Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigation of DWI to Evaluate Prostate Thermal and Cryo Lesions

Introduction An estimated 232,090 new prostate cancer cases present in the U.S. during 2005, with an estimated 30,350 deaths (1). Options for minimally invasive therapy of the prostate includes thermal therapy and cryosurgery. MRI has been shown particularly useful as the treatment guiding modality (2) with the ability to localize prostate tumor (3), to guide the positioning of treatment applicator and to measure the temperature in vivo (4, 5). Moreover, diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) has been shown promising to evaluate the acute cryolesion in vivo (2). The goal of this work is to further investigate the use of DWI to estimate the cell viability immediately after the treatment.
On the Nature of the Repetitive Coordinator To in Japanese

This article examines the distribution of the Japanese conjunctive particle to which is duplicated on the final conjunct in a coordinate structure (cf. A-to B-to ‘A and B’). It has been observed in the literature that duplication of the coordinator to, a phenomenon known as conjunction doubling, is possible in coordination in which conjuncts coordinated by to are nominal constituents and also in the so-called ‘non-constituent’ coordination, where conjuncts coordinated by to do not appear to be syntactic constituents (see, e.g., Koizumi 2000, Takano 2002, Fukui and Sakai 2003 for related discussion). Although previous analyses that deal with these constructions commonly assume that the duplicated to, which I refer to in this article as the repetitive coordinator to (RC-to), is realized optionally (cf. Fukui and Sakai 2003, Ito and Chaves 2008, Vermeulen 2008), I show that the distribution of RC-to is more restricted than previously assumed, based on three sets of observations: (i) the inapplicability of ga/no conversion in the presence of RC-to; (ii) the non-occurrence of RC-to in the predicate position of a copular sentence; and (iii) the fact that RC-to exhibits different behavior with respect to two types of focus particles. It is compatible with dake ‘only,’ but not with sae ‘even’ or mo ‘also. ’ I also point out that a piece of the presented data is problematic under the analysis of non-constituent coordination as proposed by Vermeulen (2008). Considering these observations, I propose that RC-to is a focus particle that carries an implicature of exhaustivity in a manner similar to dake, and show that this proposal accounts for several previously unidentified properties of RC-to. *
Robust Face Recognition for Uncontrolled Pose and Illumination Changes Identification

Face recognition has made significant advances in the last decade, but robust commercial applications are still lacking. Current authentication/identification applications are limited to controlled settings, e.g., limited pose and illumination changes, with the user usually aware of being screened and collaborating in the process. Among others, pose and illumination changes are limited. To address challenges from looser restrictions, this paper proposes a novel framework for real-world face recognition in uncontrolled settings named Face Analysis for Commercial Entities (FACE). Its robustness comes from normalization (“correction”) strategies to address pose and illumination variations. In addition, two separate image quality indices quantitatively assess pose and illumination changes for each biometric query, before submitting it to the classifier. Samples with poor quality are possibly discarded or undergo a manual classification or, when possible, trigger a new capture. After such filter, template similarity for matching purposes is measured using a localized version of the image correlation index. Finally, FACE adopts reliability indices, which estimate the “acceptability” of the final identification decision made by the classifier. Experimental results show that the accuracy of FACE (in terms of recognition rate) compares favorably, and in some cases by significant margins, against popular face recognition methods. In particular, FACE is compared against SVM, incremental SVM, principal component analysis, incremental LDA, ICA, and hierarchical multi scale local binary pattern. Testing exploits data from different data sets: Celebrity DB, Labeled Faces in the Wild, SC face, and FERET. The face images used present variations in pose, expression, illumination, image quality, and resolution. Our experiments show the benefits of using image quality and reliability indices to enhance overall accuracy, on one side, and to provide for individualized processing of biometric probes for better decision-making purposes, on the other side. Both kinds of indices, owing to the way they are defined, can be easily integrated within different frameworks and off-the-shelf biometric applications for the following: 1) data fusion; 2) online identity management; and 3) interoperability. The results obtained by FACE witness a significant increase in accuracy when compared with the results produced by the other algorithms considered.
The Death Penalty in Texas On Failing to Acknowledge Irrelevance

