Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic Image Registration Through Image Segmentation and SIFT

Automatic image registration (AIR) is still a present challenge for the remote sensing community. Although a wide variety of AIR methods have been proposed in the last few years, there are several drawbacks which avoid their common use in practice. The recently proposed scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) approach has already revealed to be a powerful tool for the obtention of tie points in general image processing tasks, but it has a limited performance when directly applied to remote sensing images. In this paper, a new AIR method is proposed, based on the combination of image segmentation and SIFT, complemented by a robust procedure of outlier removal. This combination allows for an accurate obtention of tie points for a pair of remote sensing images, being a powerful scheme for AIR. Both synthetic and real data have been considered in this work for the evaluation of the proposed methodology, comprising medium and high spatial resolution images, and single-band, multispectral, and hyperspectral images. A set of measures which allow for an objective evaluation of the geometric correction process quality has been used. The proposed methodology allows for a fully automatic registration of pairs of remote sensing images, leading to a subpixel accuracy for the whole considered data set. Furthermore, it is able to account for differences in spectral content, rotation, scale, translation, different viewpoint, and change in illumination.
Prevalence of Dyslipidemia in Children with Congenital Heart Disease

Dyslipidemia is one of the main risk factors associated with cardiovascular diseases. Few data on the impacts of congenital heart diseases are available with regard to the prevalence of dyslipidemia in children. Our study evaluated the lipid profile in children with congenital heart disease at a referral center. From January 2011 to July 2012, 52 pediatric patients had their lipid, metabolic and clinical profiles traced. The mean age was 10.4 ± 2.8 years and male/female rate of 1.38:1. Our population had 53.8% patients with high levels of total cholesterol and 13.4% (CI 95 %, from 6.6 to 25.2%) of them also presenting LDL levels ≥ 130 mg/dL, which characterizes dyslipidemia. The group of dyslipidemic patients presented only two obese individuals. Our data show that the presence of congenital heart disease does not lead to higher risk associated with the prevalence of dyslipidemia. Therefore, the screening of this specific population should follow the regular pediatric guidelines, which are also independent of the nutritional status of the children tested.
Unsupervised learning of a finite mixture model based on the Dirichlet distribution and its application

This paper presents an unsupervised algorithm for learning a finite mixture model from multivariate data. This mixture model is based on the Dirichlet distribution, which offers high flexibility for modeling data. The proposed approach for estimating the parameters of a Dirichlet mixture is based on the maximum likelihood (ML) and Fisher scoring methods. Experimental results are presented for the following applications: estimation of artificial histograms, summarization of image databases for efficient retrieval, and human skin color modeling and its application to skin detection in multimedia databases.
Distinct blood DNA methylation profiles in subtypes of orofacial cleft

Background There is evidence that different subtypes of orofacial cleft have distinct aetiologies, although the precise molecular mechanisms underlying these are unknown. Given the key role of epigenetic processes such as DNA methylation in embryonic development, it is likely that aberrant DNA methylation may also play a part in the development of orofacial clefts. Methods In this study, we explored whether blood samples from children with different cleft subtypes showed distinct DNA methylation profiles. In whole blood samples from 150 children from the Cleft Collective cohort study, we measured DNA methylation at over 450,000 sites on the genome. We then carried out epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) to test the association between methylation at each site and cleft subtype (cleft lip only CLO n=50; cleft palate only CPO n=50; cleft lip and palate CLP n=50). Results We found four genomic regions differentially methylated in CLO compared to CLP, 17 in CPO compared to CLP and 294 in CPO compared to CLO. These regions included several mapping to genes that have previously been implicated in the development of orofacial clefts (for example, TBX1, COL11A2, HOXA2, PDGFRA) and over 250 novel associations. Conclusion Our finding of distinct methylation profiles in different cleft subtypes might reflect differences in their aetiologies, with DNA methylation either playing a causal role in development of OFC subtypes or reflecting causal genetic or environmental factors.
Effects of prune consumption on the ratio of 2-hydroxyestrone to 16-hydroxyestrone 1 – 3

