Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sieving Regression Forest Votes for Facial Feature Detection in the Wild

In this paper we propose a method for the localization of multiple facial features on challenging face images. In the regression forests (RF) framework, observations (patches) that are extracted at several image locations cast votes for the localization of several facial features. In order to filter out votes that are not relevant, we pass them through two types of sieves, that are organised in a cascade, and which enforce geometric constraints. The first sieve filters out votes that are not consistent with a hypothesis for the location of the face center. Several sieves of the second type, one associated with each individual facial point, filter out distant votes. We propose a method that adjusts on-the-fly the proximity threshold of each second type sieve by applying a classifier which, based on middle-level features extracted from voting maps for the facial feature in question, makes a sequence of decisions on whether the threshold should be reduced or not. We validate our proposed method on two challenging datasets with images collected from the Internet in which we obtain state of the art results without resorting to explicit facial shape models. We also show the benefits of our method for proximity threshold adjustment especially on 'difficult' face images.
The impact of bilateral neck dissection on pattern of recurrence and survival in supraglottic carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE The findings of an initial evaluation of 202 patients treated for squamous cell carcinoma of the supraglottic larynx have been previously reported. Recurrent disease was observed at the primary site in four patients (2%), in the regional lymphatics in 39 patients (20%), and at distant sites in 24 patients (12%). Critical analysis of patients who demonstrated recurrent disease in the cervical lymphatics indicated that 38 of 39 recurrences developed in nonsurgically treated necks irrespective of the use of postoperative radiation therapy. Accordingly, all patients with supraglottic carcinoma have been treated with routine bilateral neck dissection since that time. We have reviewed our data to determine if bilateral neck dissections deter recurrence and improves survival. DESIGN A retrospective review of the clinical course of 76 patients undergoing excision of supraglottic squamous carcinoma combined with bilateral neck dissection between 1980 and 1990 was performed to determine survival and recurrence rates. Surgery alone was used to treat 32 patients, while 44 patients were treated with surgery plus adjunctive therapy. SETTING Department of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery, The Eye and Ear Institute, University of Pittsburgh (Pa) School of Medicine. RESULTS Distant metastatic spread was the most frequent site of failure, occurring in nine (11.8%) of 76 patients. Local recurrence was experienced by two patients (1%). The incidence of cervical recurrence (seven patients, 9.2%) following treatment for squamous cell carcinoma of the supraglottic larynx has been reduced from 20% to 9% through the use of bilateral neck dissection. The 2-year survival rate increased from 72% to 76%. CONCLUSION Routine bilateral neck dissection is beneficial in the surgical management of squamous cell carcinoma of the supraglottic larynx.
Elicitation and Elucidation of Risk Preferences CAS Working Party on the Elicitation and Elucidation of Risk Preferences

Motivation. Recent developments have created an increased interest among companies in developing formalized enterprise risk management (ERM) policies. Implicit in such an ERM policy is some statement of acceptable and unacceptable tradeoffs, or risk preferences. Since risk preferences will be a central part of the ERM policy, they should be explicitly determined. This would be accomplished through a process of eliciting and elucidating the risk preferences that management may already have in mind for operating the company. Method. Several methods in current use are described, including survey and discussion group techniques. Results. This report describes hypothetical results from applying the methods described in both business and non-business contexts. Conclusions. Making risk preferences explicit enhances the development of an ERM policy. The elicitation and elucidation of risk preferences is neither simple nor brief. The process requires first that the meaning of risk be agreed upon and not assumed since different executives and professionals often have different definitions of risk. Technical survey techniques can be applied to elicit risk preferences. A number of results in behavioral finance are pertinent to risk preference elicitation.
Does gender make any difference? Common-sense conceptions of intelligences