Kenneth Land, Raymond H. C. Teske, Jr., and Hui Zheng’s (2012, this issue) article is an interesting addition to the scholarly research that has examined the possible deterrent effects of the death penalty. Although most of the nation’s top criminologists believe that the published research has shown that the death penalty is not and has never been a superior deterrent to criminal homicide than alternative sentences of long confinement (Radelet and Lacock, 2009), the scholarly debate is certain to continue. However, scholarly debates over the death penalty are different from public policy debates that may use our research to justify, at least in part, the execution of convicted offenders. Especially when the research may be used to justify the taking of a human life, it would seem prudent for researchers to be extraordinarily clear and careful when outlining the ways in which their research may (or may not) support life-or-death public policies. In this essay, I argue that Land et al.’s findings are not relevant to contemporary death penalty debates.
PHYTOCHEMICAL PROFILING OF MANGOSTEEN FRUIT , GARCINIA MANGOSTANA

The present study deals with phytochemical profiling of epicarp and endocarp extracts of mangosteen fruit, Garcinia mangostana. Fresh fruits were procured from market, identified and authenticated and methanol, chloroform, hexane and ethyl acetate extracts were prepared for both epicarp and endocarp of the fruit. The extracts were standardized against hepatocellular carcinoma (HeP-G2) cells and the extracts (Chloroform extract of epicarp and hexane extract of endocarp) showing best anti-proliferative activity was selected for qualitative and quantitative phytochemical screening. Qualitative analysis revealed the presence of phenols, flavonoids and triterpenoids in both the extracts, while the quantitative phytochemical analysis of HPLC and GC revealed that phenol content was higher in chloroform extract of epicarp than hexane extract of endocarp and flavonoids and triterpenoid content were higher in hexane extract of endocarp. The FT-IR spectrum was used to identify the functional group of the active components based on the peak value in the region of infrared radiation. Likewise, GCMS spectral analysis showed 160 aromatic compounds in epicarp and 105 compounds in endocarp. The results are discussed in the light of previous literature.
High performance Arabic digits recognizer using neural networks

The Arabic language is a Semitic language that has many differences when compared to European languages such as English. One of these differences is how to pronounce the ten digits, zero through nine. All Arabic digits are polysyllabic (except digit zero which monosyllabic) words and most of them contain Arabic unique phonemes, namely, pharyngeal end emphatic subset. In this paper Arabic digits were investigated from the speech recognition problem point of view. An artificial neural networks based speech recognition system was designed and tested with automatic Arabic digits recognition. The system is an isolated whole word speech recognizer and it was implemented both as a multi-speaker (i.e., the same set of speakers were used in both the training and testing phases) mode and speaker-independent (i.e., speakers used for training are different from those used for testing) mode. During recognition process, the digitized speech is cleaned from the noise by means of band-pass filters, the signal is also preemphasized, then it windowed and blocked by Hamming window, a time alignment algorithm is used to compensate for the differences in the utterances' lengths and misalignments between phonemes, frames features are extracted by using MFCC coefficients to reduce the amount of the information in the input signal, and finally the neural network classifies the unknown digit. This recognition system achieved 99.5% correct digit recognition in the case of multi-speaker mode, and 94.5% in the case of speaker-independent mode.
Chemical profiling of African guinea pepper friut ( Xylopia aethiopica )

