Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Atmospheric Turbulence Mitigation Using Complex Wavelet-Based Fusion

Restoring a scene distorted by atmospheric turbulence is a challenging problem in video surveillance. The effect, caused by random, spatially varying, perturbations, makes a model-based solution difficult and in most cases, impractical. In this paper, we propose a novel method for mitigating the effects of atmospheric distortion on observed images, particularly airborne turbulence which can severely degrade a region of interest (ROI). In order to extract accurate detail about objects behind the distorting layer, a simple and efficient frame selection method is proposed to select informative ROIs only from good-quality frames. The ROIs in each frame are then registered to further reduce offsets and distortions. We solve the space-varying distortion problem using region-level fusion based on the dual tree complex wavelet transform. Finally, contrast enhancement is applied. We further propose a learning-based metric specifically for image quality assessment in the presence of atmospheric distortion. This is capable of estimating quality in both full- and no-reference scenarios. The proposed method is shown to significantly outperform existing methods, providing enhanced situational awareness in a range of surveillance scenarios.
Roles of Four Putative DEAD-Box RNA Helicase Genes in Growth of Listeria monocytogenes EGD-e under Heat, pH, Osmotic, Ethanol, and Oxidative Stress Conditions

ABSTRACT To examine the role of the four putative DEAD-box RNA helicase genes of Listeria monocytogenes EGD-e in stress tolerance, the growth of the Δlmo0866, Δlmo1246, Δlmo1450, and Δlmo1722 deletion mutant strains at 42. 5ï¿½C, at pH 5.6 or pH 9.4, in 6% NaCl, in 3.5% ethanol, and in 5 mM H2O2 was studied. Restricted growth of the Δlmo0866 deletion mutant strain in 3.5% ethanol suggests that Lmo0866 contributes to ethanol stress tolerance of L. monocytogenes EGD-e. The Δlmo1450 mutant strain showed negligible growth at 42. 5ï¿½C, at pH 9.4, and in 5 mM H2O2 and a lower maximum growth temperature than the wild-type EGD-e, suggesting that Lmo1450 is involved in the tolerance of L. monocytogenes EGD-e to heat, alkali, and oxidative stresses. The altered stress tolerance of the Δlmo0866 and Δlmo1450 deletion mutant strains did not correlate with changes in relative expression levels of lmo0866 and lmo1450 genes under corresponding stresses, suggesting that Lmo0866- and Lmo1450-dependent tolerance to heat, alkali, ethanol, or oxidative stress is not regulated at the transcriptional level. Growth of the Δlmo1246 and Δlmo1722 deletion mutant strains did not differ from that of the wild-type EGD-e under any of the conditions tested, suggesting that Lmo1246 and Lmo1722 have no roles in the growth of L. monocytogenes EGD-e under heat, pH, osmotic, ethanol, or oxidative stress. This study shows that the putative DEAD-box RNA helicase genes lmo0866 and lmo1450 play important roles in tolerance of L. monocytogenes EGD-e to ethanol, heat, alkali, and oxidative stresses.
Comparison of Planktonic and Biofilm Cultures of Pseudomonas fluorescens DSM 8341 Cells Grown on Fluoroacetate

ABSTRACT Comparisons between the physiological properties of Pseudomonas fluorescens biofilm cells grown in a tubular biofilm reactor and planktonic cells grown in a chemostat were performed. Fluoroacetate was the sole carbon source for all experiments. The performance of cells was assessed using cell cycle kinetics and by determining specific fluoroacetate utilization rates. Cell cycle kinetics were studied by flow cytometry in conjunction with the fluorescent stain propidium iodide. Determination of the DNA content of planktonic and biofilm cultures showed little difference between the two modes of growth. Cultures with comparable specific glycolate utilization rates had similar percentages of cells in the B phase of the cell cycle, indicating similar growth rates. Specific fluoroacetate utilization rates showed the performance of planktonic cells to be superior to that of biofilm cells, with more fluoroacetate utilized per cell at similar specific fluoroacetate loading rates. A consequence of this decreased biofilm performance was the accumulation of glycolate in the effluent of biofilm cultures. This accumulation of glycolate was not observed in the effluent of planktonic cultures. Spatial stratification of oxygen within the biofilm was identified as a possible explanation for the overflow metabolism of glycolate and the decreased performance of the biofilm cells.
Sixfold Post-Fracture Mortality in 16- To 30-Year-Old Patients—Suicides, Homicides, and Intoxications Among Leading Causes of Death

