Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-frequency Phase Unwrapping for Time-of-Flight cameras

Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras gain depth information by emitting amplitude-modulated near-infrared light and measuring the phase shift between the emitted and the reflected signal. The phase shift is proportional to the object's distance modulo the wavelength of the modulation frequency. This results in a distance ambiguity. Distances larger than the wavelength are wrapped into the sensor's non-ambiguity range and cause spurious distance measurements. We apply Phase Unwrapping to reconstruct these wrapped measurements. Our approach is based on a probabilistic graphical model. We use loopy belief propagation to detect and infer the position of wrapped measurements. Besides depth discontinuities, our method utilizes multiple modulation frequencies to identify wrapped measurements. In experiments, we show that wrapped measurements are identified and corrected, even in situations where the scene shows steep slopes in the depth measurements.
Optimizing Communication by Compression for Multi-GPU Scalable Breadth-First Searches

The Breadth First Search (BFS) algorithm is the foundation and building block of many higher graph-based operations such as spanning trees, shortest paths and betweenness centrality. The importance of this algorithm increases each day due to it is a key requirement for many data structures which are becoming popular nowadays. When the BFS algorithm is parallelized by distributing the graph between several processors the interconnection network limits the performance. Hence, improvements on this area may benefit the overall performance of the algorithm. This work presents an alternative compression scheme for communications in distributed BFS processing. It focuses on BFS processors using General-Purpose Graphics Processing Units.
Breaking the O(nm) Bit Barrier: Secure Multiparty Computation with a Static Adversary

We describe scalable algorithms for secure multiparty computation (SMPC). We assume a synchronous message passing communication model, but unlike most related work, we do not assume the existence of a broadcast channel. Our main result holds for the case where there are n players, of which a 1=3 fraction are controlled by an adversary, for any positive constant. We describe a SMPC algorithm for this model that requires each player to send ~ O( n+m n + p n) messages and perform ~
Adaptable AES implementation with power-gating support

In this paper, we propose a reconfigurable design of the Advanced Encryption Standard capable of adapting at runtime to the requirements of the target application. Reconfiguration is achieved by activating only a specific subset of all the instantiated processing elements. Further, we explore the effectiveness of power gating and clock gating methodologies to minimize the energy consumption of the processing elements not involved in computation.
3-D MIMO: How Much Does It Meet Our Expectations Observed From Channel Measurements?

By taking advantage of the elevation domain, three-dimensional (3-D) multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) with massive antenna elements is considered as a promising and practical technique for the fifth Generation mobile communication system. So far, 3-D MIMO is mostly studied by simulation and a few field trials have been launched recently. It still remains unknown how much does the 3-D MIMO meet our expectations in versatile scenarios. In this paper, we answer this based on measurements with $56\times 32$ antenna elements at 3.5 GHz with 100-MHz bandwidth in three typical deployment scenarios, including outdoor to indoor (O2I), urban microcell (UMi), and urban macrocell (UMa). Each scenario contains two different site locations and 2–5 test routes under the same configuration. Based on the measured data, both elevation and azimuth angles are extracted and their stochastic behaviors are investigated. Then, we reconstruct two-dimensional and 3-D MIMO channels based on the measured data, and compare the capacity and eigenvalues distribution. It is observed that 3-D MIMO channel which fully utilizes the elevation domain does improve capacity and also enhance the contributing eigenvalue number. However, this gain varies from scenario to scenario in reality, O2I is the most beneficial scenario, then followed by UMi and UMa scenarios. More results of multiuser capacity varying with the scenario, antenna number and user number can provide the experimental insights for the efficient utilization of 3-D MIMO in future.
Wall Teichoic Acid Protects Staphylococcus aureus against Antimicrobial Fatty Acids from Human Skin

ABSTRACT Skin-colonizing gram-positive bacteria produce wall teichoic acids (WTAs) or related glycopolymers for unclear reasons. Using a WTA-deficient Staphylococcus aureus mutant, we demonstrated that WTA confers resistance to antimicrobial fatty acids from human sebaceous glands by preventing fatty acid binding. Thus, WTA is probably important for bacterial skin colonization.
On the Organization of Grid and Place Cells: Neural Denoising via Subspace Learning

