Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Computation of Surface Lightness in Simple and Complex Scenes

i Acknowledgements . ii List of Publications . iii List of Figures . vi List of Tables . viii Chapter 1. Determining how the Visual System computes Surface Lightness in Complex Scenes . 1 Classes of Lightness Theories . 4 Brightness Models . 5 Framework models . 10 Decomposition models . 11 Relating Existing Lightness Theories to Real-World Scenes . 17 Potential Information about Lightness Available in Real-World Scenes . 19 Shading, cast shadows and specular highlights . 19 Texture caused by complex mesostructure . 24 Unanswered Questions . 26 Chapter 2. Do Surface Reflectance Properties and 3D Mesostructure influence the Perception of Lightness? 29 Experiment 1A and 1B: Varying Surface Relief and Gloss Level of the Surround . 30 Methods . 30 Results and discussion . 41 Experiment 2A and 2B: Variegated Surrounds . 50 Methods . 51 Results and discussion . 54 Experiment 3: Flat, Matte Adjustable Surface . 57 Methods . 57 Experiment 4: Phase-Scrambled Surrounds . 62 Methods . 62 Results and discussion . 64 Concluding Thoughts . 66 Chapter 3. The Role of Interreflections on Lightness Perception under Changing Illumination Level . 69
Mutual Authentication Scheme Based on Lattice for NFC-PCM Payment Service Environment

In recent years, the incorporation of NFC (Near Field Communication) technology into mobile devices has led to changes in payment system environments. Currently, the NFC mobile payment service is leading the mobile payment market. In particular, most electronic payment services, such as those used by Google Inc. and Apple Inc., are adopting payment methods based on NFC to replace credit cards. In addition, related groups from the Republic of Korea have enhanced safety in communication by using standard techniques for activating NFC services. However, various security threats are still present in electronic payment methods that use NFC. In this paper, we propose a mutual authentication scheme based on a lattice for conditional anonymity in NFC-PCM (Near Field Communication-Passive Communication Mode) payment services environments.
Community psychiatric nurses’ experiences of caring for clients with borderline personality disorder

This qualitative study explored the experiences of community psychiatric nurses who work with clients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Ten community psychiatric nurses were interviewed. The nurses shared varied understanding of BPD. They also highlighted that specific skills are required when working with clients with BPD. However, the absence of formal clinical supervision was a particular difficulty among participants. In addition, while participants admitted to the challenges of working with these clients, they also reported on the rewards in seeing clients making progress, albeit slowly.
Colorectal Cancer Incidence and Mortality Rates Among New York City Adults Ages 20–54 years during 1976–2015

Abstract Colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence rates are rising in younger Americans and mortality rates are increasing among younger white Americans. We used New York State Cancer Registry data to examine New York City CRC incidence and mortality trends among adults ages 20–54 years by race from 1976 to 2015. Annual percent change (APC) was considered statistically significant at P less than . 05 using a two-sided test. CRC incidence increased among those ages 20–49 years, yet blacks had the largest APC of 2.2% (1993–2015; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.4% to 3.1%) compared with 0.5% in whites (1976–2015; 95% CI = 0.2% to 0.7%). Among those aged 50–54 years, incidence increased among blacks by 0.8% annually (1976–2015; 95% CI = 0.4% to 1.1%), but not among whites. CRC mortality decreased among both age and race groups. These findings emphasize the value of local registry data to understand trends locally, the importance of timely screening, and the need for clinicians to consider CRC among all patients with compatible signs and symptoms.
Bernoulli HMMs for Handwritten Text Recognition

