Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SENSOR MODEL EVALUATION AND DEM GENERATION FOR CARTOSAT-1

In this paper the sensor model evaluation and DEM generation for CARTOSAT-1 pan stereo data is described. The model is tested on CARTOSAT-1 data provided under the ISPRS-ISRO Cartosat-1 Scientific Assessment Programme (C-SAP). The data has been evaluated using the along track Kepler model which is developed in UCL, and the Rational Polynomials Coefficient model (RPCs) model which is included in Leica Photogrammetry Suite (LPS). DEM is generated in LPS. The UCL model is a rigorous model based on the modified collinearity equations where the satellite motion during the acquisition time is simulated. On the other hand the RPCs model is provided with the images. In a few words the RPCs model should be refined using a least four GCPs in order to reach to an accepted accuracy close to pixel. The accuracy is not improved if more GCPs are involved in the solution. The UCL model as it is described in this paper is capable to reach better accuracy than RPCs model (two-three times). In DEM generation the accuracy is within the specification of the map products.
CpG island methylation in sporadic and neurofibromatis type 2-associated schwannomas.

PURPOSE The purpose of this research was to examine the DNA methylation profile of schwannomas. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We examined the DNA methylation status of 12 tumor-related genes (NF2, RB1, p14(ARF), p16(INK4a), p73, TIMP-3, MGMT, DAPK, THBS1, caspase-8, TP53, and GSTP1) in 44 sporadic and/or NF2-associated schwannomas using methylation-specific PCR. RESULTS The most frequently methylated genes were THBS1 (36%), p73 (27%), MGMT (20%), NF2 (18%), and TIMP-3 (18%). The RB1/p16INK4a gene pair displayed aberrant methylayed alleles in 15% of cases, whereas methylation was relatively rare in the other genes (<5%). Methylation was tumor specific because it was absent in two nonneoplastic nerve sheath samples and two nonneoplastic brain samples studied as controls. CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate that aberrant methylation seems to be a mechanism for NF2 gene inactivation, considered an early step in schwannoma tumorigenesis, and as well, aberrant hypermethylation of other tumor-related genes might represent secondary events that also contribute to the development of these tumors.
Discriminative Learning for Speech Recognition: Theory and Practice

In this book, we introduce the background and mainstream methods of probabilistic modeling and discriminative parameter optimization for speech recognition. The specific models treated in depth include the widely used exponential-family distributions and the hidden Markov model. A detailed study is presented on unifying the common objective functions for discriminative learning in speech recognition, namely maximum mutual information (MMI), minimum classification error, and minimum phone/word error. The unification is presented, with rigorous mathematical analysis, in a common rational-function form. This common form enables the use of the growth transformation (or extended Baum–Welch) optimization framework in discriminative learning of model parameters. In addition to all the necessary introduction of the background and tutorial material on the subject, we also included technical details on the derivation of the parameter optimization formulas for exponential-family distribut ons, discrete hidden Markov models (HMMs), and continuous-density HMMs in discriminative learning. Selected experimental results obtained by the authors in firsthand are presented to show that discriminative learning can lead to superior speech recognition performance over conventional parameter learning. Details on major algorithmic implementation issues with practical significance are provided to enable the practitioners to directly reproduce the theory in the earlier part of the book into engineering practice. Table of Contents: Introduction and Background / Statistical Speech Recognition: A Tutorial / Discriminative Learning: A Unified Objective Function / Discriminative Learning Algorithm for Exponential-Family Distributions / Discriminative Learning Algorithm for Hidden Markov Model / Practical Implementation of Discriminative Learning / Selected Experimental Results / Epilogue / Major Symbols Used in the Book and Their Descriptions / Mathematical Notation / Bibliography
3 Goal-Directed and Stimulus-Driven Determinants of Attentional Control

