Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new mode selection technique for coding Depth maps of 3D video

Compression of Depth maps that are used in 3D video systems based on Depth Image Based Rendering (DIBR) poses a new challenge in video coding, since it is not a sequence of images for final viewing by end users rather an aid for rendering. Therefore, compressing depth maps using existing video coding techniques yields unacceptable distortions while rendering virtual views. In this paper we propose a novel mode selection method for offline compression of depth maps by selecting modes collaboratively considering an entire row of macroblocks together. For selecting these modes while encoding, we propose a novel distortion criteria that incorporates rendering distortions instead of distortion of depth map itself. A genetic algorithm based optimization technique is used for the mode selection. The simulation results suggest that the proposed technique can improve the PSNR up to 1.6dB in the rendered stereoscopic views in comparison to the block wise mode selection method based on Lagrange Optimization and the distortion of the depth map itself.
Efficient design of perfect-reconstruction biorthogonal cosine-modulated filter banks using convex Lagrangian relaxation and alternating null-space projections

In essence, designing a perfect-reconstruction (PR) biorthogonal cosine-modulated filter bank (BCM) is a non-convex constrained optimization problem that can be solved in principle using general optimization solvers. However, when the number of channels is large and the order of the prototype filter (PF) is high, numerical difficulties in using those optimization solvers often occur, and the computational efficiency also becomes a concern. This paper proposes an algorithm that carries out the design in two stages. In the first stage, a convex Lagrangian relaxation technique is used to obtain a near PR (NPR) filter bank and, in the second stage, the coefficient vector of the PF obtained is alternately projected onto the null-spaces that are associated with the PR constraints, which turns the NPR filter bank into a PR filter bank. Simulation results are included to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed algorithm for designing BCM filter banks with a large number of channels and high-order PF as well as satisfactory design efficiency.
Finite State Methods and Description Logics

The accepting runs of a finite automaton are represented as concepts in a Description Logic, for various systems of roles computed by finitestate transducers. The representation refines the perspective on regular languages provided by Monadic SecondOrder Logic (MSO), under the BuchiElgot-Trakhtenbrot theorem. String symbols are structured as sets to succinctly express MSO-sentences, with auxiliary symbols conceived as variables bound by quantifiers.
Data-driven calibration of linear estimators with minimal penalties

This paper tackles the problem of selecting among several linear estimators in non-parametric regression; this includes model selection for linear regression, the choice of a regularization parameter in kernel ridge regression or spline smoothing, and the choice of a kernel in multiple kernel learning. We propose a new algorithm which first estimates consistently the variance of the noise, based upon the concept of minimal penalty which was previously introduced in the context of model selection. Then, plugging our variance estimate in Mallows' CL penalty is proved to lead to an algorithm satisfying an oracle inequality. Simulation experiments with kernel ridge regression and multiple kernel learning show that the proposed algorithm often improves significantly existing calibration procedures such as 10-fold cross-validation or generalized cross-validation.
Probabilistic fingerprints for shapes

We propose a new probabilistic framework for the efficient estimation of similarity between 3D shapes. Our framework is based on local shape signatures and is designed to allow for quick pruning of dissimilar shapes, while guaranteeing not to miss any shape with significant similarities to the query model in shape database retrieval applications. Since directly evaluating 3D similarity for large collections of signatures on shapes is expensive and impractical, we propose a suitable but compact approximation based on probabilistic fingerprints which are computed from the shape signatures using Rabin's hashing scheme and a small set of random permutations. We provide a probabilistic analysis that shows that while the preprocessing time depends on the complexity of the model, the fingerprint size and hence the query time depends only on the desired confidence in our estimated similarity. Our method is robust to noise, invariant to rigid transforms, handles articulated deformations, and effectively detects partial matches. In addition, it provides important hints about correspondences across shapes which can then significantly benefit other algorithms that explicitly align the models. We demonstrate the utility of our method on a wide variety of geometry processing applications.
TORAFIC study protocol: torasemide prolonged release versus furosemide in patients with chronic heart failure

