Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tightly-Coupled Data Compression for Efficient Face Alignment

Face alignment is the key component for applications such as face and expression recognition, face based AR (Augmented Reality), etc. Among all the algorithms, cascaded-regression based methods have become popular in recent years for their low computational costs and satisfactory performances in uncontrolled environments. However, the size of the trained model is large for cascaded-regression based methods, which makes it difficult to be applied in resource restricted scenarios such as applications on mobile phones. In this paper, a data compression method for the trained model of supervised descent method (SDM) is proposed. Firstly, according to the distribution of the model data estimated with the non-parametric method, a K-means based data quantization algorithm with probability density-aware initialization was proposed to efficiently quantize the model data. Then, a tightly-coupled SDM training algorithm was proposed so that the training process reduced the errors caused by data quantization. Quantitative experimental results proved that our proposed method compressed the trained model to less than 19% of its original size with very similar feature localization performance. The proposed method opens the gates to efficient mobile face alignment applications based on SDM.
Novel Ultrawideband and Multimode LTCC Common-Mode Filter Based on the Dual Vertical Coupling Paths

A novel ultrawideband and miniaturized common-mode filter (CMF) is proposed for suppressing the CM noise based on the dual vertical coupling paths. In the proposed CMF, a modified quarter-wavelength transmission line resonator and a modified half-wavelength transmission line resonator are utilized to introduce three CM transmission zeros. Moreover, another CM transmission zero is produced by the dual vertical path coupling. An ultrawide CM stopband is achieved by the four CM transmission zeros. Subsequently, equivalent circuit models have been established to give physical insight into the CMF operating mechanism, and the design procedures are also provided. By using the low-temperature cofired ceramic technology, a surface-mounted device prototype is fabricated and measured. The measured results show that the CM noise can be suppressed over 10 dB from 2.45 to 9.85 GHz with 120.3% fractional bandwidth. Meanwhile, the low insertion loss and the relatively constant group delay for differential mode ensure that the proposed CMF can maintain the signal integrity of differential signals below 10 GHz.
Ocean Wave Inversion Based on Hybrid Along- and Cross-Track Interferometry

The hybrid interferometric synthetic aperture radar system is a combination of an along-track configuration and cross-track configuration. Based on linear ocean wave theory, an ocean wave inversion algorithm for a hybrid interferometric synthetic aperture radar system is proposed in this work. Using the interferometric synthetic aperture radar images acquired by the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites and the interferometric synthetic aperture radar images acquired by an airborne interferometric radar altimeter with a certain degree of squint, the profile of ocean waves and the corresponding orbital velocities were retrieved by combining the new inversion algorithm with the cross-spectra. Meanwhile, key parameters of ocean waves, such as the significant wave height, significant wave orbital velocity, propagation direction, and wavelength of the dominant waves, were also extracted from the ocean wave spectra retrieved in this study. In order to evaluate the reliability of the new inversion algorithm, the retrieved significant wave heights were compared with those provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and measured by a Global Navigation Satellite System buoy. The results showed that for the ocean waves retrieved from the spaceborne hybrid interferometric synthetic aperture radar images, the differences between the retrieved significant wave heights of the four subareas selected in this paper and those provided by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts were approximately 0.01, –0.17, –0.55, and –0.37 m, respectively, and for the ocean waves retrieved from the airborne interferometric radar altimeter images, the differences between the retrieved significant wave heights corresponding to the M920 and M3120 images used in this paper and those measured by the Global Navigation Satellite System buoy were approximately –0.05 and –0.09, respectively. Therefore, the method proposed in this work could retrieve the ocean wave spectra well when the velocity bunching had a small influence; however, as the nonlinear influence of the velocity bunching increased, the difference between the significant wave heights retrieved using this method and provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts also increased.
Power Angle–Frequency Droop Control to Enhance Transient Stability of Grid-Forming Inverters Under Voltage Dips

Due to the replacement of synchronous generators (SGs), grid operators are currently demanding to control grid-connected inverters in grid-forming mode to make them participate in the maintenance of the grid. To carry this out, the traditional droop controls based on the active and reactive powers are usually adopted, achieving a satisfactory performance in normal operation. Nevertheless, the power–frequency (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P-\omega$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) droop may become transiently unstable under voltage dips. This is because of the modification of the active power response caused by the inverter current limitation together with the voltage reduction. To enhance this, the power angle–frequency (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\delta _{\mathrm {inv}}-\omega$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) droop is proposed, consisting in employing an estimation of the inverter power angle as input to obtain the inverter frequency. The proposed method provides the inverter with the same performance as the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P-\omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> droop in normal operation while enhancing considerably the transient stability margins under current limitation. This is due to the higher variation of the inverter power angle with the phase difference between the inverter and the grid. Simulation results show the transient stability problems of the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P-\omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> droop as well as the superior performance of the proposed <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\delta _{\mathrm {inv}}-\omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> droop control, which has also been verified by means of HIL results.
Pneumococcal Surface Protein A-Hybrid Nanoparticles Protect Mice from Lethal Challenge after Mucosal Immunization Targeting the Lungs