Article Type: Full Length Research Article The chemical profiling of African guinea pepper friut (Xylopia aethiopica) was determined quantitatively and qualitatively using standard chemical methods. The results of the proximate analysis carried out on the fruits showed that they have the following composition: moisture (10.5±0.10)%, ash (6.10±0.11)%, crude protein (11.39±0.02)%, crude fat (30.30±0.10)%, crude fibre (3.87±0.02)% and carbohydrate (48.06±0.01)%. However, elemental analysis of X. aethiopica fruits revealed the concentrations of mineral ions as: K (4.80±0.10) mg/100g, Na (6.90±0.11) mg/100g, Ca (2.13±0.001) mg/100g, Mg (2.40±0.10) mg/100g, Zn (0.03±0.01) mg/100g, Cu (0.02±0.01) mg/100g, Mn (0.01±0.01) mg/100g and P (1.95±0.01) mg/100g. The toxicant analysis on the sample, shows that X. aethiopica fruits contains hydrocyanic acid, oxalate (both soluble and insoluble); and phytate as major toxicants, with mean concentrations of: HCN (1.51+0.01) mg/100g, soluble oxalate (3.19±0.01) mg/100g, total oxalate (3.75±0.01) mg/100g and phytate (0.37±0.2) mg/100g of the sample. However, the quantitative estimation of the phytochemical composition of X. aethiopica showed that the plant had mean concentration of: Alkaloids (2.40±0.1)%, flavonoids (8.10±0.1)%, saponins (1.36±0.01)%, polyphenols (3.88±0.03)%, reducing sugars (glucose and fructose) (44.50±0.1)%. Phytochemical screening of this plant extract using ethanol and water as a solvent media also showed presence of alkaloids, glycosides, saponins, flavonoids, reducing sugars such as (Glucose and fructose), polyphenols, triterpenes and steroids, but absence of tannins, phlobatannins and anthraquinones. ©2015 BluePen Journals Ltd. All rights reserved
On Minimal Energy of a Class of Bicyclic Graphs with given Cycles ’ Length and Pendent Vertices ∗

The energy of G is defined as the sum of absolute value of all eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix A(G). Let B(n, a, b, p) be the set of all bicyclic graphs on n vertices with p pendent vertices and two cycles Ca and Cb which have unique common vertex u0, B θ (n, a, b, p) the graph class obtained by coinciding the common vertex u0 of Ca and Cb with the center of the star Sn−(a+b−1)+1, and B μ(n, a, b, p) the set obtained by coinciding the common vertex u0 of Ca and Cb with the center of the star Sp and connecting a pendent path Pn−(a+b−1)−(p−1) on point u0. In this paper, it is obtained that B θ (n, a, b, p) has the minimal energy in all graphs which have only pendent vertices except two cycles, and B μ(n, a, b, p) has the minimal energy in all graphs which have prescribed cycles’ length and pendent vertices.
THE ROLE OF VITAMIN D IN TREATING PATIENTS WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS

Vitamin D is a steroid hormone the primary role of which is to maintain adequate blood levels of calcium and phosphorus needed for the normal bone mineralization process. Receptors for vitamin D active form and enzymes involved in its activation have been found in many other body tissues, leading to a conclusion that vitamin D deficiency is connected with the development of many chronic diseases such as hypertension, multiple sclerosis, certain malignant tumors and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2 DM). Numerous observational studies have shown that patients with T2 DM have lower blood levels of vitamin D compared to healthy subjects. This indicates that vitamin D could play an important role in the pathogenesis of this chronic noncommunicable disease. By monitoring parameters related to glycemic status, insulin secretion and insulin resistance, many researchers tried to answer the question whether vitamin D supplementation could help patients with diabetes better control their disease and prevent the complications. The results were contradictory and failed to provide enough solid evidence for recommending vitamin D supplementation as a therapeutic measure for these patients. However, patients who might benefit from supplementation are those with the increased T2 DM risk or those at the beginning of the disease. In order to assess which group of patients could benefit from such a supplementation, it is necessary to provide well-designed, long-term experimental studies with precisely defined groups of patients (e.g. prediabetes, early T2 DM, etc.), supplemented with sufficiently high vitamin D doses in relevant monitoring periods. Acta Medica Medianae 2019;58(1):116-124.
A Comparison of Nerve Conduction Properties in Male and Female of 20 to 30 Years of Age Group

