Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Curved-Region-Based Ridge Frequency Estimation and Curved Gabor Filters for Fingerprint Image Enhancement

Gabor filters (GFs) play an important role in many application areas for the enhancement of various types of images and the extraction of Gabor features. For the purpose of enhancing curved structures in noisy images, we introduce curved GFs that locally adapt their shape to the direction of flow. These curved GFs enable the choice of filter parameters that increase the smoothing power without creating artifacts in the enhanced image. In this paper, curved GFs are applied to the curved ridge and valley structures of low-quality fingerprint images. First, we combine two orientation-field estimation methods in order to obtain a more robust estimation for very noisy images. Next, curved regions are constructed by following the respective local orientation. Subsequently, these curved regions are used for estimating the local ridge frequency. Finally, curved GFs are defined based on curved regions, and they apply the previously estimated orientations and ridge frequencies for the enhancement of low-quality fingerprint images. Experimental results on the FVC2004 databases show improvements of this approach in comparison with state-of-the-art enhancement methods.
Numerical Analysis of Plasmon Resonances in Nanoparticles Based on Fast Multipole Method

A novel technique for the numerical analysis of plasmon resonances by using the fast multipole method (FMM) is presented. This approach is based on the solution of the eigenvalue problem for boundary integral equations, which can be naturally implemented by using the FMM. Numerical examples that highlight the efficiency of the fast multipole implementation are reported
Adapting-bump model for eccentric cells of Limulus

Light-evoked intracellular voltage noise records have been obtained from Limulus eccentric cells, from threshold light intensity to an intensity . 10(5) times threshold. These data are analyzed in terms of a simple "adapting-bump" noise model. It is shown how the model yields a data reduction procedure that slightly generalizes the familiar use of Campbell's theorem for Poisson shot noise: the correlative effect of adaptation amends Campbell's theorem by a single multiplicative factor, which may be estimated directly from the power spectrum of the noise data. The model also permits direct estimation of the bump shape from the power spectrum. The bump shape estimated from noise at dim light is in excellent agreement with the average shape of bumps observed directly in the dark. The data yield a bump rate that is linear with light up through about 50 times threshold intensity but that falls short of linearity by a factor of 35 at the brightest light. The bump height decreases as the -0.4 power of light intensity across the entire range. Bump duration decreases by a factor of 2 across the entire range, and the adaptation correlation factor descends from unity to about one-third. The modest change of the adaptation correlation shows that naive application of Campbell's theorem to such data is adequate for rough estimation of the model's physiological parameters. This simple accounting for all the data gives support to the adapting-bump model.
Timing and expectation of reward: a neuro-computational model of the afferents to the ventral tegmental area

Neural activity in dopaminergic areas such as the ventral tegmental area is influenced by timing processes, in particular by the temporal expectation of rewards during Pavlovian conditioning. Receipt of a reward at the expected time allows to compute reward-prediction errors which can drive learning in motor or cognitive structures. Reciprocally, dopamine plays an important role in the timing of external events. Several models of the dopaminergic system exist, but the substrate of temporal learning is rather unclear. In this article, we propose a neuro-computational model of the afferent network to the ventral tegmental area, including the lateral hypothalamus, the pedunculopontine nucleus, the amygdala, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the ventral basal ganglia (including the nucleus accumbens and the ventral pallidum), as well as the lateral habenula and the rostromedial tegmental nucleus. Based on a plausible connectivity and realistic learning rules, this neuro-computational model reproduces several experimental observations, such as the progressive cancelation of dopaminergic bursts at reward delivery, the appearance of bursts at the onset of reward-predicting cues or the influence of reward magnitude on activity in the amygdala and ventral tegmental area. While associative learning occurs primarily in the amygdala, learning of the temporal relationship between the cue and the associated reward is implemented as a dopamine-modulated coincidence detection mechanism in the nucleus accumbens.
Large-Scale Event Extraction from Literature with Multi-Level Gene Normalization

