Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust image watermarking using dihedral angle based on maximum-likelihood detector

This study presents a robust image watermarking method based on geometric modelling. In this method, nine samples of the approximation coefficient of the image blocks are utilised to construct a plane in the three-dimensional (3D) space. The authors change the dihedral angle formed between the created plane and the x - y plane for data embedding. To preserve the imperceptibility of the watermark, geometrical computations are used to minimise the embedding distortion. Maximum-likelihood detector is implemented to extract the watermark in the noisy channel at the receiver side. The authors experimentally determine the probability density function of the embedding dihedral angle for Gaussian samples. Owing to embedding in the dihedral angle between two planes, the proposed scheme has high robustness to gain attacks. In addition, by using the low-frequency components of the image blocks for data embedding, high robustness against noise and compression attacks has been achieved. Experimental results confirm the validity of the theoretical analysis given in this study and show the superiority of the method over similar techniques in this field. The proposed method is also robust to a wide range of attacks, namely Gaussian filtering, median filtering, JPEG compression, Gaussian noise and scaling.
Fine‐needle aspiration cytology of Sister Mary Joseph's (paraumbilical) nodules

During a period of 5 years (2001–2005), six cases of Sister Mary Joseph's nodule (umbilical metastasis) were diagnosed by fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC). In all the cases, FNAC of umbilical nodules was the first investigation and subsequently the patients were investigated for the primary tumor. The primary carcinoma was found in the stomach in three cases, ovary in two cases and one case was of non‐Hodgkin's lymphoma. Based on our findings, we suggest FNAC as an initial diagnostic procedure in cases suspected of umbilical metastasis. It is not only simple, fast, accurate and inexpensive but can also save the patient from other invasive diagnostic procedures. Diagn. Cytopathol. 2008;36:348–350. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Decline in HIV and Syphilis Epidemics in Chinese Female Sex Workers (2000–2011): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background Female sex workers (FSWs) play an important role in transmitting HIV and syphilis from high-risk groups to the general population. However, the trends in HIV and syphilis epidemics in Chinese FSWs in the period after 2000 are unclear to date. Methods The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Statement was followed. Seven databases were searched for published peer-reviewed articles. The incidence of HIV and syphilis in FSWs in different time periods, provinces and workplaces in China were separately pooled by meta-analysis. Correlation analysis was conducted between HIV and syphilis incidence and study time, respectively. Results After 1,662 articles were screened, 190 published papers were included in the final analysis. Estimated HIV prevalence was 0.284% (95% CI: 0.080–0.488%) in the period 2000–2002, 0.211% (95% CI: 0.149–0.273%) in 2003–2005, 0.242% (95% CI: 0.190–0.294%) in 2006–2008 and 0.041% (95% CI: 0.024–0.058%) in 2009–2011. The corresponding syphilis prevalence was 9.669% (95% CI: 7.810–11.529%), 4.970% (95% CI: 4.384–5.556%), 4.404% (95% CI: 4.032–4.775%) and 3.169% (95% CI: 2.738–3.600%), respectively. Spearman rank correlation coefficients were −0.165 (p = 0.002) between HIV prevalence and study time, and −0.209 (p = 0.000) between syphilis prevalence and study time. The combined HIV prevalence was 0.318% (95% CI: 0.156–0.479%) in medium and high-tier workplaces and 0.393% (95% CI: 0.176–0.610%) in low-tier workplaces. The corresponding syphilis prevalence was 3.216% (95% CI: 2.192–4.240%) and 13.817% (95% CI: 10.589–17.044%), respectively. Conclusions Our data suggested a decline in HIV and syphilis epidemics in FSWs in China on a national level during the study period (2000–2011). FSWs in low-tier workplaces should be given more attention in the future to ensure they are included in prevention programs for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases.
Articulated motion discovery using pairs of trajectories

