Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Crowd Counting via Adversarial Cross-Scale Consistency Pursuit

Crowd counting or density estimation is a challenging task in computer vision due to large scale variations, perspective distortions and serious occlusions, etc. Existing methods generally suffer from two issues: 1) the model averaging effects in multi-scale CNNs induced by the widely adopted $$ regression loss; and 2) inconsistent estimation across different scaled inputs. To explicitly address these issues, we propose a novel crowd counting (density estimation) framework called Adversarial Cross-Scale Consistency Pursuit (ACSCP). On one hand, a U-net structured generation network is designed to generate density map from input patch, and an adversarial loss is directly employed to shrink the solution onto a realistic subspace, thus attenuating the blurry effects of density map estimation. On the other hand, we design a novel scale-consistency regularizer which enforces that the sum up of the crowd counts from local patches (i.e., small scale) is coherent with the overall count of their region union (i.e., large scale). The above losses are integrated via a joint training scheme, so as to help boost density estimation performance by further exploring the collaboration between both objectives. Extensive experiments on four benchmarks have well demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed innovations as well as the superior performance over prior art.
DEM simulation of effect of confining pressure on ballast behaviour

In this paper, an attempt has been made to investigate the influence of confining pressure on deformation and degradation behaviour of railway ballast using the Discrete Element Method (DEM). A novel approach has been employed to model the two dimensional projection of field size ballast particles as cluster of bonded particles. Bonded particles are held together by a bond, and debonding is considered as particle breakage. A series of cyclic loading simulations using DEM were carried out on an assembly of angular ballast particles at different confining pressures (10 kPa to 240 kPa). The results highlight that the development of axial strain during cyclic loading as a function of initial confining pressure and number of cycles. Very high axial strain and breakage of particles have been observed at low confining pressure (< 30 kPa) owing to dilative volumetric strain behaviour. In terms of particle breakage, there exists an optimum range of confining pressures where breakage is minimal. In addition, the evolution of particle displacement vectors explains the breakage mechanism and associated deformations during cyclic loading. RÉSUMÉ cyclique, l'amplification de la tension axiale par rapport à la pression de confinement initiale et le nombres de cycles. Une tension axiale très élevée et la rupture de particule ont été observés à basse pression de confinement (< 30 kPa) dû à un comportement d'expansion de la tension volumétrique. En ce qui concerne la rupture de particules, il existe une gamme optimale de pressions de confinement où la rupture est minimale. De plus, l'évolution des vecteurs de déplacement de particule explique le mécanisme de rupture et les déformation associées pendant le chargement cyclique.
Phytochemical composition and antifeedant activity of five Vincetoxicum taxa against Spodoptera littoralis and Leptinotarsa decemlineata

Five Vincetoxicum taxa (V. canescens subsp. canescens, V. canescens subsp. pedunculata, V. fuscatum subsp. fuscatum, V. fuscatum subsp. boissieri and V. parviflorum) were investigated for insect antifeedant activity against Spodoptera littoralis and Leptinotarsa decemlineata. At a dose of 500 μg/cm2, 12 extracts were 100 % feeding deterrent, while 6 extracts showed 86.3- 99.3 % antifeedant activity. The effective doses (ED50) of the total ethanol extract from V. canescens subsp. pedunculata and of the methanol: dichloromethane (1:1) extract from V. parviflorum were 12, and 18 μg/cm2, respectively, against S. littoralis, and that of the total ethanol extract from V. fuscatum subsp. fuscatum was 25 μg/cm2 against L. decemlineata. The dichloromethane extracts of V. parviflorum and V. canescens subsp. pedunculata inhibited the growth of S. littoralis with ED50 values of 0.08 and 0.09 mg/g, respectively, and their LD50 values for larval mortality were 1.07 and 1.03 mg/g, respectively. Phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of cardiotonic glycosides, sugars, flavonoids and alkaloids in all investigated taxa. In the dichloromethane and methanol:dichloromethane (1:1) extracts, phenanthroindolizidine alkaloids were detected by LC/MS/MS.
Pulling Actions out of Context: Explicit Separation for Effective Combination