Selective visual attention to objects and locations depends both on deliberate behavioral goals that regulate even early visual representations (goal-directed influences) and on autonomous neural responses to sensory input (stimulus-driven influences). In this chapter, I argue that deliberate goal-directed attentional strategies are always constrained by involuntary, ”hard-wired computations, and that an appropriate research strategy is to delineate the nature of the interactions imposed by these constraints. To illustrate the interaction between goal-directed and stimulus-driven attentional control, four domains of visual selection are reviewed. First, selection by location is both spatially and temporally limited, reflecting in part early visual representations of the scene. Second, selection by feature is an available attentional strategy, but it appears to be mediated by location, and feature salience alone does not govern the deployment of attention. Third, early visual segmentation processes that parse a scene into perceptual object representations enable object-based selection, but they also enforce selection of entire objects, and not just isolated features. And fourth, the appearance of a new perceptual object captures attention in a stimulus-driven fashion, but even this is subject to some top-down attentional control. Possible mechanisms for the interaction between bottom-up and top-down control are
Wikipedia-Based Distributional Semantics for Entity Relatedness

Wikipedia provides an enormous amount of background knowledge to reason about the semantic relatedness between two entities. We propose Wikipedia-based Distributional Semantics for Entity Relatedness (DiSER), which represents the semantics of an entity by its distribution in the high dimensional concept space derived from Wikipedia. DiSER measures the semantic relatedness between two entities by quantifying the distance between the corresponding high-dimensional vectors. DiSER builds the model by taking the annotated entities only, therefore it improves over existing approaches, which do not distinguish between an entity and its surface form. We evaluate the approach on a benchmark that contains the relative entity relatedness scores for 420 entity pairs. Our approach improves the accuracy by 12% on state of the art methods for computing entity relatedness. We also show an evaluation of DiSER in the Entity Disambiguation task on a dataset of 50 sentences with highly ambiguous entity mentions. It shows an improvement of 10% in precision over the best performing methods. In order to provide the resource that can be used to ﬁnd out all the related entities for a given entity, a graph is constructed, where the nodes represent Wikipedia entities and the relatedness scores are reﬂected by the edges. Wikipedia contains more than 4.1 millions entities, which required efﬁcient computation of the relatedness scores between the corresponding 17 trillions of entity-pairs.
A randomized binary modular exponentiation based RSA algorithm against the comparative power analysis

In this paper, we propose a binary modular exponentiation RSA countermeasure in order to defend against the comparative power analysis by dividing the private key e into n random parts and randomly choosing one of the parts to do one unit operation each selection till the modular exponentiation of all parts are completed. When the bit length of the private key computed actually is less than 4/3 of the original bit length of the private key, our method is more efficient and has more probability to against the exhaustive attack than the squaring-and-multiply-always right-to-left binary method which was previously considered to be the only effective binary method against the comparative power analysis. Further, the efficiency and security of our algorithm can be improved even more by adopting the parallel computing architecture.
The Importance of De Facto Decentralization in Primary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa PTAs and Local Accountability in Uganda

In the past two decades, cash-strapped countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have been unable to provide even rudimentary primary education systems. User fees for primary education have become common, as has the intervention of parent-teacher associations (PTAs), which requires further fees. A look at the relationship between PTAs and local government in Jinja, Uganda, demonstrates that the de facto decentralization of the provision of primary education to PTAs provides an opportunity for building political accountability; when parents bring resources to the table, governments must share resources and responsibility and relationships of accountability emerge. These relationships are threatened by the new universal primary education (UPE) policy for which Uganda has few resources and little accountability. Current UNESCO initiatives for establishing UPE in Sub-Saharan Africa call for participation and accountability but may ignore the potential for accountability and improvement through partnerships between governments and PTAs.
How and why fathers are involved in their children’s education: gendered model of parent involvement

Abstract Accumulating evidence points to the unique contributions fathers make to their children’s academic outcomes. However, the large body of multi-disciplinary literature on fatherhood does not address how fathers engage in specific practices relevant to education, while the educational research in the United States focused on parent involvement often excludes fathers. There is no theoretical framework up to date explaining the gendered nature of parental educational involvement. How and why might fathers’ involvement differentially influence children’s achievement from mothers’? In this article, based on a review of existing research locating school involvement as a major area of difference between fathers and mothers, I propose a revised model describing the sources of father involvement drawing on Hoover-Dempsey and Lamb’s models of parent involvement and fathering explaining why fathers and mothers might differ over school involvement.
Prevalence of symptomatic pelvic floor disorders in US women.

