Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cryptanalysis of optimal differential energy watermarking (DEW) and a modified robust scheme

This work presents a cryptanalytic methodology of the well-known "Optimal Differential Energy Watermarking (DEW)" scheme. The DEW scheme divides the image into some disjoint regions (each region containing two subregions). In the DEW scheme, the watermark is a secret binary string where each individual bit information gets inserted in one of the regions by modifying the high-frequency Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients. This modification creates a required energy difference between two subregions. We modify these high-frequency components so that this energy difference vanishes, and in turn, extraction of the watermark signal becomes impossible, making the cryptanalysis successful. Further, we improve the DEW scheme by inserting the watermark information in low-frequency components instead of high-frequency components and propose an oblivious robust watermarking strategy that enables forensic tracking. We present statistical justification toward the robustness of our modified scheme.
Impaired water maze learning performance without altered dopaminergic function in mice heterozygous for the GDNF mutation

Exogenous glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) exhibits potent survival‐promoting effects on dopaminergic neurons of the nigrostriatal pathway that is implicated in Parkinson's disease and also protects neurons in forebrain ischemia of animal models. However, a role for endogenous GDNF in brain function has not been established. Although mice homozygous for a targeted deletion of the GDNF gene have been generated, these mice die within hours of birth because of deficits in kidney morphogenesis, and, thus, the effect of the absence of GDNF on brain function could not be studied. Herein, we sought to determine whether adult mice, heterozygous for a GDNF mutation on two different genetic backgrounds, demonstrate alterations in the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system or in cognitive function. While both neurochemical and behavioural measures suggested that reduction of GDNF gene expression in the mutant mice does not alter the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system, it led to a significant and selective impairment of performance in the spatial version of the Morris water maze. A standard panel of blood chemistry tests and basic pathological analyses did not reveal alterations in the mutants that could account for the observed performance deficit. These results suggest that endogenous GDNF may not be critical for the development and functioning of the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system but it plays an important role in cognitive abilities.
Perspectives on Teachers as Digital Library Users: Consumers, Contributors, and Designers

". freed of the constraints of physical space and media, digital libraries can be more adaptive and reflective of the communities they serve. They should be collaborative, allowing users to contribute knowledge to the library, either actively through annotations, reviews, and the like, or passively through their patterns of resource use. In addition, they should be contextual, expressing the expanding web of inter-relationships and layers of knowledge that extend among selected primary resources. In this manner, the core of the digital library should be an evolving information base, weaving together professional selection and the 'wisdom of crowds. '" (Lagoze, Krafft, Payette, & Jesuroga, 2005)
Perceived parenting, school climate and positive youth development: a predicting model

Positive youth development is the ideal process of human development that includes five psychological, behavioral, and social indices as competence, connection, confidence, caring and character. The present study was conducted aiming at predicting positive youth development based on perception of parenting and perception of school climate. For this purpose, 400 female high school students of Kerman responded to the scale of parenting style perception, school climate perception, and positive youth development. The results of correlation analysis indicated a positive and significant correlation between school climate dimensions (teacher support, autonomy support and students support), and positive youth development and a positive and significant correlation between perception of parenting dimensions (parent engagement, warmth and autonomy support) and positive youth development. In addition, the results of stepwise regression indicated that parent engagement, teacher support and parent autonomy explain 40% of the changes of positive youth development.
The Effect of Digital Media on Emergent Literacy Skills: A Systematic Review

OF THESIS THE EFFECT OF DIGITAL MEDIA ON EMERGENT LITERACY SKILLS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW This review examines the effectiveness of digital media on emergent literacy skills, specifically alphabet knowledge, print awareness, and phonological awareness, on children birth to four. A systematic search of the literature identified 13 studies that met the pre-determined inclusion criteria. Two independent raters evaluated each study for methodological quality and assigned appropriate levels of evidence based on ASHA levels of evidence. Results found that specific features of digital media can lead to positive effects on emergent literacy skills. A checklist with the highlighted features was created to guide clinicians, parents, and others in making decisions about the true educational quality of various screen media.
Perioperative Recordings of Vestibular-Evoked Myogenic Potentials in Otosclerosis

