Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonreference Medical Image Edge Map Measure

Edge detection is a key step in medical image processing. It is widely used to extract features, perform segmentation, and further assist in diagnosis. A poor quality edge map can result in false alarms and misses in cancer detection algorithms. Therefore, it is necessary to have a reliable edge measure to assist in selecting the optimal edge map. Existing reference based edge measures require a ground truth edge map to evaluate the similarity between the generated edge map and the ground truth. However, the ground truth images are not available for medical images. Therefore, a nonreference edge measure is ideal for medical image processing applications. In this paper, a nonreference reconstruction based edge map evaluation (NREM) is proposed. The theoretical basis is that a good edge map keeps the structure and details of the original image thus would yield a good reconstructed image. The NREM is based on comparing the similarity between the reconstructed image with the original image using this concept. The edge measure is used for selecting the optimal edge detection algorithm and optimal parameters for the algorithm. Experimental results show that the quantitative evaluations given by the edge measure have good correlations with human visual analysis.
A Framework for Efficient Adaptively Secure Composable Oblivious Transfer in the ROM

Oblivious Transfer (OT) is a fundamental cryptographic protocol that finds a number of applications, in particular, as an essential building block for two-party and multi-party computation. We construct a round-optimal (2 rounds) universally composable (UC) protocol for oblivious transfer secure against active adaptive adversaries from any OW-CPA secure public-key encryption scheme with certain properties in the random oracle model (ROM). In terms of computation, our protocol only requires the generation of a public/secret-key pair, two encryption operations and one decryption operation, apart from a few calls to the random oracle. In~terms of communication, our protocol only requires the transfer of one public-key, two ciphertexts, and three binary strings of roughly the same size as the message. Next, we show how to instantiate our construction under the low noise LPN, McEliece, QC-MDPC, LWE, and CDH assumptions. Our instantiations based on the low noise LPN, McEliece, and QC-MDPC assumptions are the first UC-secure OT protocols based on coding assumptions to achieve: 1) adaptive security, 2) optimal round complexity, 3) low communication and computational complexities. Previous results in this setting only achieved static security and used costly cut-and-choose techniques.Our instantiation based on CDH achieves adaptive security at the small cost of communicating only two more group elements as compared to the gap-DH based Simplest OT protocol of Chou and Orlandi (Latincrypt 15), which only achieves static security in the ROM.
CROSS CROSSOVER STUDIES OFF YOUR LIST

When studying the effect of different drugs or different dose levels (or more generally, simply different treatments) on people, the variability between responses of different people can overwhelm any treatment differences. That is why crossover designs, where each person gets one of each drug or each dose level, are so appealing. Since the order in which people receive a drug may have an effect, the crossover is designed to balance out any period effects. When a carryover effect occurs, that is, when the drug’s effect carries over to the next period, there may be difficulties. Nonetheless, the crossover is very appealing theoretically, with power to detect very small differences with relatively much smaller sample sizes. That is the good news.
Microscopy and computerized image analysis of wood pulp fibres multi-scale structures

Wood pulp fibres have mulitscale characteristics. Roughly, the length and width of fibres vary from 1-3 mm and 10-50 μm, respectively. The fibre wall structure is mainly composed of well-organized fibrils with diameters in the nano-scale. The multi-scale structures of cellulose fibres require dedicated microscopy techniques for assessment of their characteristic details. In this work, a description of several microscopy techniques is given. The surface and bulk, 2D and 3D, structures are assessed with light microscopy, X-ray microtomography, conventional scanning electron microscopy and modern field-emission scanning electron microscopy. Conventional microscopy is extended to quantitative microscopy, aided by the increasing development of the ImageJ program and its distribution packages, which are in the public domain and freely available. Several case studies are presented based on specific plugins, which are described in detail.
Experiences in calibrating and evaluating lumped karst hydrological models

Abstract Karst systems play an important part in providing clean drinking water for many countries worldwide. Their sustainable management often requires the application of karst hydrological models to quantify the water volumes available and to assess their sensitivity to changes in climate or land use. The available literature provides a broad overview of different modelling approaches to simulate karst hydrology, but guidance for the application of these approaches is scarce. This paper provides personal insights into the application, calibration and evaluation of lumped karst hydrological models. An introduction to model calibration and sensitivity analysis is given, with links to further reading and ready-to-use toolboxes. It is followed by three case studies of karst model applications at three different scales (the plot scale, aquifer scale and continental scale), which apply model calibration and sensitivity analysis to obtain realistic simulations. These three case studies elaborate how the necessary trade-off between the available data and process representation in the model structures was achieved. General recommendations and a workflow for future karst model applications are given.
Reclaiming Knowledge: A Case for Evidence-Based Information Systems