Background: A higher urinary ratio of the biologically inactive estrogen metabolite, 2-hydroxyestrone (2OHE1), to the biologically active metabolite, 16 -hydroxyestrone (16 OHE1), may be associated with a lower risk of breast cancer. High fiber intake is also associated with decreased breast cancer risk. Objective: We investigated the effects of prunes, which are naturally rich in both soluble and insoluble fiber, on the concentrations of 2OHE1 and 16 OHE1 and on the ratio of 2OHE1 to 16 OHE1. Design: Nineteen healthy premenopausal women consumed their habitual diets for 3 menstrual cycles and then consumed 100 g prunes/d for the next 3 cycles. Concentrations of urinary 2OHE1 and 16 OHE1 were determined during the follicular and luteal phases. Results: Prune supplementation increased total and soluble fiber intakes by 4 and 2 g/d, respectively (P < 0.001). Mean (± SEM) luteal 2OHE1 excretion decreased from 3.92 ± 0.79 to 2.20 ± 0.40 nmol/mmol creatinine during the third cycle (P = 0.017). Luteal 16 OHE1 excretion decreased from 1.38 ± 0.24 to 0.87 ± 0.10 and 0.87 ± 0.15 nmol/mmol creatinine during the first and third cycles, respectively (P = 0.018 for both values). Follicular 16 OHE1 excretion decreased significantly only during the first cycle (from 0.82 ± 0.12 to 0.45 ± 0.09 nmol/mmol creatinine; P = 0.005). The 2OHE1-16 OHE1 ratio did not change significantly after prune supplementation. Conclusions: Prune supplementation significantly decreased the excretion of 16 OHE1 during the follicular phase of the first menstrual cycle and during the luteal phases of both the first and third menstrual cycles. The 2OHE1-16 OHE1 ratio did not change significantly. The potential significance of the decrease in 16 OHE1 excretion, without a change in the 2OHE1-16 OHE1 ratio, on the prevention of estrogen-dependent cancers remains to be determined. Am J Clin Nutr 2002;76:1422–7.
Feasibility Assessment of Using Power Plant Waste Heat in Large Scale Horticulture Facility Energy Supply Systems

Recently, the Korean government has been carrying out projects to construct several large scale horticulture facilities. However, it is difficult for an energy supply to operate stably and economically with only a conventional fossil fuel boiler system. For this reason, several unused energy sources have become attractive and it was found that power plant waste heat has the greatest potential for application in this scenario. In this study, we performed a feasibility assessment of power plant waste heat as an energy source for horticulture facilities. As a result, it was confirmed that there was a sufficient amount of energy potential for the use of waste heat to supply energy to the assumed area. In Dangjin, an horticultural area of 500 ha could be constructed by utilizing 20% of the energy reserves. In Hadong, a horticulture facility can be set up to be 260 ha with 7.4% of the energy reserves. In Youngdong, an assumed area of 65 ha could be built utilizing about 19% of the energy reserves. Furthermore, the payback period was calculated in order to evaluate the economic feasibility compared with a conventional system. The initial investment costs can be recovered by the approximately 83% reduction in the annual operating costs.
CPAP versus oxygen in obstructive sleep apnea.