The ability to recognize human actions in video has many potential applications. Human action recognition, however, is tremendously challenging for computers due to the complexity of video data and the subtlety of human actions. Most current recognition systems flounder on the inability to separate human actions from co-occurring factors that usually dominate subtle human actions. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for training a human action recognizer, one that can: (1) explicitly factorize human actions from the co-occurring factors; (2) deliberately build a model for human actions and a separate model for all correlated contextual elements; and (3) effectively combine the models for human action recognition. Our approach exploits the benefits of conjugate samples of human actions, which are video clips that are contextually similar to human action samples, but do not contain the action. Experiments on ActionThread, PASCAL VOC, UCF101, and Hollywood2 datasets demonstrate the ability to separate action from context of the proposed approach.
IRGUN : Improved Residue Based Gradual Up-Scaling Network for Single Image Super Resolution

Convolutional neural network based architectures have achieved decent perceptual quality super resolution on natural images for small scaling factors (2X and 4X). However, image super-resolution for large magnication factors (8X) is an extremely challenging problem for the computer vision community. In this paper, we propose a novel Improved Residual based Gradual Up-Scaling Network (IRGUN) to improve the quality of the super-resolved image for a large magnification factor. IRGUN has a Gradual Upsampling and Residue-based Enhancment Network (GUREN) which comprises of series of Up-scaling and Enhancement blocks (UEB) connected end-to-end and fine-tuned together to give a gradual magnification and enhancement. Due to the perceptual importance of the luminance in super-resolution, the model is trained on luminance (Y) channel of the YCbCr image. Whereas, the chrominance components (Cb and Cr) channel are up-scaled using bicubic interpolation and combined with super-resolved Y channel of the image, which is then converted to RGB. A cascaded 3D-RED architecture trained on RGB images is utilized to incorporate its inter-channel correlation. In addition to this, the training methodology is also presented in the paper. In the training procedure, the weights of the previous UEB are used in the next immediate UEB for faster and better convergence. Each UEB is trained on its respective scale by taking the output image of the previous UEB as input and corresponding HR image of the same scale as ground truth to the successive UEB. All the UEBs are then connected end-to-end and fine tuned. The IRGUN recovers fine details effectively at large (8X) magnification factors. The efficiency of IRGUN is presented on various benchmark datasets and at different magnification scales.
A catalogue of structural and morphological measurements for DES Y1

We present a structural and morphological catalogue for 45 million objects selected from the first year data of the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Single Sersic fits and non-parametric ´ measurements are produced for g, r, and i filters. The parameters from the best-fitting Sersic ´ model (total magnitude, half-light radius, Sersic index, axis ratio, and position angle) are mea- ´ sured with GALFIT; the non-parametric coefficients (concentration, asymmetry, clumpiness, Gini, M20) are provided using the Zurich Estimator of Structural Types (ZEST+). To study the statistical uncertainties, we consider a sample of state-of-the-art image simulations with a realistic distribution in the input parameter space and then process and analyse them as we do with real data: this enables us to quantify the observational biases due to PSF blurring and magnitude effects and correct the measurements as a function of magnitude, galaxy size, Sersic ´ index (concentration for the analysis of the non-parametric measurements) and ellipticity. We present the largest structural catalogue to date: we find that accurate and complete measurements for all the structural parameters are typically obtained for galaxies with SEXTRACTOR MAG AUTO I ≤ 21. Indeed, the parameters in the filters i and r can be overall well recovered up to MAG AUTO ≤ 21.5, corresponding to a fitting completeness of ∼90 per cent below this threshold, for a total of 25 million galaxies. The combination of parametric and non-parametric structural measurements makes this catalogue an important instrument to explore and understand how galaxies form and evolve. The catalogue described in this paper will be publicly released alongside the DES collaboration Y1 cosmology data products at the following URL: https://des.ncsa. illinois.edu/releases.
Anti-lipase activity for Portulaca oleracea, Urtica urens, Brassica napus and Lathyrus hierosolymitanus wild plants from Palestine

Plants are used to the treatment and prevention of many of metabolic, degenerative and cardiovascular diseases. Obesity is one of the most common metabolic diseases which is considered one of the global health problems. The present study aimed to screen anti-lipase effect of Portulaca oleracea, Urtica urens, Brassica napus and Lathyrus hierosolymitanus traditional Palestinian medicinal wild plants. Anti-lipase activity was measured by using porcine pancreatic lipase inhibitory test which was established by using the UV-visible spectrophotometer method, while orlistat (anti-obesity drug) was used as a positive control reference. The porcine pancreatic lipase inhibitory effect for organic and aqueous extracts of Urtica urens were 157 μg/ml and 157.1 μg/ml, respectively. While the anti-lipase IC50 value for the organic extract of P. oleracea was 262.03 μg/ml. In addition, the aqueous extracts of Brassica napus and Portulaca oleracea have anti-lipase activity with the IC50 values 296.87 μg/ml and 417.62 μg/ml, respectively. Meanwhile, Lathyrus hierosolymitanus both aqueous and organic extracts were almost inactive. The results showed that Urtica urens, Portulaca oleracea, and Brassica napus have anti-lipase activity, which provided evidence for their folkloric use as functional food and medicine. These three plants could be used as antilipase agents in the pharmaceutical and nutritional industries or may be used as fatty food additives in order to decrease the absorption and digestion of fats from food.
Two-stage Sketch