In last years Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) have received significant attention in the task off-line handwritten text recognition (HTR). As in automatic speech recognition (ASR), HMMs are used to model the probability of an observation sequence, given its corresponding text transcription. However, in contrast to what happens in ASR, in HTR there is no standard set of local features being used by most of the proposed systems. In this thesis we propose the use of raw binary pixels as features, in conjunction with models that deal more directly with the binary data. In particular, we propose the use of Bernoulli HMMs (BHMMs), that is, conventional HMMs in which Gaussian (mixture) distributions have been replaced by Bernoulli (mixture) probability functions. The objective is twofold: on the one hand, this allows us to better modeling the binary nature of text images (foreground/background) using BHMMs. On the other hand, this guarantees that no discriminative information is filtered out during feature extraction (most HTR available datasets can be easily binarized without a relevant loss of information). In this thesis, all the HMM theory required to develop a HMM based HTR toolkit is reviewed and adapted to the case of BHMMs. Specifically, we begin by defining a simple classifier based on BHMMs with Bernoulli probability functions at the states, and we end with an embedded Bernoulli mixture HMM recognizer for continuous HTR. Regarding the binary features, we propose a simple binary feature extraction process without significant loss of information. All input images are scaled and binarized, in order to easily reinterpret them as sequences of binary feature vectors. Two extensions are proposed to this basic feature extraction method: the use of a sliding window in order to better capture the context, and a repositioning method in order to better deal with vertical distortions. Competitive results were obtained when BHMMs and proposed methods were applied to well-known HTR databases. In particular, we ranked first at the "Arabic Handwriting Recognition Competition" organized during the "12th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition" (ICFHR 2010), and at the "Arabic Recognition Competition: Multi-font Multi-size Digitally Represented Text" organized during the "11th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition" (ICDAR 2011). In the last part of this thesis we propose a method for training BHMM classifiers using discriminative training criteria, instead of the conventional Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE). Specifically, we propose a log-linear classifier for binary data based on the BHMM classifier. Parameter estimation of this model can be carried out using discriminative training criteria for log-linear models. In particular, we show the formulae for several MMI based criteria. Finally, we prove the equivalence between both classifiers, hence, discriminative training of a BHMM classifier can be carried out by obtaining its equivalent log-linear classifier. Reported results show that discriminative BHMMs clearly outperform conventional generative BHMMs.
Real World Haskell

This easy-to-use, fast-moving tutorial introduces you to functional programming with Haskell. You'll learn how to use Haskell in a variety of practical ways, from short scripts to large and demanding applications. Real World Haskell takes you through the basics of functional programming at a brisk pace, and then helps you increase your understanding of Haskell in real-world issues like I/O, performance, dealing with data, concurrency, and more as you move through each chapter. With this book, you will: Understand the differences between procedural and functional programming Learn the features of Haskell, and how to use it to develop useful programs Interact with filesystems, databases, and network services Write solid code with automated tests, code coverage, and error handling Harness the power of multicore systems via concurrent and parallel programming You'll find plenty of hands-on exercises, along with examples of real Haskell programs that you can modify, compile, and run. Whether or not you've used a functional language before, if you want to understand why Haskell is coming into its own as a practical language in so many major organizations, Real World Haskell is the best place to start.
High immunogenicity of measles AIK-C vaccine produced in Vietnam

Abstract. The goal of measles elimination has been set for 2012 in the WHO Western Pacific Region. To achieve this goal, an enhanced immunization strategy is required, and measles vaccines have been provided through the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in Vietnam. A large quantity of vaccines should be supplied for a two-dose immunization schedule with a supplementary catch-up campaign. The live measles vaccine AIK-C strain was produced in Vietnam through technical transfer from the Kitasato Institute, Japan. PolyVac I was produced from bulk materials imported from Japan and PolyVac II from the AIK-C seed. Two clinical trials were conducted using three vaccines: PolyVac I, and II, and the EPI vaccine (Rouvax) for the control. A total of 160 subjects were examined for the immunogenicity of PolyVac I and 57 for that of the EPI vaccine. All subjects became sero-converted in PolyVac I groups for three different Lots, but 54 (94.7%; 88.9-100%) of 57 recipients of the EPI vaccine became sero-positive. For PolyVac II, 118 initially sero-negatives became sero-converted. Whereas, 107 (95.5%; 91.7-99.3%) of 112 initially sero-negatives in the EPI group showed sero-conversion. The mean titers of post-immunization sera of sero-converted subjects receiving PolyVac I and II were lower than that for the EPI vaccine. No significant difference was observed in the incidence of adverse clinical events. Essentially the same results were obtained using PolyVac I and II, showing higher sero-conversion rates than the EPI vaccine, and PolyVac measles AIK-C will be favorable in Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries. Key words: live attenuated measles vaccine, clinical trial, technical transfer
Hepatitis B Infection and pregnancy: disease management and prevention of perinatal transmission