Place cells in the hippocampus (HC) are active when an animal visits a certain location (referred to as a place field) within an environment. Grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) respond at multiple locations, with firing fields that form a periodic and hexagonal tiling of the environment. The joint activity of grid and place cell populations, as a function of location, forms a neural code for space. In this article, we develop an understanding of the relationships between coding theoretically relevant properties of the combined activity of these populations and how these properties limit the robustness of this representation to noise-induced interference. These relationships are revisited by measuring the performances of biologically realizable algorithms implemented by networks of place and grid cell populations, as well as constraint neurons, which perform denoising operations. Contributions of this work include the investigation of coding theoretic limitations of the mammalian neural code for location and how communication between grid and place cell networks may improve the accuracy of each population's representation. Simulations demonstrate that denoising mechanisms analyzed here can significantly improve the fidelity of this neural representation of space. Furthermore, patterns observed in connectivity of each population of simulated cells predict that anti-Hebbian learning drives decreases in inter-HC-MEC connectivity along the dorsoventral axis.
An Urban Education Study: Implementing Problem-Solving Strategies in Mathematics as a Function of Teacher's Learning Styles

AN URBAN EDUCATION STUDY: IMPLEMENTING PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGIES IN MATHEMATICS AS A FUNCTION OF TEACHERS’ LEARNING STYLES Mary Lou Meinhold Fogarty Old Dominion University, 1994 Director: Dr. Rebecca S. Bowers This qualitative research was designed to ascertain the impact of teachers’ learning styles on an active teaching program. Using grounded theory procedures, the researcher explored the second-year implementation of Moretti and associates’ Problem Solver Program by 67 secondthrough fifth-grade teachers in order to gain information on the major research question: How effective are teachers with different learning styles in implementing problem-solving strategies in mathematics that require an active teaching style? Three Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) instruments were used in this study. Two quantitative instruments were used: The Stages of Concern (CBAM) to determine the degree of program implementation and the Gregorc Style Delineator to determine the teachers’ learning styles. Other instruments used to gather information during the interviews and observations were the Innovation Configurations Checklist (CBAM), the Levels of Use (CBAM), and the Classroom Observation Checklist. The data showed that the ordering dimensions of the teachers’ learning styles divided them into three distinct groups: sequential, random, and mixed. Data analysis revealed that the random-ordering group implemented The Problem Solver Program more effectively than did the sequential or mixed-ordering groups of teachers. These findings indicate a clear association between a teacher’s learning style and the degree of success with which the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Problem Solver Program is implemented. The most significant implication from this study is that active teaching and learning programs will only become institutionalized to the extent to which the concerns of the teachers are met. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Copyright 1994 by Mary Lou Meinhold Fogarty All Rights Reserved
Cross-modality Consistent Regression for Joint Visual-Textual Sentiment Analysis of Social Multimedia

Sentiment analysis of online user generated content is important for many social media analytics tasks. Researchers have largely relied on textual sentiment analysis to develop systems to predict political elections, measure economic indicators, and so on. Recently, social media users are increasingly using additional images and videos to express their opinions and share their experiences. Sentiment analysis of such large-scale textual and visual content can help better extract user sentiments toward events or topics. Motivated by the needs to leverage large-scale social multimedia content for sentiment analysis, we propose a cross-modality consistent regression (CCR) model, which is able to utilize both the state-of-the-art visual and textual sentiment analysis techniques. We first fine-tune a convolutional neural network (CNN) for image sentiment analysis and train a paragraph vector model for textual sentiment analysis. On top of them, we train our multi-modality regression model. We use sentimental queries to obtain half a million training samples from Getty Images. We have conducted extensive experiments on both machine weakly labeled and manually labeled image tweets. The results show that the proposed model can achieve better performance than the state-of-the-art textual and visual sentiment analysis algorithms alone.
Comment on: Kim et al. (2010) Hypothalamic Angptl4/Fiaf Is a Novel Regulator of Food Intake and Body Weight. Diabetes;59:2772–2780

The article by Kim et al. (1) outlines a detailed series of experiments that purport to establish angiopoietin-like protein 4(Angptl4)/fasting- induced adipose factor (Fiaf) as a novel hypothalamic regulator of food intake and body weight in the mouse. Although the results of this study are impressive, we note that all previous publications on the regulation of fiaf in the murine brain were overlooked. For example, in our ongoing studies of adipokine gene expression in the nervous …
TCP-Illinois: a loss and delay-based congestion control algorithm for high-speed networks

We introduce a new congestion control algorithm, called TCP-Illinois, which has many desirable properties for implementation in (very) high-speed networks. TCP-Illinois is a sender side protocol, which modifies the AIMD algorithm of the standard TCP (Reno, NewReno or SACK) by adjusting the increment/decrement amounts based on delay information. By using both loss and delay as congestion signals, TCP-Illinois achieves a better throughput than the standard TCP for high-speed networks. To study its fairness and stability properties, we extend recently developed stochastic matrix models of TCP to accommodate window size backoff probabilities that are proportional to arrival rates when the network is congested. Using this model, TCP-Illinois is shown to allocate the network resource fairly as in the standard TCP. In addition, TCP-Illinois is shown to be compatible with the standard TCP when implemented in today's networks, and is shown to provide the right incentive for transition to the new protocol. We finally perform ns-2 simulations to validate its properties and demonstrate its performance.
Fathers and Early Childhood Programs