Both the information base, on which IS research and practice is founded, and its accessibility continue to grow rapidly. A major challenge facing the IS community in the next decade will be discovering how to extract knowledge, useful to, and usable by, all in the community, from this fragmented, disparate, often conflicting and sometimes unevaluated resource. This challenge is not unique to IS, and the concept of ‘evidencebased’ practice is already used by the healthcare community to address these same issues. Emerging as a considered response to the increasing need for efficient and effective use of resources, evidence-based healthcare relies heavily on the timely dissemination of ‘best evidence’ to a wide audience of health practitioners. A formal methodology for the critical appraisal and systematic review of primary research has been developed and, through the Cochrane Collaboration, has become an important means of synthesising and disseminating information to inform practitioners’ and managers’ decision-making. Here, we explore the application of the fundamental elements of evidence-based healthcare to IS. We define 'evidence-based Information Systems' (EBIS) as a mechanism for facilitating informed decision-making and providing indications of valuable research directions through the promotion of conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence, as determined by the rigorous evaluation and synthesis of all relevant evidential sources. The provision of the results of such evaluations and syntheses in the public domain is also promoted as something from which managers, practitioners and researchers would all benefit. This research initiative, which is in its preliminary stages, does not expect to establish a formal methodology or to undertake systematic reviews in isolation, rather it hopes to facilitate and coordinate such work. Hence, through this paper we hope to generate debate on the principles underlying this initiative, to highlight the issues that currently appear important and to solicit active support for advancing the concept within a broader arena.
Gene copy number changes in dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans – a fine-resolution study using array comparative genomic hybridization

Dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP) is a rare, slow-growing, low-grade dermal tumor. Cytogenetic and FISH studies have revealed that the chromosomal rearrangements characteristic of DFSP tumors involve both translocations and the formation of a supernumerary ring derived from chromosomes 17 and 22. The t(17;22) (q22;q13.1) translocation generates a gene fusion between COL1A1 and PDGFB, which serves as a diagnostic marker of DFSP. In the present study we performed array-CGH (aCGH) analysis on ten DFSP tumors. The COL1A1 region at 17q was gained in 71% (5/7) of the samples and the PDGFB region at 22q was gained in 43% (3/7) of the individual samples. In addition to the 17q and 22q gains, altogether 17 minimal common regions of gain and one region of loss were detected.
Encouraging outlook for recovery of a once severely exploited marine megaherbivore

Aim To critically review the status of the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) using the best available scientific studies as there is a prevailing view that this species is globally endangered and its marine ecosystem functions compromised. Location Ogasawara (Japan), Hawaii (USA), Great Barrier Reef (Australia), Florida (USA), Tortuguero (Costa Rica). Methods We compiled seasonal nesting activity data from all reliable continuous long-term studies (> 25 years), which comprised data series for six of the world's major green turtle rookeries. We estimated the underlying time-specific trend in these six rookery-specific nester or nest abundance series using a generalized smoothing spline regression approach. Results Estimated rates of nesting population increase ranged from c. 4-14% per annum over the past two to three decades. These rates varied considerably among the rookeries, reflecting the level of historical exploitation. Similar increases in nesting population were also evident for many other green turtle stocks that have been monitored for shorter durations than the long-term studies presented here. Main conclusions We show that six of the major green turtle nesting populations in the world have been increasing over the past two to three decades following protection from human hazards such as exploitation of eggs and turtles. This population recovery or rebound capacity is encouraging and suggests that the green turtle is not on the brink of global extinction even though some stocks have been seriously depleted and are still below historical abundance levels. This demonstrates that relatively simple conservation strategies can have a profound effect on the recovery of once-depleted green turtle stocks and presumably the restoration of their ecological function as major marine consumers.
Abiogenic Methane and the Origin of Petroleum

The concentration of carbon at the surface of the Earth is the result of a gradual seepage of carbon-bearing gases from the deeper layers. There is a growing body of evidence that these gases are not always oxidized, as had been generally assumed, but that a substantial proportion emerges as methane. Complex organic molecules of non-biological origin are very abundant in some meteorites and must have been incorporated by the accreting Earth. Methane generated from such materials in the mantle would ascend through zones of weakness in the crust and there contribute to natural gas deposits directly and to petroleum deposits by polymerization. Much of it would ultimately reach the surface, in volcanic eruptions (with most of the CH4 oxidized to CO2) , by slow seepage, or during earthquakes. The seismic precursory phenomena are interpreted as symptoms of deep gas pressure variations. If this viewpoint is correct, a revised strategy is indicated in the search for gas. Very large quantities can then be expected, but generally at deeper levels where present exploration is minimal. In this paper we further develop some of the ideas previously published.l-' and briefly respond to some objections raised by Dr F. K. North. " COSMOCHEMISTRY AND THE ORIGIN OF THE VOLATILES
Discovering Temporal Patterns from Images using Extended PLSA