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection affects about 350 million individuals worldwide. Perinatal transmission is a common mode of HBV transmission. Without prophylaxis the risk of mother-to-child transmission is very high and it depends on the HBeAg status of mothers, being 85%-90% for HBeAg-positive mothers, and 32% for HBeAg-negative mothers. Maternal screening programs aimed at identifying HBsAg-positive mothers should be part of pregnancy routine examinations. Once HBsAg-positive mothers are identified, their babies receive passive-active immunoprophylaxis at birth, this reduces the risk of vertical HBV transmission from 90% to 5-10%. The present review aimed to show the peculiar and sometimes controversial aspects which concern both the mother and the fetus in the case of HBV infection in pregnancy, including the effect of pregnancy on HBV infection and of HBV infection on pregnancy; the potential viral transmission from mother to newborn; and prevention of mother-to-child transmission through antiviral drugs, and the type of antiviral drug to use considering their efficacy and potential teratogenic effect.
A multi-method approach to researching stress and mental health in two groups of healthcare students: nursing students and trainee clinical psychologists

This dissertation investigates stress and mental health in two groups of healthcare trainees using quantitative and qualitative research. Specifically, the thesis focuses on nursing students and trainee clinical psychologists. The quantitative studies adopt a particular methodological approach that is used at the Centre for Occupational Health Psychology at Cardiff University. The method is multi-dimensional in nature, and attempts to “tap-in” to the multiple levels of the stress process without overburdening the participants or the service they provide. This approach is described in great detail throughout the thesis, and therefore this work can also act as a template for future studies that may adopt this method to investigate other populations. It is suggested that taking a multi-dimensional approach to assessing stress might be a good way to inform regulatory standards, curriculum design, and student support. To complement the quantitative studies, qualitative studies were run to investigate stressors and coping strategies in mental health nursing students and trainee clinical psychologists. Many of the reported stressors were common across the two groups whereas others were specific to the individual population. For example, similarities between the groups included conflict with members of staff, problems in their home life, and ‘being a student/trainee’, whereas differences included the level of support received. That is, trainee clinical psychologists generally reported feeling well supported, whereas mental health nursing students reported inadequate support. Furthermore, there were additional barriers to accessing support for mental health nursing students, such as gaining access to counselling services during busy periods.
Plug and play reconfigurable solutions for heterogeneous IoT

The world is rapidly developing into a networked society, where people, machines, data, services and applications are tightly integrated by means of information and communications technology. The members of this dynamic machine-human community possess different, and even unique, capabilities. This development requires solutions to support the unprecedented level of the system's pervasion and heterogeneity, solutions which are missing today. Today’s device-level design procedures are an obstacle in the transition to this heterogeneous future, which demands diverse Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including low-end and low-power ones. Reducing the design and production costs of devices in low to mid-scale production quantities, requires new approaches to cope with application versatility. To address this problem, this thesis proposes a novel wireless sensor and actuator network (WSAN)/IoT device design methodology based on the combination of two approaches: platformbased design and autoconfiguration, that are applied to hardware (HW) and software (SW) components. Unlike the state-of-the-art methodologies, the methodology proposed enables more flexibility both during the design and after device deployment, while reducing the development expenses and time-to-market. Although neither of the two these approaches is fundamentally novel on its own, in this thesis they are employed in, and adapted to, extremely resource restricted systems. The feasibility of the methodology is shown by the development of technology artifact representing a Plug-and-Play enabled WSAN/IoT device platform. The new devices are assembled from HW modules, encapsulating the various power supply, processing, transceiver, sensor and actuator units, or sets of those. The central control unit of a device automatically identifies the HW, and configures the SW accordingly. The technology enablers for this the HW and SW architectures and interfaces – are reported in this thesis. Experimentation confirms the viability of the proposed concepts and mechanisms. The utility of the designed solutions has been shown by a series of successful research projects and experimental results.
Sosyal Girişimciliğin Genç Aktörleri: Üniversite Öğrenci Toplulukları Örneği