CONTEXT Pelvic floor disorders (urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse) affect many women. No national prevalence estimates derived from the same population-based sample exists for multiple pelvic floor disorders in women in the United States. OBJECTIVE To provide national prevalence estimates of symptomatic pelvic floor disorders in US women. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A cross-sectional analysis of 1961 nonpregnant women (>or=20 years) who participated in the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a nationally representative survey of the US noninstitutionalized population. Women were interviewed in their homes and then underwent standardized physical examinations in a mobile examination center. Urinary incontinence (score of >or=3 on a validated incontinence severity index, constituting moderate to severe leakage), fecal incontinence (at least monthly leakage of solid, liquid, or mucous stool), and pelvic organ prolapse (seeing/feeling a bulge in or outside the vagina) symptoms were assessed. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Weighted prevalence estimates of urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse symptoms. RESULTS The weighted prevalence of at least 1 pelvic floor disorder was 23.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 21.2%-26.2%), with 15.7% of women (95% CI, 13.2%-18.2%) experiencing urinary incontinence, 9.0% of women (95% CI, 7.3%-10.7%) experiencing fecal incontinence, and 2.9% of women (95% CI, 2.1%-3.7%) experiencing pelvic organ prolapse. The proportion of women reporting at least 1 disorder increased incrementally with age, ranging from 9.7% (95% CI, 7.8%-11.7%) in women between ages 20 and 39 years to 49.7% (95% CI, 40.3%-59.1%) in those aged 80 years or older (P < .001), and parity (12.8% [95% CI, 9.0%-16.6%], 18.4% [95% CI, 12.9%-23.9%], 24.6% [95% CI, 19.5%-29.8%], and 32.4% [95% CI, 27.8%-37.1%] for 0, 1, 2, and 3 or more deliveries, respectively; P < .001). Overweight and obese women were more likely to report at least 1 pelvic floor disorder than normal weight women (26.3% [95% CI, 21.7%-30.9%], 30.4% [95% CI, 25.8%-35.0%], and 15.1% [95% CI, 11.6%-18.7%], respectively; P < .001). We detected no differences in prevalence by racial/ethnic group. CONCLUSION Pelvic floor disorders affect a substantial proportion of women and increase with age.
Rotor flux-barrier design for torque ripple reduction in synchronous reluctance motors

The torque produced by a synchronous reluctance machine (including the PM assisted configuration) is studied analytically, to the aim of characterizing the effect of the position of the flux-barriers on the torque ripple. It is verified that the position of the flux-barrier ends highly influences the torque waveform. To the aim of reducing the torque harmonic contents, a new strategy is proposed based on the choice of couples of flux-barriers of different shapes. The couples of the flux-barriers are chosen so as to obtain compensation between the torque harmonics produced by each couple of them. Experimental results on two prototypes confirm the analytical prediction
B-tests: Low Variance Kernel Two-Sample Tests

A family of maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) kernel two-sample tests is introduced. Members of the test family are called Block-tests or B-tests, since the test statistic is an average over MMDs computed on subsets of the samples. The choice of block size allows control over the tradeoff between test power and computation time. In this respect, the $B$-test family combines favorable properties of previously proposed MMD two-sample tests: B-tests are more powerful than a linear time test where blocks are just pairs of samples, yet they are more computationally efficient than a quadratic time test where a single large block incorporating all the samples is used to compute a U-statistic. A further important advantage of the B-tests is their asymptotically Normal null distribution: this is by contrast with the U-statistic, which is degenerate under the null hypothesis, and for which estimates of the null distribution are computationally demanding. Recent results on kernel selection for hypothesis testing transfer seamlessly to the B-tests, yielding a means to optimize test power via kernel choice.
Increased serum and urinary microRNAs in children with idiopathic nephrotic syndrome.

