Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A quasi-dense approach to surface reconstruction from uncalibrated images

This paper proposes a quasi-dense approach to 3D surface model acquisition from uncalibrated images. First, correspondence information and geometry are computed based on new quasi-dense point features that are resampled subpixel points from a disparity map. The quasi-dense approach gives more robust and accurate geometry estimations than the standard sparse approach. The robustness is measured as the success rate of full automatic geometry estimation with all involved parameters fixed. The accuracy is measured by a fast gauge-free uncertainty estimation algorithm. The quasi-dense approach also works for more largely separated images than the sparse approach, therefore, it requires fewer images for modeling. More importantly, the quasi-dense approach delivers a high density of reconstructed 3D points on which a surface representation can be reconstructed. This fills the gap of insufficiency of the sparse approach for surface reconstruction, essential for modeling and visualization applications. Second, surface reconstruction methods from the given quasi-dense geometry are also developed. The algorithm optimizes new unified functionals integrating both 3D quasi-dense points and 2D image information, including silhouettes. Combining both 3D data and 2D images is more robust than the existing methods using only 2D information or only 3D data. An efficient bounded regularization method is proposed to implement the surface evolution by level-set methods. Its properties are discussed and proven for some cases. As a whole, a complete automatic and practical system of 3D modeling from raw images captured by hand-held cameras to surface representation is proposed. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superior performance of the quasi-dense approach with respect to the standard sparse approach in robustness, accuracy, and applicability.
Intact But Less Accessible Phonetic Representations in Adults with Dyslexia

Good Foundations, Poor Access Dyslexia makes reading and spelling difficult. Boets et al. (p. 1251) analyzed whether for adult readers with dyslexia the internal references for word sounds are poorly constructed or whether accessing those references is abnormally difficult. Brain imaging during phonetic discrimination tasks suggested that the internal dictionary for word sounds was correct, but accessing the dictionary was more difficult than normal. The persistent reading problems observed in dyslexia may derive from inefficient communication within the brain. Dyslexia is a severe and persistent reading and spelling disorder caused by impairment in the ability to manipulate speech sounds. We combined functional magnetic resonance brain imaging with multivoxel pattern analysis and functional and structural connectivity analysis in an effort to disentangle whether dyslexics’ phonological deficits are caused by poor quality of the phonetic representations or by difficulties in accessing intact phonetic representations. We found that phonetic representations are hosted bilaterally in primary and secondary auditory cortices and that their neural quality (in terms of robustness and distinctness) is intact in adults with dyslexia. However, the functional and structural connectivity between the bilateral auditory cortices and the left inferior frontal gyrus (a region involved in higher-level phonological processing) is significantly hampered in dyslexics, suggesting deficient access to otherwise intact phonetic representations.
Systematic Population Screening, Using Biomarkers and Genetic Testing, Identifies 2.5% of the U.K. Pediatric Diabetes Population With Monogenic Diabetes

OBJECTIVE Monogenic diabetes is rare but is an important diagnosis in pediatric diabetes clinics. These patients are often not identified as this relies on the recognition of key clinical features by an alert clinician. Biomarkers (islet autoantibodies and C-peptide) can assist in the exclusion of patients with type 1 diabetes and allow systematic testing that does not rely on clinical recognition. Our study aimed to establish the prevalence of monogenic diabetes in U.K. pediatric clinics using a systematic approach of biomarker screening and targeted genetic testing. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We studied 808 patients (79.5% of the eligible population) <20 years of age with diabetes who were attending six pediatric clinics in South West England and Tayside, Scotland. Endogenous insulin production was measured using the urinary C-peptide creatinine ratio (UCPCR). C-peptide–positive patients (UCPCR ≥0.2 nmol/mmol) underwent islet autoantibody (GAD and IA2) testing, with patients who were autoantibody negative undergoing genetic testing for all 29 identified causes of monogenic diabetes. RESULTS A total of 2.5% of patients (20 of 808 patients) (95% CI 1.6–3.9%) had monogenic diabetes (8 GCK, 5 HNF1A, 4 HNF4A, 1 HNF1B, 1 ABCC8, 1 INSR). The majority (17 of 20 patients) were managed without insulin treatment. A similar proportion of the population had type 2 diabetes (3.3%, 27 of 808 patients). CONCLUSIONS This large systematic study confirms a prevalence of 2.5% of patients with monogenic diabetes who were <20 years of age in six U.K. clinics. This figure suggests that ∼50% of the estimated 875 U.K. pediatric patients with monogenic diabetes have still not received a genetic diagnosis. This biomarker screening pathway is a practical approach that can be used to identify pediatric patients who are most appropriate for genetic testing.
The influence of the topography and physico-chemical properties of the cuticle surface on the wettability and adhesive properties of the elytra of the dung beetle Geotrupes stercorarius (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae)

