Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of 2D and 3D wall reconstruction algorithms from point cloud data for as-built BIM

As-built Building Information Models (BIMs) are becoming increasingly popular in the Architectural, Engineering, Construction, Owner and Operator (AECOO) industry. These models reflect the state of the building up to as-built conditions. The production of these models for existing buildings with no prior BIM includes the segmentation and classification of point cloud data and the reconstruction of the BIM objects. The automation of this process is a must since the manual Scan-to-BIM procedure is both time-consuming and error prone. However, the automated reconstruction from point cloud data is still ongoing research with both 2D and 3D approaches being proposed. There currently is a gap in the literature concerning the quality assessment of the created entities. In this research, we present the empirical comparison of both strategies with respect to existing specifications. A 3D and a 2D reconstruction method are implemented and tested on a real life test case. The experiments focus on the reconstruction of the wall geometry from unstructured point clouds as it forms the basis of the model. Both presented approaches are unsupervised methods that segment, classify and create generic wall elements. The first method operates on the 3D point cloud itself and consists of a general approach for the segmentation and classification and a class-specific reconstruction algorithm for the wall geometry. The point cloud is first segmented into planar clusters, after which a Random Forests classifier is used with geometric and contextual features for the semantic labelling. The final wall geometry is created based on the 3D point clusters representing the walls. The second method is an efficient Manhattan-world scene reconstruction algorithm that simultaneously segments and classifies the point cloud based on point feature histograms. The wall reconstruction is considered an instance of image segmentation by representing the data as 2D raster images. Both methods have promising results towards the reconstruction of wall geometry of multi-story buildings. The experiments report that over 80% of the walls were correctly segmented by both methods. Furthermore, the reconstructed geometry is conform Level-of-Accuracy 20 for 88% of the data by the first method and for 55% by the second method despite the Manhattan-world scene assumption. The empirical comparison showcases the fundamental differences in both strategies and will support the further development of these methods.
Modeling the Relationship between Cultural Capital and Sense of School Belonging among Middle School Students: The mediating role of Social and Institutional Trust

Cultural capital influencing students attitudes toward school and the value of schooling, as well as transmitting notions about the nature of the wider society and people around them. In this study, the relation between students’ cultural capital and three non-cognitive attitudinal outcomes developing in the process of schooling including social trust, institutional trust (both as long-term outcomes), and sense of school belonging (a short-term outcome) was investigated.The present study was conducted with a descriptive-correlational design. A total of 528 students selected from Urmia secondary schools through stratified sampling responded to the questionnaire. The research data were collected using the standard questionnaires (Cultural capital: A researcher-made questionnaire based on the Bourdieu's theory, Social trust: Based on the Rosenberg’s (1956) notion of misanthropy, Institutional trust: A researcher-made questionnaire (Sabbagh et al., 2013) and Students' sense of school belonging: A 5-point Likert scale designed by Goodenow (1993)) and their validity and reliability were confirmed.Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to study and evaluate the relationships between the studied variables. Path analysis results showed that, there is a positive and significant relationship between cultural capital and (social–institutional) trust, cultural capital and sense of school belonging and, between (social–institutional) trust and sense of school belonging.So, it can be concluded that, there is a positive and significant relationship between cultural capital of students and sense of school belonging by mediating role of trust in high school students.
On a Generalization of the Jensen–Shannon Divergence and the Jensen–Shannon Centroid

The Jensen–Shannon divergence is a renown bounded symmetrization of the Kullback–Leibler divergence which does not require probability densities to have matching supports. In this paper, we introduce a vector-skew generalization of the scalar α-Jensen–Bregman divergences and derive thereof the vector-skew α-Jensen–Shannon divergences. We prove that the vector-skew α-Jensen–Shannon divergences are f-divergences and study the properties of these novel divergences. Finally, we report an iterative algorithm to numerically compute the Jensen–Shannon-type centroids for a set of probability densities belonging to a mixture family: This includes the case of the Jensen–Shannon centroid of a set of categorical distributions or normalized histograms.
A Comparative Content Analysis of The Services of Arab Parliamentary Websites

