Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Ground-Based SAR Data With Diverse Temporal Baselines

In this paper, the algorithms developed for satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry were adapted to the ground-based SAR (GB-SAR) configuration and used for detecting the displacements of an alpine landslide which have occurred over many years. Indeed GB-SAR interferometry is based on the same principles as satellite SAR techniques but benefits from the GB-SAR's versatility and capability of gathering many images per day. In monitoring applications of landslides moving only few centimeters per year, as the case here reported, the GB-SAR sensor is installed at repeated intervals several months apart over the observation period. Although the revisiting time is very similar to the satellite one, for each survey, lasting two or three days, more than ten images are available. They are analyzed separately and in combination with images from other surveys for coherent pixel selection. Interferograms are formed by cross-combining images from different surveys. Finally, the evolution of the deformation across the surveys is retrieved in a least square sense without any assumptions on its regularity. The used GB-SAR technique is described in detail in this paper, and the results obtained with regard to a landslide in the Italian Alps that has been monitored over a period of about three years are discussed.
Union types for object-oriented programming

We propose union types for statically typed class-based object-oriented languages as a means to enhance the flexibility of subtyping. As its name suggests, a union type can be considered a set union of instances of several types and behaves as their least common supertype. It also plays the role of an interface that 'factors out' commonality of given types---fields of the same name and methods with similar signatures. Union types can be useful for implementing heterogeneous collections and for grouping independently developed classes with similar interfaces, which has been considered difficult in languages like Java. To rigorously show the safety of union types, we formalize them on top of Featherweight Java and prove that the type system is sound.
Multi-camera rectification using linearized trifocal tensor

Multi-camera systems such as linear camera arrays are commonly used to capture content for multi-baseline stereo estimation, view generation for auto-stereoscopic displays, or similar tasks. However, even after a careful mechanical alignment, residual vertical disparities and horizontal disparity offsets impair further processing steps. In consequence, the multicamera content needs to be rectified on a common baseline. The trifocal tensor represents the geometry between three cameras and hence is a helpful tool to calibrate a multi-camera system, and to derive rectifying homographies. Against this background we propose a new method for a robust estimation of the trifocal tensor specialized for linear camera arrays and subsequent rectifying homography computation based on feature point triplets.
A metric-based approach for reconstructing methods in object-oriented systems

Refactoring is an important activity to improve software quality, which tends to become worse through repetitive bug fixes and function additions. Unfortunately, it is difficult to perform appropriate refactorings because a refactoring needs certain costs, and its effects should be greater than the costs. This paper describes an approach for appropriate refactorings. The approach identifies spots to be refactored and it suggests how they should be improved. Moreover, the approach estimates the effects of the refactorings. The approach requires a lightweight source code analysis for measuring several metrics, so that it can be applied to middle- or large-scale software system. The approach can make the refactoring process more effective and efficient one.
ParaMetric: An Automatic Evaluation Metric for Paraphrasing

We present ParaMetric, an automatic evaluation metric for data-driven approaches to paraphrasing. ParaMetric provides an objective measure of quality using a collection of multiple translations whose paraphrases have been manually annotated. ParaMetric calculates precision and recall scores by comparing the paraphrases discovered by automatic paraphrasing techniques against gold standard alignments of words and phrases within equivalent sentences. We report scores for several established paraphrasing techniques.
The Use of Micrografts and Minigrafts in the Aesthetic Reconstruction of the Face and Scalp

Hair transplantation by use of micrografts (one- to two-hair follicular unit grafts) and minigrafts (three- to four-hair follicular unit grafts) used in large numbers (>1000 grafts) in a single session was initially described for the treatment of male pattern baldness. More recently, the author has found many other applications, particularly in facial and scalp reconstruction. The most common causes for aesthetic hair restoration of those areas in the author’s experience include hair loss resulting from aesthetic facial rejuvenation surgery, revision of unsatisfactory results from previous hair transplantation, burn alopecia, congenital reasons, and hair loss after oncologic resections. The basic technique is described in detail, with variations given for each of the challenging anatomic areas, including the sideburns and temporal hairline, eyebrows, eyelashes, mustache, beard, and remaining scalp. Special attention is given to the direction of hair growth, hair texture, aesthetic planning, and absence of detectable scars, in order to mimic nature and to result in a minimal number of procedures. The use of micrografts and minigrafts in the aesthetic reconstruction of the face and scalp has been found to be safe and predictable, and has provided a high level of patient satisfaction.
A GA-based Multi-Objective Decision Making for Optimal Vehicle Transportation