The elytral surface of dung beetles is generally accepted to be self-cleaning due to its anti-adhesive properties. In this article, the wettability and adhesive properties of elytral surface (intact and treated with Acetone and Ethanol) of the beetle Geotrupes stercorarius were characterized. Since these properties are influenced by the surface structure and chemistry, the micro- and nanostructure of the elytra were observed using scanning electron microscopy and the surface roughness were estimated with white light interferometery, whereas the water contact angle and adhesion force of the elytra were evaluated using contact angle measurement device and force transducer, respectively. The results show that the microstructure of the elytra changed greatly after different chemical treatments and the changes in wettability were mainly related to the changes of elytra roughness after treatments. The differences in adhesion force between differently treated elytra and wet sand indicate that the molecular polarity of the elytral surface is decisive for its anti-adhesive (self-cleaning) property.
Childhood sexual abuse and the risk for recurrent major depression in Chinese women

Background Studies in Western countries have repeatedly shown that women with a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) are at increased risk for developing major depression (MD). Would this relationship be found in China? Method Three levels of CSA (non-genital, genital, and intercourse) were assessed by self-report in two groups of Han Chinese women: 1970 clinically ascertained with recurrent MD and 2597 matched controls. Diagnostic and other risk factor information was assessed at personal interview. Odds ratios (ORs) were calculated by logistic regression and regression coefficients by linear or Poisson regression. Results Any form of CSA was significantly associated with recurrent MD [OR 3.26, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.95–5.45]. This association strengthened with increasing CSA severity: non-genital (OR 2.47, 95% CI 1.17–5.23), genital (OR 2.77, 95% CI 1.32–5.83) and intercourse (OR 13.35, 95% CI 1.83–97.42). The association between any form of CSA and MD remained significant after accounting for parental history of depression, childhood emotional neglect (CEN), childhood physical abuse (CPA) and parent–child relationship. Among the depressed women, those with CSA had an earlier age of onset, longer depressive episodes and an increased risk for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; OR 1.92, 95% CI 1.39–2.66) and dysthymia (OR 2.16, 95% CI 1.52–3.09). Conclusions In Chinese women CSA is strongly associated with MD and this association increases with greater severity of CSA. Depressed women with CSA have an earlier age of onset, longer depressive episodes and increased co-morbidity with GAD and dysthymia. Although reporting biases cannot be ruled out, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that, as in Western countries, CSA substantially increases the risk for MD in China.
Maintaining Sexual Desire in Intimate Relationships : The Importance of Approach Goals

Three studies tested whether adopting strong (relative to weak) approach goals in relationships (i.e., goals focused on the pursuit of positive experiences in one’s relationship such as fun, growth, and development) predict greater sexual desire. Study 1 was a 6-month longitudinal study with biweekly assessments of sexual desire. Studies 2 and 3 were 2-week daily experience studies with daily assessments of sexual desire. Results showed that approach relationship goals buffered against declines in sexual desire over time and predicted elevated sexual desire during daily sexual interactions. Approach sexual goals mediated the association between approach relationship goals and daily sexual desire. Individuals with strong approach goals experienced even greater desire on days with positive relationship events and experienced less of a decrease in desire on days with negative relationships events than individuals who were low in approach goals. In two of the three studies, the association between approach relationship goals and sexual desire was stronger for women than for men. Implications of these findings for maintaining sexual desire in long-term relationships are discussed.
Maximizing donors with viral hepatitis in the current era

1. The disparity between organ availability and patient need for transplantation mandates the exploration of utilizing donors with viral hepatitis as a means by which to expand the donor pool. 2. The use of HBV-positive and HCV-positive organs in HBV-positive and HCV-positive recipients respectively appears to offer reasonable graft and patient survivals post-transplantation. 3. Antiviral therapy for HBV can be used to mitigate the risk of transmission to transplant recipients of HBV-positive organs and provides opportunity for excellent longterm patient and graft survivals. 4. New therapies for HCV allows for early treatment of HCV-infected recipients which can improve patient and graft survival post-transplantation and may be used in the future to allow HCV-postitive donor use in HCV-negative recipients.
Parallel High-Order Integrators