In this study we examined the gender dependence of conceptions of intelligence: what kinds of gender stereotypes would emerge in identifications and descriptions of target persons, adults and pupils, whom the participants knew personally and considered to be intelligent. Characteristics of an intelligent adult were rated by a sample of the general population ( N = 152) and characteristics of an intelligent pupil by a group of parents ( N = 69). It was found that the image of the intelligent person, whether adult or pupil, consists of many qualities. However, it was the cognitive one (i.e., problem-solving skills) that is seen as the essence of adult intelligence, whereas school success was regarded as the essential element of pupils intelligence. Traditional gender stereotypes appeared in the images of pupils’ intelligence as cognitive skill differences favoring boys, and in the images of adult intelligence as social skill differences favoring women.
Effects of divided attention and social categorization on the own-race bias in face recognition

Perceivers remember own-race faces more accurately than other-race faces (i.e., Own-Race Bias). In the current experiments, we manipulated participants' attentional resources and social group membership to explore their influence on own and other-race face recognition memory. In Experiment 1, Chinese participants viewed own-race and Caucasian faces, and between-subjects we manipulated whether participants attention was divided during face encoding. We found that divided attention eliminated the Own-Race Bias in memory due to a reduction of memory accuracy for own-race faces, implicating that attention allocation plays a role in creating the bias. In Experiment 2, Chinese participants completed an ostensible personality test. Some participants were informed that their personality traits were most commonly found in Caucasian (i.e., other-race) individuals, resulting in these participants sharing a group membership with other-race targets. In contrast, other participants were not told anything about the personality test, resulting in the default own-race group membership. The participants encoded the faces for a subsequent recognition memory test either with or without performing a concurrent arithmetic distracting task. Results showed that other-race group membership and reducing attention during encoding independently eliminated the typical Own-Race Bias in face memory. The implications of these findings on perceptual-expertise and social-categorization models are discussed.
A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study of Widowhood for African-American Women

There is a dearth of bereavement and healthcare literature on the experience of widowhood for African-American women. This hermeneutic phenomenological study of 11 African-American widows used demographic questions, field notes, and in-depth interviews to understand their experience. The physical loss of the marital bond and the psychological growth toward increased independence was examined within the context of the widows' relationships with their deceased spouses, families, churches, and friends. Their experiences were contextualized within the meaning structure provided by their faith and interpreted based upon descriptions of their cultural and historical context. From the analysis, four themes emerged: Defining Needs and Relaxing Boundaries, Releasing the Sadness and Keeping Busy, Being Together, and Going on Alone.
Appraising job performance – to be or not to be? An Asian dilemma

Describes an ongoing research project to monitor performance appraisal reports (PARs) of staff working at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, India. Presents major shortcomings of the PAR mechanism as observed while analysing the data. Suggests ways in which the existing appraisal mechanism could be improved in order to introduce and maintain a performance‐oriented work culture.
Teenage Marriage in the Malay/Muslim Community of Singapore: Problems, Perceptions and Programmes

Teenage marriage within the Malay community of Singapore was thrust under the national spotlight by the government in recent years. Though identified as one of the major social challenges confronting the Malay community, there is still at present, a gross lack of research necessary for an objective understanding of the phenomenon. The adverse implications of the lacunae are reinforced by instant solutions and prescriptions aimed at eradicating the problem. Utilising data obtained from interviews and responses to a survey administered to Malay teenage married couples, this paper examines dominant perceptions of teenage marriage in Singapore and their ramifications on policies and programmes. It is hoped that this paper can contribute towards a more objective understanding of the problem so vital for effective policy making.
Selective instruction compression for memory energy reduction in embedded systems

Proposes a technique for reducing the energy required by firmware code to execute on embedded systems. The method is based on the idea of compressing the most commonly executed instructions so as to reduce the energy dissipated in memory accesses. Instruction decompression is performed on the fly by a hardware module located between processor and memory: no changes to the processor architecture are required. Hence, our technique is well-suited for systems employing IP (instruction processor) cores whose internal architecture cannot be modified. We describe a number of decompression schemes and architectures that effectively trade hardware complexity for memory energy and bandwidth reduction, as proved by experimental data collected by executing several sample programs.
Dietary habits and mortality in 11 000 vegetarians and health conscious people: results of a 17 year follow up