Loop diuretics, such as torasemide and furosemide, are important agents in the treatment of chronic heart failure. Beneficial effects of torasemide immediate-release formulation beyond diuresis have been documented as the ability of this compound to inhibit myocardial synthesis and deposition of collagen type I in patients with chronic heart failure. In addition, torasemide-treated patients, but not furosemide-treated patients, showed decreased serum concentrations of the C-terminal propeptide of procollagen type I, a biochemical marker of myocardial fibrosis. The aim of the TORAFIC study is to test the efficacy of torasemide prolonged-release formulation (PR) in reducing myocardial fibrosis in chronic heart failure in a large, randomized clinical trial. Methods: This prospective, Phase IV, randomized, blinded end point, active-controlled clinical trial will randomize 142 patients with chronic heart failure in New York Heart Association functional class II–IV to 8 months treatment with either torasemide-PR (10–40 mg daily) or furosemide (40–160 mg daily). The primary objective is to test the hypothesis that torasemide-PR is superior to furosemide in reducing myocardial fibrosis. The primary outcome measure is the difference in the change of serum propeptide of procollagen type I concentration from the initial to the final visit between both study groups. Secondary outcome measures include all efficacy variables related to heart failure (signs and symptoms, ECG, echocardiogram and serum levels of N-terminal brain natriuretic propeptide). Secondary safety variables are heart rate, blood pressure, laboratory data, adverse events, cardiovascular events (hospital admission, emergency department visits) and quality of life (Minnesota questionnaire). Discussion: This trial will test whether torasemide-PR possesses antifibrotic properties, which may provide an additional benefit beyond diuresis in patients with chronic heart failure.
The role of attention in meditation and hypnosis: a psychobiological perspective on transformations of consciousness.

Abstract A temporally based scheme for investigation of changes in consciousness, applicable to areas such as meditation and hypnosis, is proposed and is divided into 3 basic epochs: before - predispositional variables that affect response to consciousness altering techniques; during-the state effects of the particular technique; and after-the trait effects of the practice. Research is surveyed which indicates the role of attentional processes during each of these 3 basic epochs in both meditation and hypnosis. Attentional flexibility is a predispositional variable affecting response to both meditation and hypnosis. The state effects of concentrative meditation involve alterations in stimulus set while the state effects of hypnosis may reflect primarily response set. The trait effects elicited by meditation depend critically on the psychobiological systems which are called into play. Evidence is discussed which suggests that concentrative meditation shares with relaxation an autonomic quiescence, but in a.
Mechanical properties and fabrication of small boat using woven glass/sugar palm fibres reinforced unsaturated polyester hybrid composite

In recent years, sugar palm fibre has been found to have great potential to be used as fibre reinforcement in polymer matrix composites. This research investigates the mechanical properties of woven glass/sugar palm fibres reinforced unsaturated polyester hybrid composite. The composite specimens made of different layer of fibres such as strand mat, natural and hand woven of sugar palm fibres. The composites were fabricated using a compression moulding technique. The tensile and impact test was carried out in accordance to ASTM 5083 and ASTM D256 standard. The fibre glass boat is a familiar material used in boat industry. A lot of research on fabrication process such as lay-up, vacuum infusion mould and resin transfer mould has been conducted. Hybrid material of sugar palm fibre and fibre glass was used in fabricating the boat. This research investigates the method selection for fabrication of small boat application of natural fibre composites. The composite specimens made of different layer of fibres; woven glass fibre, strand mat, natural and hand woven of woven sugar palm fibres were prepared. The small boat were fabricated using a compression moulding and lay up technique. The results of the experiment showed that the tensile strength, tensile modulus, elongation at break value and impact strength were higher than the natural woven sugar palm fibre. The best method for fabricating the small boat was compression moulding technique. As a general conclusion, the usage of glass fibre had improved the tensile properties sugar palm fibre composites and compression moulding technique is suitable to be used in making a small boat application of natural fibre composites.
Cost-effectiveness of enoxaparin vs low-dose warfarin in the prevention of deep-vein thrombosis after total hip replacement surgery.

BACKGROUND Enoxaparin sodium, a low-molecular-weight heparin, was recently approved for use in the United States to prevent deep-vein thrombosis after total hip replacement surgery. Its cost-effectiveness relative to prophylaxis with low-dose warfarin sodium is unknown. METHODS A decision-analytic model was developed to compare two strategies of prophylaxis for deep-vein thrombosis with a strategy of not using prophylaxis in a hypothetical cohort of 10,000 patients undergoing total hip replacement surgery. For each of these strategies, we estimated the expected number of cases of confirmed deep-vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism, the expected number of thromboembolic deaths, and the expected costs of venous thromboembolic care, including prophylaxis, diagnosis, and treatment. Data were drawn primarily from the published literature. RESULTS Compared with no prophylaxis, the use of low-dose warfarin would be expected to reduce the number of cases of confirmed deep-vein thrombosis from about 1000 (per 10,000 patients) to 420 and the number of thromboembolic deaths from about 250 to 110. Expected costs of care related to deep-vein thrombosis also would be reduced from approximately $530 to $330 per patient. Prophylaxis with enoxaparin would be expected to reduce further the number of cases of confirmed deep-vein thrombosis and the number of thromboembolic deaths (to 250 and 70, respectively) but increase costs of care by approximately $50 per patient. The cost-effectiveness of enoxaparin (relative to low-dose warfarin) is estimated to be approximately $12,000 per death averted. CONCLUSION Although enoxaparin is more costly than low-dose warfarin, its cost-effectiveness in total hip replacement compares favorably with that of other generally accepted medical interventions.
General and targeted statistical potentials for protein–ligand interactions