Sosyal girisimcilik, toplumun ve cevrenin ihtiyaclarinin ve sorunlarinin farkinda olan; bunlari cozmek icin harekete gecen ve toplum adina deger yaratma misyonunu ustlenen cesitli birey, grup ya da orgutlerin yenilikci ve yaratici bakis acisi ile sekillenen faaliyetleri olarak ele alinabilir. Bu faaliyetleri sosyal deger yaratma misyonunu ustlenerek yapan, kendi kazanci yerine toplumun kazancini dusunerek calisan ve boylece toplumsal degisim ve donusumlere imza atan bireyler de sosyal girisimciler olarak adlandirilabilir. Sosyal girisimcilerin toplumlarin gelismesinde ustlendikleri degisim ajani rolu, dunyanin ve dunya uzerindeki topluluklarin gelecegi acisindan son derece onemlidir. Bu kapsamda ozellikle gelecegi sekillendirecek olan genclerin sosyal girisimcilige yaklasimi ve bu yonde yaptiklari faaliyetler ise toplumlarin ve cevrenin surdurulebilirligi acisindan ayri bir oneme sahiptir. Bu sebeple calisma, universite genclerinin kurduklari topluluklarin sosyal girisimcilik yonunde gerceklestirdikleri faaliyetleri incelemeyi amaclamaktadir. Bu amac dogrultusunda, calismada Pamukkale Universitesi’ndeki cesitli universite topluluklarinin (kluplerinin) sosyal girisimcilik faaliyetlerinden ornekler sunularak, genclerin toplumsal sorunlara yaklasimlari ve bu yonde gelistirdikleri cozumler degerlendirilmistir. Gencler tarafindan yurutulen faaliyetler incelendiginde, genclerin sorunlara iliskin farkindaliklari, sorunlari ele alis bicimleri ve cozum noktasinda ortaya koyduklari kararli tutumlari sosyal deger yaratma ve surdurulebilirlik bakimindan anlam tasimaktadir.
AN OBJECTIVE-GUIDED ORTHO-SYNAPSE HOPFIELD NETWORK APPROACH TO MACHINE GROUPING PROBLEMS

This paper reports an ortho-synapse Hopfield network (OSHN) for solving machine grouping problems. An objective-guided search scheme is proposed to lead the search process. The OSHN structure and the objective-guided search scheme have been implemented in an algorithm. Unlike the back propagation or A RT1 neural networks, the proposed approach does not require training process and is not affected by the initial arrangement of the machine-part incidence matrix. As compared with the original Hopfield neural network, the computational efficiency and the solution quality can be considerably improved due to the reduced synapses in the OSHN and the objective-guided search process. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been tested using 28 notable problems from the literature and compared favourably with the solutions obtained in the literature.
Temporalis muscle fascia and cartilage palisade technique of type 1 tympanoplasty: A comparison