BACKGROUND Obstructive sleep apnea is associated with hypertension, inflammation, and increased cardiovascular risk. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) reduces blood pressure, but adherence is often suboptimal, and the benefit beyond management of conventional risk factors is uncertain. Since intermittent hypoxemia may underlie cardiovascular sequelae of sleep apnea, we evaluated the effects of nocturnal supplemental oxygen and CPAP on markers of cardiovascular risk. METHODS We conducted a randomized, controlled trial in which patients with cardiovascular disease or multiple cardiovascular risk factors were recruited from cardiology practices. Patients were screened for obstructive sleep apnea with the use of the Berlin questionnaire, and home sleep testing was used to establish the diagnosis. Participants with an apnea-hypopnea index of 15 to 50 events per hour were randomly assigned to receive education on sleep hygiene and healthy lifestyle alone (the control group) or, in addition to education, either CPAP or nocturnal supplemental oxygen. Cardiovascular risk was assessed at baseline and after 12 weeks of the study treatment. The primary outcome was 24-hour mean arterial pressure. RESULTS Of 318 patients who underwent randomization, 281 (88%) could be evaluated for ambulatory blood pressure at both baseline and follow-up. On average, the 24-hour mean arterial pressure at 12 weeks was lower in the group receiving CPAP than in the control group (-2.4 mm Hg; 95% confidence interval [CI], -4.7 to -0.1; P=0.04) or the group receiving supplemental oxygen (-2.8 mm Hg; 95% CI, -5.1 to -0.5; P=0.02). There was no significant difference in the 24-hour mean arterial pressure between the control group and the group receiving oxygen. A sensitivity analysis performed with the use of multiple imputation approaches to assess the effect of missing data did not change the results of the primary analysis. CONCLUSIONS In patients with cardiovascular disease or multiple cardiovascular risk factors, the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea with CPAP, but not nocturnal supplemental oxygen, resulted in a significant reduction in blood pressure. (Funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and others; HeartBEAT ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01086800 .).
Centroid-Based Actionable 3D Subspace Clustering

Actionable 3D subspace clustering from real-world continuous-valued 3D (i.e., object-attribute-context) data promises tangible benefits such as discovery of biologically significant protein residues and profitable stocks, but existing algorithms are inadequate in solving this clustering problem; most of them are not actionable (ability to suggest profitable or beneficial actions to users), do not allow incorporation of domain knowledge, and are parameter sensitive, i.e., the wrong threshold setting reduces the cluster quality. Moreover, its 3D structure complicates this clustering problem. We propose a centroid-based actionable 3D subspace clustering framework, named CATSeeker, which allows incorporation of domain knowledge, and achieves parameter insensitivity and excellent performance through a unique combination of singular value decomposition, numerical optimization, and 3D frequent itemset mining. Experimental results on synthetic, protein structural, and financial data show that CATSeeker significantly outperforms all the competing methods in terms of efficiency, parameter insensitivity, and cluster usefulness.
Visibility thresholds for compression-induced image blocking: measurements and models

The present investigation compares performance of two objective video quality metrics in predicting the visual threshold for the detection of blocking impairments associated with MPEG-2 compression. The visibility thresholds for both saturated color and gray-scale targets are measured. The test material consists of image sequences in which either saturated color or gray-scale targets exhibiting blocking are varied in luminance contrast from -44 dB to -5 dB against a constant gray background. Stimulus presentation is by the 'method of limits' under International Telecommunications Union Rec. 500 conditions. Results find the detection of blocking impairments at Michelson contrast levels between -28 dB and -33 dB. This result is consistent with values reported by other investigators for luminance contrast detection thresholds. A small, but statistically significant difference is found between the detection threshold of saturated color patterns versus luma-only images. The results suggest, however, that blocking impairment detections controlled mainly by display luminance. Two objective metrics are applied to gray-scale image sequences, yielding measures of perceptible image blocking for each frame. A relatively simple blocking detector and a more elaborate discrete cosine transform error metric correlate well over the contrast range examined. Also, the two measures correlate highly with measured image contrast. Both objective metrics agree closely with visual threshold measurements, yielding threshold predictions of approximately -29 dB.
Simulation d ’ ordonnancement sur la Grille avec deadlines et co-allocations