BACKGROUND MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are present in body fluids and may have the potential to serve as disease biomarkers. This study explored the clinical value of miRNAs in serum and urine as biomarkers for idiopathic childhood nephrotic syndrome (NS). METHODS We obtained serum samples from 159 NS children (24 steroid resistant and 135 steroid sensitive), 109 age/sex-matched healthy controls and 44 children with other kidney diseases. Serum miRNAs were analyzed with the TaqMan Low Density Array and then validated with a quantitative reverse-transcription PCR assay with 126 individual samples. Moreover, we collected paired serum samples from 50 patients before and after treatment to determine the value of these miRNAs for condition assessment. In addition, urine samples from these patients were examined for candidate miRNAs. RESULTS The concentrations of serum miR-30a-5p, miR-151-3p, miR-150, miR-191, and miR-19b were highly increased in NS children compared with controls (P < 0.0001). The urinary miR-30a-5p concentration was also increased in NS (P = 0.001). The area under the ROC curve and the odds ratio for the combined 5 serum miRNAs were 0.90 (95% CI, 0.86-0.94; P < 0.0001) and 40.7 (95% CI, 6.06-103; P < 0.0001), respectively. Moreover, the concentrations of the 5 serum miRNAs and urinary miR-30a-5p markedly declined with the clinical improvement of the patients. CONCLUSIONS We determined that 5 distinct serum miRNAs and urinary miR-30a-5p were increased in NS children. These circulating or urinary miRNAs may represent potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for idiopathic pediatric NS.
A versatile biomimetic controller for contact tooling and haptic exploration

This article presents a versatile controller that enables various contact tooling tasks with minimal prior knowledge of the tooled surface. The controller is derived from results of neuroscience studies that investigated the neural mechanisms utilized by humans to control and learn complex interactions with the environment. We demonstrate here the versatility of this controller in simulations of cutting, drilling and surface exploration tasks, which would normally require different control paradigms. We also present results on the exploration of an unknown surface with a 7-DOF manipulator, where the robot builds a 3D surface map of the surface profile and texture while applying constant force during motion. Our controller provides a unified control framework encompassing behaviors expected from the different specialized control paradigms like position control, force control and impedance control.
The enzymology of the formation and interconversion of labile 1-carbon groups in five hepatomas and in Walker tumor 256.

The levels of the enzymes histidase, urocanase, formiminoglutamic acid transferase, dihydrofolate reductase, serine hydroxymethylase, N 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase, and formylase, all involved in the metabolism of 1-carbon and related compounds, were determined in the cytoplasmic fractions of 5 rat hepatomas, Walker tumor 256, and livers of tumor-bearing rats. The hepatomas studied included the Novikoff, H-35, and Morris 7800, 7777, and 5123D hepatomas. The activities of virtually all enzymes studied were significantly decreased in hepatomas in comparison to corresponding activities in livers of tumor-bearing rats. The hepatoma levels of formiminoglutamic acid transferase and serine hydroxymethylase never exceeded 7 and 41%, respectively, the corresponding enzyme levels found in host liver. The levels of histidase, urocanase, and dihydrofolate reductase were also significantly lower in all hepatomas studied than in livers of tumor-bearing rats. The levels of formylase in the 5123D hepatoma and of N 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase in hepatoma H-35 were found to be comparable to the corresponding enzyme level in livers of tumor-bearing rats; in all other hepatomas studied, however, the levels of these two enzymes were lower than in the host livers. With the exception of serine hydroxymethylase, the activities of all enzymes studied were similar in the two rapidly growing tumors, the Novikoff hepatoma and Walker carcinosarcoma 256. No other correlations could be observed between the growth rates of tumors studied and the levels of any enzymes investigated. The results are consistent with an overall decrease in both the 1-carbon and tetrahydrofolate moieties of the labile 1-carbon pool of tumors and with a decreased interconversion of the metabolically labile formyl and hydroxymethyl groups.
Population Stratification and Underrepresentation of Indian Subcontinent Genetic Diversity in the 1000 Genomes Project Dataset