This paper considers the problem of modelling the topics in a sequence of images with known time stamp. Detecting and tracking of temporal data is an important task in multiple applications, such as finding hot research point from scientific literature, news article series analysis, email surveillance, search query log mining, etc. In contrast to existing works mainly focusing on text document collections, this paper considers mining temporal topic trends from image data set. An extension of the Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis(PLSA) model, which includes an additional variable associated with the time stamp to better model the temporal topics, is presented to track not only topics among images but also how topics change over time. Experiments show the effectiveness of this method.
Structured Prediction: From Gaussian Perturbations to Linear-Time Principled Algorithms

Margin-based structured prediction commonly uses a maximum loss over all possible structured outputs \cite{Altun03,Collins04b,Taskar03}. In natural language processing, recent work \cite{Zhang14,Zhang15} has proposed the use of the maximum loss over random structured outputs sampled independently from some proposal distribution. This method is linear-time in the number of random structured outputs and trivially parallelizable. We study this family of loss functions in the PAC-Bayes framework under Gaussian perturbations \cite{McAllester07}. Under some technical conditions and up to statistical accuracy, we show that this family of loss functions produces a tighter upper bound of the Gibbs decoder distortion than commonly used methods. Thus, using the maximum loss over random structured outputs is a principled way of learning the parameter of structured prediction models. Besides explaining the experimental success of \cite{Zhang14,Zhang15}, our theoretical results show that more general techniques are possible.
Partition-Based Similarity Join Processing in High Dimensional Data Spaces

It is not desirable in the performance perspective of search algorithms to partition a high dimensional data space by dividing all the dimensions. This is because the number of cells resulted from partitioning explodes as the number of partitioning dimensions increases, thus making any search method based on space partitioning impractical. To address this problem, we propose an algorithm to dynamically select partitioning dimensions based on a data sampling method for eÆcient similarity join processing. Futhermore, a disk-based plane sweeping method is proposed to minimize the cost of joins between the partitioned cells. The experimental results show that the proposed schemes substantially improve the performance of the partition-based similarity joins in high dimensional data spaces.
Performance analysis of MANET routing protocols for multimedia traffic

Providing requisite Quality of service (QoS) guarantees in wireless multi-hop networks is much more challenging than in wired networks. This is mainly due to its dynamic topology, distributed nature, interference, multi-hop communication and contention for channel access. In particular, it is important for routing protocols to provide QoS guarantees by incorporating metrics like achievable throughput, delay, jitter, packet loss ratio, etc. In this paper, we present comparative analysis of mobile ad-hoc routing protocols over real time video streaming. Our analysis exploits the built-in support for real time multimedia streaming in MANETs. We use H.264/SVC encoded video sequences to evaluate the performance of various routing protocols over a large number of scenarios in terms of throughput and end-to-end delay. Effects of changes in mobility, network scalability and network load are evaluated and presented. Our results show that it is possible to stream some multimedia applications with acceptable quality over MANETs within limited mobility, QoS and network size.
Overproduction of Abscisic Acid in Tomato Increases Transpiration Efficiency and Root Hydraulic Conductivity and Influences Leaf Expansion1[OA]

Overexpression of genes that respond to drought stress is a seemingly attractive approach for improving drought resistance in crops. However, the consequences for both water-use efficiency and productivity must be considered if agronomic utility is sought. Here, we characterize two tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) lines (sp12 and sp5) that overexpress a gene encoding 9-cis-epoxycarotenoid dioxygenase, the enzyme that catalyzes a key rate-limiting step in abscisic acid (ABA) biosynthesis. Both lines contained more ABA than the wild type, with sp5 accumulating more than sp12. Both had higher transpiration efficiency because of their lower stomatal conductance, as demonstrated by increases in δ13C and δ18O, and also by gravimetric and gas-exchange methods. They also had greater root hydraulic conductivity. Under well-watered glasshouse conditions, mature sp5 plants were found to have a shoot biomass equal to the wild type despite their lower assimilation rate per unit leaf area. These plants also had longer petioles, larger leaf area, increased specific leaf area, and reduced leaf epinasty. When exposed to root-zone water deficits, line sp12 showed an increase in xylem ABA concentration and a reduction in stomatal conductance to the same final levels as the wild type, but from a different basal level. Indeed, the main difference between the high ABA plants and the wild type was their performance under well-watered conditions: the former conserved soil water by limiting maximum stomatal conductance per unit leaf area, but also, at least in the case of sp5, developed a canopy more suited to light interception, maximizing assimilation per plant, possibly due to improved turgor or suppression of epinasty.
Tumor's other immune targets: dendritic cells