In this work we discuss a class of defect correction methods which is easily adapted to create parallel time integrators for multicore architectures and is ideally suited for developing methods which can be order adaptive in time. The method is based on integral deferred correction (IDC), which was itself motivated by spectral deferred correction by Dutt, Greengard, and Rokhlin [BIT, 40 (2000), pp. 241-266]. The method presented here is a revised formulation of explicit IDC, dubbed revisionist IDC (RIDC), which can achieve $p$th-order accuracy in “wall-clock time” comparable to a single forward Euler simulation on problems where the time to evaluate the right-hand side of a system of differential equations is greater than latency costs of interprocessor communication, such as in the case of the $N$-body problem. The key idea is to rewrite the defect correction framework so that, after initial start-up costs, each correction loop can be lagged behind the previous correction loop in a manner that facilitates running the predictor and $M=p-1$ correctors in parallel on an interval which has $K$ steps, where $K\gg p$. We prove that given an $r$th-order Runge-Kutta method in both the prediction and $M$ correction loops of RIDC, then the method is order $r\times(M+1)$. The parallelization in RIDC uses a small number of cores (the number of processors used is limited by the order one wants to achieve). Using a four-core CPU, it is natural to think about fourth-order RIDC built with forward Euler, or eighth-order RIDC constructed with second-order Runge-Kutta. Numerical tests on an $N$-body simulation show that RIDC methods can be significantly faster than popular Runge-Kutta methods such as the classical fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme. In a PDE setting, one can imagine coupling RIDC time integrators with parallel spatial evaluators, thereby increasing the parallelization. The ideas behind RIDC extend to implicit and semi-implicit IDC and have high potential in this area.
Topic models for semantics-preserving video compression

Most state-of-the-art systems for content-based video understanding tasks require video content to be represented as collections of many low-level descriptors, e.g. as histograms of the color, texture or motion in local image regions. In order to preserve as much of the information contained in the original video as possible, these representations are typically high-dimensional, which conflicts with the aim for compact descriptors that would allow better efficiency and lower storage requirements. In this paper, we address the problem of semantic compression of video, i.e. the reduction of low-level descriptors to a small number of dimensions while preserving most of the semantic information. For this, we adapt topic models - which have previously been used as compact representations of still images - to take into account the temporal structure of a video, as well as multi-modal components such as motion information. Experiments on a large-scale collection of YouTube videos show that we can achieve a compression ratio of 20 : 1 compared to ordinary histogram representations and at least 2 : 1 compared to other dimensionality reduction techniques without significant loss of prediction accuracy. Also, improvements are demonstrated for our video-specific extensions modeling temporal structure and multiple modalities.
Evaluating Letter Recognition, Flicker Fusion, and the Talbot-Plateau Law using Microsecond-Duration Flashes

Four experiments examined the ability of respondents to identify letters that were displayed on an LED array with flashes lasting little more than a microsecond. The first experiment displayed each letter with a single, simultaneous flash of all the dots forming the letter and established the relation of flash intensity to the probability of letter identification. The second experiment displayed the letters with multiple flashes at different frequencies to determine the probability that the sequence of flashes would be perceived as fused. The third experiment displayed the letters at a frequency that was above the flicker-fusion frequency, varying flash intensity to establish the amount needed to elicit a given probability of letter identification. The fourth experiment displayed each letter twice, once at a frequency where no flicker was perceived and also with steady light emission. The intensity of each flash was fixed and the steady intensity was varied; respondents were asked to judge whether the fused-flicker display and the steady display appeared to be the same brightness. Steady intensity was about double the average flash intensity where the two conditions were perceived as being equal in brightness. This is at odds with Talbot-Plateau law, which predicts that these two values should be equal. The law was formulated relative to a flash lasting half of each period, so it is surprising that it comes this close to being correct where the flash occupies only a millionth of the total period.
Discovery and Optimization of Small-Molecule Ligands for the CBP/p300 Bromodomains

Small-molecule inhibitors that target bromodomains outside of the bromodomain and extra-terminal (BET) sub-family are lacking. Here, we describe highly potent and selective ligands for the bromodomain module of the human lysine acetyl transferase CBP/p300, developed from a series of 5-isoxazolyl-benzimidazoles. Our starting point was a fragment hit, which was optimized into a more potent and selective lead using parallel synthesis employing Suzuki couplings, benzimidazole-forming reactions, and reductive aminations. The selectivity of the lead compound against other bromodomain family members was investigated using a thermal stability assay, which revealed some inhibition of the structurally related BET family members. To address the BET selectivity issue, X-ray crystal structures of the lead compound bound to the CREB binding protein (CBP) and the first bromodomain of BRD4 (BRD4(1)) were used to guide the design of more selective compounds. The crystal structures obtained revealed two distinct binding modes. By varying the aryl substitution pattern and developing conformationally constrained analogues, selectivity for CBP over BRD4(1) was increased. The optimized compound is highly potent (Kd = 21 nM) and selective, displaying 40-fold selectivity over BRD4(1). Cellular activity was demonstrated using fluorescence recovery after photo-bleaching (FRAP) and a p53 reporter assay. The optimized compounds are cell-active and have nanomolar affinity for CBP/p300; therefore, they should be useful in studies investigating the biological roles of CBP and p300 and to validate the CBP and p300 bromodomains as therapeutic targets.
Plushie: an interactive design system for plush toys