Abstract Objective: To investigate the association of dietary habits with mortality in a cohort of vegetarians and other health conscious people. Design: Observational study. Setting: United Kingdom. Subjects: 4336 men and 6435 women recruited through health food shops, vegetarian societies, and magazines. Main outcome measures: Mortality ratios for vegetarianism and for daily versus less than daily consumption of wholemeal bread, bran cereals, nuts or dried fruit, fresh fruit, and raw salad in relation to all cause mortality and mortality from ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, all malignant neoplasms, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer. Results: 2064 (19%) subjects smoked, 4627 (43%) were vegetarian, 6699 (62%) ate wholemeal bread daily, 2948 (27%) ate bran cereals daily, 4091 (38%) ate nuts or dried fruit daily, 8304 (77%) ate fresh fruit daily, and 4105 (38%) ate raw salad daily. After a mean of 16.8 years follow up there were 1343 deaths before age 80. Overall the cohort had a mortality about half that of the general population. Within the cohort, daily consumption of fresh fruit was associated with significantly reduced mortality from ischaemic heart disease (rate ratio adjusted for smoking 0.76 (95% confidence interval 0.60 to 0.97)), cerebrovascular disease (0.68 (0.47 to 0.98)), and for all causes combined (0.79 (0.70 to 0.90)). Conclusions: In this cohort of health conscious individuals, daily consumption of fresh fruit is associated with a reduced mortality from ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and all causes combined. Key messages This study examined dietary factors associated with mortality among 11 000 health conscious people followed for an average of 17 years. After smoking was adjusted for, daily consumption of fresh fruit was associated with a 24% reduction in mortality from ischaemic heart disease, a 32% reduction in mortality from cerebrovascular disease, and a 21% reduction in all cause mortality compared with less frequent consumption.
Dementia in the severely aphasic: Global aphasia without hemiparesis—A stroke subtype simulating dementia

Patients with severe aphasia and possible dementia cannot be adequately assessed for want of normative data. We describe four patients with global aphasia without hemiparesis who were referred for evaluation of dementia without the knowledge that they had previously suffered a stroke. All four had no neurological deficits except for language dysfunction. The study looked at the utility of the commonly-used dementia scales in patients with severe aphasia and possible dementia. The findings indicated the limitations of verbal, non-verbal cognitive tests and the reliance on informant reports. Appropriate weighting of these may help in arriving at a more accurate diagnosis. Until guidelines for a reliable criteria are established, the clinician should assess the patient in a global way and not just in one aspect of the patient's symptomatology. Dementia in the severely aphasic remains a diagnostic challenge and merits further study.
Glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans from different zones of the porcine knee meniscus

Medial and lateral knee menisci were obtained from 20‐week‐old pigs, dissected into three zones of equal width, and analyzed for collagen and glycosaminoglycan content and for types of glycosaminoglycan and proteoglycan. The thin inner zones contained about 76% collagen and 8% glycosaminoglycan (by dry weight) and the ouer zones. 93% collagen and 2% glycosaminoglycan. The most abundant glycosaminoglycan in all zones was chondroitin sulphate, accounting for about 80% of total glycosaminoglycan in the inner zones and 50–56% in the outer zones, Dermatan sulphate was the second most abundant glycosaminoglycan, present relative to chondroitin sulphate in a ratio of about 1:5–6 in the inner zones and 1:1.5 in the outer zones. Hyaluronic acid accounted for 4–5% of total glycosaminoglycan content in the inner zones and 10% in the outer zones. All compositional parameters for the middle zones were between those for the inner and outer zones. There were no statistically significant differences in composition between medial and lateral menisci. Proteoglycans were extracted and separated into two groups (large and small proteoglycans) by gel chromatography and were further characterized by gel electrophoresis. The large proteoglycans stained with use of monoclonal antibodies to chondroitin sulphate and keratan sulphate. Biglycan and decorin, two related dermatan sulphate proteoglycans, were identified in the small proteoglycan pool by their behaviour on gel electrophoresis and by immunostaining with specific antibodies. In the middle and inner zones, biglycan predominated. The observed lower dectrophoretic mobilities of dermatan sulphate proteoglycans from the inner zone compared with those from the outer zone were explained by the discovery of longer dermatan sulphate chains on the former. Collectively, these results show that the extracellular matrix of knee meniscus varies continuously across its width in a manner consistent with increased compressive loading on the thinner, inside aspect of the structure.
Regulatory T Cells Control Immune Responses through Their Non-Redundant Tissue Specific Features