Pneumococcal disease remains a global burden, with current conjugated vaccines offering protection against the common serotype strains. However, there are over 100 serotype strains, and serotype replacement is now being observed, which reduces the effectiveness of the current vaccines. Pneumococcal surface protein A (PspA) has been investigated as a candidate for new serotype-independent pneumococcal vaccines, but requires adjuvants and/or delivery systems to improve protection. Polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) are biocompatible and, besides the antigen, can incorporate mucoadhesive and adjuvant substances such as chitosans, which improve antigen presentation at mucosal surfaces. This work aimed to define the optimal NP formulation to deliver PspA into the lungs and protect mice against lethal challenge. We prepared poly(glycerol-adipate-co-ω-pentadecalactone) (PGA-co-PDL) and poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) NPs using an emulsion/solvent evaporation method, incorporating chitosan hydrochloride (HCl-CS) or carboxymethyl chitosan (CM-CS) as hybrid NPs with encapsulated or adsorbed PspA. We investigated the physicochemical properties of NPs, together with the PspA integrity and biological activity. Furthermore, their ability to activate dendritic cells in vitro was evaluated, followed by mucosal immunization targeting mouse lungs. PGA-co-PDL/HCl-CS (291 nm) or CM-CS (281 nm) NPs produced smaller sizes compared to PLGA/HCl-CS (310 nm) or CM-CS (299 nm) NPs. Moreover, NPs formulated with HCl-CS possessed a positive charge (PGA-co-PDL +17 mV, PLGA + 13 mV) compared to those formulated with CM-CS (PGA-co-PDL −20 mV, PLGA −40 mV). PspA released from NPs formulated with HCl-CS preserved the integrity and biological activity, but CM-CS affected PspA binding to lactoferrin and antibody recognition. PspA adsorbed in PGA-co-PDL/HCl-CS NPs stimulated CD80+ and CD86+ cells, but this was lower compared to when PspA was encapsulated in PLGA/HCl-CS NPs, which also stimulated CD40+ and MHC II (I-A/I-E)+ cells. Despite no differences in IgG being observed between immunized animals, PGA-co-PDL/HCl-CS/adsorbed-PspA protected 83% of mice after lethal pneumococcal challenge, while 100% of mice immunized with PLGA/HCl-CS/encapsulated-PspA were protected. Therefore, this formulation is a promising vaccine strategy, which has beneficial properties for mucosal immunization and could potentially provide serotype-independent protection.
Implications of internal audit effectiveness on corporate governance: Research agenda

This paper aims to use theoretical literature to develop propositions and suggest a research agenda on the implications of internal audit (IA) on corporate governance (CG). The paper uses institutional theory and Marx’s theory of the circuit of industrial capital to develop theoretical and justifiable propositions and highlight influential research agenda. The key variables are identified and operationalization issues are discussed. To demonstrate the relationship between CG and IA, researchers used theories such as institutional theory, agency theory, stewardship theory, and resource dependence theory (Tripathi, 2019; Činčalová & Hedija, 2020). The existing literature does not offer norms for IA effectiveness. We claim that a positive relationship between IA compliance with standards and CG could be used to assess IA performance. It is high time that the IA should be given consideration as a service to the board, and the IA should be made independent of the top management. Studies in settings where IA is well-developed and in different contexts, similar to Fiji, where IA is relatively at an early stage of development, could provide valuable insights.
Dihydrotanshinone I Enhances Cell Adhesion and Inhibits Cell Migration in Osteosarcoma U−2 OS Cells through CD44 and Chemokine Signaling

In the screening of novel natural products against cancer using an in vitro cancer cell model, we recently found that tanshinones from a traditional Chinese medicine, the rhizome of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge (Danshen), had potent effects on cell proliferation and migration. Especially for human osteosarcoma U−2 OS cells, tanshinones significantly enhanced the cell adherence, implying a possible role in cell adhesion and cell migration inhibition. In this work, therefore, we aimed to provide a new insight into the possible molecule mechanisms of dihydrotanshinone I, which had the strongest effects on cell adhesion among several candidate tanshinones. RNA−sequencing-based transcriptome analysis and several biochemical experiments indicated that there were comprehensive signals involved in dihydrotanshinone I-treated U−2 OS cells, such as cell cycle, DNA replication, thermogenesis, tight junction, oxidative phosphorylation, adherens junction, and focal adhesion. First, dihydrotanshinone I could potently inhibit cell proliferation and induce cell cycle arrest in the G0/G1 phase by downregulating the expression of CDK4, CDK2, cyclin D1, and cyclin E1 and upregulating the expression of p21. Second, it could significantly enhance cell adhesion on cell plates and inhibit cell migration, involving the hyaluronan CD44−mediated CXCL8–PI3K/AKT–FOXO1, IL6–STAT3–P53, and EMT signaling pathways. Thus, the increased expression of CD44 and lengthened protrusions around the cell yielded a significant increase in cell adhesion. In summary, these results suggest that dihydrotanshinone I might be an interesting molecular therapy for enhancing human osteosarcoma U−2 OS cell adhesion and inhibiting cell migration and proliferation.
Retrospective Study on the Prevalence of Gastro-esophageal Reflux in Brachycephalic and Non-Brachycephalic Dogs Anesthetized for CT Examination