We present a novel atom–atom potential derived from a database of protein–ligand complexes. First, we clarify the similarities and differences between two statistical potentials described in the literature, PMF and Drugscore. We highlight shortcomings caused by an important factor unaccounted for in their reference states, and describe a new potential, which we name the Astex Statistical Potential (ASP). ASP's reference state considers the difference in exposure of protein atom types towards ligand binding sites. We show that this new potential predicts binding affinities with an accuracy similar to that of Goldscore and Chemscore. We investigate the influence of the choice of reference state by constructing two additional statistical potentials that differ from ASP only in this respect. The reference states in these two potentials are defined along the lines of Drugscore and PMF. In docking experiments, the potential using the new reference state proposed for ASP gives better success rates than when these literature reference states were used; a success rate similar to the established scoring functions Goldscore and Chemscore is achieved with ASP. This is the case both for a large, general validation set of protein–ligand structures and for small test sets of actives against four pharmaceutically relevant targets. Virtual screening experiments for these targets show less discrimination between the different reference states in terms of enrichment. In addition, we describe how statistical potentials can be used in the construction of targeted scoring functions. Examples are given for cdk2, using four different targeted scoring functions, biased towards increasingly large target‐specific databases. Using these targeted scoring functions, docking success rates as well as enrichments are significantly better than for the general ASP scoring function. Results improve with the number of structures used in the construction of the target scoring functions, thus illustrating that these targeted ASP potentials can be continuously improved as new structural data become available. Proteins 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Anatomical Differences Determine Distribution of Adenovirus after Convection-Enhanced Delivery to the Rat Brain

Background Convection-enhanced delivery (CED) of adenoviruses offers the potential of widespread virus distribution in the brain. In CED, the volume of distribution (Vd) should be related to the volume of infusion (Vi) and not to dose, but when using adenoviruses contrasting results have been reported. As the characteristics of the infused tissue can affect convective delivery, this study was performed to determine the effects of the gray and white matter on CED of adenoviruses and similar sized super paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIO). Methodology/Principal Findings We convected AdGFP, an adenovirus vector expressing Green Fluorescent Protein, a virus sized SPIO or trypan blue in the gray and white matter of the striatum and external capsule of Wistar rats and towards orthotopic infiltrative brain tumors. The resulting Vds were compared to Vi and transgene expression to SPIO distribution. Results show that in the striatum Vd is not determined by the Vi but by the infused virus dose, suggesting diffusion, active transport or receptor saturation rather than convection. Distribution of virus and SPIO in the white matter is partly volume dependent, which is probably caused by preferential fluid pathways from the external capsule to the surrounding gray matter, as demonstrated by co-infusing trypan blue. Distant tumors were reached using the white matter tracts but tumor penetration was limited. Conclusions/Significance CED of adenoviruses in the rat brain and towards infiltrative tumors is feasible when regional anatomical differences are taken into account while SPIO infusion could be considered to validate proper catheter positioning and predict adenoviral distribution.
The Transtheoretical Model and stages of change: a critique: observations by five commentators on the paper by Adams, J. and White, M. (2004) why don't stage-based activity promotion interventions work?

The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) has for some time now enjoyed fame (or even notoriety). Indeed, Health Education Research has been pleased to publish a number of articles over recent years. We were especially pleased to publish Adams and White’s (Adams and White, 2004) interesting and arguably heretical paper which appears in this edition of the Journal (and was published in advance on our website). We felt this would be an excellent opportunity to repeat our recent venture in which we invited a Commentary Group of distinguished researchers to react to three articles on the European Smoking Prevention Framework Approach in Health Education Research, 18(6), 664–677 (2003). Accordingly, we invited six equally distinguished commentators to provide a critical review of the TTM. We are very grateful to these six colleagues for their efforts—and, of course, we thank Jean Adams and Martin White for not only agreeing to their paper being subjected to critical scrutiny, but actively encouraging debate on a subject that is partly technical and partly ideological! Keith Tones Executive Editor
GridVine: An Infrastructure for Peer Information Management

GridVine is a semantic overlay infrastructure based on a peer-to-peer (P2P) access structure. Built following the principle of data independence, it separates a logical layer - in which data, schemas, and schema mappings are managed - from a physical layer consisting of a structured P2P network supporting decentralized indexing, key load-balancing, and efficient routing. The system is decentralized, yet fosters semantic interoperability through pair-wise schema mappings and query reformulation. GridVine's heterogeneous but semantically related information sources can be queried transparently using iterative query reformulation. The authors discuss a reference implementation of the system and several mechanisms for resolving queries collaboratively.
Generalizing the improved run-time complexity algorithm for non-dominated sorting

