threaten the future of the wetland. Currently, Malawi does not have either a national wetland policy or a climate change policy and wetland issues are only marginally present in the National Parks and Wildlife Policy of 2000 and National Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy of 2001. As a result, the country lacks a framework that could be strong enough to achieve balanced and sustainable wetland management for multiple resource users. The objective of this study was to establish the development potentials of Elephant Marsh from an ecosystem-based (‘working-with-nature’) perspective. It was revealed that there are development potentials in fisheries, recession agriculture, biomass for energy, conservation and tourism. This paper emphasizes that as these opportunities are developed, there will be the need to strengthen management institutions at local and national levels, and the coordination between the two.
High IL-35 Pleural Expression in Patients with Tuberculous Pleural Effusion

Background IL-35 is a novel anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive cytokine primarily produced by Treg cells, and is involved in inflammatory diseases and autoimmune diseases. However, its roles in tuberculous pleural effusion (TPE) remain unknown. We aimed to investigate the potential involvement of IL-35 in TPE. Material/Methods Thirty TPE patients and 20 lung cancer patients with malignant pleural effusion (MPE) were recruited. Samples of pleural effusion (100 mL) were collected after traditional pleurocentesis. Blood was sampled from TPE patients. Mononuclear cells were isolated by Ficoll-Hypaque gradient. Proportions of Th1, Th17, and IL-35-producing cells were analyzed by flow cytometry. IL-35 was assessed by real-time RT-PCR, ELISA, and immunofluorescence. An ELISPOT assay was used to assess the effect of IL-35 on pleural effusion mononuclear cells (PEMCs). Results Proportions of IL-35-producing cells were higher in TPE compared with MPE (49.4±6.0 vs. 15.8±5.4%, P<0.001) and blood from TPE patients (49.4±6.0% vs. 16.6±3.1, P<0.001). IL-35, IL-17 and IFN-γ were elevated in TPE compared with MPE (all P<0.01). ELISPOT assay showed that IL-35 reduced the proportion of IFN-γ-producing CD4+ T cells in TPE. IL-35 mRNA expression was higher in TPE compared with MPE (P<0.001). Immunofluorescence showed that IL-35-positive cells were present in pleural tissues from TPE patients. Conclusions Results suggest that there is an imbalance in IL-35 metabolism in TPE. However, further studies are required to assess the exact relationship with the immune system response to tuberculosis. IL-35 might play a role in TPE and might be targeted as a treatment for TPE.
Maximizing Lifetime Vector in Wireless Sensor Networks

Maximizing the lifetime of a sensor network has been a subject of intensive study. However, much prior work defines the network lifetime as the time before the first data-generating sensor in the network runs out of energy or is not reachable to the sink due to network partition. The problem is that even though one sensor is out of operation, the rest of the network may well remain operational, with other sensors generating useful data and delivering those data to the sink. Hence, instead of just maximizing the time before the first sensor is out of operation, we should maximize the lifetime vector of the network, consisting of the lifetimes of all sensors, sorted in ascending order. For this problem, there exists only a centralized algorithm that solves a series of linear programming problems with high-order complexities. This paper proposes a fully distributed algorithm that runs iteratively. Each iteration produces a lifetime vector that is better than the vector produced by the previous iteration. Instead of giving the optimal result in one shot after lengthy computation, the proposed distributed algorithm has a result at any time, and the more time spent gives the better result. We show that when the algorithm stabilizes, its result produces the maximum lifetime vector. Furthermore, simulations demonstrate that the algorithm is able to converge rapidly toward the maximum lifetime vector with low overhead.
Commonality in Disagreement and Asset Pricing

This paper presents a dynamic model to demonstrate that, when di¤erences-of-opinion over individual securities have a common component, the valuation of the aggregate market can be higher than its fundamental even if all investors agree on the market fundamental, and the common disagreement drives discount rate news. Using analyst forecast dispersion to measure disagreement, I nd empirical evidence that individual stock disagreements co-move and the common component mean-reverts, the common disagreement has substantial explanatory power for the time-series variation of equity premium, and the common disagreement correlates with discount-rate news rather than cash-ow news and has explanatory power for the time-series variation of value premium. I thank Andrew Ang, Douglas Diamond, Larry Glosten, Robert Hodrick, Harrison Hong (discussant), Paul Tetlock, Rossen Valkanov, Wei Xiong, Kathy Yuan (discussant) and seminar participants at the 18th Annual Conference on Financial Economics and Accounting, Columbia Business School nance lunch workshop, CUNY Baruch College, CUNY Graduate Center, and NYU Stern Five-Star Conference on Research in Finance for helpful comments. y421 Uris Hall, 3022 Broadway, New York, NY 10027. Phone: (212) 854-9140. Email: jy2167@columbia.edu.
The Effect of Risk, Liquidity, and Growth Potential on the Returns of Value and Growth Portfolios in Japan

This paper examines the behavior of value and growth portfolios in Japan when firm risk, liquidity and growth potential are taken into account. We look at the period 1986 to 1996. In all, 48 value-weighted portfolios are formed and their returns computed. For portfolios formed on value-growth and risk, our results show that value stocks outperform growth stocks except for value and growth portfolios in the high-risk portfolios. Similar results (higher performance of value stocks) are found for liquidity for all portfolios with the exception of high liquidity portfolios. Portfolios formed on return-on-equity also shows a value premium that is disrupted by low ROE stocks. Return-on-assets is the only dimension that does not show a clear value premium for all the portfolios.
High transconductance self-aligned gate-last surface channel In0.53Ga0.47As MOSFET