Chapter 1: The Importance of Early Childhood Programs in Promoting Father Involvement. Chapter 2: The New Father Roles: What Are They? Chapter 3: Father Involvement in Early Childhood Education: A Brief History. Chapter 4: Theory and Research on Father Involvement in Early Childhood Programs. Chapter 5: A Qualitative Study of Important Dynamics of Father Involvement. Chapter 6: Profiles of Four Fatherhood Initiatives. Chapter 7: Getting Started: Practical Suggestions for Developing Fatherhood Initiatives. Chapter 8: Types of Father Involvement. Chapter 9: Targeting Parent Education Specifically for Fathers. Chapter 10: Father-Child Interaction Time: Having Fun and Learning Together. Chapter 11: Conclusion and Future Directions.
The risk of cancer associated with specific mutations of BRCA1 and BRCA2 among Ashkenazi Jews.

BACKGROUND Carriers of germ-line mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 from families at high risk for cancer have been estimated to have an 85 percent risk of breast cancer. Since the combined frequency of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations exceeds 2 percent among Ashkenazi Jews, we were able to estimate the risk of cancer in a large group of Jewish men and women from the Washington, D.C., area. METHODS We collected blood samples from 5318 Jewish subjects who had filled out epidemiologic questionnaires. Carriers of the 185delAG and 5382insC mutations in BRCA1 and the 6174delT mutation in BRCA2 were identified with assays based on the polymerase chain reaction. We estimated the risks of breast and other cancers by comparing the cancer histories of relatives of carriers of the mutations and noncarriers. RESULTS One hundred twenty carriers of a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation were identified. By the age of 70, the estimated risk of breast cancer among carriers was 56 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 40 to 73 percent); of ovarian cancer, 16 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 6 to 28 percent); and of prostate cancer, 16 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 4 to 30 percent). There were no significant differences in the risk of breast cancer between carriers of BRCA1 mutations and carriers of BRCA2 mutations, and the incidence of colon cancer among the relatives of carriers was not elevated. CONCLUSIONS Over 2 percent of Ashkenazi Jews carry mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 that confer increased risks of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer. The risks of breast cancer may be overestimated, but they fall well below previous estimates based on subjects from high-risk families.
Att drabbas av testikelcancer : En studie av män med behandlad testikelcancer och deras anhöriga

The aim of this study was to describe, by means of explorative interviews, the experiences of relatives of male family members suffering from testicular cancer. The central questions concerned how the disease and its treatment affected the life of the family, how its daily routines were affected, the form of relationships and closeness during the period of the disease, and how the future was given shape. The results revealed four main themes presented by the relatives during the interviews: the disease and its course, normalization, the long-term consequences of the disease, and the social network. The results showed that relatives of men suffering from cancer live in a vulnerable situation characterized by social isolation.
Effect of Ryanodine Receptor Mutations on Interleukin-6 Release and Intracellular Calcium Homeostasis in Human Myotubes from Malignant Hyperthermia-susceptible Individuals and Patients Affected by Central Core Disease*

In this study we report for the first time the functional properties of human myotubes isolated from patients harboring the native RYR1 I4898T and R4893W mutations linked to central core disease. We examined two aspects of myotube physiology, namely excitation-contraction and excitation-secretion coupling. Our results show that upon activation of the ryanodine receptor (RYR), myotubes release interleukin-6 (IL-6); this was dependent on de novo protein synthesis and could be blocked by dantrolene and cyclosporine. Myotubes from the two patients affected by central core disease showed a 4-fold increase in the release of the inflammatory cytokine IL-6, compared with cells derived from control or malignant hyperthermia susceptible individuals. All tested myotubes released calcium from intracellular stores upon stimulation via surface membrane depolarization or direct RYR activation by 4-chloro-m-cresol. The functional impact on calcium release of RYR1 mutations linked to central core disease or malignant hyperthermia is different: human myotubes carrying the malignant hyperthermia-linked RYR1 mutation V2168M had a shift in their sensitivity to the RYR agonist 4-chloro-m-cresol to lower concentrations, whereas human myotubes harboring C-terminal mutations linked to central core disease exhibited reduced [Ca2+]i increase in response to 4-chloro-m-cresol, caffeine, and KCl. Taken together, these results suggest that abnormal release of calcium via mutated RYR enhances the production of the inflammatory cytokine IL-6, which may in turn affect signaling pathways responsible for the trophic status of muscle fibers.
College-Readiness Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