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to investigate saccular function in patients with otosclerosis. Furthermore, the influence of stapedotomy on the vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs) should be demonstrated. Study Design: Prospective study. Setting: Tertiary referral center. Methods: Bone-conducted tone-burst-evoked VEMPs were measured in 23 patients (25 ears) with unilateral or bilateral otosclerosis preoperatively and postoperatively. Results: Preoperatively, VEMPs could be recorded in 11 ears (44%). There was no statistically significant correlation among the extent of preoperative sensorineural hearing loss, age, and VEMP measurements. Postoperatively, VEMPs were found in 14 ears (56%). In three cases (12%), VEMPs reappeared after surgery. The rare cases of preoperative vertigo could not be correlated to the nonappearance of VEMPs. Conclusion: Stapedotomy surgery does not influence VEMPs, implying that the saccular receptors are not injured by surgery. Moreover, in some cases, the elicitability of VEMPs was improved by stapedotomy surgery. Seemingly, otosclerosis can influence the generation of VEMPs most probably due to an involvement of the otolith organ's saccular receptors. No correlation was found between the clinical occurrence of vertigo and the elicitability of VEMPs.
Two-day Bowel Preparation With Polyethylene Glycol 3350 and Bisacodyl: A New, Safe, and Effective Regimen for Colonoscopy in Children

Objectives: To assess the safety, efficacy, and acceptance of a 2-day bowel preparation with polyethylene glycol (PEG) 3350 without electrolytes and bisacodyl for colonoscopy in children. Patients and Methods: In a prospective study, 111 children of mean age 11.9 years were given 2 g/kg of PEG and a 5-mg tablet of bisacodyl daily for 2 days before colonoscopy. Stool frequency, consistency, and adverse effects were monitored for the duration of the bowel preparation. Compliance and quality of colonic preparation were assessed on the day of the colonoscopy. Results: The average daily stool frequency increased from a baseline of 2, to 4* on day 1, and 6.5* on day 2 of the bowel preparation (*P < 0.001 for difference vs baseline). The colonic preparations were rated as excellent or good in 92% and 93% of the patients in the right and left colon, respectively. Adverse effects were mild nausea (19%), abdominal pain (11%), and vomiting (4%). The compliance was rated as excellent in 95% of the patients. Conclusions: A 2-day bowel preparation with PEG and bisacodyl is safe, effective, and well accepted for colonoscopy in children without any major adverse effects.
The typology of the American metropolis: monocentricity, polycentricity, or generalized dispersion?

ABSTRACT Although the spatial structure of employment in large US metropolitan regions is a well-researched topic, few studies focus on medium-sized and small US metropolitan regions. Consequently, there is no overall typology relating small-to-medium urban form to employment distribution. We address this gap by investigating the spatial structure of employment in 356 metropolitan regions. We conceptualize six typologies based on three categories that have overlapping properties: “monocentricity,” “polycentricity,” and “generalized dispersion. ” The study has three main findings. First, the three types of urban form that we identify as “hybrid” outnumber the three “pure” types by almost four to one. Second, job dispersion is a dominant characteristic in almost 70% of all metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) (including the hybrid types), and polycentricity (56.7% of MSAs) is somewhat more common than monocentricity. Third, there is a strong relationship between population size and density. The population of medium-sized metropolitan areas is generally more dispersed than that of small and large metropolitan areas. Polycentricy emerges mostly in large metropolitan regions, while monocentrity is found in both small and large metropolitan regions.
Aquila X-1 from Outburst to Quiescence: The Onset of the Propeller Effect and Signs of a Turned-on Rotation-powered Pulsar

We report on the 1997 March-April BeppoSAX observations of Aquila X-1, which were the first to monitor the evolution of the spectral and time-variability properties of a neutron star soft X-ray transient from the outburst decay to quiescence. We observed a fast X-ray flux decay, which brought the source luminosity from ~1036 to ~1033 ergs s-1 in less than 10 days. The X-ray spectrum showed a power-law high-energy tail with a photon index Γ~2, which hardened to Γ~1-1.5 as the source reached quiescence. These observations, together with the detection by the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer of a periodicity of a few milliseconds during an X-ray burst, likely indicate that the rapid flux decay is caused by the onset of the propeller effect, which arises from the very fast rotation of the neutron star magnetosphere. The X-ray luminosity and hard spectrum that characterize the quiescent emission can be consistently interpreted as shock emission by a turned-on rotation-powered pulsar.
Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation

This book presents a comprehensive theory of why human freedom gave way to increasing oppression since the invention of states - and why this trend began to reverse itself more recently, leading to a rapid expansion of universal freedoms and democracy. Drawing on a massive body of evidence, the author tests various explanations of the rise of freedom, providing convincing support of a well-reasoned theory of emancipation. The study demonstrates multiple trends toward human empowerment, which converge to give people control over their lives. Most important among these trends is the spread of 'emancipative values', which emphasize free choice and equal opportunities. The author identifies the desire for emancipation as the origin of the human empowerment trend and shows when and why this desire grows strong; why it is the source of democracy; and how it vitalizes civil society, feeds humanitarian norms, enhances happiness, and helps redirect modern civilization toward sustainable development.
Abnormal respiratory pattern generation during sleep in patients with autonomic dysfunction.