Sketch or line art colorization is a research field with significant market demand. Different from photo colorization which strongly relies on texture information, sketch colorization is more challenging as sketches may not have texture. Even worse, color, texture, and gradient have to be generated from the abstract sketch lines. In this paper, we propose a semi-automatic learning-based framework to colorize sketches with proper color, texture as well as gradient. Our framework consists of two stages. In the first drafting stage, our model guesses color regions and splashes a rich variety of colors over the sketch to obtain a color draft. In the second refinement stage, it detects the unnatural colors and artifacts, and try to fix and refine the result. Comparing to existing approaches, this two-stage design effectively divides the complex colorization task into two simpler and goal-clearer subtasks. This eases the learning and raises the quality of colorization. Our model resolves the artifacts such as water-color blurring, color distortion, and dull textures.
Influence of Sowing Season and Host Crop Identity on the Community Structure of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Colonizing Roots of Two Different Gramineous and Leguminous Crop Species

Introduction of cover crops may improve the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in roots and soil under crop rotational systems; therefore, it is necessary to determine the potential for AMF communities to improve sustainable food production. We investigated the impact of cover crops, including wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), pea (Pisum sativum L.), and hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth.), on the AMF communities in their roots in autumn and spring sowing seasons with PCR-DGGE analysis. Although all four cover crops impacted the AMF community structure in roots, the diversity of AMF communities was unchanged among crop type or sowing season. Redundancy analysis (RDA) demonstrated that AMF communities within crop type were significantly different. However, the AMF community structures were not influenced by growing season, suggesting that growth stage in crops may be more responsive to shaping AMF community structure in crop roots than host crop identity.
Simulation of the Earth's radiation budget by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts 40-year reanalysis (ERA40)

[1] The radiation budget simulated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 40-year reanalysis (ERA40) is evaluated for the period 1979–2001 using independent satellite data and additional model data. This provides information on the quality of the radiation products and indirect evaluation of other aspects of the climate produced by ERA40. The climatology of clear-sky outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) is well captured by ERA40. Underestimations of about 10 W m−2 in clear-sky OLR over tropical convective regions by ERA40 compared to satellite data are substantially reduced when the satellite sampling is taken into account. The climatology of column-integrated water vapor is well simulated by ERA40 compared to satellite data over the ocean, indicating that the simulation of downward clear-sky longwave fluxes at the surface is likely to be good. Clear-sky absorbed solar radiation (ASR) and clear-sky OLR are overestimated by ERA40 over north Africa and high-latitude land regions. The observed interannual changes in low-latitude means are not well reproduced. Using ERA40 to analyze trends and climate feedbacks globally is therefore not recommended. The all-sky radiation budget is poorly simulated by ERA40. OLR is overestimated by around 10 W m−2 over much of the globe. ASR is underestimated by around 30 W m−2 over tropical ocean regions. Away from marine stratocumulus regions, where cloud fraction is underestimated by ERA40, the poor radiation simulation by ERA40 appears to be related to inaccurate radiative properties of cloud rather than inaccurate cloud distributions.
Human Appearance Transfer