In this paper we present a 55 nm gate length In0.53Ga0. 47As MOSFET with extrinsic transconductance of 1.9 mS/µm and on-resistance of 199 Ωµm. The self-aligned MOSFET is formed using metalorganic chemical vapor deposition regrowth of highly doped source and drain access regions. The fabricated 140 nm gate length devices shows a low subthreshold swing of 79 mV/decade, which is attributed to the described low temperature gate-last process scheme.
An Application Layer Protocol for Energy-Efficient Bandwidth Aggregation with Guaranteed Quality-of-Experience

WiFi and cellular networks are pervasively provided for mobile Internet access. Although most existing mobile devices are equipped with both WiFi and cellular network interfaces, concurrent data transmissions over these interfaces for improved throughput are not provided. In this paper, a bandwidth aggregation prototype, named Application Layer Protocol based Aggregation (ALP-A), is developed for easy use by simply installing an application in mobile devices without modifying their operating systems or drivers. It provides desired quality-of-experience (QoE), i.e., acceptable response delay to users, learned from application characteristics and users behaviors. Furthermore, we propose an online algorithm of traffic scheduling over WiFi and cellular interfaces with the objective of minimizing energy consumption while guaranteeing the QoE. Over the prototype implemented on Andriod-based smartphones, we conduct extensive experiments to show that ALP-A outperforms existing schemes significantly.
POD Based Control of Beam Vibrations: Methodology and Experimental Implementation

The objective of this paper is to present the status of a study to determine the feasibility, through simulation, of real time implementation of control methodologies for the attenuation of beam vibrations in a smart structure paradigm caused by a narrow-band exogenous force. By narrow-band exogenous force we mean a periodic force over a narrow frequency band or a particular harmonic. The particular control methods are based on the minimization of two specific quadratic cost functionals. One of these cost functionals is a typical cost functional constrained by an affine plant. The other is a cost functional that is frequency dependent. These control methods have been used successfully in various applications; however, this investigation differs from other works in that it emphasizes the development of control methodologies based on reduced order models derived from physical first principles. In particular a central part of this focus is the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) reduction technique and its application to real-time control of beam vibrations. Numerical results indicate that POD based control achieves comparable control attenuation with full order model based control.
Quantitative vaginal microflora in women convalescent from toxic shock syndrome and in healthy controls

We performed sequential and quantitative vaginal cultures obtained from 8 women within 4 days to 3 years (average, 15.8 months) after their recovery from classic menstrual toxic shock syndrome (TSS) and from 11 healthy women who served as age-matched controls. Apart from tampon use, which was significantly less frequent in TSS women after their acute illness, no demographic differences were observed in the two groups. Significantly lower total aerobic and anaerobic bacterial counts were found in TSS women than in healthy controls (P less than 0.05, Mann-Whitney test). These differences were most profound during the menstrual (aerobes) and premenstrual (aerobes and anaerobes) sample times, whereas no difference in bacterial counts was observed in the mid-cycle samples. Although the less frequent usage of tampons among TSS women after their acute illness might explain the lower aerobic counts in menstrual specimens, this is unlikely to explain the significantly lower aerobic and anaerobic counts observed in premenstrual samples when tampons were not used in either group. It is possible that these differences in the quantitative vaginal microflora were a direct result of recent TSS in these women. Alternatively, disruption of the normal indigenous microflora could have predisposed these women to acute TSS by alteration of the resistance of vaginal colonization to pathogenic microorganisms.
Chromatin features, RNA polymerase II and the comparative expression of lens genes encoding crystallins, transcription factors, and autophagy mediators

Purpose Gene expression correlates with local chromatin structure. Our studies have mapped histone post-translational modifications, RNA polymerase II (pol II), and transcription factor Pax6 in lens chromatin. These data represent the first genome-wide insights into the relationship between lens chromatin structure and lens transcriptomes and serve as an excellent source for additional data analysis and refinement. The principal lens proteins, the crystallins, are encoded by predominantly expressed mRNAs; however, the regulatory mechanisms underlying their high expression in the lens remain poorly understood. Methods The formaldehyde-assisted identification of regulatory regions (FAIRE-Seq) was employed to analyze newborn lens chromatin. ChIP-seq and RNA-seq data published earlier (GSE66961) have been used to assist in FAIRE-seq data interpretation. RNA transcriptomes from murine lens epithelium, lens fibers, erythrocytes, forebrain, liver, neurons, and pancreas were compared to establish the gene expression levels of the most abundant mRNAs versus median gene expression across other differentiated cells. Results Normalized RNA expression data from multiple tissues show that crystallins rank among the most highly expressed genes in mammalian cells. These findings correlate with the extremely high abundance of pol II all across the crystallin loci, including crystallin genes clustered on chromosomes 1 and 5, as well as within regions of “open” chromatin, as identified by FAIRE-seq. The expression levels of mRNAs encoding DNA-binding transcription factors (e.g., Foxe3, Hsf4, Maf, Pax6, Prox1, Sox1, and Tfap2a) revealed that their transcripts form “clusters” of abundant mRNAs in either lens fibers or lens epithelium. The expression of three autophagy regulatory mRNAs, encoding Tfeb, FoxO1, and Hif1α, was found within a group of lens preferentially expressed transcription factors compared to the E12.5 forebrain. Conclusions This study reveals novel features of lens chromatin, including the remarkably high abundance of pol II at the crystallin loci that exhibit features of “open” chromatin. Hsf4 ranks among the most abundant fiber cell-preferred DNA-binding transcription factors. Notable transcripts, including Atf4, Ctcf, E2F4, Hey1, Hmgb1, Mycn, RXRβ, Smad4, Sp1, and Taf1 (transcription factors) and Ctsd, Gabarapl1, and Park7 (autophagy regulators) have been identified with high levels of expression in lens fibers, which suggests specific roles in lens fiber cell terminal differentiation.