In this study, a genetic algorithm is applied to obtain the best combination of transportation parameters for vehicle dispatching. The searching mechanism based on genetic algorithm can find several feasible solutions of dispatching parameters to proceed with transportation plan within constrained conditions. Besides, the concept of fuzzy due time is applied to replace that of time window so as to meet customers’ preferences and demands much better. A fuzzy vehicle routing and scheduling problem (FVRSP) is formulated with five attributes: space utility, service satisfaction, waiting time, delay time, and transportation distance and proposed to solve it with a pure genetic algorithm method. In addition, the system can simultaneously calculate the residual loading capacity of weight and volume of each vehicle in order to provide the dispatcher with options to tune the dispatching operation. With the help of this system of acquiring the optimal solution to vehicle transportation, the promotion of the efficiency of transportation can thus be achieved.
Revisiting the Relationship among Metrics of Tropical Expansion

There is mounting evidence that the width of the tropics has increased over the last few decades, but there are large differences in reported expansion rates. This is, likely, in part due to the wide variety of metrics that have been used to define the tropical width. Here we perform a systematic investigation into the relationship among nine metrics of the zonal-mean tropical width using preindustrial control and abrupt quadrupling of CO2 simulations from a suite of coupled climate models. It is shown that the latitudes of the edge of the Hadley cell, the midlatitude eddy-driven jet, the edge of the subtropical dry zones, and the Southern Hemisphere subtropical high covary interannually and exhibit similar long-term responses to a quadrupling of CO2. However, metrics based on the outgoing longwave radiation, the position of the subtropical jet, the break in the tropopause, and the Northern Hemisphere subtropical high have very weak covariations with the above metrics and/or respond differently to increases in CO2 and thus are not good indicators of the expansion of the Hadley cell or subtropical dry zone. The differing variability and responses to increases in CO2 among metrics highlights that care is needed when choosing metrics for studies of the width of the tropics and that it is important to make sure the metric used is appropriate for the specific phenomena and impacts being examined.
PedCut: an iterative framework for pedestrian segmentation combining shape models and multiple data cues

This paper presents an iterative, EM-like framework for accurate pedestrian segmentation, combining generative shape models and multiple data cues. In the E-step, shape priors are introduced in the unary terms of a Conditional Random Field (CRF) formulation, joining other data terms derived from color, texture and disparity cues. In the M-step, the resulting segmentation is used to adapt an Active Shape Model (ASM), after which the EM process alternates. Experiments on the public Penn-Fudan pedestrian dataset suggest that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art. We further provide results on a new Daimler pedestrian dataset, captured from on-board a vehicle, which includes disparity data. This dataset is made public to facilitate benchmarking.
A Query Reformulation Model Using Markov Graphic Method

Information retrieval model is still can not achieve satisfactory performance after decades of development. One of the reasons is the queries can not express information need precisely. Researches have shown that query reformulation can improve the performance of retrieval model. In this paper, we propose a query reformulation model, which use Markov network to represent term relationship to obtain useful information from corpus to reformulate query. Experimental results show that our model can avoid topic drift and then improve the retrieval performance.
Diversity and Spatial Structure of Belowground Plant–Fungal Symbiosis in a Mixed Subtropical Forest of Ectomycorrhizal and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Plants

Plant-mycorrhizal fungal interactions are ubiquitous in forest ecosystems. While ectomycorrhizal plants and their fungi generally dominate temperate forests, arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis is common in the tropics. In subtropical regions, however, ectomycorrhizal and arbuscular mycorrhizal plants co-occur at comparable abundances in single forests, presumably generating complex community structures of root-associated fungi. To reveal root-associated fungal community structure in a mixed forest of ectomycorrhizal and arbuscular mycorrhizal plants, we conducted a massively-parallel pyrosequencing analysis, targeting fungi in the roots of 36 plant species that co-occur in a subtropical forest. In total, 580 fungal operational taxonomic units were detected, of which 132 and 58 were probably ectomycorrhizal and arbuscular mycorrhizal, respectively. As expected, the composition of fungal symbionts differed between fagaceous (ectomycorrhizal) and non-fagaceous (possibly arbuscular mycorrhizal) plants. However, non-fagaceous plants were associated with not only arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi but also several clades of ectomycorrhizal (e.g., Russula) and root-endophytic ascomycete fungi. Many of the ectomycorrhizal and root-endophytic fungi were detected from both fagaceous and non-fagaceous plants in the community. Interestingly, ectomycorrhizal and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were concurrently detected from tiny root fragments of non-fagaceous plants. The plant-fungal associations in the forest were spatially structured, and non-fagaceous plant roots hosted ectomycorrhizal fungi more often in the proximity of ectomycorrhizal plant roots. Overall, this study suggests that belowground plant-fungal symbiosis in subtropical forests is complex in that it includes "non-typical" plant-fungal combinations (e.g., ectomycorrhizal fungi on possibly arbuscular mycorrhizal plants) that do not fall within the conventional classification of mycorrhizal symbioses, and in that associations with multiple functional (or phylogenetic) groups of fungi are ubiquitous among plants. Moreover, ectomycorrhizal fungal symbionts of fagaceous plants may "invade" the roots of neighboring non-fagaceous plants, potentially influencing the interactions between non-fagaceous plants and their arbuscular-mycorrhizal fungal symbionts at a fine spatial scale.
Evolutionary studies of ectomycorrhizal fungi: recent advances and future directions