We propose an automatic person-to-person appearance transfer model based on explicit parametric 3d human representations and learned, constrained deep translation network architectures for photographic image synthesis. Given a single source image and a single target image, each corresponding to different human subjects, wearing different clothing and in different poses, our goal is to photo-realistically transfer the appearance from the source image onto the target image while preserving the target shape and clothing segmentation layout. Our solution to this new problem is formulated in terms of a computational pipeline that combines (1) 3d human pose and body shape estimation from monocular images, (2) identifying 3d surface colors elements (mesh triangles) visible in both images, that can be transferred directly using barycentric procedures, and (3) predicting surface appearance missing in the first image but visible in the second one using deep learning-based image synthesis techniques. Our model achieves promising results as supported by a perceptual user study where the participants rated around 65% of our results as good, very good or perfect, as well in automated tests (Inception scores and a Faster-RCNN human detector responding very similarly to real and model generated images). We further show how the proposed architecture can be profiled to automatically generate images of a person dressed with different clothing transferred from a person in another image, opening paths for applications in entertainment and photo-editing (e.g. embodying and posing as friends or famous actors), the fashion industry, or affordable online shopping of clothing.
Changes of the Cerebral Metabolite Patterns in Patients Undergoing Hemodialysis due to Chronic Renal Failure: Evaluation with Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Purpose: We wanted to evaluate the cerebral metabolites in patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) and who were undergoing hemodialysis by performing proton MR spectroscopy and we wanted to evaluate the correlation between the changes in the cerebral metabolite ratios and the duration after starting the initial hemodialysis. Materials and Methods: Proton MR spectroscopy was performed in 15 patients with CRF and who were undergoing hemodialysis and in ten healthy volunteers. The changes in N-acetylaspartate (NAA), choline-containing compounds (Cho), myo-inositol (Myo), glutamine/glutamate complex (Glx), and creatine (Cr) were analyzed. MR spectroscopy was performed before and after hemodialysis. Results: For the patients with CRF before hemodialysis, the Cho/Cr ratio in the gray matter (p<0.001) and the Myo/Cr ratio in both the gray and white matter (p<0.01) were significantly elevated compared with those in the control subjects. For the patients with CRF after hemodialysis, their Cho/Cr ratios were significantly reduced in both the gray and white matter compared with that before hemodialysis (p<0.05). There was a significant positive correlation between the Cho/Cr ratio and serum Cr in the gray matter of CRF patients after hemodialysis (r=0.54, p<0.05). The cerebral metabolite ratios were not significantly correlated with the duration after starting the initial hemodialysis. Conclusion: The cerebral metabolite patterns are significantly different between the patients with CRF and who are undergoing hemodialysis and the normal controls. The cerebral metabolite ratios are not significantly correlated with the duration after starting the initial hemodialysis.
Structure and distribution of glandular trichomes in three species of Bignoniaceae

Tricomas glandulares desempenham papel importante na caracterizacao morfologica de Bignoniaceae e, devido a grande diversidade de formas e funcoes que esses tricomas apresentam, o objetivo desse estudo foi inventariar os tricomas glandulares presentes no eixo vegetativo aereo de Amphilophium magnoliifolium, Martinella obovata. e Stizophyllum riparium, bem como analisar sua estrutura e registrar a participacao de formigas nessas especies. Amostras frescas da regiao mediana a apical das lâmina foliolar, peciolo e no foram fixadas e processadas de acordo com os metodos usuais para microscopia de luz e eletronica de varredura. Os tricomas glandulares encontrados nas especies foram: peltados, capitados, estipitados e pateliformes/cupuliformes. Dentre esses tipos o mais abundante foi o tricoma peltado, apresentando tambem uma distribuicao mais uniforme que os demais. Os tricomas pateliformes/cupuliformes estavam em regioes mais especificas, como profilos, lâmina foliolar e na regiao nodal. Martinella obovata foi a unica especie que apresentou os tricomas capitados e estipitados, amplamente distribuidos ao longo de todo eixo vegetativo aereo. Em todas as especies foram encontradas formigas, principalmente nas regioes nodais. A ocorrencia do tricoma capitado e relatada pela primeira vez para o genero.
Human Adipose Tissue as a Source of Cells with Angiogenic Potential

Endothelial cells (ECs) are involved in the process of angiogenesis, the outgrowth of new vessels from preexisting blood vessels. If available in sufficiently large numbers, ECs could be used therapeutically to establish blood flow through in vitro engineered tissues and tissues suffering from severe ischemia. Adipose tissue (AT) is an easily available source of large number of autologous ECs. Here we describe the isolation, in vitro expansion, and characterization of human AT derived ECs (AT-ECs). AT-ECs proliferated rapidly through 15–20 population doublings. The cultured cells showed cobblestone morphology and expressed EC markers including CD31, CD144, eNOS, CD309, CD105, von Willebrand factor, CD146, CD54, and CD102. They bound Ulex europaeus agglutinin I lectin and took up DiI-Ac-LDL. The AT-ECs formed capillary-like tubes in Matrigel in vitro and formed functional blood vessels in Matrigel following subcutaneous injection into immunodeficient mice. In conclusion, AT-ECs reach clinically significant cell numbers after few population doublings and are easily accessible from autologous AT, which also contains mesenchymal stem cells/pericytes. Thus, AT yields two cell populations that may be used together in the treatment of tissue ischemia and in clinical applications of tissue engineering.