Background and Aims: The death of any young individual is associated with the loss of many potentially fulfilling years of life. It has been suggested that the relative mortality of fracture patients may be higher in younger age groups than in older cohorts. We determined the mortality and causes of death in a cohort of 16- to 30-year-old patients that had been hospitalized for fractures. Material and Methods: We collected data using criteria based on the diagnosis code (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision), surgical procedure code (Nordic Medico-Statistical Committee), and seven additional characteristics of patients admitted to the trauma ward at the Central Finland Hospital between 2002 and 2008. Patients were then followed to ascertain their mortality status until the end of 2012. Standardized mortality ratios were calculated and causes of death were determined by combining our registry data with data provided by Statistics Finland. Results: During the study, 199 women and 525 men aged 16–30 years had sustained fractures. None of these patients died during the primary hospital stay. At the end of follow-up (mean duration 7.4 years), 6 women and 23 men had died. The standardized mortality ratio for all patients was 6.2 (95% Confidence Interval: 4.3–8.9). Suicides and intoxications comprised over half, and motor vehicle accidents and homicides comprised nearly a third of the post-fracture deaths. Conclusion: We found a concerning increase in mortality among young adults that had been hospitalized due to a fracture compared to the general population that had been standardized by age, sex, and calendar-period. Leading causes of death were suicides and intoxications or motor vehicle accidents and homicides, which may be indicative of depressive disorders or impulse control disorders, respectively. Identification of the underlying psychosocial problems may provide an opportunity for preventive interventions.
Changes in Bowel Microbiota Induced by Feeding Weanlings Resistant Starch Stimulate Transcriptomic and Physiological Responses

ABSTRACT The ability to predictably engineer the composition of bowel microbial communities (microbiota) using dietary components is important because of the reported associations of altered microbiota composition with medical conditions. In a synecological study, weanling conventional Sprague-Dawley rats (21 days old) were fed a basal diet (BD) or a diet supplemented with resistant starch (RS) at 5%, 2.5%, or 1.25% for 28 days. Pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA genes and temporal temperature gradient electrophoresis (TTGE) profiles in the colonic digesta showed that rats fed RS had altered microbiota compositions due to blooms of Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria. The altered microbiota was associated with changes in colonic short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) concentrations, colonic-tissue gene expression (Gsta2 and Ela1), and host physiology (serum metabolite profiles and colonic goblet cell numbers). Comparisons between germ-free and conventional rats showed that transcriptional and serum metabolite differences were mediated by the microbiota and were not the direct result of diet composition. Altered transcriptomic and physiological responses may reflect the young host's attempts to maintain homeostasis as a consequence of exposure to a new collection of bacteria and their associated biochemistry.
Rationale behind psychiatrists' choice of drug

Aims and method The study investigated the reasons that influence medical staffs9 choice of a specific drug over another given the same clinical situation, by use of a questionnaire-based survey. The study population was 88 clinicians of various ranks, at psychiatry units in National Health Service university and district general hospitals in Greater Manchester. Responses in the factors: personal experience, scientific evidence, influence from colleagues, economic consideration, influence by drug representatives, ward or unit policy and other in choice of prescription, were the main outcome measures. Results Of the 546 responses generated by the 88 clinicians, 263 (48.2%) were for personal experience as the most important influence on choice of prescription. Scientific evidence was the second most important factor with 117 (21.4%) responses. Economic consideration and influence by drug representatives were least important. This trend held for all ranks except for registrars, where scientific evidence was as important as personal experience. Clinical implications As prescribers, clinicians trust mostly in their own personal experience. This may not be unique to psychiatrists. An understanding of how clinicians gain ‘personal experience’ could be important in improving rational prescribing.
A comparison of computer and questionnaire methods of history-taking in a genito-urinary clinic

Abstract Information on the medical history and symptomatology of 69 patients presenting at a genito-urinary (GU) clinic was obtained either by a computerized interview or a paper questionnaire and the results compared. A comparison was also made between these methods and notes taken during a standard physician interview. Significantly more symptoms were elicited by the computer than the paper questionnaire. Both methods also elicited significantly more symptoms than were recorded by the physician. The patients reported having previously attended a GU clinic more often to the computer than to the physician whereas the questionnaire was no different from the physician. The results indicate that computers can be used satisfactorily to facilitate medical history- taking in GU clinics and may result in a more complete profile of symptoms than either written questionnaire or physician interview.
Prevalence of Cardinium Bacteria in Planthoppers and Spider Mites and Taxonomic Revision of “Candidatus Cardinium hertigii” Based on Detection of a New Cardinium Group from Biting Midges