We introduce Plushie, an interactive system that allows nonprofessional users to design their own original plush toys. To design a plush toy, one needs to construct an appropriate two-dimensional (2D) pattern. However, it is difficult for non-professional users to appropriately design a 2D pattern. Some recent systems automatically generate a 2D pattern for a given three-dimensional (3D) model, but constructing a 3D model is itself a challenge. Furthermore, an arbitrary 3D model cannot necessarily be realized as a real plush toy, and the final sewn result can be very different from the original 3D model. We avoid this mismatch by constructing appropriate 2D patterns and applying simple physical simulation to it on the fly during 3D modeling. In this way, the model on the screen is always a good approximation of the final sewn result, which makes the design process much more efficient. We use a sketching interface for 3D modeling and also provide various editing operations tailored for plush toy design. Internally, the system constructs a 2D cloth pattern in such a way that the simulation result matches the user's input stroke. Our goal is to show that relatively simple algorithms can provide fast, satisfactory results to the user whereas the pursuit of optimal layout and simulation accuracy lies outside this paper's scope. We successfully demonstrated that non-professional users could design plush toys or balloon easily using Plushie.
Effects of different reading distances on the accommodation of children with myopia

Objective To study the effect of different reading distances on the accommodation of children with myopia and to reveal its relation to the development of myopia.Methods There were 77 children with myopia investigated.The children′s ages between 7 to 14 year-old.Shin-Nippon NVision-K 5001 autorefractor was used to measure accommodative refraction while they viewed target placed at 50cm,33cm and 20cm respectively.Results The results demonstrate that the accommodative demands were 1.90±0.03D,2.85±0.05D and 4.75±0.08D respectively.And the accommodative response were 0.87±0.42D,1.76±0.54D,3.52±0.66D respectively.The accommodative lags were 1.03±0.36D,1.08±0.52D and 1.23±0.63D respectively.When the subjects read in near distance,they responded with accommodative lag.When reading distances decreased,accommodative lag increased.The accommodative lag shows a statistically significant difference among the three reading distances(P=0.014). There was statistically significant difference between 50cm and 20cm,33cm and 20cm,respectively(P0.05). Conclusions Reading distance will affect the accommodative response of children with myopia.Accommodative lag increases with reading distance decreasing.This induces hyperopic retinal defocus.Thus it may be inferred that for the children with myopia,their eyes longer to compensate the effect of retinal defocus.
Optimal Dynamic Hotel Pricing

We analyze a confidential reservation database provided by a luxury hotel, ”hotel 0”, based in a major US city that enables us to observe individual reservations and cancellations at a daily frequency over a 37 month period. We show how the hotel sets prices for various classes of customers and how its prices vary over time. Hotel pricing is a challenging high-dimensional problem since hotels must not only set prices for each current date, but they must also quote prices for a range of future dates, room types and customer types. Our data reveal the full path of room rates quoted for different types of rooms and customers in advance of the date of occupancy. We find large within and between week variability in room prices, as well as huge seasonal variations in average daily rates and occupancy rates, not only for the hotel we study but also for its direct competitors. We formulate and estimate a structural model of optimal dynamic hotel pricing using the Method of Simulated Moments (MSM). The estimated model provides accurate predictions of the actual prices set by this firm and resulting paths of bookings and cancellations. Prices quoted for bookings in advance of occupancy generally decline as the date of occupancy arrives for non-busy days, but can increase dramatically in the final days before occupancy on busy days when management forecasts a high probability of sell-out. Hotel 0’s prices co-move strongly with it competitors’ prices and we show that a simple price-following strategy where hotel 0 undercuts its competitors’ average price by a fixed percentage provides a good first approximation to its pricing behavior. However we show that simple price-following is suboptimal: when hotel 0 expects to sell out, it is optimal to depart from price-following and increase its price significantly above its competitors. On non-busy days, it is not optimal for hotel 0 to cut its prices in the final days before arrival to try to increase occupancy unless its competitors cut their prices. Though price- following has the superficial appearance of collusive behavior mediated by the use of a commercial revenue management system (RMS), our results suggest that hotel 0’s pricing is competitive and is best described as a rational best response to its beliefs about demand and the prices set by its competitors. In fact hotel 0 regularly disregards the recommended prices of its RMS, which it regards as too low compared to the prices it actually sets.