The induction of apoptosis in T cells is one of several mechanisms by which tumors escape immune recognition. We have investigated whether tumors induce apoptosis in dendritic cells (DC) by co‐culture of murine or human DC with different tumor cell lines for 4–48 h. Analysis of DC morphological features, JAM assay, TUNEL, caspase‐3‐like and transglutaminase activity, Annexin V binding, and DNA fragmentation assays revealed a time‐ and dose‐dependent induction of apoptosis in DC by tumor‐derived factors. This finding is both effector and target specific. The mechanism of tumor‐induced DC apoptosis involved regulation of Bcl‐2 and Bax expression. Double staining of both murine and human tumor tissues confirmed that tumor‐associated DC undergo apoptotic death in vivo. DC isolated from tumor tissue showed significantly higher levels of apoptosis as determined by TUNEL assay when compared with DC isolated from spleen. These findings demonstrate that tumors induce apoptosis in DC and suggest a new mechanism of tumor escape from immune recognition. DC protection from apoptosis will lead to improvement of DC‐based immunotherapies for cancer and other immune diseases. J. Leukoc. Biol. 66: 336–344; 1999.
Heart Rate Variability and Respiration Signal as Diagnostic Tools for Late Onset Sepsis in Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Apnea-bradycardia is one of the major clinical early indicators of late-onset sepsis occurring in approximately 7% to 10% of all neonates and in more than 25% of very low birth weight infants in NICU. The objective of this paper was to determine if HRV, respiration and their relationships help to diagnose infection in premature infants via non-invasive ways in NICU. Therefore, we implement Mono-Channel (MC) and Bi-Channel (BC) Analysis in two groups: sepsis (S) vs. non-sepsis (NS). Firstly, we studied RR series not only by linear methods: time domain and frequency domain, but also by non-linear methods: chaos theory and information theory. The results show that alpha Slow, alpha Fast and Sample Entropy are significant parameters to distinguish S from NS. Secondly, the question about the functional coupling of HRV and nasal respiration is addressed. Local linear correlation coefficient r2t,f has been explored, while non-linear regression coefficient h2 was calculated in two directions. It is obvious that r2t,f within the third frequency band (0.2<f<0.4 Hz) and h2 in two directions were complementary approaches to diagnose sepsis. Thirdly, feasibility study is carried out on the candidate parameters selected from MC and BC respectively. We discovered that the proposed test based on optimal fusion of 6 features shows good performance with the largest AUC and a reduced probability of false alarm (PFA).
An implicit algorithm for finding steady states and its application to FSM verification

Finding the set of steady states of a machine has applications in formal verification, sequential synthesis and ATPG. Existing techniques assume the presence of a designated set of initial states which is impractical in a real design environment. The set steady states of a design is defined by the terminally strongly connected components (tSCCs) of the underlying state transition graph (STG). We show that multiple tSCCs and non-terminal CCs need to be handled in a real design environment especially for verification. We present a fully implicit algorithm to find the steady states of a machine without any knowledge of initial states. We demonstrate the utility of our algorithm by applying it to FSM equivalence checking.
An alarm flood pattern matching algorithm based on modified BLAST with leveshtein distance

Alarm flooding is one of the main problems in alarm management. Alarm flood pattern analysis is helpful for root cause analysis of historical floods and for incoming flood prediction. This paper introduces a data driven method for alarm flood pattern matching. A modified BLAST algorithm with Levenshtein distance is proposed to discover similar alarm floods. A quadruple tank process is simulated to test the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The results show that the algorithm is quick and accurate.
Management Information Base for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

Status of This Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract This memo defines a portion of the Management Information Base (MIB) for use with network management protocols in the Internet community. In particular, it describes a set of managed objects that are used to manage Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) entities, which include User Agents, and Proxy, Redirect and Registrar servers.
Usefulness of ultrasound for selecting a correctly sized uncuffed tracheal tube for paediatric patients

The purpose of this study was to assess whether ultrasonography is useful for determining uncuffed tracheal tube sizes for paediatric patients. The equation for selecting the correctly sized tracheal tube was developed using data on the subglottic diameter measured by ultrasonography and air leak test. The efficacy of the new equation was evaluated by comparing it with the conventional age‐based formula (4 + age/4) in another 100 patients. Tracheal tube sizes were selected using two methods, and air leakage pressure was measured after each intubation. The ultrasonographic method allowed the correct tube size to be selected in 60% of cases, whereas the age‐based method enabled this in 31% of cases (p < 0.001). Ultrasound can offer a useful means of selecting correct tracheal tube size compared with the age‐based formula in paediatric patients. However, even using ultrasound, the success rate of correct tube size selection is still not very high.