ABSTRACT Cardinium bacteria, members of the phylum Cytophaga-Flavobacterium-Bacteroides (CFB), are intracellular bacteria in arthropods that are capable of inducing reproductive abnormalities in their hosts, which include parasitic wasps, mites, and spiders. A high frequency of Cardinium infection was detected in planthoppers (27 out of 57 species were infected). A high frequency of Cardinium infection was also found in spider mites (9 out of 22 species were infected). Frequencies of double infection by Cardinium and Wolbachia bacteria (Alphaproteobacteria capable of manipulating reproduction of their hosts) were disproportionately high in planthoppers but not in spider mites. A new group of bacteria, phylogenetically closely related to but distinct from previously described Cardinium bacteria (based on 16S rRNA and gyrB genes) was found in 4 out of 25 species of Culicoides biting midges. These bacteria possessed a microfilament-like structure that is a morphological feature previously found in Cardinium and Paenicardinium. The bacteria close to the genus Cardinium consist of at least three groups, A, B, and C. Group A is present in various species of arthropods and was previously referred to as “Candidatus Cardinium hertigii,” group B is present in plant parasitic nematodes and was previously referred to as “Candidatus Paenicardinium endonii,” and group C is present in Culicoides biting midges. On the basis of morphological and molecular data, we propose that the nomenclature of these three groups be integrated into a single species, “Candidatus Cardinium hertigii. ”
SuBSENSE: A Universal Change Detection Method With Local Adaptive Sensitivity

Foreground/background segmentation via change detection in video sequences is often used as a stepping stone in high-level analytics and applications. Despite the wide variety of methods that have been proposed for this problem, none has been able to fully address the complex nature of dynamic scenes in real surveillance tasks. In this paper, we present a universal pixel-level segmentation method that relies on spatiotemporal binary features as well as color information to detect changes. This allows camouflaged foreground objects to be detected more easily while most illumination variations are ignored. Besides, instead of using manually set, frame-wide constants to dictate model sensitivity and adaptation speed, we use pixel-level feedback loops to dynamically adjust our method's internal parameters without user intervention. These adjustments are based on the continuous monitoring of model fidelity and local segmentation noise levels. This new approach enables us to outperform all 32 previously tested state-of-the-art methods on the 2012 and 2014 versions of the ChangeDetection.net dataset in terms of overall F-Measure. The use of local binary image descriptors for pixel-level modeling also facilitates high-speed parallel implementations: our own version, which used no low-level or architecture-specific instruction, reached real-time processing speed on a midlevel desktop CPU. A complete C++ implementation based on OpenCV is available online.
2D Segmentation Using a Robust Active Shape Model With the EM Algorithm

Statistical shape models have been extensively used in a wide range of applications due to their effectiveness in providing prior shape information for object segmentation problems. The most popular method is the active shape model (ASM). However, accurately fitting the shape model to an object boundary under a cluttered environment is a challenging task. Under such assumptions, the model is often attracted toward invalid observations (outliers), leading to meaningless estimates of the object boundary. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm that improves the robustness of ASM in the presence of outliers. The proposed framework assumes that both type of observations (valid observations and outliers) are detected in the image. A new strategy is devised for treating the data in different ways, depending on the observations being considered as valid or invalid. The proposed algorithm assigns a different weight to each observation. The shape parameters are recursively updated using the expectation-maximization method, allowing a correct and robust fit of the shape model to the object boundary in the image. Two estimation criteria are considered: 1) the maximum likelihood criterion and 2) the maximum a posteriori criterion that use priors for the unknown parameters. The methods are tested with synthetic and real images, comprising medical images of the heart and image sequences of the lips. The results are promising and show that this approach is robust in the presence of outliers, leading to a significant improvement over the standard ASM and other state-of-the-art methods.
Mycobacterial Shuttle Vectors Designed for High-Level Protein Expression in Infected Macrophages

ABSTRACT Mycobacterial shuttle vectors contain dual origins of replication for growth in both Escherichia coli and mycobacteria. One such vector, pSUM36, was re-engineered for high-level protein expression in diverse bacterial species. The modified vector (pSUM-kan-MCS2) enabled green fluorescent protein expression in E. coli, Mycobacterium smegmatis, and M. avium at levels up to 50-fold higher than that detected with the parental vector, which was originally developed with a lacZα promoter. This high-level fluorescent protein expression allowed easy visualization of M. smegmatis and M. avium in infected macrophages. The M. tuberculosis gene esat-6 was cloned in place of the green fluorescence protein gene (gfp) to determine the impact of ESAT-6 on the innate inflammatory response. The modified vector (pSUM-kan-MCS2) yielded high levels of ESAT-6 expression in M. smegmatis. The ability of ESAT-6 to suppress innate inflammatory pathways was assayed with a novel macrophage reporter cell line, designed with an interleukin-6 (IL-6) promoter-driven GFP cassette. This stable cell line fluoresces in response to diverse mycobacterial strains and stimuli, such as lipopolysaccharide. M. smegmatis clones expressing high levels of ESAT-6 failed to attenuate IL-6-driven GFP expression. Pure ESAT-6, produced in E. coli, was insufficient to suppress a strong inflammatory response elicited by M. smegmatis or lipopolysaccharide, with ESAT-6 itself directly activating the IL-6 pathway. In summary, a pSUM-protein expression vector and a mammalian IL-6 reporter cell line provide new tools for understanding the pathogenic mechanisms deployed by various mycobacterial species.
Interferon‐α in acute posttransfusion hepatitis C:. A randomized, controlled trial