One of the true challenges in resource management in grids is to provide support for co-allocation, that is, the allocation of resources in multiples autonomous subsystems of a grid to single jobs. With reservation-based local schedulers, a grid scheduler can reserve processors with these schedulers to achieve simultaneous processor availability. However, with queuing-based local schedulers, it is much more difficult to guarantee this. In this paper we present mechanisms and policies for working around the lack of reservation mechanisms for jobs with deadlines that require co-allocation, and simulations of these mechanisms and policies. Key-words: Grid, Scheduling, Simulation This text is also available as a research report of the Laboratoire de l’Informatique du Parallélisme http://www.ens-lyon.fr/LIP. Simulation d’ordonnancement sur la Grille avec deadlines et co-allocations Résumé : Un des véritables défis pour la gestion des ressources dans les environnements de type grilles est de fournir un support pour la co-allocation. La co-allocation est l’allocation des ressources dans des sous-systèmes autonomes et différents pour des tâches uniques. Aves des ordonnanceurs locaux à base de réservation, un ordonnanceur de grille peut faire appel à ces derniers pour réserver des processeurs afin d’utiliser efficacement les processeurs disponibles. Cependant, avec des ordonnanceurs locaux à base de système batch, il est beaucoup plus difficile de garantir une utilisation efficace des processeurs. Dans cet article nous proposons des mécanismes et des politiques pour palier au manque de mécanismes de réservation avec une date limite que requiert la co-allocation. Nous avons réalisé des simulations afin de valider ces mécanismes. Mots-clés : Grille, Ordonnancement, Simulation Simulating Grid Schedulers with Deadlines and Co-Allocation 3
A New Approach to Collaborative Filtering: Operator Estimation with Spectral Regularization

We present a general approach for collaborative filtering (CF) using spectral regularization to learn linear operators mapping a set of "users" to a set of possibly desired "objects". In particular, several recent low-rank type matrix-completion methods for CF are shown to be special cases of our proposed framework. Unlike existing regularization-based CF, our approach can be used to incorporate additional information such as attributes of the users/objects---a feature currently lacking in existing regularization-based CF approaches---using popular and well-known kernel methods. We provide novel representer theorems that we use to develop new estimation methods. We then provide learning algorithms based on low-rank decompositions and test them on a standard CF data set. The experiments indicate the advantages of generalizing the existing regularization-based CF methods to incorporate related information about users and objects. Finally, we show that certain multi-task learning methods can be also seen as special cases of our proposed approach.
Sentiment Analysis of Tunisian Dialects: Linguistic Ressources and Experiments

Dialectal Arabic (DA) is significantly different from the Arabic language taught in schools and used in written communication and formal speech (broadcast news, religion, politics, etc.). There are many existing researches in the field of Arabic language Sentiment Analysis (SA); however, they are generally restricted to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or some dialects of economic or political interest. In this paper we are interested in the SA of the Tunisian Dialect. We utilize Machine Learning techniques to determine the polarity of comments written in Tunisian Dialect. First, we evaluate the SA systems performances with models trained using freely available MSA and Multi-dialectal data sets. We then collect and annotate a Tunisian Dialect corpus of 17.000 comments from Facebook. This corpus allows us a significant accuracy improvement compared to the best model trained on other Arabic dialects or MSA data. We believe that this first freely available corpus will be valuable to researchers working in the field of Tunisian Sentiment Analysis and similar areas.
Reliability and Accuracy of Resident Evaluations of Surgical Faculty

This study examines the reliability and accuracy of ratings by general surgery residents of surgical faculty. Twenty-three of 33 residents anonymously and voluntarily evaluated 62 surgeons in June, 1988; 24 of 28 residents evaluated 64 surgeons in June, 1989. Each resident rated each surgeon on a 5-point scale for each of 10 areas ofperformance: technical ability, basic science knowledge, clinical knowledge, judgment, peer relations, patient relations, reliability, industry, personal appearance, and reaction to pressure. Reliability analyses evaluated internal consistency and interrater correlation. Accuracy analyses evaluated halo error, leniency/severity, central tendency, and range restriction. Ratings had high internal consistency (coefficient alpha = 0. 97). Interrater correlations were moderately high (average Pearson correlation = 0.63 among raters). Ratings were generally accurate, with halo error most prevalent and some evidence of leniency. Ratings by chief residents had the least halo. Results were generally replicable across the two academic years. We conclude that anonymous ratings of surgical faculty by groups of residents can provide a reliable and accurate evaluation method, ratings by chief residents are most accurate, and halo error may pose the greatest threat to accuracy, pointing to the needfor greater definition of evaluation items and scale points.
Globalization, the Bologna Process and African Universities: Limits and Contradictions of Market-oriented Higher Education Reforms