This study aimed to investigate whether services of the selected Arab parliamentary websites fulfill the selected dimensions, and whether there is any relation between the countries’ ranking on both of e-government survey and democracy index, and the level of services of Arab parliamentary websites. The final findings were as follows: the goal of designing the websites of Arab parliamentary websites is concerned only in provision of information rather than enabling the relationship between MPs and public and promoting democracy. In case of our sample of Arab countries, the well-established application of e-government does not mean at all an elevated level of the services of Arab parliamentary websites. In addition, there is no relation between the countries’ ranking on democracy index and the level of the services provided by Arab parliamentary websites. Low level of democracy in Arab countries has its effect on the designing of parliamentary websites and the services through which they are provided.
SCHIZOTYPY – CURRENT CONCEPTS AND FUTURE RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS SHIZOTIPIJA – TRENUTNI KONCEPTI I IMPLIKACIJE ZA BUDUĆA ISTRAŽIVANJA

Schizotypy is a construct used to describe a group of persons with symptoms which do not fulfill criteria for schizophrenia, but have some similarities with this complex and heterogeneous psychiatric disorder. ICD-10 describes schizotypy as a state (schizotypal disorder), while DSM-5 labels it as a trait marker (schizotypal personality disorder). Considering how schizotypy encompasses through the normal, subclinical and clinical population, a thorough theoretical understanding of this concept could be helpful in developing measures of assessment. So far, most of the tools for psychometric evaluation of schizotypy have focused only on abnormal personality. The present article focuses on the evolution of the term schizotypy, its current understanding, the possibilities of psychometric assessment in relation to contemporary constructs of personality and on clinical considerations for improved detection and intervention in this field.
Multiscale Entropy as a New Feature for EEG and fNIRS Analysis

The present study aims to apply multiscale entropy (MSE) to analyse brain activity in terms of brain complexity levels and to use simultaneous electroencephalogram and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (EEG/fNIRS) recordings for brain functional analysis. A memory task was selected to demonstrate the potential of this multimodality approach since memory is a highly complex neurocognitive process, and the mechanisms governing selective retention of memories are not fully understood by other approaches. In this study, 15 healthy participants with normal colour vision participated in the visual memory task, which involved the making the executive decision of remembering or forgetting the visual stimuli based on his/her own will. In a continuous stimulus set, 250 indoor/outdoor scenes were presented at random, between periods of fixation on a black background. The participants were instructed to make a binary choice indicating whether they wished to remember or forget the image; both stimulus and response times were stored for analysis. The participants then performed a scene recognition test to confirm whether or not they remembered the images. The results revealed that the participants intentionally memorising a visual scene demonstrate significantly greater brain complexity levels in the prefrontal and frontal lobe than when purposefully forgetting a scene; p < 0.05 (two-tailed). This suggests that simultaneous EEG and fNIRS can be used for brain functional analysis, and MSE might be the potential indicator for this multimodality approach.
A study to assess the quality of life (QOL) of patients suffering from tinea corporis attending dermatology OPD of a tertiary care centre of Eastern India

Background: A huge number of patients in our country are affected by Tinea Corporis (TC). The number of patients affected by dermatophytosis has increased by a large extent in the last 4 to 5 years. The quality of life in TC patients can be affected by various factors including the disease morbidity, duration of disease, social & demographic factors. Aims and Objectives: The aim of the study is to find out the effect of TC on the quality of life of the affected patients & along with that to assess whether there is some association of this effect on quality of life with some demographic & clinical factors. Methods: The effect on quality of life of 328 patients affected by TC who attended the Dermatology outpatient’s department of NRS Medical College was assessed using the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) questionnaire. Results: 12 (3.658 %) of the patients had an extremely large effect on quality of life. There was a very large effect on the QOL of 121 (36.890 %) patients. There was moderate effect on 134 (40.853 %) of the patients. There was a small effect on 59 (17.987 %) of the patients. 2 (0.609 %) patients had no effect on their QOL. Duration of disease & body surface area involved have significant impacts on QOL. Conclusion: The quality of life is adversely affected by TC. Early detection & treatment of the disease is very important. Steps must be taken to increase awareness about the disease among the general population.
Potential drug-drug interactions among elderly in-patients with cardiac illness at a tertiary care centre

Background: Drug interactions are major cause of concern in hospitalized patients with cardiac illness especially in elderly population. Therefore, the study was conducted to determine the prevalence and pattern of potential drug-drug interactions (pDDI) and risk factors, if any.Methods: It was a prospective observational study involving 75 elderly in-patients with cardiac diseases. IHEC approval was taken before commencement of study and written informed consent was taken from all the study participants. Data was collected using structured data collection tool. pDDI were analyzed using MEDSCAPE databse. Data was analyzed using SPSS 20.0 in terms of descriptive statistics. Pearson correlation coefficient was used to find the association between the risk factors and potential DDIs. P value of ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: The prevalence of pDDI was found to be 100%. Total 593 pDDI and 33 interacting drug pairs were observed in the study. The common drug interacting pairs were aspirin and furosemide 140 (23.61%), followed by aspirin+ enalapril 98 (16.53%) and heparin and clopidogrel 56 (9.44%). Majority of pDDI 480 (81%) were found to be of moderate severity. A significant association was documented between length of hospital stay (p=0.041) and occurrence of pDDI. A statistically significant correlation (r =0.621; p<0.01) was noted between number of drugs prescribed and total number of pDDIs.Conclusions: A high prevalence of pDDI was observed. The prevalence rate is directly related to number of drugs prescribed and length of hospital stay. Therefore, close monitoring of hospitalized patients is recommended.
VANET: A novel service for predicting and disseminating vehicle traffic information