Text mining for the life sciences aims to aid database curation, knowledge summarization and information retrieval through the automated processing of biomedical texts. To provide comprehensive coverage and enable full integration with existing biomolecular database records, it is crucial that text mining tools scale up to millions of articles and that their analyses can be unambiguously linked to information recorded in resources such as UniProt, KEGG, BioGRID and NCBI databases. In this study, we investigate how fully automated text mining of complex biomolecular events can be augmented with a normalization strategy that identifies biological concepts in text, mapping them to identifiers at varying levels of granularity, ranging from canonicalized symbols to unique gene and proteins and broad gene families. To this end, we have combined two state-of-the-art text mining components, previously evaluated on two community-wide challenges, and have extended and improved upon these methods by exploiting their complementary nature. Using these systems, we perform normalization and event extraction to create a large-scale resource that is publicly available, unique in semantic scope, and covers all 21.9 million PubMed abstracts and 460 thousand PubMed Central open access full-text articles. This dataset contains 40 million biomolecular events involving 76 million gene/protein mentions, linked to 122 thousand distinct genes from 5032 species across the full taxonomic tree. Detailed evaluations and analyses reveal promising results for application of this data in database and pathway curation efforts. The main software components used in this study are released under an open-source license. Further, the resulting dataset is freely accessible through a novel API, providing programmatic and customized access (http://www.evexdb.org/api/v001/). Finally, to allow for large-scale bioinformatic analyses, the entire resource is available for bulk download from http://evexdb.org/download/, under the Creative Commons – Attribution – Share Alike (CC BY-SA) license.
Causal Links between Dorsal Medial Superior Temporal Area Neurons and Multisensory Heading Perception

The dorsal medial superior temporal area (MSTd) in the extrastriate visual cortex is thought to play an important role in heading perception because neurons in this area are tuned to both optic flow and vestibular signals. MSTd neurons also show significant correlations with perceptual judgments during a fine heading direction discrimination task. To test for a causal link with heading perception, we used microstimulation and reversible inactivation techniques to artificially perturb MSTd activity while monitoring behavioral performance. Electrical microstimulation significantly biased monkeys' heading percepts based on optic flow, but did not significantly impact vestibular heading judgments. The latter result may be due to the fact that vestibular heading preferences in MSTd are more weakly clustered than visual preferences and multiunit tuning for vestibular stimuli is weak. Reversible chemical inactivation, however, increased behavioral thresholds when heading judgments were based on either optic flow or vestibular cues, although the magnitude of the effects was substantially stronger for optic flow. Behavioral deficits in a combined visual/vestibular stimulus condition were intermediate between the single-cue effects. Despite deficits in discrimination thresholds, animals were able to combine visual and vestibular cues near optimally, even after large bilateral muscimol injections into MSTd. Simulations show that the overall pattern of results following inactivation is consistent with a mixture of contributions from MSTd and other areas with vestibular-dominant tuning for heading. Our results support a causal link between MSTd neurons and multisensory heading perception but suggest that other multisensory brain areas also contribute.
Target Fortification of Breast Milk: How Often Should Milk Analysis Be Done?

Target fortification (TFO) reduces natural macronutrient variation in breast milk (BM). Daily BM analysis for TFO increases neonatal intensive care unit work load by 10–15 min/patient/day and may not be feasible in all nurseries. The variation of macronutrient intake when BM analysis is done for various schedules was studied. In an observational study, we analyzed 21 subsequent samples of native 24-h BM batches, which had been prepared for 10 healthy infants (gestational age 26.1 ± 1.3 weeks, birth weight: 890 ± 210 g). Levels of protein and fat (validated near-infrared milk analyzer), as well as lactose (UPLC-MS/MS) generated the database for modelling TFO to meet recommendations of European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology Hepatology and Nutrition. Intake of macronutrients and energy were calculated for different schedules of BM measurements for TFO (n = 1/week; n = 2/week; n = 3/week; n = 5/week; n = 7/week) and compared to native and fixed dose fortified BM. Day-to-day variation of macronutrients (protein 20%, carbohydrate 13%, fat 17%, energy 10%) decreased as the frequency of milk analysis increased and was almost zero for protein and carbohydrate with daily measurements. Measurements two/week led to mean macronutrient intake within a range of ±5% of targeted levels. A reduced schedule for macronutrient measurement may increase the practical use of TFO. To what extent the day-to-day variation affects growth while mean intake is stable needs to be studied.
An empirical power comparison of univariate goodness-of-fit tests for normality

A comprehensive power comparison study of existing tests for normality is proposed. Given the importance of this subject and the widespread development of normality tests, comprehensive descriptions and power comparisons of such tests are of considerable interest. Since recent comparison studies do not include several interesting and more recently developed tests, a further comparison of normality tests is considered to be of foremost interest. The study addresses the performance of 33 normality tests, for various sample sizes, considering several significance levels and for a number of symmetric, asymmetric and modified normal distributions. General recommendations for normality testing resulting from the study are defined according to the nature of the non-normality.
The Causes , Consequences , and Future of Senior Hunger in America