Introduction In the recent years electrodiagnostic studies have been identified to play a key role in the evaluation of patients with various neuromuscular disorders. The nerve conduction studies are most often used to diagnose disorders of the peripheral nervous system. Conduction velocity of the nerves depends on the fibre diameter, degree of de-myelination and internodal distance. Motor nerve conduction studies require stimulation of a peripheral nerve while recording from a muscle innervated by the nerve. Sensory nerve conduction studies are performed by stimulating a mixed nerve while recording from a mixed or cutaneous nerve. These studies have been used clinically for many years to identify the location of peripheral nerve disease in single nerves and along the length of nerves and to differentiate these disorders from diseases of muscle or neuromuscular junction Aminoff (1999). It is a diagnostic tool for various neuropathies. The nerve conduction velocity is the speed at which an electrical stimulus passes through the nerves. The motor nerve conduction velocity (MNCV) is performed by the electrical stimulation of a peripheral nerve and by using the recording from a muscle which is supplied by this nerve. The time it takes for the electrical impulse to travel from the stimulation site to the recording site is measured. This value is called the latency and it is measured in milliseconds (ms). The size of the response called the amplitude is also measured. The motor amplitudes are measured in millivolts (mv). Routine nerve conduction study Abstract Objective: The study aimed to compare nerve conduction properties of both gender in 2030 age group. Method: Total 70 subjects of both genders ranging in age between 20 to 30 years were selected as per inclusion and exclusion guidelines of the study. Nerve conduction properties of median and ulnar nerves of both genders were recorded as per set guidelines. Result: Gender has definite effects on, latency, amplitude and conduction velocity of motor and sensory nerves. These effects are not identical in different motor and sensory nerves. Females had higher amplitude and conduction velocity in both motor and sensory stimulation of median and ulnar nerves, whereas, motor and sensory latency of median and ulnar nerve is higher in males.
Development of the Conical Spouted Bed Technology for Biomass and Waste Plastic Gasification

Gasification is one of the most effective methods for upgrading different wastes, such as plastics and biomass, because the gas produced can be used directly as a fuel or as a renewable raw material for the production of chemicals and fuels. The conical spouted bed reactor (CSBR) has demonstrated to perform well in gasification process due to its specific features, such as (i) the cyclic and vigorous particle movement that avoids bed defluidization (a limitation in fluidized beds), (ii) capability for handling irregular or sticky solids, (iii) high heat transfer rates between phases, and (iv) bed stability in a wide range of gas flow rates. However, the conventional CSBR is characterized by its short residence time, which involves serious problems for minimizing tar formation. The incorporation of a fountain confiner in the CSBR is key to increasing the gas residence time and improving the contact between the gas and heat carrier particles, thereby promoting tar cracking reactions and so enhancing carbon conversion efficiency from 81.5% (without confiner) to 86.1% under fountain enhanced regime. The quality of the syngas is clearly improved as the H 2 concentration increases from 36 to 42% with and without the fountain confiner, whereas that of CO decreases from 34 to 29%, respectively.
Genotype X Environment Interaction and Yield Stability of Bread Wheat Genotypes in central Ethiopia