Regulatory T cells (Treg) are needed in the control of immune responses and to maintain immune homeostasis. Of this subtype of regulatory lymphocytes, the most potent are Foxp3 expressing CD4+ T cells, which can be roughly divided into two main groups; natural Treg cells (nTreg), developing in the thymus, and induced or adaptive Treg cells (iTreg), developing in the periphery from naïve, conventional T cells. Both nTreg cells and iTreg cells have their own, non-redundant roles in the immune system, with nTreg cells mainly maintaining tolerance toward self-structures, and iTreg developing in response to externally delivered antigens or commensal microbes. In addition, Treg cells acquire tissue specific features and are adapted to function in the tissue they reside. This review will focus on some specific features of Treg cells in different compartments of the body.
Children's and lay adults' views about thermal equilibrium

This paper describes an investigation into the understanding demonstrated by a small sample of students aged 14 and 16 and of adults of a simple thermal system. Interviews explored the constructs and explanatory ideas used by children and adults in interpreting the outcome of a heating experiment in which a candle was used to heat water in a metal can. None of the interviewees appeared to use the scientific model of thermal phenomena in framing their responses, though they did use the individual terms ‘heat’ and ‘temperature’, often incorrectly from a scientific point of view. Heat loss to the surroundings appeared not to be recognized as a factor in the behaviour of the system. Many interviewees' reasoning about heat phenomena used an elementary ‘on = hot/off= cold’ principle. Some implications of these findings for the teaching of heat and temperature are discussed.
Intertester reliability and concurrent validity of fluid-based and universal goniometers for active knee flexion.

This study was designed 1) to determine the intertester reliability of the universal goniometer and the fluid-based goniometer and 2) to establish the concurrent validity of the fluid-based goniometer. Two testers measured active knee flexion of 20 healthy subjects (15 women, 5 men) using both instruments. The subjects had a mean age of 24.8 years (s = 5.5) and reported no previous history of pathological conditions of the right lower extremity. Using a correlational design, high intertester reliability was established for each instrument (universal goniometer, r = .87; fluid-based goniometer, r = .83). The concurrent validity of the fluid-based goniometer was also good for both testers (tester A, r = .83; tester B, r = .82). When the data were subjected to t tests, significant differences were found between the instruments for each tester (p less than .05). The results suggest that similar measurements will be obtained between therapists using the universal and fluid-based goniometers; however, the two instruments cannot be used interchangeably in the clinic.
Accelerating the Hough Transform with CUDA on Graphics Processing Units

Circle detection has been widely applied in image processing applications. Hough transform, the most popular method of shape detection, normally takes a long time to achieve reasonable results, especially for large images. Such performance makes it almost impossible to conduct real-time image processing with sequential algorithms on community computers. Recently, NVIDIA developed CUDA programming paradigm to explore the tremendous computational power for operations on vectors, matrices and highdimensional matrices. In this paper, two Hough transform algorithms are designed to run on both CPU and GPU computing platforms. Experimental results indicate that the better Hough transform on GPUs can achieve up to 400 times speedup over the version on CPU. With other efficient image scaling algorithms, real-time circle extraction can be achieved with GPU support.
Role of the Latent Transforming Growth Factor β–Binding Protein 1 in Fibrillin‐Containing Microfibrils in Bone Cells In Vitro and In Vivo