We examined the control of breathing during wakefulness and sleep in 3 patients with autonomic nervous dysfunction who were free of respiratory and sleep-related symptoms. During wakefulness, the ability of the patients to voluntarily reproduce a breath of a given tidal volume did not differ from that of healthy control subjects, indicating normal function of the behavioral respiratory control system. Defects in the metabolic control system were indicated in all 3 patients by lack of a ventilatory response to acute hypoxia. During sleep, minute volume of ventilation in the patients with autonomic dysfunction was not significantly less than that in the healthy subjects, but their pattern of breathing was highly irregular, resulting in coefficients of variation of respiratory variables that were 2 to 3 times greater than normal (p < 0.05). This irregularity of breathing persisted during slow-wave sleep, when ventilatory pattern is normally highly regular. Three patients with Parkinson's disease were also st.
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department Staff Report 490 Paradox of Thrift Recessions *

We build a variation of the neoclassical growth model in which both wealth shocks (in the sense of wealth destruction) and financial shocks to households generate recessions. The model features three mild departures from the standard model: (1) adjustment costs make it difficult to expand the tradable goods sector by reallocating factors of production from nontradables to tradables; (2) there is a mild form of labor market frictions (Nash bargaining wage setting with Mortensen-Pissarides labor markets); (3) goods markets for nontradables require active search from households wherein increases in consumption expenditures increase measured productivity. These departures provide a novel quantitative theory to explain recessions like those in southern Europe without relying on technology shocks. as well as the comments of Joan Gieseke and the attendants at the many seminars where this paper was presented. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis or the Federal Reserve System.
Can the “Sympatho‐Galvanic Reflex” (Skin Conductance Response) Be Used to Evaluate the Extent of Sympathetic Block in Spinal Analgesia?

The skin conductance response (SCR) (the “sympatho‐galvanic reflex”) was studied in volunteers and in a few patients undergoing spinal analgesia. Electrical stimulation over the clavicle, breath‐holding during inspiration, a short, deep breath and a sharp sound provoked a marked change in conductance not only in the hand and foot but also in dermatomes T5, T9, T12‐L1. Thus, the SC response can be used to study sympathetic activity not only in the hand and foot, but also on the chest and abdomen. Electrical stimulation over the clavicle or a short, deep breath were the best means of provoking SC responses in patients receiving spinal analgesia. This restricted pilot study indicates that skin conductance response is maintained at dermatome levels far below anaesthetised levels during spinal analgesia, and a larger study is now under way to investigate these results further.
A Character-level Decoder without Explicit Segmentation for Neural Machine Translation

The existing machine translation systems, whether phrase-based or neural, have relied almost exclusively on word-level modelling with explicit segmentation. In this paper, we ask a fundamental question: can neural machine translation generate a character sequence without any explicit segmentation? To answer this question, we evaluate an attention-based encoder-decoder with a subword-level encoder and a character-level decoder on four language pairs--En-Cs, En-De, En-Ru and En-Fi-- using the parallel corpora from WMT'15. Our experiments show that the models with a character-level decoder outperform the ones with a subword-level decoder on all of the four language pairs. Furthermore, the ensembles of neural models with a character-level decoder outperform the state-of-the-art non-neural machine translation systems on En-Cs, En-De and En-Fi and perform comparably on En-Ru.
Implications of Comovement Patterns in the Stock Option and Spot Markets 1

We study comovements between standardized option values and spot stock prices for the S&P 100 equity index and ten large U.S. firms over 1988 to 1995. To standardize option values, we use a weighted average of option implied volatilities (IV) to control for the option’s moneyness, interest rates, and time to maturity. We find differences in the comovement behavior across individual stocks and the index that have implications for better understanding: (1) the dynamics between spot and options markets, (2) the nature of the bias in IV for subsequent realized volatility, (3) the extent to which stochastic volatility is a priced risk factor that affects the valuation of index and individual stock options, and (4) the asymmetric volatility phenomenon. Collectively, our findings suggest that only the market-wide component of stochastic volatility is materially important for understanding option prices and the asymmetric volatility phenomenon in daily returns. JEL: G12, G14, D80
Revealing GPCR oligomerization at the single-molecule level through a nanoscopic lens : methods , dynamics and biological function