The three biggest advances in fungal molecular phylogenetics in the last few years have been (1) the huge expansion in data sets, (2) the development of nonribosomal loci for phylogenetic analysis, and (3) the use of increasingly sophisticated types of analyses. In addition, advances in parallel computing hold great promise for dramatic increases in speed of analysis. These changes have had, or will have, a direct impact on mycorrhizal ecology through the use of sequence-based identification and an indirect impact through the conclusions drawn from such studies. One problem in the field has been the accidental addition of erroneous sequences to the public databases through a variety of means, including polymerase change reaction contamination. We discuss several examples, suggest ways to identify errors, and argue the case for third-party annotations of sequences. Multiple studies have produced compelling evidence that the ectomycorrhizal habit has developed convergently in multiple lineages of fungi and .
A critical ethnographic approach to facilitating cultural shift in midwifery.

OBJECTIVE to improve understanding of local midwifery morale, inform development and reorganisation of a maternity unit, and enhance midwifery involvement in strategic planning. PARTICIPANTS a randomised stratified sample of 20 midwives working in a UK National Health Service (NHS) hospital and its surrounding community area. METHOD within a critical ethnographic framework, focus groups were tape-recorded and transcribed, and analysed using a thematic content analysis approach. FINDINGS key areas affecting midwifery morale were identified, in particular staffing levels, working relationships and organisational issues. One year later, despite many changes having taken place, midwifery morale was still low but participants were more politically analytical of, and actively involved in changing their situation. The findings of the study indicate that there are complex and long-standing cultural inhibitions to the effective development of midwifery care but, if these are made explicit through a planned collaborative process, such as in this study, a process of cultural shift can be seen to begin. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE focus groups can be a useful tool in moving midwifery culture forward within a local context.
Mastocytosis and adverse reactions to biogenic amines and histamine-releasing foods: what is the evidence?

BACKGROUND It has been suggested that normal concentrations of biogenic amines and 'histamine-releasing foods' may exacerbate symptoms in mastocytosis. The purpose of this study was to look for scientific evidence in the literature on diets restricted in biogenic amines and histamine-releasing foods in the treatment of mastocytosis. METHODS Medline (1966 to 2004), Cinahl (1982 to 2004) and the Cochraine Library were searched for double-blind placebo-controlled food challenge (DBPCFC) studies with biogenic amines and/or histamine-releasing foods in mastocytosis. RESULTS No studies employing DBPCFC with dietary biogenic amines or histamine-releasing foods in mastocytosis were found. Only a few in vitro studies in other diseases, animal studies and studies in humans in which histamine-releasing agents were incubated directly with duodenal tissues were found. One case was reported of severe adverse reactions to alcohol in mastocytosis, objectified by an open challenge. CONCLUSION Despite the widespread belief that biogenic amines and histamine-releasing foods may cause allergy-like, non-IgE-mediated symptoms in certain patients, the role of diets restricted in biogenic amines and histamine-releasing foods in the treatment of mastosytosis remains hypothetical but worthy of further investigation. There is some evidence for adverse reactions to alcohol in mastocytosis.
Robust Fast Time-Varying Multipath Fading Channel Estimation and Equalization for MIMO-OFDM Systems via a Fuzzy Method