Acknowledgements This report was made possible by a generous grant from the Meals On Wheels Association of America Foundation and underwritten by Harrah's Foundation. We owe a special debt of gratitude to Enid Bor-den, Peggy Ingraham, and Robert Herbolsheimer of MOWAAF for their assistance and feedback through the various stages of the report. We also thank members of the MOWAAF Board of Directors and Thom Reilly of Harrah's Foundation for helpful comments on a preliminary draft. We also benefited from the and opinions expressed herein are our own and do not necessarily represent the views of any sponsoring agency.
TRY – a global database of plant traits

Plant traits – the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants and their organs – determine how primary producers respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, influence ecosystem processes and services and provide a link from species richness to ecosystem functional diversity. Trait data thus represent the raw material for a wide range of research from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology to biogeography. Here we present the global database initiative named TRY, which has united a wide range of the plant trait research community worldwide and gained an unprecedented buy‐in of trait data: so far 93 trait databases have been contributed. The data repository currently contains almost three million trait entries for 69 000 out of the world's 300 000 plant species, with a focus on 52 groups of traits characterizing the vegetative and regeneration stages of the plant life cycle, including growth, dispersal, establishment and persistence. A first data analysis shows that most plant traits are approximately log‐normally distributed, with widely differing ranges of variation across traits. Most trait variation is between species (interspecific), but significant intraspecific variation is also documented, up to 40% of the overall variation. Plant functional types (PFTs), as commonly used in vegetation models, capture a substantial fraction of the observed variation – but for several traits most variation occurs within PFTs, up to 75% of the overall variation. In the context of vegetation models these traits would better be represented by state variables rather than fixed parameter values. The improved availability of plant trait data in the unified global database is expected to support a paradigm shift from species to trait‐based ecology, offer new opportunities for synthetic plant trait research and enable a more realistic and empirically grounded representation of terrestrial vegetation in Earth system models.
Predicting Acute Kidney Injury Following Mitral Valve Repair

Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) after cardiac surgery is associated with short-term and long-term adverse outcomes. Novel biomarkers have been identified for the early detection of AKI; however, examining these in every patient who undergoes cardiac surgery is prohibitively expensive. Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and Age, Creatinine, and Ejection Fraction (ACEF) scores have been proven to predict mortality in bypass surgery. The aim of this study was to determine whether these scores can be used to predict AKI after mitral valve repair. Materials and Methods: Between January 2010 and December 2013, 196 patients who underwent mitral valve repair were enrolled. The clinical characteristics, outcomes, and scores of prognostic models were collected. The primary outcome was postoperative AKI, defined using the Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcome 2012 clinical practice guidelines for AKI. Results: A total of 76 patients (38.7%) developed postoperative AKI. The STS renal failure (AUROC: 0.797, P < .001) and ACEF scores (AUROC: 0.758, P < .001) are both satisfactory tools for predicting all AKI. The STS renal failure score exhibited superior accuracy compared with the ACEF score in predicting AKI stage 2 and 3. The overall accuracy of both scores was similar for all AKI and AKI stage 2 and 3 when the cut-off points of the STS renal failure and ACEF scores were 2.2 and 1.1, respectively. Conclusion: In conclusion, the STS renal failure score can be used to accurately predict stage 2 and 3 AKI after mitral valve repair. The ACEF score is a simple tool with satisfactory power in screening patients at risk of all AKI stages. Additional studies can aim to determine the clinical implications of combining preoperative risk stratification and novel biomarkers.
Virtual Instrument Based Measurement System for Handle Properties Evaluation of Textile Materials

A virtual instrument (VI) based test method and measurement system was proposed and developed to evaluate the handle properties of textile materials such as fabrics in one step by measuring the fundamental mechanical and thermal sensory signals and simulating the psychological judgment processes during human hand evaluation process. The test method and the definition of evaluation indices for handle properties were introduced. Twelve types of fabrics with different structural features and made from different materials and/or using different finishing techniques were tested. The analysis of the variance and capacity study were performed to identify the significance of differences among the test samples and determine the capability of the measurement system.
Thwarting the Power-Hungry Disk

Minimizing power consumption is important for mobile computers, and disks consume a significant portion of system-wide power. There is a large difference in power consumption between a disk that is spinning and one that is not, so systems try to keep the disk spinning only when it must. The system must trade off between the power that can be saved by spinning the disk down quickly after each access and the impact on response time from spinning it up again too often. We use trace-driven simulation to examine these trade-offs, and compare a number of different algorithms for controlling disk spin-down. We simulate disk accesses from a mobile computer (a Macintosh Powerbook Duo 230) and also from a desktop workstation (a Hewlett-Packard 9000/845 personal workstation running HP-UX), running on two disks used on mobile computers, the Hewlett-Packard Kittyhawk C3014A and the Quantum Go•Drive 120. We show that the "perfect" off-line algorithm--one that consumes minimum power without increasing response time relative to a disk that never spins down--can reduce disk power consumption by 35--50%, compared to the fixed threshold suggested by manufacturers. An on-line algorithm with a threshold of 10 seconds, running on the Powerbook trace and Go•Drive disk, reduces energy consumption by about 40% compared to the 5-minute threshold recommended by manufacturers of comparable disks; however, over a 4-hour trace period it results in 140 additional delays due to disk spin-ups.
Octonionic Strong and Weak Interactions and Their Quantum Equations