To assess the efficacy of interferon‐α in acute hepatitis C, 28 patients with acute posttransfusion hepatitis were randomized to receive 3 million units of recombinant interferon‐α three times weekly for 12 wk or no treatment. Biochemical, histological and serological parameters were monitored during 1 yr of follow‐up. Serum ALT levels were normal at the end of therapy in 73% of treated patients and only in 38% of control patients (p = 0.06); these differences disappeared at 6 and 12 mo of follow‐up. Anti–hepatitis C virus seroconversion occurred later and at a lower rate in the group of patients who received interferon‐α. Treated patients had a trend toward less severe hepatic lesions with lower histological activity as compared with the control group, but no statistical differences were observed. No severe side effects of interferon‐α were detected during the study. In summary, a 3‐mo course of interferon‐α in acute hepatitis C is safe and might have some effect in diminishing disease activity only during the treatment period; however, and probably because of a small sample size, no benefit of interferon‐α in the long‐term outcome of this disease was demonstrated. (HEPATOLOGY 1992;15:767–769).
Trust in health information websites: A systematic literature review on the antecedents of trust

Health websites are important sources of information for consumers. In choosing websites, trust in websites largely determines which website to access and how to best utilize the information. Thus, it is critical to understand why consumers trust certain websites and distrust others. A systematic literature review was conducted with the goal of identifying the antecedents of trust in health information websites. After four rounds of screening process, 20 articles between 2000 and 2013 were harvested. Factors that determine trust are classified into individual difference antecedents, website-related antecedents, and consumer-to-website interaction-related antecedents. The most frequently studied antecedents were socio-demographics, information quality, appearance, and perceived reputation of the website. Each antecedent of trust are discussed in detail and future research directions are proposed.
The Bacterial Communities of Full-Scale Biologically Active, Granular Activated Carbon Filters Are Stable and Diverse and Potentially Contain Novel Ammonia-Oxidizing Microorganisms

ABSTRACT The bacterial community composition of the full-scale biologically active, granular activated carbon (BAC) filters operated at the St. Paul Regional Water Services (SPRWS) was investigated using Illumina MiSeq analysis of PCR-amplified 16S rRNA gene fragments. These bacterial communities were consistently diverse (Shannon index, >4.4; richness estimates, >1,500 unique operational taxonomic units [OTUs]) throughout the duration of the 12-month study period. In addition, only modest shifts in the quantities of individual bacterial populations were observed; of the 15 most prominent OTUs, the most highly variable population (a Variovorax sp.) modulated less than 13-fold over time and less than 8-fold from filter to filter. The most prominent population in the profiles was a Nitrospira sp. , representing 13 to 21% of the community. Interestingly, very few of the known ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB; <0.07%) and no ammonia-oxidizing Archaea were detected in the profiles. Quantitative PCR of amoA genes, however, suggested that AOB were prominent in the bacterial communities (amoA/16S rRNA gene ratio, 1 to 10%). We conclude, therefore, that the BAC filters at the SPRWS potentially contained significant numbers of unidentified and novel ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms that possess amoA genes similar to those of previously described AOB.
Freshwater Suspended Sediments and Sewage Are Reservoirs for Enterotoxin-Positive Clostridium perfringens

ABSTRACT The release of fecal pollution into surface waters may create environmental reservoirs of feces-derived microorganisms, including pathogens. Clostridium perfringens is a commonly used fecal indicator that represents a human pathogen. The pathogenicity of this bacterium is associated with its expression of multiple toxins; however, the prevalence of C. perfringens with various toxin genes in aquatic environments is not well characterized. In this study, C. perfringens spores were used to measure the distribution of fecal pollution associated with suspended sediments in the nearshore waters of Lake Michigan. Particle-associated C. perfringens levels were greatest adjacent to the Milwaukee harbor and diminished in the nearshore waters. Species-specific PCR and toxin gene profiles identified 174 isolates collected from the suspended sediments, surface water, and sewage influent as C. perfringens type A. Regardless of the isolation source, the beta2 and enterotoxin genes were common among isolates. The suspended sediments yielded the highest frequency of cpe-carrying C. perfringens (61%) compared to sewage (38%). Gene arrangement of enterotoxin was investigated using PCR to target known insertion sequences associated with this gene. Amplification products were detected in only 9 of 90 strains, which suggests there is greater variability in cpe gene arrangement than previously described. This work presents evidence that freshwater suspended sediments and sewage influent are reservoirs for potentially pathogenic cpe-carrying C. perfringens spores.