We propose an unsupervised approach for discovering characteristic motion patterns in videos of highly articulated objects performing natural, unscripted behaviors, such as tigers in the wild. We discover consistent patterns in a bottom-up manner by analyzing the relative displacements of large numbers of ordered trajectory pairs through time, such that each trajectory is attached to a different moving part on the object. The pairs of trajectories descriptor relies entirely on motion and is more discriminative than state-of-the-art features that employ single trajectories. Our method generates temporal video intervals, each automatically trimmed to one instance of the discovered behavior, and clusters them by type (e.g., running, turning head, drinking water). We present experiments on two datasets: dogs from YouTube-Objects and a new dataset of National Geographic tiger videos. Results confirm that our proposed descriptor outperforms existing appearance- and trajectory-based descriptors (e.g., HOG and DTFs) on both datasets and enables us to segment unconstrained animal video into intervals containing single behaviors.
Payments for Acute Myocardial Infarction Episodes-of-Care Initiated at Hospitals With and Without Interventional Capabilities

Background—It is unknown whether hospitals with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) capability provide costlier care than hospitals without PCI capability for patients with acute myocardial infarction. The growing number of PCI hospitals and higher rate of PCI use may result in higher costs for episodes-of-care initiated at PCI hospitals. However, higher rates of transfers and postacute care procedures may result in higher costs for episodes-of-care initiated at non-PCI hospitals. Methods and Results—We identified all 2008 acute myocardial infarction admissions among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries by principal discharge diagnosis and classified hospitals as PCI- or non-PCI-capable on the basis of hospitals’ 2007 PCI performance. We added all payments from admission through 30 days postadmission, including payments to hospitals other than the admitting hospital. We calculated and compared risk-standardized payment for PCI and non-PCI hospitals using 2-level hierarchical generalized linear models, adjusting for patient demographics and clinical characteristics. PCI hospitals had a higher mean 30-day risk-standardized payment than non-PCI hospitals (PCI, $20 340; non-PCI, $19 713; P<0.001). Patients presenting to PCI hospitals had higher PCI rates (39.2% versus 13.2%; P<0.001) and higher coronary artery bypass graft rates (9.5% versus 4.4%; P<0.001) during index admissions, lower transfer rates (2.2% versus 25.4%; P<0.001), and lower revascularization rates within 30 days (0.15% versus 0.27%; P<0.0001) than those presenting to non-PCI hospitals. Conclusions—Despite higher PCI and coronary artery bypass graft rates for Medicare patients initially presenting to PCI hospitals, PCI hospitals were only $627 costlier than non-PCI hospitals for the treatment of patients with acute myocardial infarction in 2008.
Burkholderia mallei Cluster 1 Type VI Secretion Mutants Exhibit Growth and Actin Polymerization Defects in RAW 264.7 Murine Macrophages

ABSTRACT Burkholderia mallei is a facultative intracellular pathogen that causes severe disease in animals and humans. Recent studies have shown that the cluster 1 type VI secretion system (T6SS-1) expressed by this organism is essential for survival in a hamster model of glanders. To better understand the role of T6SS-1 in the pathogenesis of disease, studies were initiated to examine the interactions of B. mallei tssE mutants with RAW 264.7 murine macrophages. Results obtained by utilizing modified gentamicin protection assays indicated that although the tssE mutants were able to survive within RAW 264.7 cells, significant growth defects were observed in comparison to controls. In addition, analysis of infected monolayers by differential interference contrast and fluorescence microscopy demonstrated that the tssE mutants lacked the ability to induce multinucleated giant cell formation. Via the use of fluorescence microscopy, tssE mutants were shown to undergo escape from lysosome-associated membrane protein 1-positive vacuoles. Curiously, however, following entry into the cytosol, the mutants exhibited actin polymerization defects resulting in inefficient intra- and intercellular spread characteristics. Importantly, all mutant phenotypes observed in this study could be restored by complementation. Based upon these findings, it appears that T6SS-1 plays a critical role in growth and actin-based motility following uptake of B. mallei by RAW 264.7 cells.
The Impact of the Green Supply Chain Management on Environmental-Based Marketing Performance