Gastro-esophageal reflux is the return of gastric contents in the esophagus, phenomenon that can be identified in dogs under general anesthesia, but also in dogs without anesthesia, due to disorders of the distal esophageal sphincter. The aim of the present study was the comparative assessment of the incidence of gastro-esophageal reflux in brachycephalic and non-brachycephalic dogs. The medical records were evaluated for 98 dogs, presented with different pathologies of the spine. The animals were subjected to a standardized anesthetic protocol and CT scan. Following the analysis of the acquired CT images, it was found that gastro-esophageal reflux was present in 31 brachycephalic dogs (31/46; 67.39%) and in 9 non-brachycephalic dogs (9/52; 17.31%), respectively. There was an increased predisposition of the brachycephalic breeds regarding the occurrence of gastro-esophageal reflux, using identical anesthesia and positioning protocols.
Parallel Recurrent Module with Inter-layer Attention for Capturing Long-range Feature Relationships

Capturing long-range feature relationships is becoming a central issue with regard to convolutional neural networks (CNNs). In particular, several recent end-to-end trainable attention modules have attempted to model spatial-channel relationships within a given layer. In this work, we focus instead on modeling relationships among visual information captured in different layers and propose a novel module, referred to as a Parallel Recurrent Module with Inter-layer Attention (PI module). The PI module exhibits several unique characteristics, including the ability to memorize information from earlier layers and ameliorate gradient vanishing, both of which are issues not addressed by existing attention modules. Furthermore, due to its easy-to-adopt structure also incurring negligible computational overheads, the module successfully extends to not only CNNs on regular grids but also to graph convolution networks, and even other attention modules. We demonstrate by extensive experiments that the PI module is cost-efficient yet effectively provides additional performance gains on multiple benchmarks in classification, detection, and segmentation tasks in the image domain and a segmentation task in the point cloud domain.
Target Therapies for Systemic Mastocytosis: An Update

Systemic mastocytosis (SM) results from a clonal proliferation of abnormal mast cells (MCs) in extra-cutaneous organs. It could be divided into indolent SM, smoldering SM, SM with an associated hematologic (non-MC lineage) neoplasm, aggressive SM, and mast cell leukemia. SM is generally associated with the presence of a gain-of-function somatic mutation in KIT at codon 816. Clinical features could be related to MC mediator release or to uncontrolled infiltration of MCs in different organs. Whereas indolent forms have a near-normal life expectancy, advanced diseases have a poor prognosis with short survival times. Indolent forms should be considered for symptom-directed therapy, while cytoreductive therapy represents the first-line treatment for advanced diseases. Since the emergence of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), KIT inhibition has been an attractive approach. Initial reports showed that only the rare KITD816V negative cases were responsive to first-line TKI imatinib. The development of new TKIs with activity against the KITD816V mutation, such as midostaurin or avapritinib, has changed the management of this disease. This review aims to focus on the available clinical data of therapies for SM and provide insights into possible future therapeutic targets.
A Compact Wideband Circularly Polarized Metasurface Antenna Using one novel Cross-layer Polarization Dependent Structure

In this work, a compact wideband circularly-polarized (CP) metasurface (MS) antenna is proposed, which is composed by one novel 4×4 cross-layer polarization dependent metasurface (PDMS) structure and a slanted coupling slot fed through the microstrip line. The cross-layer PDMS structure is constructed by loading several lower-patches along one dimension of the conventional square upper-MS structure. Besides, these lower-patches are located below the gaps of upper square patches directly. Distinct with conventional square MS structure, the proposed cross-layer PDMS structure can exhibit different reflection features in two orthogonal dimensions. Besides, these lower-patches also can provide a large cross-layer capacitive loading to miniaturize the size of MS. By properly tailoring the phase difference of the PDMS structure between the two orthogonal dimensions and combining with a slanted coupling slot, the PDMS structure can be used as a radiator to realize circular- polarization states. Accordingly, a circularly-polarized MS antenna based on the proposed PDMS structure is designed, exhibiting a large 3-dB axial ratio (AR) of 25.5% (6.6~8.53GHz), a large -10dB impedance bandwidth of 42.02% (5.62~8.61GHz) within a much compact aperture size (0.4λ0×0.4λ0).
A Multi-Atlas-Based [18F]9-Fluoropropyl-(+)-Dihydrotetrabenazine Positron Emission Tomography Image Segmentation Method for Parkinson’s Disease Quantification