Genomic variation in Indian populations is of great interest due to the diversity of ancestral components, social stratification, endogamy and complex admixture patterns. With an expanding population of 1.2 billion, India is also a treasure trove to catalogue innocuous as well as clinically relevant rare mutations. Recent studies have revealed four dominant ancestries in populations from mainland India: Ancestral North-Indian (ANI), Ancestral South-Indian (ASI), Ancestral Tibeto–Burman (ATB) and Ancestral Austro-Asiatic (AAA). The 1000 Genomes Project (KGP) Phase-3 data include about 500 genomes from five linguistically defined Indian-Subcontinent (IS) populations (Punjabi, Gujrati, Bengali, Telugu and Tamil) some of whom are recent migrants to USA or UK. Comparative analyses show that despite the distinct geographic origins of the KGP-IS populations, the ANI component is predominantly represented in this dataset. Previous studies demonstrated population substructure in the HapMap Gujrati population, and we found evidence for additional substructure in the Punjabi and Telugu populations. These substructured populations have characteristic/significant differences in heterozygosity and inbreeding coefficients. Moreover, we demonstrate that the substructure is better explained by factors like differences in proportion of ancestral components, and endogamy driven social structure rather than invoking a novel ancestral component to explain it. Therefore, using language and/or geography as a proxy for an ethnic unit is inadequate for many of the IS populations. This highlights the necessity for more nuanced sampling strategies or corrective statistical approaches, particularly for biomedical and population genetics research in India.
Translanguaging Tareas: Emergent Bilingual Youth as Language Brokers for Homework in Immigrant Families

This article reports from five years of qualitative research into the languages and literacies of language brokers during tutoring sessions between emergent bilingual elementary school students, their mothers, and homework mentors at an after-school program in New York City. Alvarez’s research explores the translanguaging practices (García, 2009; 2012) of participant youth language brokers who simultaneously translated and interpreted homework with adults. He examines translanguaging events during homework tutoring, documenting how practices such as language brokering develop tactical repertoires for youths communicating language arts assignments between their mothers, mentors, and peers. Emergent bilingual youth and their homework mentors at the after-school program involved Spanish-dominant mothers in English language activities, permitting mothers’ increased collaboration in their children’s homework assignments. Together, families and mentors worked to pool their bilingual resources in the practices of doing monolingualized homework multilingually and with meaningful involvement.
Search space reduction of particle swarm optimization for hierarchical similarity measurement model

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is one of many optimization techniques used to find a solution in many areas not limited to engineering or mathematics. It can discover the solution to a problem of finding input to a program based on the similarity of program's execution. However, identifying such solutions with standard PSO is not very efficient or in a few cases, not possible. There is a high probability that particles are stuck in an area of local maxima. The main reason is due to excessive exploitation steps. In addition, when the new exploration starts, there is no guarantee that particles will no longer be generated from earlier explored areas. This paper presents an algorithm of Search Space Reduction (SSR) applied to PSO for Hierarchical Similarity Measurement (HSM) model of program execution. The algorithm uses a fitness function computed from HSM model. SSR helps to find the solution by eliminating areas where the solution is most likely not to be found. It improves the optimization process by reducing the excessive exploitation step. Moreover, SSR can be applied to all variants of PSO. The experimental results demonstrate that PSO with SSR is the most effective method among all other three techniques used in experiment. SSR increases effectiveness in finding a solution by 73%. For each program under the experiment, SSR algorithm was able to find all solutions with the smallest number of exploitations. Regardless of the program's complexity, PSO with SSR usually manipulates the searching process faster than both versions of PSO without SSR.