This paper generalizes the "Improved Run-Time Complexity Algorithm for Non-Dominated Sorting" by Jensen, removing its limitation that no two solutions can share identical values for any of the problem's objectives. This constraint is especially limiting for discrete combinatorial problems, but can also lead the Jensen algorithm to produce incorrect results even for problems that appear to have a continuous nature, but for which identical objective values are nevertheless possible. Moreover, even when values are not meant to be identical, the limited precision of floating point numbers can sometimes make them equal anyway. Thus a fast and correct algorithm is needed for the general case. The paper shows that generalizing the Jensen algorithm can be achieved without affecting its time complexity, and experimental results are provided to demonstrate speedups of up to two orders of magnitude for common problem sizes, when compared with the correct baseline algorithm from Deb.
Electronic Alerts Versus On-Demand Decision Support to Improve Dyslipidemia Treatment: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

Background— Indirect evidence shows that alerting users with clinical decision support systems seems to change behavior more than requiring users to actively initiate the system. However, randomized trials comparing these methods in a clinical setting are lacking. We studied the effect of both alerting and on-demand decision support with respect to screening and treatment of dyslipidemia based on the guidelines of the Dutch College of General Practitioners. Methods and Results— In a clustered randomized trial design, 38 Dutch general practices (77 physicians) and 87 886 of their patients (39 433 men 18 to 70 years of age and 48 453 women 18 to 75 years of age) who used the ELIAS electronic health record participated. Each practice was assigned to receive alerts, on-demand support, or no intervention. We measured the percentage of patients screened and treated after 12 months of follow-up. In the alerting group, 65% of the patients requiring screening were screened (relative risk versus control=1.76; 95% confidence interval, 1.41 to 2.20) compared with 35% of patients in the on-demand group (relative risk versus control=1.28; 95% confidence interval, 0.98 to 1.68) and 25% of patients in the control group. In the alerting group, 66% of patients requiring treatment were treated (relative risk versus control=1.40; 95% confidence interval, 1.15 to 1.70) compared with 40% of patients (relative risk versus control=1.19; 95% confidence interval, 0.94 to 1.50) in the on-demand group and 36% of patients in the control group. Conclusion— The alerting version of the clinical decision support systems significantly improved screening and treatment performance for dyslipidemia by general practitioners.
Context issues for integrating mobile and Grid environments

In this paper we present architecture of a middleware layer that enables users of mobile devices to seamlessly and securely access distributed resources in a grid. It lays the ground work for an application toolkit that addresses issues such as delegation of the job to the grid service, interaction with heterogeneous mobile devices, support for online processing, secure communication between the client and the middleware and presentation of results formatted in accordance with the device specification by outsourcing computationally intensive tasks with high storage and network bandwidth demands.
UniCam—2D gestural camera controls for 3D environments

We present a novel approach to controlling a virtual 3D camera with a 2D mouse or stylus input device that is based on gestural interaction. Our approach to 3D camera manipulation, UniCam, requires only a single-button stylus or mouse to directly invoke specific camera operations within a single 3D view. No 2D widgets or keyboard modifiers are necessary. By gesturally invoking all camera functionality, UniCam reduces the modal nature of typical desktop 3D graphics applications, since remaining mouse or stylus buttons can be used for other application functionality. In addition, the particular choice and refinement of UniCam controls efficiently enables a wide range of camera manipulation tasks, including translation in three-dimensions, orbiting about a point, animated focusing on an object surface, animated navigation around an object, zooming in upon a region, and saving and restoring viewpoints. UniCam’s efficiency derives primarily from improved transitions between techniques and to a lesser degree from adaptations of existing techniques. Although we have conducted no formal user evaluations, UniCam is the result of years of iterative development with approximately one hundred users. During this time more conventional modifier key and menu-based implementations were implemented and either refined or rejected. Informally, users appear to require a few hours of training to become proficient with UniCam controls, but then typically choose them almost exclusively even when widget-based controls, such as those provided by an Inventor viewer, are simultaneously available. CR Categories: H.5. 2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g., HCI)]: User Interfaces—Graphics user interfaces (GUI); H.5. 2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g., HCI)]: User Interfaces—Input devices and strategies; H.5. 1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g., HCI)]: Multimedia Information Systems—Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities; I.3. 6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology and Techniques—Interaction techniques;
Response to "Projection Methods Require Black Border Removal"

In contrast to prior experimental work, our results support the conclusion that RXYC can perform well after marginal noise removal. However, marginal noise removal on page images like those found in UW3 remains a hard problem, and it therefore remains an open question whether RXYC can actually achieve competitive performance on such databases.