The arrival of cloud computing technology promises innovative solutions to the problems inherent in existing vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) networks. Because of the highly dynamic nature of these networks in crowded conditions, some network performance improvements are needed to anticipate and disseminate reliable traffic information. Although several approaches have been proposed for the dissemination of data in the vehicular clouds, these approaches rely on the dissemination of data from conventional clouds to vehicles, or vice versa. However, anticipating and delivering data, in a proactive way, based on query message or an event driven has not been defined so far by these approaches. Therefore, in this paper, a VANET‐Cloud layer is proposed for traffic management and network performance improvements during congested conditions. For the traffic management, the proposed layer integrates the benefits of the connected sensor network (CSN) to collect traffic data and the cloud infrastructure to provide on‐demand and automatic cloud services. In this work, traffic services use a data exchange mechanism to propagate the predicted data using a fuzzy aggregation technique. In the evaluation phase, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed VANET‐Cloud layer to dramatically improve traffic safety and network performance as compared with recent works.
The revised ‘Common Time’ program as a strategy for student engagement and retention at university

The School of Human Services and Social Work at Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia) developed the Common Time program in 2002 for its first year undergraduate students to increase student success in academic learning and to facilitate student engagement with staff and fellow students. Common Time consists of a series of facilitated forums during the initial weeks of each semester, where the first year cohort meet weekly to discuss general first year issues and receive information relevant to the first year university experience. As the program underwent changes in 2013, this paper discusses the findings of an evaluative research initiative. The results indicate that the revised 2013 Common Time program was, for the most part, effective in orientating and engaging these first year students during their transition into university study. However, further revisions to the program are needed to improve students’ opportunities to build meaningful social networks in particular.
TRECVID 2019: An evaluation campaign to benchmark Video Activity Detection, Video Captioning and Matching, and Video Search & retrieval

The TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation (TRECVID) 2019 was a TREC-style video analysis and retrieval evaluation, the goal of which remains to promote progress in research and development of content-based exploitation and retrieval of information from digital video via open, metrics-based evaluation. Over the last nineteen years this effort has yielded a better understanding of how systems can effectively accomplish such processing and how one can reliably benchmark their performance. TRECVID has been funded by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and other US government agencies. In addition, many organizations and individuals worldwide contribute significant time and effort. TRECVID 2019 represented a continuation of four tasks from TRECVID 2018. In total, 27 teams from various research organizations worldwide completed one or more of the following four tasks: 1. Ad-hoc Video Search (AVS) 2. Instance Search (INS) 3. Activities in Extended Video (ActEV) 4. Video to Text Description (VTT) This paper is an introduction to the evaluation framework, tasks, data, and measures used in the workshop.
Evolution of Neuroaesthetic Variables in Portrait Paintings throughout the Renaissance

To compose art, artists rely on a set of sensory evaluations performed fluently by the brain. The outcome of these evaluations, which we call neuroaesthetic variables, helps to compose art with high aesthetic value. In this study, we probed whether these variables varied across art periods despite relatively unvaried neural function. We measured several neuroaesthetic variables in portrait paintings from the Early and High Renaissance, and from Mannerism. The variables included symmetry, balance, and contrast (chiaroscuro), as well as intensity and spatial complexities measured by two forms of normalized entropy. The results showed that the degree of symmetry remained relatively constant during the Renaissance. However, the balance of portraits decayed abruptly at the end of the Early Renaissance, that is, at the closing of the 15th century. Intensity and spatial complexities, and thus entropies, of portraits also fell in such manner around the same time. Our data also showed that the decline of complexity and entropy could be attributed to the rise of chiaroscuro. With few exceptions, the values of aesthetic variables from the top of artists of the Renaissance resembled those of their peers. We conclude that neuroaesthetic variables have flexibility to change in brains of artists (and observers).
Introduction