One of the greatest challenges posed by neo-liberal capitalist globalization is competitiveness. The birth of the Bologna Process in 1999 and the launching of the Erasmus Mundus in 2004 were serious attempts by Europe to make its higher education one of the most competitive systems in the world. Both initiatives were aimed at enhancing the compatibility and comparability of European higher education among its members as well as its attractiveness to other regions of the world. The implementation of the Bologna Process has, however, exposed the limits and contradictions of market-oriented higher education reforms. The experience of Europe has shown that neo-liberal higher education reforms under globalization can be manipulated as dictated by the exigencies of national interests. Europe has declared higher education a public good to be made equally accessible to all and to remain a public responsibility. This paper contends that Africa has a lot to learn from the implementation of the Bologna Process. Furthermore, the paper raises policy concerns about the implications of the implementation of the Erasmus Mundus so far from 2004 to 2008, as some evidence suggests that the students benefiting from the Erasmus Mundus programme may end up being part of the brain drain rather than brain gain for Africa. This would therefore hinder rather than promote African development, which the programme ostensibly aims at achieving. Consequently, the paper recommends that policy-makers in Africa should be weary of attempts to use the Bologna Process and the Erasmus Mundus programme as a subtle and new launching pad promoting the brain drain in Africa.
Up-regulation of flk-1/vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 by its ligand in a cerebral slice culture system.

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and its tyrosine kinase receptors VEGFR-1 (flt-1) and VEGFR-2 (flk-1/KDR) are key mediators of physiological and pathological angiogenesis. They are expressed in most tissues during embryonic development but are down-regulated in the adult, when angiogenesis ceases. Up-regulation of VEGFR-2 and of VEGF are observed in many pathological conditions under which angiogenesis is reinduced. A major regulator of VEGF expression is hypoxia. Although the temporal expression pattern of VEGFR-2 parallels VEGF expression to a high extent, little is known about its regulation. Here, we show that VEGFR-2 is highly expressed in early postnatal mouse brain but is down-regulated commencing at postnatal day 15 (P15) of mouse brain development and is hardly detectable in P30 mouse brain. Using P30 mouse brain slices, we observed that hypoxia up-regulates VEGFR-2 in the slices but not in human umbilical vein endothelial cells, suggesting the presence of a hypoxia-inducible factor in the murine neuroectoderm that up-regulates VEGFR-2. To identify the factors involved, normoxic P30 cerebral slices were cultured with growth factors that are either hypoxia-inducible (e.g., PDGF-BB, erythropoietin, and VEGF) and/or are known to act on endothelial cells (e.g., PDGF-BB, VEGF, and PIGF). Exogenously added recombinant VEGF led to an up-regulation of VEGFR-2 expression, which could be inhibited by preincubation with a neutralizing anti-VEGF antibody. Addition of PDGF-BB, PIGF, and erythropoietin had no effect on VEGFR-2 expression. Our results suggest a differential but synergistic regulation by hypoxia of VEGF and VEGFR-2: a direct induction of VEGF that subsequently up-regulates VEGFR-2 in endothelial cells. This autoenhancing system may represent an important mechanism of tumor angiogenesis.
The Specter of Supreme Court Criticism: Public Opinion and Unilateral Action

The conventional wisdom suggests that the judicial constraint on presidential unilateralism is weak: judicial challenges are rare and successful ones rarer still. However, we argue that courts have grown increasingly assertive in checking important unilateral policy initiatives in both the foreign and domestic arenas. This judicial reassertion also raises the prospect that courts may exert a more informal constraint on presidential power. Utilizing two experiments embedded on nationally representative surveys, we find evidence that even speculation about a judicial challenge can erode public support for unilateral action. For some issues the effect may be conditional on diffuse support for the Court. Anticipations of these political costs may help explain the relative paucity of major unilateral actions.