Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Self-Training Approach for Point-Supervised Object Detection and Counting in Crowds

In this article, we propose a novel self-training approach named Crowd-SDNet that enables a typical object detector trained only with point-level annotations (i.e., objects are labeled with points) to estimate both the center points and sizes of crowded objects. Specifically, during training, we utilize the available point annotations to supervise the estimation of the center points of objects directly. Based on a locally-uniform distribution assumption, we initialize pseudo object sizes from the point-level supervisory information, which are then leveraged to guide the regression of object sizes via a crowdedness-aware loss. Meanwhile, we propose a confidence and order-aware refinement scheme to continuously refine the initial pseudo object sizes such that the ability of the detector is increasingly boosted to detect and count objects in crowds simultaneously. Moreover, to address extremely crowded scenes, we propose an effective decoding method to improve the detector’s representation ability. Experimental results on the WiderFace benchmark show that our approach significantly outperforms state-of-the-art point-supervised methods under both detection and counting tasks, i.e., our method improves the average precision by more than 10% and reduces the counting error by 31.2%. Besides, our method obtains the best results on the crowd counting and localization datasets (i.e., ShanghaiTech and NWPU-Crowd) and vehicle counting datasets (i.e., CARPK and PUCPR+) compared with state-of-the-art counting-by-detection methods. The code will be publicly available at https://github.com/WangyiNTU/Point-supervised-crowd-detection.
You say "disaster", i say "no problem": unusable problem rating scales

This paper documents a consistent and considerable evaluator effect in the ratings of usability problem severity carried out by experienced usability professionals. The CUE-9 study, conducted in 2011, showed a reasonable level of rater agreement in problem identification, but the severity assigned to problems varied wildly from "not a problem" to "disaster". This paper documents the variations we observed and the need for a better rating scale and better training. The paper calls for more caution when using extreme ratings. Our results also show that simple attempts to fix the traditional rating scales may not work.
Progressive elevations in muscle blood flow during prolonged exercise in swine.

Distribution of muscle blood flow has not been measured in man during prolonged exercise, but progressive elevations in skin flow coupled with constant cardiac output (QT) have suggested muscle blood flow may be compromised. However, previous experiments with rats demonstrated progressive increases in muscle blood flow over time during prolonged submaximal exercise. The present study was performed to study muscle blood flow in miniature swine during long-term exercise to shed light on this apparent anomaly. QT and distribution of QT were studied with radiolabeled microspheres while pigs ran on a level treadmill at a speed (10.5 km/h) requiring 71 +/- 4% of maximal O2 consumption (VO2 max). QT increased 23% from the 5th to the 30th min of exercise, whereas total skeletal muscle flow increased by 49%. Increases in flow in the muscles resulted from decreased resistance, since mean arterial pressure declined over this time period (-7%). In addition, the proportional increases in muscle flow were similar within synergistic muscle groups independent of fiber type composition (e.g., elbow extensors: 59-78%; elbow flexors: 26-40%). The factor that limited continued exercise appeared to be body temperature. Colonic temperature rose in linear fashion over time; the animals became exhausted at approximately 42 degrees C. These flow data are similar to previous findings in rats and indicate that during prolonged treadmill locomotion in quadrupedal animals muscle blood flow increases over time to near maximal levels.
Osmophobia in Migraine and Tension-Type Headache and Its Clinical Features in Patients With Migraine

Intolerance to smell is often reported by migraine patients. This study evaluates osmophobia in connection with the diagnosis of migraine and episodic tension-type headache (ETTH). The characteristics of this symptom are also investigated. We recruited from our Headache Centre 1005 patients (772 female, 233 male; age 37 ± 11 years), of whom 677 were migraine without aura (MoA), 130 migraine with aura (MA) and 198 TTH. Patients with two or more forms of primary headache were excluded. Among migraine patients, 43.9% with MoA and 38.5% with MA reported osmophobia during the attacks; none of the 198 TTH patients suffered this symptom. Most frequently offending odours were scents (63.9%), food (55.2%) and cigarette smoke (54.8%). Osmophobia appears structurally integrated into the migraine history of the patient. It seems to be a peculiar symptom favouring the diagnosis of migraine (MoA and MA) in the differential diagnosis with ETTH.
Subjective Complaints, Verbal Fluency, and Working Memory in Mild Multiple Sclerosis

Patients with mild multiple sclerosis (MS) regularly report subjective complaints characterized by generalized cognitive inefficiency. A feature of these complaints is reduced verbal fluency, for example, losing the thread of conversation. Mild MS patients and controls were compared on subjective complaints, verbal fluency, and working memory, and the possible role of working memory was investigated. As predicted, subjective difficulties and verbal fluency each correlated with working memory. Subjective difficulties and verbal fluency were also related. Within the control group, the subjective difficulties were associated only with depression. On the other hand, in the MS group, subjective difficulties were unrelated to affective state but were correlated with working memory. For the patients, partialing out depression and anxiety did not influence any of the correlations involving subjective difficulties, verbal fluency, or working memory. These findings support the proposal that working memory impairment underlies subjective complaints of mild MS patients and that verbal dysfluency is part and parcel of this phenomenon.
The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding

Introduction 1. The value of knowledge is external to it 2. The value of true belief 3. The value of justification 4. Reliabilism, normativity and the special promise of virtue 5. The Gettier problem and the value of knowledge 6. Knowledge as irreducibly valuable 7. Epistemic attitudinalism: semantic and pragmatic approaches 8. Knowledge and understanding 9. Conclusion References Index.
Ecological factors influencing small mammal infection by Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. in agricultural and forest landscapes

Small mammals are key components of numerous tick-borne disease systems, as hosts for immature ticks and pathogen reservoirs. To study the factors influencing tick-borne infection in small mammals, we trapped small mammals and collected questing ticks in spring and autumn in 2012 and 2013 at 24 sites in a 10 × 15 km rural landscapes (Brittany, France). Tissue samples were screened by real-time PCR for Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato. Of the two dominant small mammal species captured, bank voles (Myodes glareolus) had higher prevalence than wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) for both infections, presumably because of specific differences in immunological defenses. Prevalence of infections was higher in 2013 than in 2012, likely because small mammals were fivefold less abundant in 2013, favouring tick aggregation. Bacterial prevalence, which was higher in autumn, was not associated to questing Ixodes ricinus nymph abundance which was six times higher in spring, but rather to the structure of the small mammal community. These findings suggest the involvement of endophilic tick species, I. trianguliceps and/or I. acuminatus, in bacterial transmission. Our study highlights that the entire community of hosts and vectors, and their interactions, should be considered to fully understand the epidemiology of vector-borne diseases.
Deep Networks tag the location of bird vocalisations on audio spectrograms

This work focuses on reliable detection and segmentation of bird vocalizations as recorded in the open field. Acoustic detection of avian sounds can be used for the automatized monitoring of multiple bird taxa and querying in long-term recordings for species of interest. These tasks are tackled in this work, by suggesting two approaches: A) First, DenseNets are applied to weekly labeled data to infer the attention map of the dataset (i.e. Salience and CAM). We push further this idea by directing attention maps to the YOLO v2 Deepnet-based, detection framework to localize bird vocalizations. B) A deep autoencoder, namely the U-net, maps the audio spectrogram of bird vocalizations to its corresponding binary mask that encircles the spectral blobs of vocalizations while suppressing other audio sources. We focus solely on procedures requiring minimum human attendance, suitable to scan massive volumes of data, in order to analyze them, evaluate insights and hypotheses and identify patterns of bird activity. Hopefully, this approach will be valuable to researchers, conservation practitioners, and decision makers that need to design policies on biodiversity issues.
Risk Factors for Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus (VRE) Infection in Colonized Patients With Cancer

Abstract To determine the risk factors for vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) infection in colonized patients with cancer, we conducted a case–control study. According to multivariate analysis, the only significant factors were neutropenia (< 500 cells/mm3) for more than 1 week and the use of oral vancomycin. Therefore, colonized neutropenic patients with cancer who have previously used oral vancomycin are most prone to VRE infection.
Study on Fault Current Limiting Characteristics of an SFCL Using Magnetic Coupling of Two Coils With Mechanical Switch Driven by Electromagnetic Repulsion Force

In this paper, the superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) using magnetic coupling of two coils with mechanical switch, which the extra driving coil to drive it unlike the previous hybrid SFCL was not required, was suggested. The operational principle of the suggested SFCL using magnetic coupling of two coils with the mechanical switch is basically the same as one without mechanical switch, except that the mechanical switch is driven by the electromagnetic repulsion force generated by the magnetic flux between two coils comprising the SFCL. With the operation of the mechanical switch, the fault current flowing through the SFCL using magnetic coupling of two coils can be commutated from the magnetically coupled two coils into the coil operated as the current limiting reactor (CLR) immediately after the fault occurs, which is contributed to the fault current limiting operation of this SFCL. To verify the operation of the suggested SFCL, the mechanical switch with electromagnetic contact comprised of the fixed and the moving parts, which were located just above open iron core wound by two parallel connected coils, was designed and fabricated. With the fabricated mechanical switch, the short-circuit tests of the SFCL with the suggested mechanical switch were carried out. Through the analysis on the results of the short-circuit tests, the current limiting characteristics of the suggested SFCL with the mechanical switch could be confirmed to be improved effectively with the reduction of the power burden of the high- TC superconducting (HTSC) element comprising the SFCL.
3D tongue motion visualization based on the B-mode ultrasound tongue images. (Visualisation tridimensionnelle de la langue basée sur des séquences d'image échographique en mode-B)

A silent speech interface (SSI) is a system to enable speech communication with non-audible signal, that employs sensors to capture non-acoustic features for speech recognition and synthesis. Extracting robust articulatory features from such signals, however, remains a challenge. As the tongue is a major component of the vocal tract, and the most important articulator during speech production, a realistic simulation of tongue motion in 3D can provide a direct, effective visual representation of speech production. This representation could in turn be used to improve the performance of speech recognition of an SSI, or serve as a tool for speech production research and the study of articulation disorders. In this thesis, we explore a novel 3D tongue visualization framework, which combines the 2D ultrasound imaging and 3D physics-based modeling technique. Firstly, different approaches are employed to follow the motion of the tongue in the ultrasound image sequences, which can be divided into two main types of methods: speckle tracking and contour tracking. The methods to track speckles include deformation registration, optical-flow, and local invariant features-based method. Moreover, an image-based tracking re-initialization method is proposed to improve the robustness of speckle tracking. Compared to speckle tracking, the extraction of the contour of the tongue surface from ultrasound images exhibits superior performance and robustness. In this thesis, a novel contour-tracking algorithm is presented for ultrasound tongue image sequences, which can follow the motion of tongue contours over long durations with good robustness. To cope with missing segments caused by noise, or by the tongue midsagittal surface being parallel to the direction of ultrasound wave propagation, active contours with a contour-similarity constraint are introduced, which can be used to provide “prior” shape information. Experiments on synthetic data and on real 60 frame per second data from different subjects demonstrate that the proposed method gives good contour tracking for ultrasound image sequences even over durations of minutes, which can be useful in applications such as speech recognition where very long sequences must be analyzed in their entirety…
Effect Modification by Catalase Genotype Suggests a Role for Oxidative Stress in the Association of Hormone Replacement Therapy with Postmenopausal Breast Cancer Risk

Catalase, a ubiquitous heme enzyme, catalyzes conversion of hydrogen peroxide to water and molecular oxygen, protecting cells from oxidative stress. A C/T polymorphism in the promoter region of the CAT gene (rs1001179) affects transcriptional activity and RBC catalase levels. Oxidative stress may explain the observed increased postmenopausal breast cancer risk associated with hormone replacement therapy (HRT). We examined CAT genotype, HRT, and postmenopausal breast cancer risk in the Western New York Exposures and Breast Cancer case-control study. Cases (n = 616) were women with primary, incident, pathologically confirmed breast cancer. Randomly selected controls (n = 1,082) were frequency matched to cases on age and race. Genotype was assayed by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Unconditional logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) adjusted for potential confounders. CAT genotype alone was not associated with breast cancer risk. Ever use of HRT was associated with increased risk (OR, 1.39; 95% CI, 1.11-1.75). The increase with ever use was more pronounced among those with variant CT or TT CAT genotype (OR, 1.88; 95% CI, 1.29-2.75) than among those with CC (OR, 1.15; 95% CI, 0.86-1.54). Similarly, risk associated with ≥5 years of HRT use was greater among those with at least one variant T allele (OR, 2.32; 95% CI, 1.50-3.59). Increased risk was limited to estrogen receptor–positive tumors. Our findings suggest that CAT genotype modifies the effect of HRT use on breast cancer risk and that HRT may affect risk by affecting oxidative stress. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008;17(5):1082–7)
Mucormycosis in hematologic malignancies: an emerging fungal infection.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES In recent years pulmonary mucormycosis has been reported in patients with leukemia and lymphoma and bone marrow transplant recipients. It carries an extremely poor prognosis. We report our experience of clinical findings, diagnostic procedures, treatment and outcome of mucormycosis diagnosed in neutropenic patients affected by hematologic neoplasms admitted to our Department. DESIGN AND METHODS From November 1987 to July 1999 we observed 13 cases of Mucor. Their median age was 61 years (range 20-75), and they were predominantly in the aplastic post-chemotherapy period (12/13), affected by acute myeloid leukemia (11 cases ) or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (2 cases). Six patients (all with leukemia) were receiving inductionEth consolidation therapy, 7 had progressive hematologic disease. At the onset of infection all patients were neutropenic (N < 0.5x10(9)/L). No patients had diabetes mellitus. Two patients had been receiving steroid therapy for 5 and 7 days. RESULTS The lung was involved in all cases (13/13); disseminated disease was present in 8/13 patients. All cultures (blood, sputum, nasal swabs and bronchoalveolar lavage) were negative. In 3 patients a histologic diagnosis was made in vivo: in 1 patient by percutaneous pulmonary biopsy, in 1 patient by pulmonary lobectomy, and in the last patient by percutaneous pulmonary biopsy confirmed by excision of a cerebellar abscess. In the remaining 10 cases diagnosis was made post-mortem. Five patients were not treated, 2 because of poor clinical condition and 3 because fungal infection was not suspected. Amphotericin B (1 mg/kg/day) was given empirically to 6 patients and 2 responded to treatment. The remaining 2 patients with neurologic symptoms at the onset of infection were treated with liposomal amphotericin, Ambisome, one with 3 and one with 5 mg/kg/day; of these two patients the first died in 4 days; the second, with both pulmonary and cerebellar localizations, was treated successfully with 5 mg/kg/day for 4 weeks and then with 3 mg/kg/day, and excision of a brain abscess at neutrophil recovery (total dose of Ambisome: 12,000 mg). The 3 surviving leukemic patients were able to complete subsequent consolidation therapy using amphotericin B or liposomal amphotericin as secondary prophylaxis during aplasia. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS In neutropenic hematologic patients Mucor is rarely suspected. In our patients infection was often characterized by disseminated disease and a rapidly fatal course; only early aggressive amphotericin B (or Ambisome) treatment together with neutrophil recovery appeared to improve the outcome. Diagnosis is very important for programming antifungal therapy and secondary prophylaxis with amphotericin B, because Mucor is usually resistant to itraconazole.
A review on Cressa cretica Linn.: A halophytic plant

Herbal medicine is used by up to 80% of the population in developing countries. Cressa cretica L. is a popular holophytic plant and is used in folklore medicine for ailments including diabetes, ulcers, asthma, anthelmintic, stomachic, tonic and aphrodisiac purposes, enriches the blood, and is useful in constipation, leprosy, and urinary discharges. The plant is traditionally used in Bahrain as expectorant and antibilious agent. Scientific evidence suggests its versatile biological functions such as its antibacterial, antifungal, antitussive, anticancer with some other plants, anti-inflammatory, and improving testicular function in rats. In this article, a comprehensive account of the morphology, phytochemical constituents, ethnobotany, and biological activities are included in view of the recent findings of importance on the plant, C. cretica.
Asymptotic controllability by means of eventually periodic switching rulesVol

In this paper we introduce the notion of eventually periodic switching signal. We prove that if a family of linear vector fields satisfies a mild finite time controllability condition, and for each initial state there exists a time-dependent switching signal which asymptotically drives the system to the origin (possibly allowing different signals for different initial states), then the same goal can be achieved by means of an eventually periodic switching signal. This enables us to considerably reduce the dependence of the control law on the initial state. In this sense, the problem addressed in this paper can be reviewed as a switched system theory version of the classical problem of investigating whether, or to what extent, a nonlinear asymptotically controllable system admits stabilizing feedback laws.
Marginal living donor in kidney transplantation: experience in a Chinese single center.

BACKGROUND Living donor kidney transplantation is becoming popular in China, whereas, in clinical situations, some kidney donors may be sub-optimal, namely marginal living donor. The present study aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of marginal living donor kidney transplantation in a Chinese single center. METHODS Between January 2001 and December 2009, 888 kidney transplantations were performed in our center; 149 were living donor kidney transplantations. The living donors and recipients were followed up regularly after the operation. Of the living donors, 30 donors were marginal, who were older than 60 years or suffered from kidney anomaly or some benign diseases. Among the non-marginal living kidney transplantations, 58 donors and recipients had complete perioperative and follow-up data. We compared the marginal and non-marginal living donor kidney transplantations with regard to donor age, follow-up period, donor's serum creatinine at the last follow-up, recipient's serum creatinine at the last follow-up, and graft survival at the last follow-up. RESULTS The mean age of donors in the marginal and non-marginal living donors were (55 ± 9) (37-66) and (43 ± 12) (30-59) years. The mean follow-up times of the marginal and non-marginal groups were (26.4 ± 13.4) months and (28.8 ± 14.8) months. The donor and recipient serum creatinine levels at the last follow-up were (1.16 ± 0.20) mg/dl and (1.30 ± 0.24) mg/dl in the marginal group, and (1.12 ± 0.32) mg/dl and (1.34 ± 0.32) mg/dl in the non-marginal group. Three recipients in the marginal group and five recipients in the non-marginal group had acute rejection episodes during the first year. Actuarial 3-year graft survival was 96.7% in the marginal group and 100% in the non-marginal group. No significant differences were detected between the two groups with regard to these data. CONCLUSION Utilization of highly selective marginal living donors can be a safe, feasible, and effective way for the treatment of patients with end stage renal disease.