Objectives [18F]9-fluoropropyl-(+)-dihydrotetrabenazine ([18F]-FP-DTBZ) positron emission tomography (PET) provides reliable information for the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this study, we proposed a multi-atlas-based [18F]-FP-DTBZ PET image segmentation method for PD quantification assessment. Methods A total of 99 subjects from Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University were included in this study, and both brain PET and magnetic resonance (MR) scans were conducted. Data from 20 subjects were used to generate atlases, based on which a multi-atlas-based [18F]-FP-DTBZ PET segmentation method was developed especially for striatum and its subregions. The proposed method was compared with the template-based method through striatal subregion parcellation performance and the standard uptake value ratio (SUVR) quantification accuracy. Discriminant analysis between healthy controls (HCs) and PD patients was further performed. Results Segmentation results of the multi-atlas-based method showed better consistency than the template-based method with the ground truth, yielding a dice coefficient of 0.81 over 0.73 on the full striatum. The SUVRs calculated by the multi-atlas-based method had an average interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.953 with the standardized result, whereas the template-based method only reached 0.815. The SUVRs of HCs were generally higher than that of patients with PD and showed significant differences in all of the striatal subregions (all p < 0.001). The median and posterior putamen performed best in discriminating patients with PD from HCs. Conclusion The proposed multi-atlas-based [18F]-FP-DTBZ PET image segmentation method achieved better performance than the template-based method, indicating great potential in improving accuracy and efficiency for PD diagnosis in clinical routine.
Does EPICS as a pre-college program foster engineering identity development as correlated to doing engineering?

Tirupalavanam G. Ganesh is Assistant Dean of Engineering Education at Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. He is Tooker Professor in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport, & Energy. His research interests include educational research methods, communication of research, and k-16+ engineering education. Ganesh’s research is largely focused on studying the impact of k-12 and undergraduate curricula, and teaching-learning processes in both the formal and informal settings. He is also studying entry and persistence in engineering of first generation, women, and under-represented ethnic minorities.
Comparison of Selected Immune Parameters in a Single Infection and Co-Infection with Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis Virus with Other Viruses in Rainbow Trout

Infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV) often occurs in an aquatic environment in co-infection with other viruses. In this study, we wanted to investigate the effect of this virus on the course of co-infection with other viruses in rainbow trout. For co-infection we used viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV), infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) and salmonid alphavirus (SAV) field strains and infected rainbow trout divided into eight groups; I; IPNV, II; IHNV, III; VHSV, I; SAV, V; IPNV+IHNV, VI; IPNV+VHSV, VII; IPNV+SAV, and the control group. We assessed apoptosis in white blood cells and used a real time RT-PCR to analyze RNA obtained from the internal organs of the fish. During single infection and co-infection the level of expression of immune genes such as interferon and toll-like receptor 3 (TLR-3) was assessed. The highest mortality during the experiment was observed in group III infected by VHSV. The average percentage of apoptotic cells was higher in groups without co-infection, especially in groups II and III. Interferon expression was higher in singly infected groups, the highest being in the heart in group III, while expression of the TLR-3 gene was generally raised in all tested organs in all groups. We found that co-infection with IPNV had a positive impact on the course of infection with the viruses listed because it lowered mortality, reduced apoptosis in co-infected cells, and positively affected fish health.
Utilization of lateral anterior lumbar interbody fusion for revision of failed prior TLIF: illustrative case

BACKGROUND The use of the lateral decubitus approach for L5–S1 anterior lumbar interbody fusion (LALIF) is a recent advancement capable of facilitating single-position surgery, revision operations, and anterior column reconstruction. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first description of the use of LALIF at L5–S1 for failed prior transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) and anterior column reconstruction. Using an illustrative case, the authors discuss their experience using LALIF at L5–S1 for the revision of pseudoarthrosis and TLIF failure. OBSERVATIONS The patient had prior attempted L2 to S1 fusion with TLIF but suffered from hardware failure and pseudoarthrosis at the L5–S1 level. LALIF was used to facilitate same-position revision at L5–S1 in addition to further anterior column revision and reconstruction by lateral lumbar interbody fusion at the L1–2 level. Robotic posterior T10–S2 fusion was then added to provide stability to the construct and address the patient’s scoliotic deformity. No complications were noted, and the patient was followed until 1 year after the operation with a favorable clinical and radiological result. LESSONS Revision of a prior failed L5–S1 TLIF with an LALIF approach has technical challenges but may be advantageous for single position anterior column reconstruction under certain conditions.