Channel estimation is an important issue for wireless communication systems. A channel estimation scheme using a Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy-based Kalman filter under the time-varying velocity of the mobile station in a multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) system is proposed in this paper. The fuzzy technique is used to interpolate several linear models to approximate the nonlinear estimation system. A MIMO system with the orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) scheme is considered, where the radio channel is modeled as an autoregressive (AR) random process. The parameters of the AR process and the channel gain are simultaneously estimated by the proposed method. One-step-ahead prediction can be obtained during this estimation procedure. This is useful for the decision-directed channel-tracking design, particularly in the fast-fading channel. Furthermore, the robust minimum mean-square error (MMSE) equalization design can be achieved by considering the channel prediction error to improve the performance of symbol detection. To validate the performance of our proposed method, several simulation results are given and compared with those of other methods. When considering the time-varying velocity of the mobile station communication in the MIMO-OFDM system, the enhanced equalizer based on the T-S fuzzy-based Kalman filter performs better than those based on the conventional channel estimators in terms of symbol error rate.
Iterative Multiuser Detection with Spectral Efficient Protocol for Relay-Assisted SC-FDE

This letter proposes an iterative multiuser detection scheme using spectral efficient protocol for relay-assisted single- carrier frequency-domain equalization (SC-FDE). The proposed system achieves spatial diversity over fading channels in a distributed fashion. In the proposed system, two sources with user-specific interleavers access a relay simultaneously, which increases spectral efficiency of time-division multiple-access (TDMA)-based relay protocol. Interference from the other source is removed by an iterative detection method in the frequency domain at the destination. Simulation results show that the proposed system can obtain diversity gain without sacrificing spectral efficiency and approaches the single-user bound.
A robust time difference of arrival estimator in reverberant environments

This paper proposes a robust generalized cross correlation (GCC)-based time difference of arrival (TDOA) estimator in reverberant and noisy environments. Under the assumption that the phase of cross channel power spectrum should be linear in a normal single source environment, the effect of reverberation to cross power spectrum is directly reduced by a recursive estimation method. An adaptive smoothing process is also designed to make the system more robust. Simulation results with a two-channel microphone system verify that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the accuracy of TDOA by enhancing phase linearity in various reverberant environments. Also, the reliability of proposed system is confirmed by the experiments performed in additional background noise conditions. Finally, we confirm the superiority of the proposed algorithm from the results of real room experiments.
Linking Citizen Satisfaction with E-Government and Trust in Government

This article asks how Internet use, citizen satisfaction with e-government, and citizen trust in government are interrelated. We first review the literature on trust and explore how radical information technologies may work to alter the production or maintenance of trust. We then develop hypotheses about how citizens’ experience with e-government, satisfaction with e-government and government Web sites, and trust in government are interrelated. Moreover, the model for e-government and Web site satisfaction incorporates citizen perspectives on electronic transaction, transparency, and interactivity. Using data obtained from the Council on Excellence in Government, we then develop and test a twostage multiple-equation model that simultaneously predicts experience, satisfaction, and trust. Findings indicate that government Web site use is positively associated with e-government satisfaction and Web site satisfaction and that e-government satisfaction is positively associated with trust in government. We also find that while citizens are generally satisfied with the electronic provision of information (transparency), there is some dissatisfaction with the transaction and interactivity of Web sites. We conclude that electronic government strategies—transaction, transparency, and interactivity—are important factors that directly affect e-government satisfaction and indirectly affect trust. Individuals who use government Web sites are not only critical consumers but also demanding citizens.
Extubation Success in Premature Infants With Respiratory Distress Syndrome Treated With Bi-Level Nasal Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Versus Nasal Intermittent Positive Pressure Ventilation

Infants born prematurely with respiratory distress syndrome are at high risk for complications from mechanical ventilation. Strategies are needed to minimize their days on the ventilator. The purpose of this study was to compare extubation success rates in infants treated with 2 different types of continuous positive airway pressure devices. A retrospective cohort study design was used. Data were retrieved from electronic medical records for patients in a large, metropolitan, level III neonatal intensive care unit. A sample of 194 premature infants with respiratory distress syndrome was selected, 124 of whom were treated with nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation and 70 with bi-level variable flow nasal continuous positive airway pressure (bi-level nasal continuous positive airway pressure). Infants in both groups had high extubation success rates (79% of nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation group and 77% of bi-level nasal continuous positive airway pressure group). Although infants in the bi-level nasal continuous positive airway pressure group were extubated sooner, there was no difference in duration of oxygen therapy between the 2 groups. Promoting early extubation and extubation success is a vital strategy to reduce complications of mechanical ventilation that adversely affect premature infants with respiratory distress syndrome.