This study aims to investigate “The impact of the Green Supply Chain Management” (GSCM) on Environmental-Based Marketing Performance. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the researchers deployed the descriptive analytical approach due to its relevance to this kind of research. The sample used in this study was the stratified convenience sampling, where the study targeted the top and middle managerial levels from the population, and the targeted managerial levels was made up of (167) employees in the five companies. 125 questionnaires were distributed for the five companies with (25) questionnaires for each company. The accepted questionnaire was (96). The results of the research showed that the elements of the Green Supply Chain Management “Internal Environmental Management, Green Purchasing, Green Information Systems, Cooperation with Customers, Eco-Design and Packaging, and Investment Recovery” practices affected the environmental-based marketing performance. The results showed the element with significant impact on the environmental-based marketing performance was internal environmental management.
Techniques of the Optimization Based in Artificial Intelligence Applied to Hydrothermal Power Systems Operation Planning

The Hydrothermal Power Systems Operation Planning (HPSOP) aims to determine a strategy for each generation plant at each time interval in order to minimize the expected value of operating costs in the planning horizon. This is a challenge for managers of the Energy Sector, because of the stochastic nature of the problem which is coupled in time (dynamic) and in space (interconnected), large, not separable, non-convex and the target function is non-linear. Therefore, the application of classical techniques presents several limitations. In order to overcome those limitations, improvement of traditional methods, or the development of alternative heuristics is a vital step in the operation of HPSOP. This paper presents an application of two of this new heuristics of Artificial Intelligence: Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimization. Those techniques were applied to a test system with data from Brazilian power plants. The results showed a good performance when compared with traditional optimization techniques already used in HPSOP. It is noteworthy that in the current study, the applications of traditional optimization techniques and Artificial Intelligence have made use of real characteristics of plant operation without the need to simplify the original formulation.
On the Ergodic Rate Lower Bounds With Applications to Massive MIMO

A well-known lower bound widely used in the massive MIMO literature hinges on channel hardening, i.e., the phenomenon for which, thanks to the large number of antennas, the effective channel coefficients resulting from beamforming tend to deterministic quantities. If the channel hardening effect does not hold sufficiently well, this bound may be quite far from the actual achievable rate. In recent developments of massive MIMO, several scenarios where channel hardening is not sufficiently pronounced have emerged. These settings include, for example, the case of small scattering angular spread, yielding highly correlated channel vectors, and the case of cell-free massive MIMO. In this short contribution, we present two new bounds on the achievable ergodic rate that offer a complementary behavior with respect to the classical bound: while the former performs well in the case of channel hardening and/or when the system is interference-limited (notably, in the case of finite number of antennas and conjugate beamforming transmission), the new bounds perform well when the useful signal coefficient does not harden but the channel coherence block length is large with respect to the number of users, and in the case where interference is nearly entirely eliminated by zero-forcing beamforming. Overall, using the most appropriate bound depending on the system operating conditions yields a better understanding of the actual performance of systems where channel hardening may not occur, even in the presence of a very large number of antennas.
Beyond Bevacizumab: An Outlook to New Anti-Angiogenics for the Treatment of Ovarian Cancer