800x600 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:. 0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Garamond;} The purpose of this article is to provide a critical analysis of the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda that now guides curriculum and expectations in our nation’s secondary schools. Although President Obama, in 2010, emphasized the need for college- and career-readiness for all high school graduates, the emphasis is clearly on college-readiness, at the exclusion of other educational alternatives. College- and career-readiness may be the mantra for the 21st century, but politicians and educational leaders tend to lean heavily on college-readiness when curricular requirements are increased and accountability measures become more stringent, which tends to anchor academic-preparedness. In this article, educational policy reports, legislative acts, and scholarly journal articles were examined and discussed to illuminate the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda and explore the extent to which students should be college-ready. In the review of recent college- and career-readiness literature, the indication is that, in all likelihood, the one-size-fits-all college-readiness agenda is a dichotomous variable rather than a continuum, which would allow students to make more informed decisions about college goals and career aspirations.
Synthesis of F pilin

Transfer of the Escherichia coli fertility plasmid, F, is dependent on expression of F pili. Synthesis of F-pilin subunits is known to involve three F plasmid transfer (tra) region products: traA encodes the 13-kDa precursor protein, TraQ permits this to be processed to the 7-kDa pilin polypeptide, and TraX catalyzes acetylation of the pilin amino terminus. Using cloned tra sequences, we performed a series of pulse-chase experiments to investigate the effect of TraQ and TraX on the fate of the traA product. In TraQ- cells, the traA gene product was found to be very unstable. While traA polypeptides of various sizes were detected early in the chase period, almost all were degraded within 5 min. Rapid traA product degradation was also observed in TraX+ cells, although an increased percentage of these products persisted during the chase. In TraQ+ cells, most of the traA product was processed to the 7-kDa pilin polypeptide within the 1-min pulse period; this product [7(Q)] was not degraded but was increasingly converted to an 8-kDa form [8(Q)] as the chase continued, suggesting that host enzymes can modify the pilin polypeptide. Similar results were observed in TraQ+ TraX+ cells, but the primary 7-kDa product appeared to be N-acetylated pilin (Ac-7). An 8-kDa product (Ac-8) was also detected, but this band did not increase in intensity during the chase. We suggest a pathway in which TraQ prevents the traA product from folding to a readily degradable conformation and assists its entry into the membrane, Leader peptidase I cleaves the traA product signal sequence, and a subset of the pilin polypeptides becomes modified by host enzymes; TraX then acetylates the N terminal of both the modified and unmodified pilin polypeptides.
Factors Associated with Survival in 97 Horses with Septic Pleuropneumonia

Background Septic pleuropneumonia is a common cause of morbidity and mortality in horses, but there is limited data available regarding factors associated with survival. Hypothesis/Objectives To identify factors predictive of survival in horses with septic pleuropneumonia. Animals A total of 97 horses with septic pleuropneumonia at 2 referral institutions. Methods A retrospective study was performed. A diagnosis of septic pleuropneumonia was based on the presence of sepsis, pleural effusion, and positive bacterial culture from tracheal aspiration (TA) or pleural fluid (PF). Results Thirty‐one percent of horses had a recent history of travel. Clinical signs included lethargy (78%), tachycardia (75%), tachypnea (60%), fever (43%), prolonged capillary refill time (22%), and ventral edema (14%). The most common clinicopathologic abnormality was hyperfibrinogenemia (79%). Increased serum creatinine concentration at presentation was negatively associated with survival (OR, 5.13; CI, 1.88–14.01; P = .001) and return to work (OR, 6.46; CI, 1.10–37.92; P = .034). Eighty‐four TA and 67 PF samples were submitted for culture, 98 and 84% of which were positive, respectively. The most common isolate was Streptococcus equi subsp zooepidemicus. Tracheal aspirates were more sensitive than PF for bacterial growth, but some organisms isolated from PF were not isolated from TA. Thoracotomy was positively associated with survival (OR, 0.13; CI, 0.01–0.83; P = .028). Conclusions and Clinical Importance Increased serum creatinine concentration is a negative prognostic indicator and is likely a reflection of dehydration. Submission of TA and PF is recommended. Thoracotomy should be considered as a treatment for pleuropneumonia.
Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. Latino Political Engagement: The Intersection of Power, Identity(ies), and Place 2. Legacies of Conquest: Latinos in California and Los Angeles 3. A Thin Line between Love and Hate: Language, Social Stigma, and Intragroup Relations 4. Why Vote? Race, Identity(ies), and Politics 5. Community Problems, Collective Solutions: Latinos and Nonelectoral Participation Conclusion. Fluid Borders: Latinos, Race, and American Politics Appendix A: Study Respondents Appendix B: Interview Questionnaire Notes Bibliography Index