The present study was conducted to interpret Genotype main effect and GEI obtained by AMMI analysis and group the genotype having similar response pattern over all environments. Fifteen bread wheat genotypes were evaluated by RCBD using four replications at six locations in Ethiopia. The main effect differences among genotypes, environments, and the interaction effects were highly significant (P ≤ 0.001) for the total variance of grain yield. Results of AMMI analysis of mean grain yield for the six locations showed significant differences (P0.001) among the genotypes, environments and GEI. The environment had the greatest effect with the environmental sum of squares (35.28%) than the genotypes (33.46%) and GEI (31.45%) effect. The AMMI analysis for the IPCA1 captured 46.1% and the IPCA2 explained 28.6%. The two IPC cumulatively captured 74.7% of the sum of square the GEI of bread wheat genotypes, when the IPCA1 was plotted against IPCA2. The genotype ETBW8075, ETBW8070 and ETBW9470 were unstable as they are located far apart from the other genotypes in the biplot when plotted on the IPCA1 and IPCA2 scores. The ETBW8078, ETBW8459, Hidase and ETBW8311 were genotype located near to the origin of the biplot which implying that it was stable bread wheat genotypes across environments. There is closer association between Lemu and ETBW8065 which indicate similar response of the genotypes to the environment. The best genotype with respect to location Kulumsa was ETBW9470, ETBW8075 was the best genotype for Dhera, ETBW8070 was the best genotype for Holeta while ETBW9466 was the best genotype for Arsi Robe. Arsi Robe and Kulumsa is the most favorable environment for all genotypes with nearly similar yield response for grain yield.
P o S ( G M C 8 ) 0 0 8 Modelling microlensing events

Modelling microlensing events is a complex job extending far beyond the optimization of a function of adopted model parameters by means of standard techniques. Non-linearity of the underlying models leads to parameter ambiguities and degeneracies, and already the most simple case of a single point-like observed source star and a single point-mass lens as well as a static observer is substantially less trivial than one might think, while a proper treatment of the various microlensing anomalies requires tailored approaches to ensure that all regions in a high-dimensional intricate model parameter space are identified that could provide a suitable description of the nature of the observed event. Catastrophic behaviour leading to caustics results in the need to optimize functions that are not smooth, which causes a significant problem to standard algorithms. As if this were not enough, the photometric measurements frequently show complex statistics, varying amongst different sites, and involving outliers, an increased abundance of larger deviations as compared to a Gaussian distribution, as well as effects depending on the observing conditions. It requires advanced statistical methods and numerical strategies to account for the encountered difficulties. In order to be able to identify deviations from an ordinary light curve of ongoing microlensing events, a real-time modelling is required, and for realizing an optimal monitoring strategy, accurate predictions of model parameters are a valuable ingredient. The bias of maximum-likelihood estimates however frequently leads to substantial mispredictions, whereas maximum a-posteriori estimates with an appropriate prior are doing a better job. Multivariate parameter probability densities of the model parameters for observed events contain all the relevant information from which any interval estimates can be derived. Moreover, by means of Bayes’ theorem, these can be converted to yield the probabilistic distributions of any physical properties with the assumption of respective priors. The identification of characteristic features in the observed light curve provides the clue to a successful modelling, and tailored artificial neural networks might replace human intuition, eventually leading to fully-automated real-time modelling systems.
NKG 2 D ligand expression in pediatric brain tumors

To cite this article: Kristen Haberthur, Kathryn Brennan, Virginia Hoglund, Stephanie Balcaitis, Harrison Chinn, Amira Davis, Shannon Kreuser, Conrad Winter, Sarah E.S. Leary, Gail H. Deutsch, Richard G. Ellenbogen & Courtney A. Crane (2016) NKG2D ligand expression in pediatric brain tumors, Cancer Biology & Therapy, 17:12, 1253-1265, DOI: 10.1080/15384047.2016. 1250047 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15384047.2016. 1250047
Analyzing How Formalist, Cognitive-Processing, and Literacy Practices Learning Paradigms are Shaping the Implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

This paper analyzes the influence of three different learning paradigms for learning literacy— formalist, cognitive-processing, and literacy practices on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. It argues that the Common Core State Standards are based largely on a formalist paradigm as evident in the emphasis on teaching text structure/genre forms for reading, writing, and speaking/listening. It also notes that much of the analysis of alignment of the Common Core State Standards with state standards (Porter et al., 2011) as well as the development of “learning progressions” is based on cognitivist learning/cognitive stage model paradigms. And, it posits the value of adopting a alternative literacy practice paradigm that focuses on creating authentic contexts for literacy learning. It also cites research on issues with about creating false expectations for low-income students in ways that do not serve students’ best interests. All of this suggests the need for further research on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards.