Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geodesic Flow Kernel Support Vector Machine for Hyperspectral Image Classification by Unsupervised Subspace Feature Transfer

In order to deal with scenarios where the training data, used to deduce a model, and the validation data have different statistical distributions, we study the problem of transformed subspace feature transfer for domain adaptation (DA) in the context of hyperspectral image classification via a geodesic Gaussian flow kernel based support vector machine (GFKSVM). To show the superior performance of the proposed approach, conventional support vector machines (SVMs) and state-of-the-art DA algorithms, including information-theoretical learning of discriminative cluster for domain adaptation (ITLDC), joint distribution adaptation (JDA), and joint transfer matching (JTM), are also considered. Additionally, unsupervised linear and nonlinear subspace feature transfer techniques including principal component analysis (PCA), randomized nonlinear principal component analysis (rPCA), factor analysis (FA) and non-negative matrix factorization (NNMF) are investigated and compared. Experiments on two real hyperspectral images show the cross-image classification performances of the GFKSVM, confirming its effectiveness and suitability when applied to hyperspectral images.
Vitamin D and Athletes

While it is well recognized that vitamin D is necessary for optimal bone health, emerging evidence is finding that adequate vitamin D intake reduces risk for conditions such as stress fracture, total body inflammation, infectious illness, and impaired muscle function. Studies in athletes have found that vitamin D status is variable and is dependent on outdoor training time (during peak sunlight), skin color, and geographic location. Although research has found that athletes generally do not meet the U.S. dietary reference intake for vitamin D, inadequate endogenous synthesis is the most probable reason for insufficient/deficient status. Given the recent findings, it is imperative that sports dietitians and physicians routinely assess vitamin D status and make recommendations to help athletes achieve a serum 25(OH)D concentration of ≥32 and preferably ≥40 ng·mL−1. Further research is needed to determine the effect of vitamin D status on injury, training, and performance in athletes.
History of fires and vegetation since the Neolithic in the Cantabrian Mountains (Spain)

Fire has been one of the main causes of disturbance of vegetation over time, and since the Neolithic has become an irreplaceable tool for the opening of forest spaces and maintenance of pastures. Previous studies showed that the intensity and effects of wildfires are related to the biomass and controlled by climate factors. However, in regions such as Cantabria, where agriculture and livestock have spread throughout the territory since prehistory, fires should also be closely related to human land uses. The aim of this paper was to investigate the history of fires and vegetation since the Neolithic in the Cantabrian Mountains, using sedimentary charcoal and pollen data to study the role of human activities in the processes that have shaped ecosystems throughout the Holocene. The asynchrony and quantitative differences in the results obtained at different sites indicate significant variations in fire patterns at regional scale since the Neolithic, although the type and size of each basin also had a strong influence on charcoal accumulation. Maximum values for charcoal accumulation rate at La Molina were observed between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age but occurred after about 3500 cal years BP at El Cueto de la Avellanosa. At El Sertal, low charcoal accumulation rate values were observed, probably because the sequence begins in a space that already had been cleared; the maximum values occurred during the most recent millennium. These data provide evidence that fire has been a key factor in forest retreat and in maintaining open landscapes since the Neolithic.
The effect of chemoradiotherapy on survival in locally advanced unresectable non-small cell lung cancer patients: Experience from the southeast region of Turkey

ÇIĞDEM USUL AFŞAR1, FERYAL KARACA2, MERAL GÜNALDI3, İSMAIL OĞUZ KARA4, MELEK ERKIŞI4, BERKSOY ŞAHIN4, BERNA BOZKURT DUMAN5, SEMRA PAYDAŞ4, VEHBI ERCOLAK6 1Ministry of Health, Istanbul Education and Research Hospital, Department of Medical Oncology, Istanbul 2Adana Numune Education and Research Hospital, Department of Radiation Oncology, Adana 3Bakirkoy Sadi Konuk Education and Research Hospital, Department of Medical Oncology, Istanbul 4Cukurova University Medical Faculty, Department of Medical Oncology, Adana 5Adana Numune Education and Research Hospital, Department of Medical Oncology, Adana 6Mersin Government Hospital, Department of Medical Oncology, Mersin, Turkey
CRITICAL ROLE OF REACTIVE OXYGEN SPECIES FORMATION IN MICROCYSTIN-INDUCED CYTOSKELETON DISRUPTION IN PRIMARY CULTURED HEPATOCYTES

Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae)-contaminated water is a worldwide public health problem. Microcystins are a group of liver-specific toxins generated by cyanobacteria. It is generally believed that the protein phosphorylation that leads to the disruption of intermediate filaments plays an important role in microcystin-induced hepatotoxicity. However, the mechanisms that contribute to the microcystin-induced alterations of microtubules and microfilaments are not fully understood. In the present study, the effects of microcystin-LR (M-LR), the most common microcystin, were examined on the organization of cellular microtubules and microfilaments in primary cultured rat hepatocytes. Our results indicate that M-LR initiated reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation followed by altering the cytoskeleton structures, which eventually led to significant LDH leakage. These effects were completely prevented by TEMPOL, a superoxide dismutase mimic, and also partially prevented by desferoxamine. These findings provide further evidence that ROS formation, especially superoxide radical, plays a crucial role in M-LR-induced disruption of cytoskeleton organization and consequent hepatotoxicity.
The neural control of fast vs. slow vergence eye movements

When looking between targets located in three‐dimensional space, information about relative depth is sent from the visual cortex to the motor control centers in the brainstem, which are responsible for generating appropriate motor commands to move the eyes. Surprisingly, how the neurons in the brainstem use the depth information supplied by the visual cortex to precisely aim each eye on a visual target remains highly controversial. This review will consider the results of recent studies that have focused on determining how individual neurons contribute to realigning gaze when we look between objects located at different depths. In particular, the results of new experiments provide compelling evidence that the majority of saccadic neurons dynamically encode the movement of an individual eye, and show that the time‐varying discharge of the saccadic neuron population encodes the drive required to account for vergence facilitation during disconjugate saccades. Notably, these results suggest that an additional input (i.e. from a separate vergence subsystem) is not required to shape the activity of motoneurons during disconjugate saccades. Furthermore, whereas motoneurons drive both fast and slow vergence movements, saccadic neurons discharge only during fast vergence movements, emphasizing the existence of distinct premotor pathways for controlling fast vs. slow vergence. Taken together, these recent findings contradict the traditional view that the brain is circuited with independent pathways for conjugate and vergence control, and thus provide an important new insight into how the brain controls three‐dimensional gaze shifts.
Marginalized Bags of Vectors Kernels on Switching Linear Dynamics for Online Action Recognition

In this paper, we propose a novel kernel computation algorithm between time-series human motion data for online action recognition. The proposed kernel is based on probabilistic models called switching linear dynamics (SLDs). SLD is one of the powerful tools for tracking, analyzing and classifying human complex time-series motion. The proposed kernel incorporates information about the latent variables in SLDs with simplified designing approach called marginalized kernels. The empirical evaluation using real motion data shows that a classifier using SVM with our proposed kernel has much better performance than the classifier with some conventional kernel techniques. Another experiment using walking around motion shows that a classifier with the proposed kernel can properly segment the start and the end of the target action.
Normal Fatty Acid Concentrations in Young Children With Phenylketonuria

The objective of this study was to determine whether children with phenylketonuria (PKU) have lower fatty acid concentrations in total erythrocyte lipid due to the phenylalanine-restricted diet therapy compared to healthy control subjects. Dietary intake and fatty acid concentrations in total erythrocyte lipid were measured in 21 subjects (≤6 years of age) with PKU and 23 control children. Subjects with PKU had significantly lower protein and significantly higher polyunsaturated fat intake than controls. Subjects with PKU had significantly lower concentrations in total erythrocyte lipid of the sum of the ω-3, ω-6, saturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Concentrations of fatty acids among subjects with PKU were lower than those among control subjects, but no subject with PKU exhibited any signs or symptoms suggestive of essential fatty acid deficiency, thereby suggesting that subjects with PKU in this cohort had normal and adequate essential fatty acid concentrations in total erythrocyte lipid.
Irregular Polar Coding for Massive MIMO Channels

Recent advancements in polar coding have achieved practical performance competitive with other capacity-achieving codes such as low-density parity-check codes. In this paper, we propose a new family called irregular polar codes, where polarlization units are irregularly inactivated to achieve additional degrees of freedom for code design. We first discuss the code construction for irregular polar-coded modulation by taking non-uniform bit-reliability into consideration. We then apply the proposed polar codes to wireless massive multiple-input multiple- output (MIMO) communication channels. Simulation results show that the irregular polar codes can significantly reduce encoding/decoding complexity up to 50% while also yielding a marginal improvement in error rate performance.
What Is Computer Ethics?*

A Proposed Definition Computers are special technology and they raise some special ethical issues. In this essay I will discuss what makes computers different from other technology and how this difference makes a difference in ethical considerations. In particular, I want to characterize computer ethics and show why this emerging field is both intellectually interesting and enormously important. On my view, computer ethics is the analysis of the nature and social impact of computer technology and the corresponding formulation and justification of policies for the ethical use of such technology. I use the phrase “computer technology” because I take the subject matter of the field broadly to include computers and associated technology. For instance, I include concerns about software as well as hardware and concerns about networks connecting computers as well as computers themselves. A typical problem in computer ethics arises because there is a policy vacuum about how computer technology should be used. Computers provide us with new capabilities and these in turn give us new choices for action. Often, either no policies for conduct in these situations exist or existing policies seem inadequate. A central task of computer ethics is to determine what we should do in such cases, i.e., to formulate policies to guide our actions. Of course, some ethical situations confront us as individuals and some as a society. Computer ethics includes consideration of both personal and social policies for the ethical use of computer technology. Now it may seem that all that needs to be done is the mechanical application of an ethical theory to generate the appropriate policy. But this is usually not possible. A difficulty is that along with a policy vacuum there is often a conceptual vacuum. Although a problem in computer ethics may seem clear initially, a little reflection reveals a conceptual muddle. What is needed in such cases is an analysis which provides a coherent conceptual framework within which to formulate a policy for action. Indeed, much of the important work in computer ethics is devoted to proposing conceptual frameworks for understanding ethical problems involving computer technology. An example may help to clarify the kind of conceptual work that is required. Let’s suppose we are trying to formulate a policy for protecting computer programs. Initially, the idea may seem clear enough. We are looking for a policy for protecting a kind of intellectual property. But then a
Regular languages are testable with a constant number of queries

We continue the study of combinatorial property testing, initiated by Goldreich, Goldwasser and Ron (1996). The subject of this paper is testing regular languages. Our main result is as follows. For a regular language L/spl isin/{0, 1}* and an integer n there exists a randomized algorithm which always accepts a word w of length n if w/spl isin/L, and rejects it with high probability if w has to be modified in at least En positions to create a word in L. The algorithm queries O~(1//spl epsiv/) bits of w. This query complexity is shown to be optimal up to a factor poly-logarithmic in 1//spl epsiv/. We also discuss testability of more complex languages and show, in particular, that the query complexity required for testing context free languages cannot be bounded by any function of /spl epsiv/. The problem of testing regular languages can be viewed as a part of a very general approach, seeking to probe testability of properties defined by logical means.
Nail: A Practical Tool for Parsing and Generating Data Formats

Nail is a tool that greatly reduces the programmer effort for safely parsing and generating data formats defined by a grammar. Nail introduces several key ideas to achieve its goal. First, Nail uses a protocol grammar to define not just the data format, but also the internal object model of the data. Second, Nail eliminates the notion of semantic actions, used by existing parser generators, which reduces the expressive power but allows Nail to both parse data formats and generate them from the internal object model, by establishing a semantic bijection between the data format and the object model. Third, Nail introduces dependent fields and stream transforms to capture protocol features such as size and offset fields, checksums, and compressed data, which are impractical to express in existing protocol languages. Using Nail, we implement an authoritative DNS server in C in under 300 lines of code and grammar, and an unzip program in C in 220 lines of code and grammar, demonstrating that Nail makes it easy to parse complex real-world data formats. Performance experiments show that a Nail-based DNS server can outperform the widely used BIND DNS server on an authoritative workload, demonstrating that systems built with Nail can achieve good performance.
The Potential of Systems Biology to Discover Antibacterial Mechanisms of Plant Phenolics

Drug resistance of bacterial pathogens is a growing problem that can be addressed through the discovery of compounds with novel mechanisms of antibacterial activity. Natural products, including plant phenolic compounds, are one source of diverse chemical structures that could inhibit bacteria through novel mechanisms. However, evaluating novel antibacterial mechanisms of action can be difficult and is uncommon in assessments of plant phenolic compounds. With systems biology approaches, though, antibacterial mechanisms can be assessed without the bias of target-directed bioassays to enable the discovery of novel mechanism(s) of action against drug resistant microorganisms. This review article summarizes the current knowledge of antibacterial mechanisms of action of plant phenolic compounds and discusses relevant methodology.
On the effect of ideal and non ideal antenna sectorization on the uplink user capacity of a CDMA macrocell with a hotspot microcell

In this paper the effect of antenna sectorization on the uplink user capacity of a macrocell/microcell CDMA system is studied. A "hot spot" microcell is embedded within a large macrocell and operates over the same bandwidth as the large cell. The macrocell base station uses an omnidirectional antenna and the microcell base station uses an ideal and non ideal sectorized antenna to provide coverage to the hot spot. The optimum antenna position and beamwidth are determined. To evaluate the user capacity we use a computer simulation, and we take into account propagation loss, multiple access interference, power control and random location of users terminals. Our results show an increment of 15% in the capacity of the system by the use of antenna sectorization. The possibility of keeping the optimum value of capacity using smart antennas to account for traffic variability is also discussed.
Coherent control of ultracold collisions with chirped light : Direction matters

We demonstrate the ability to coherently control ultracold atomic Rb collisions using frequency-chirped light on the nanosecond time scale. For certain center frequencies of the chirp, the rate of inelastic trap-loss collisions induced by negatively chirped light is dramatically suppressed compared to the case of a positive chirp. We attribute this to a fundamental asymmetry in the system: an excited wave packet moves inward on the attractive molecular potential. For a positive chirp, the resonance condition moves outward in time, while for a negative chirp, it moves inward, in the same direction as the excited wave packet; this allows multiple interactions between the wave packet and the light, enabling the wave packet to be returned coherently to the ground state. Classical and quantum calculations support this interpretation.
Use of combined ARX - NARX model in identification of neuromuscular system

Neural system that controls movement and posture is a highly nonlinear complex system. Its adaptability and easy accommodation to changes in environment and task specifications make it an ideal system. In this paper, the muscle control system from spinal cord to muscle displacement has been studied. At first, a detailed nonlinear model is simulated in Simulink based on an already developed work. Then, three system identification techniques are examined to estimate the behavior of this complex system. The first one is based on popular linear ARX model. Then, the system is modeled by NARX neural network (Nonlinear Autoregressive Network with Exogenous Inputs) which has a powerful structural network in modeling dynamical systems. Finally, a new method of modeling using combined NARX and ARX structure is proposed in which ARX gets the linear part of the system and the NARX picks up the nonlinearities. The simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the latter method with respect to other examined approaches.
A Brief, Global History of Microsimulation Models in Health: Past Applications, Lessons Learned and Future Directions

This review discusses the evolution of microsimulation models in health over the past three decades. We focus on three aspects of health microsimulation. First, we describe the origins and applications of health microsimulation, including how early research challenged early methodologies and led to the development of more rigorous models. We describe limitations of early means-based models and how more detailed methods, which are based on health-specific input data, overcame many of the early data shortfalls and assumptions. Second, we discuss the global expansion of applications of microsimulation to health over the last ten years. Many health microsimulation models have focussed on health expenditure, the ageing population, diabetes, mortality modelling, and spatial models. Health models over the past few decades have expanded to many countries including Canada, Africa, the United States, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia. Finally, we describe future developments, including emerging research fields for microsimulation and health and how the early development of health microsimulation models provides important lessons for emerging applications. These include the emerging field of genomics and precision medicine, and the diagnosis and treatment of childhood cancers and rare diseases. We suggest research directions, including the need for good data to avoid model errors, and highlight some pitfalls to avoid.
Towards Domain-Independent Deep Linguistic Processing: Ensuring Portability and Re-Usability of Lexicalised Grammars

In this paper we illustrate and underline the importance of making detailed linguistic information a central part of the process of automatic acquisition of large-scale lexicons as a means for enhancing robustness and at the same time ensuring maintainability and re-usability of deep lexicalised grammars. Using the error mining techniques proposed in (van Noord, 2004) we show very convincingly that the main hindrance to portability of deep lexicalised grammars to domains other than the ones originally developed in, as well as to robustness of systems using such grammars is low lexical coverage. To this effect, we develop linguistically-driven methods that use detailed morphosyntactic information to automatically enhance the performance of deep lexicalised grammars maintaining at the same time their usually already achieved high linguistic quality.
Security Assurance: How Online Service Providers Can Influence Security Control Perceptions and Gain Trust

Security researchers agree that security control is a difficult to observe credence quality of online services that Internet users cannot easily assess through research or experience. Yet there is evidence that users form perceptions of security control that strongly determine how much trust they put in online services. This study investigates whether users’ security control perceptions arise solely from their predispositions or whether online service providers can influence them. The study also examines whether these seemingly undependable perceptions of security control lead to trust or whether more traditional factors might offer a better explanation of trust under security risks. To address these issues, this study proposes a new theory of security assurance that integrates the frameworks of trust and quality signals. The results show that rather than being guided by predispositions, users appear to mainly assess security control based on indirect cues controlled by service providers. Importantly, Internet users do not treat the credence quality of security the same way they treat qualities that can be understood through search and experience. Although returning users develop security control perceptions and trust from the usual heuristics of ongoing relationships, they also continue to evaluate market information about service providers like they do in new relationships. The proposed model offers a new perspective of how users respond to the uncertain and technically challenging qualities prevalent in online services.
Toshiba MT System Description for the WAT2014 Workshop

This paper provides a system description of Toshiba Machine Translation System for WAT2014. We participated in two tasks, namely Japanese-English translation and Japanese-Chinese translation. In each task, we submitted two results; one is a result of a rule-based translation system, and the other is a result which is an output of statistical post editing trained with the ASPEC training corpora. In both tasks, output by statistical post editing shows improvement in machine evaluation, but we obtained different results from human evaluation.