In addition to the monoclonal vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) antibody bevacizumab, several alternative anti-angiogenic treatment strategies for ovarian cancer patients have been evaluated in clinical trials. Apart from targeting extracellular receptors by the antibody aflibercept or the peptibody trebananib, the multikinase inhibitors pazopanib, nintedanib, cediranib, sunitinib, and sorafenib were developed to interfere with VEGF receptors and multiple additional intracellular pathways. Nintedanib and pazopanib significantly improved progression-free survival in two positive phase III trials for first-line therapy. A reliable effect on overall survival could, however, not be observed for any anti-angiogenic first-line therapies so far. In terms of recurrent disease, two positive phase III trials revealed that trebananib and cediranib are effective anti-angiogenic agents for this indication. Patient selection and biomarker guided prediction of response seems to be a central aspect for future studies. Combining anti-angiogenics with other targeted therapies to possibly spare chemotherapy in certain constellations represents another very interesting future perspective for clinical trials. This short review gives an overview of current clinical trials for anti-angiogenic treatment strategies beyond bevacizumab. In this context, possible future perspectives combining anti-angiogenics with other targeted therapies and the need for specific biomarkers predicting response are elucidated.
Discrepancy of High-Dimensional Permutations

Let $L$ be an order-$n$ Latin square. For $X, Y, Z \subseteq \{1, . ,n\}$, let $L(X, Y. Z)$ be the number of triples $i\in X, j\in Y, k\in Z$ such that $L(i,j) = k$. We conjecture that asymptotically almost every Latin square satisfies $|L(X, Y, Z) - \frac 1n |X||Y||Z||\le O(\sqrt{|X||Y||Z|})$ for every $X, Y$ and $Z$. Let $\varepsilon(L):= \max |X||Y||Z|$ when $L(X, Y, Z)=0$. The above conjecture implies that $\varepsilon(L) \le O(n^2)$ holds asymptotically almost surely (this bound is obviously tight). We show that there exist Latin squares with $\varepsilon(L) \le O(n^2)$, and that $\varepsilon(L) \le O(n^2 \log^2 n)$ for almost every order-$n$ Latin square. On the other hand, we recall that $\varepsilon(L)\geq \Omega(n^{33/14})$ if $L$ is the multiplication table of an order-$n$ group. Some of these results extend to higher dimensions. Many open problems remain.
Synthetic surfactant containing SP-B and SP-C mimics is superior to single-peptide formulations in rabbits with chemical acute lung injury

Background. Chemical spills are on the rise and inhalation of toxic chemicals may induce chemical acute lung injury (ALI)/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Although the pathophysiology of ALI/ARDS is well understood, the absence of specific antidotes has limited the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Objectives. Surfactant inactivation and formation of free radicals are important pathways in (chemical) ALI. We tested the potential of lipid mixtures with advanced surfactant protein B and C (SP-B and C) mimics to improve oxygenation and lung compliance in rabbits with lavage- and chemical-induced ALI/ARDS. Methods. Ventilated young adult rabbits underwent repeated saline lung lavages or underwent intratracheal instillation of hydrochloric acid to induce ALI/ARDS. After establishment of respiratory failure rabbits were treated with a single intratracheal dose of 100 mg/kg of synthetic surfactant composed of 3% Super Mini-B (S-MB), a SP-B mimic, and/or SP-C33 UCLA, a SP-C mimic, in a lipid mixture (DPPC:POPC:POPG 5:3:2 by weight), the clinical surfactant Infasurf®, a bovine lung lavage extract with SP-B and C, or synthetic lipids alone. End-points consisted of arterial oxygenation, dynamic lung compliance, and protein and lipid content in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Potential mechanism of surfactant action for S-MB and SP-C33 UCLA were investigated with captive bubble surfactometry (CBS) assays. Results. All three surfactant peptide/lipid mixtures and Infasurf equally lowered the minimum surface tension on CBS, and also improved oxygenation and lung compliance. In both animal models, the two-peptide synthetic surfactant with S-MB and SP-C33 UCLA led to better arterial oxygenation and lung compliance than single peptide synthetic surfactants and Infasurf. Synthetic surfactants and Infasurf improved lung function further in lavage- than in chemical-induced respiratory failure, with the difference probably due to greater capillary-alveolar protein leakage and surfactant dysfunction after HCl instillation than following lung lavage. At the end of the duration of the experiments, synthetic surfactants provided more clinical stability in ALI/ARDS than Infasurf, and the protein content of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid was lowest for the two-peptide synthetic surfactant with S-MB and SP-C33 UCLA. Conclusion. Advanced synthetic surfactant with robust SP-B and SP-C mimics is better equipped to tackle surfactant inactivation in chemical ALI than synthetic surfactant with only a single surfactant peptide or animal-derived surfactant.
Effects of Steel Fibers on Short Beams Loaded in Shear