Latent transforming growth factor β–binding proteins (LTBPs) are extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins that bind latent transforming growth factor β (TGF‐β) and influence its availability in bone and other connective tissues. LTBPs have homology with fibrillins and may have related functions as microfibrillar proteins. However, at present little is known about their structural arrangement in the ECM. By using antibodies against purified LTBP1, against a short peptide in LTBP1, and against epitope‐tagged LTBP1 constructs, we have shown colocalization of LTBP1 and fibrillin 1 in microfibrillar structures in the ECM of cultured primary osteoblasts. Immunoelectron microscopy confirmed localization of LTBP1 to 10‐ to 12‐nm microfibrils and suggested an ordered aggregation of LTBP1 into these structures. Early colocalization of LTBP1 with fibronectin suggested a role for fibronectin in the initial assembly of LTBP1 into the matrix; however, in more differentiated osteoblast cultures, LTBP1 and fibronectin 1 were found in distinct fibrillar networks. Overexpression of LTBP1 deletion constructs in osteoblast‐like cells showed that N‐terminal amino acids 67–467 were sufficient for incorporation into fibrillin‐containing microfibrils and suggested that LTBP1 can be produced by cells distant from the site of fibril formation. In embryonic long bones in vivo, LTBP1 and fibrillin 1 colocalized at the surface of newly forming osteoid and bone. However, LTBP1‐positive fibrils, which did not contain fibrillin 1, were present in cartilage matrix. These studies show that in addition to regulating TGFβ1, LTBP1 may function as a structural component of connective tissue microfibrils. LTBP1 may therefore be a candidate gene for Marfan‐related connective tissue disorders in which linkage to fibrillins has been excluded.
Engagement in breast cancer screening behaviors.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To distinguish women who engaged in recommended breast cancer screening from those who did not. DESIGN Descriptive design, with quantitative measures. SETTING Urban, county hospital serving many low-income clients. SAMPLE 119 women, age 51 to 80, who had not had mammograms in the last 13 months. METHOD Nurse-conducted telephone interviews that incorporated a modified Profile of Mood States, Attitudes Towards Mammography Scale, Barriers Scale, and reports of engagement in mammography and clinical breast exam (CBE) in the last 13 months and breast self-exam (BSE) practice in the last 3 months. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES Affect, beliefs, facilitators, and knowledge regarding screening; engagement in mammography, CBE, and BSE. FINDINGS In discriminant analyses of engagement in mammography and CBE, affect, barriers, prior history of breast problems, and race were significant variables. In discriminant analysis of BSE, history of breast biopsy, family history of breast cancer, beliefs about screening and cancer, prior instruction in BSE, and being single were significant variables. CONCLUSIONS Variables that discriminated between use and non-use of professional screening were different from those that discriminated between use and non-use of BSE. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE Nurses can promote professional breast screening by addressing women's negative affect, prior breast concerns, and barriers, especially among Caucasians. Nurses can promote monthly BSE by supporting realistic beliefs about screening and cancer as well as by demonstrating BSE, especially among married women.
“Empirical Modeling of the Impact Factor Distribution”

Abstract The distribution of impact factors has been modeled in the recent informetric literature using two-exponent law proposed by Mansilla, Koppen, Cocho, and Miramontes (2007) . This paper shows that two distributions widely-used in economics, namely the Dagum and Singh-Maddala models, possess several advantages over the two-exponent model. Compared to the latter, the former models give as good as or slightly better fit to data on impact factors in eight important scientific fields. In contrast to the two-exponent model, both proposed distributions have closed-from probability density functions and cumulative distribution functions, which facilitates fitting these distributions to data and deriving their statistical properties.