By analogy with the octonionic electromagnetic and gravitational interactions, the octonionic strong and weak interactions and their quantum interplays are discussed in the paper. In the weak interaction, the study deduces some conclusions of field sources and intermediate particles, which are consistent with the Dirac equation, Yang-Mills equation and some new intermediate particles etc. In the strong interaction, the research draws some conclusions of the field sources and intermediate particles, which are coincident with the Dirac-like equation, three kinds of colors and some new intermediate particles etc. The researches results show that there exist some new field source particles in the strong and weak interactions.
Comparison of epizootic haematopoietic necrosis and Bohle iridoviruses, recently isolated Australian iridoviruses.

Epizootic haematopoletic necrosis virus (EHNV) and Bohle virus (BIV) are piscine and amphibian iridoviruses respectively which have been isolated in Australia from redfin perch Perca fluviatjlis L. , cultured rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum) and the ornate burrowing frog Limnodynastes ornatus (Gray). To determine whether the viruses were similar they were examined at the ultrastructural, protein, antigenic and genomic levels. EHNV was found to differ from BIV in cytopathic effect on host cells, size, site of virus release, molecular weights of proteins and restriction endonuclease digest profiles of the respective DNA's. On the other hand both iridoviruses \yere also found to infect a similar range of tissue culture cells, exhibit a similar sequence of ultrastuctural events and possess proteins of similar antigenic reactivity. DNA from EHNV and BIV cross hybridized to a high level. When the BIV polypeptides were compared to the published data for purified frog virus 3 (FV3) and with the appropriate restriction enzyme profiles, a similarity was noted between the 2 viruses. This implies that EHNV, which shares many structural and biochemical characteristics with BIV, is itself related to the Ranavirus genus of iridoviruses.
Compact binaries in star clusters – I. Black hole binaries inside globular clusters

We study the compact binary population in star clusters, focusing on binaries containing black holes, using a self-consistent Monte Carlo treatment of dynamics and full stellar evolution. We find that the black holes experience strong mass segregation and become centrally concentrated. In the core the black holes interact strongly with each other and black hole–black hole binaries are formed very efficiently. The strong interactions, however, also destroy or eject the black hole–black hole binaries. We find no black hole–black hole mergers within our simulations but produce many hard escapers that will merge in the Galactic field within a Hubble time. We also find several highly eccentric black hole–black hole binaries that are potential Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) sources, suggesting that star clusters are interesting targets for space-based detectors. We conclude that star clusters must be taken into account when predicting compact binary population statistics.
The distribution of active galactic nuclei in a large sample of galaxy clusters

We present an analysis of the X-ray point source populations in 182 Chandra images of galaxy clusters at z > 0.1 with exposure time >10 ks, as well as 44 non-cluster fields. The analysis of the number and flux of these sources, using a detailed pipeline to predict the distribution of non-cluster sources in each field, reveals an excess of X-ray point sources associated with the galaxy clusters. A sample of 148 galaxy clusters at 0.1 < z < 0.9, with no other nearby clusters, shows an excess of 230 cluster sources in total, an average of ∼1.5 sources per cluster. The lack of optical data for these clusters limits the physical interpretation of this result, as we cannot calculate the fraction of cluster galaxies hosting X-ray sources. However, the fluxes of the excess sources indicate that over half of them are very likely to be active galactic nuclei (AGN), and the radial distribution shows that they are quite evenly distributed over the central 1 Mpc of the cluster, with almost no sources found beyond this radius. We also use this pipeline to successfully reproduce the results of previous studies, particularly the higher density of sources in the central 0.5 Mpc of a few cluster fields, but show that these conclusions are not generally valid for this larger sample of clusters. We conclude that some of these differences may be due to the sample properties, such as the size and redshift of the clusters studied, or a lack of publications for cluster fields with no excess sources. This paper also presents the basic X-ray properties of the galaxy clusters, and in subsequent papers in this series the dependence of the AGN population on these cluster properties will be evaluated. In addition the properties of over 9500 X-ray point sources in the fields of galaxy clusters are tabulated in a separate catalogue available online or at http://www.sc. eso.org~rgilmour.