Background and aims. Gingival recession (GR), a common problem in periodontium, is associated with various etiologic factors. There is controversy over the role and importance of these factors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the etiologic factors of GR in a group of subjects in Northwest Iran. Materials and methods. In this case-control study, patients referring to a university clinic (123 patients with GR and 123 patients without GR) were evaluated. Patients were examined by an experienced periodontist. A checklist assessing the history of systemic disease, smoking, radiotherapy, orthodontic treatment, chemical and mechanical trauma, tooth-brushing method, type of occlusion, axial inclination of tooth, width and thickness of keratinized gingiva, presence of calculus, prosthesis, faulty restorations and food impaction, and frenum pull was completed for each patient. Chi-square test was used for data analysis. Results. Presence of calculus was significantly associated with GR in the evaluated patients (P = 0.000). Low width and thickness of keratinized gingiva, smoking and traumatic tooth brushing were other significant factors (P < 0.05). The type of occlusion, axial inclination of teeth, existence of prosthesis, high frenal attachment, radiotherapy, systemic diseases and chemical trauma were not significantly associated with GR in the evaluated patients (P > 0.05). Conclusions. Supraand sub-gingival calculus, inadequate width and thickness of keratinized tissue, and incorrect tooth brushing techniques are most important etiologic factors of GR. Oral hygiene instructions including correct tooth brushing techniques as well as scaling and root planing with periodic recalls can play a significant role in prevention of GR.
Development of Low Cost Microwave Detection System for Salinity and Sugar Detection

This work is proposed to develop a low cost measurement system to check the salinity and sugar content of food. A Mini-Circuits ZX95-2800+ voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), Mini-Circuits ZGDC10-362HP+ high power directional coupler, Mini Circuits PWR-6GHS+ USB Smart power sensor and open-ended coaxial probe made of semi-rigid coaxial cable RG402/U are used. The main idea for this work is based on electromagnetic reflection due to the impedance mismatch. In order to verify efficiency and accuracy of this developed detection system, comparison with measured result from P-series network analyzer (PNA) is conducted. The measured reflection coefficient from developed system was discussed among Agilent 85052D High-Temperature probe, RG405/U and RG402/U openended coaxial probe. Index Term— Salinity; Sugar; open-ended coaxial probe, reflection coefficient; microwave detection system
A Four-Year Hospital-Based Retrospective Study of the Predictors of Tuberculosis in People Living with HIV and Receiving Care at Bamenda Regional Hospital, Cameroon

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) co-infections place immense burdens on healthcare systems with particularly diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. TB is high among opportunistic diseases and the most leading cause of death among patients with HIV/AIDS. HIV infection is the most-known risk factor for Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and progression to active disease, which increases the risk of latent TB reactivation by 20-fold. We present a four-year descriptive analysis of TB in people living with HIV in the Bamenda Regional Hospital (BRH) from 2012-2016. Methods: This was a hospital-based descriptive chart review. We conducted manual reviews of medical records of HIV/TB co-infected patients from June 2017-July 2017 at BRH’s AIDS Treatment Centre, North West region of Cameroon. Socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of cases were captured using a pre-tested data collection sheet and analyzed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 25. Results: Out of the 1078 HIV patients, 36.5% (393) of them were diagnosed with TB; 75% (808) of the People living with HIV (PLWHIV) were active; among the remaining 25%, 10.2% were bedridden, 13.0% were jobless, and 1.8% were retired. The greater proportion of the participants were females 65.5% (705). Conclusion and Global Health Implications: The baseline anemia, smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, detectable (≥50copies/mL), CD4 count ≤ 200cells/µl and gender of the PLWHIV were associated with the incidence of TB. We recommend early diagnosis and treatment of anemia, modification of patient’s lifestyle, and strengthening of immunization programs to reduce the risk of TB occurrence among HIV-infected people.
Influence of propiverine ER 30 mg once daily on cognitive function in elderly female and male patients with overactive bladder: a non-interventional study to assess real life data

Female and male OAB-patients were enrolled in this non-interventional study if they fulfilled the following inclusion criteria: age ≥70 years and no treatment of OAB with anticholinergics within 4 weeks prior to study inclusion. Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) test and Patient Perception of Bladder Condition (PPBC) questionnaire were completed at baseline and after 12 weeks of treatment with propiverine ER 30 mg QD. Post-void residual urine (PVR) and number of pads/24 h were recorded before and after 4 and 12 weeks of treatment with propiverine ER 30 mg QD. PVR and patient-reported adverse drug reaction (ADR) were monitored as safety parameters.