30 fiber-reinforced concrete beams were tested under varying conditions to study the influences of steel fibers on cracking and ultimate loads, as well as on deformation and failure characteristics. Several existing methods for estimating flexural or shear resistance were compared and discussed through their prediction of test results. Increased cracking and ultimate loads and improved ductility, mostly dependent on the volume fraction of fibers, were observed. The deformation concentrated at 1 or 2 major cracks, however, collapsed the beams regardless of the failure mode. Nonetheless, the beams, which failed in a flexural and a shear-flexural mode, did exhibit good ductility. Flexural capacities predicted by the procedure given by ACI Committee 544 were very conservative. The predicted shear capacities using different formulas varied considerably. The feasibility of the application of a plastic theory in determining shear resistance was examined, offering much promise.
Big Five Personality Traits Reflected in Job Applicants' Social Media Postings

Job applicants and incumbents often use social media for personal communications allowing for direct observation of their social communications "unfiltered" for employer consumption. As such, these data offer a glimpse of employees in settings free from the impression management pressures present during evaluations conducted for applicant screening and research purposes. This study investigated whether job applicants' (N=175) personality characteristics are reflected in the content of their social media postings. Participant self-reported social media content related to (a) photos and text-based references to alcohol and drug use and (b) criticisms of superiors and peers (so-called "badmouthing" behavior) were compared to traditional personality assessments. Results indicated that extraverted candidates were prone to postings related to alcohol and drugs. Those low in agreeableness were particularly likely to engage in online badmouthing behaviors. Evidence concerning the relationships between conscientiousness and the outcomes of interest was mixed.
Tissue Kallikrein Is Involved in the Cardioprotective Effect of AT1-Receptor Blockade in Acute Myocardial Ischemia

Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors limit infarct size in animal models of myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury. This effect has been shown to be due to inhibition of bradykinin degradation rather than inhibition of angiotensin II formation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether angiotensin AT1 receptor blockade by losartan or its active metabolite EXP3174 protects against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury in mice and whether this protection is mediated by the kallikrein kinin system. We subjected anesthetized mice to 30 min of coronary artery occlusion followed by 3 h of reperfusion and evaluated infarct size immediately after reperfusion. Losartan (Los) or EXP3174 [2-n-butyl-4-chloro-1-[(2′-(1H-tetrazol-5-yl)biphenyl-4-yI)methyl]imidazole-5-carboxylic acid] were administered 5 min before starting reperfusion at dosages determined by preliminary studies of blood pressure effect and inhibition of angiotensin pressor response. Compared with saline, both drugs significantly reduced myocardial infarct size by roughly 40% (P < 0.001). Pretreatment of mice with the selective AT2 receptor antagonist PD123,319 [S-(+)-1-([4-(dimethylamino)-3-methylphenyl]methyl)-5-(diphenylacetyl)-4,5,6,7-tetrahydro-1H-imidazo(4,5-c)pyridine-6-carboxylic acid] did not affect infarct size in the absence of losartan but abolished the reduction in infarct size provided by losartan. In tissue kallikrein gene-deficient mice (TK–/–), losartan no longer reduced infarct size. Pretreatment of wild-type mice with the B2 receptor antagonist icatibant reproduced the effect of TK deficiency. We conclude that AT1 receptor blockade provides cardioprotection against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury through stimulation of AT2 receptors. Kallikrein and B2 receptor are major determinants of this cardioprotective effect of losartan. Our results support the hypothesis of a coupling between AT2 receptors and kallikrein during AT1 receptor blockade, which plays a major role in cardioprotection.