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/febs.13577 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Revealing GPCR oligomerization at the single-molecule level through a nanoscopic lens: methods, dynamics and biological function
Impact of remuneration and organizational factors on completing preventive manoeuvres in primary care practices

Background: Several jurisdictions attempting to reform primary care have focused on changes in physician remuneration. The goals of this study were to compare the delivery of preventive services by practices in four primary care funding models and to identify organizational factors associated with superior preventive care. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, we included 137 primary care practices in the province of Ontario (35 fee-for-service practices, 35 with salaried physicians [community health centres], 35 practices in the new capitation model [family health networks] and 32 practices in the established capitation model [health services organizations]). We surveyed 288 family physicians. We reviewed 4108 randomly selected patient charts and assigned prevention scores based on the proportion of eligible preventive manoeuvres delivered for each patient. Results: A total of 3284 patients were eligible for at least one of six preventive manoeuvres. After adjusting for patient profile and contextual factors, we found that, compared with prevention scores in practices in the new capitation model, scores were significantly lower in fee-for-service practices (β estimate for effect on prevention score = −6.3, 95% confidence interval [CI] −11.9 to −0.6) and practices in the established capitation model (β = −9.1, 95% CI −14.9 to −3.3) but not for those with salaried remuneration (β = −0.8, 95% CI −6.5 to 4.8). After accounting for physician characteristics and organizational structure, the type of funding model was no longer a statistically significant factor. Compared with reference practices, those with at least one female family physician (β = 8.0, 95% CI 4.2 to 11.8), a panel size of fewer than 1600 patients per full-time equivalent family physician (β = 6.8, 95% CI 3.1 to 10.6) and an electronic reminder system (β = 4.6, 95% CI 0.4 to 8.7) had superior prevention scores. The effect of these three factors was largely but not always consistent across the funding models; it was largely consistent across the preventive manoeuvres. Interpretation: No funding model was clearly associated with superior preventive care. Factors related to physician characteristics and practice structure were stronger predictors of performance. Practices with one or more female physicians, a smaller patient load and an electronic reminder system had superior prevention scores. Our findings raise questions about reform initiatives aimed at increasing patient numbers, but they support the adoption of information technology.
Altered Immune Response Differentially Enhances Susceptibility to Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii Infection in Mice Expressing the HIV-1 Transgene

ABSTRACT Cryptococcus neoformans var. grubii is the most frequent cause of AIDS-associated cryptococcosis worldwide, while Cryptococcus gattii usually infects immunocompetent people. To understand the mechanisms which cause differential susceptibility to these cryptococcal species in HIV infection, we established and characterized a model of cryptococcosis in CD4C/HIVMutA transgenic (Tg) mice expressing gene products of HIV-1 and developing an AIDS-like disease. Tg mice infected intranasally with C. neoformans var. grubii strain H99 or C23 consistently displayed reduced survival compared to non-Tg mice at three graded inocula, while shortened survival of Tg mice infected with C. gattii strain R265 or R272 was restricted to a single high inoculum. HIV-1 transgene expression selectively augmented systemic dissemination to the liver and spleen for strains H99 and C23 but not strains R265 and R272. Histopathologic examination of lungs of Tg mice revealed large numbers of widely scattered H99 cells, with a minimal inflammatory cell response, while in the non-Tg mice H99 was almost completely embedded within extensive mixed inflammatory cell infiltrates. In contrast to H99, R265 was dispersed throughout the lung parenchyma and failed to induce a strong inflammatory response in both Tg and non-Tg mice. HIV-1 transgene expression reduced pulmonary production of CCL2 and CCL5 after infection with H99 or R265, and production of these two chemokines was lower after infection with R265. These results indicate that an altered immune response in these Tg mice markedly enhances C. neoformans but not C. gattii infection. This model therefore provides a powerful new tool to further investigate the immunopathogenesis of cryptococcosis.
Distributed Detection of Randomly Located Targets in Mobility-Assisted Sensor Networks with Node Mobility Management

Performance gain achieved by adding mobile nodes to a stationary sensor network for target detection depends on factors such as the number of mobile nodes deployed, mobility patterns, speed and energy constraints of mobile nodes, and the nature of the target locations (deterministic or random). In this paper, we address the problem of distributed detection of a randomly located target by a hybrid sensor network. Specifically, we develop two decision-fusion architectures for detection where in the first one, impact of node mobility is taken into account for decisions updating at the fusion center, while in the second model the impact of node mobility is taken at the node level decision updating. The cost of deploying mobile nodes is analyzed in terms of the minimum fraction of mobile nodes required to achieve the desired performance level within a desired delay constraint. Moreover, we consider managing node mobility under given constraints.