Background: Chronic suppurative otitis media is one of the common causes of deafness in india and occupies a considerable amount of clinic and operating time of otolaryngologists. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective study containing 50 patients, which was further divided into two groups of 25 patient each. One group was cartilage palisade technique group and other was temporalis fascia technique group (TFT group). Detailed history and examination along with pure tone audiometry was performed. Pre- and postoperative hearing results and graft uptake were compared. All surgeries were performed through the post aural approach. Cartilage was harvested from cymba concha and fascia from temporalis muscle. Results: Hearing improved significantly when either of the technique was used. Though this was slightly better, but stastically insignificant in TFT. there was no significant difference in the graft uptake rates, but it was better in cases of Eustachian tube dysfunction when cartilage palisades were used. Conclusion: There was no statistically significant difference in results in terms of success and auditory function but cartilage palisade technique gave better results in specific conditions like Eustachian tube dysfunction.
TEMPORARY ANCHORAGE DEVICES AND GUMMY SMILE

Aim was to evaluate the usability of mini-screw (Temporary Anchorage Devices TADs), as an anchor unit (units), in the treatment of gummy smile associated with deep over-bite. The sample was made up of 15 adult gummy smile patients (2males and 13 females). Materials and Methods All patients suffered from increased anterior facial height. Pre-treatment and post-intrusion gingival smile line (GSL), which is the distance between cervical gingival margins of maxillary central incisors and the lower border of the upper lip during smiling, was measured in millimetres using a digital calliper. Four TADs were used for each patient: two anterior TADs that were inserted between the roots of lateral incisors and canines; and the other two TADs were inserted posteriorly, between the roots of 2nd premolars and 1st molars. The anterior TADs were used as anchor units for the intrusion of upper anterior teeth, while posterior TADs were used for en-mass retraction. Pre-treatment and post intrusion lateral cephalometric radiographic measurements were taken for statistical inferences. Statistical analyses were carried out using Wilcoxon signed rank test. Statistical analyses revealed significant reduction in GSL and overbite. Results Radiographically, there were significant changes in the vertical and antro-posterior positions of upper anterior teeth, but no significant changes have been noticed in the vertical position of upper or lower posterior teeth. Conclusions The findings of the present study indicate that gummy smile which is mainly due to maxillary dentoalveolar overgrowth can be treated effectively with intrusion using anterior TADs, particularly in case of divergent face. The findings also indicate that anterior and posterior TAD scan provide absolute anchorage for treatment of deep overbite, and increased overjet.
Fixed order H/sub /spl infin// control design for dual-stage hard disk drives

Crucial to the increase in aerial densities of future hard disk drives (HDD) is the increase of the number of tracks per inch. In order to achieve very high track densities new high bandwidth and very accurate servo systems will be necessary. One possible solution is the use of dual-stage actuators, in which a high bandwidth and a highly accurate micro-actuator (MA) is used in combination with a traditional voice coil motor (VCM). In this case the nature of the servo controller becomes multivariable since both the VCM and the MA have to be controlled simultaneously. The design of servo controllers for track following with dual-stage actuators has been an active area of research in the last few years. Modern control methods were specifically developed for multivariable systems and offer significant advantages over classical control methods. On the down side, they usually lead to controllers which are of order equal to or greater than the plant they were designed for. The aim of the paper is to present a systematic approach for the design of a fixed order servo controller and to illustrate this design on a piezoelectric MA designed by Hutchinson Technologies Inc. The complexity of the servo controller is limited to address costs and implementation issues in a commercial HDD. The systematic approach for such a low order servo controller design is developed in the paper by utilizing H/sub /spl infin//-optimization with a choice of specific closed loop weighting functions and additional constraints on the order of the controller.
Deeper Time Delay Neural Networks for Effective Acoustic Modelling

Time delay neural networks (TDNNs) have been shown to be an efficient network architecture for modelling long temporal contexts in speech recognition. Meanwhile, the training times of TDNNs are much less, compared with other long temporal contexts models based on recurrent neural networks. In this paper, we propose deeper architectures to improve the modelling power of TDNNs. At each TDNN layer that needs spliced input, we increase the number of transforms so that the lower layers can provide more salient features for upper layers. Dropout is found to be an effective way to prevent the model from overfitting once the depth of the model is substantially increased. The proposed architectures significantly improvements the recognition accuracy in Switchboard and AMI.