Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kernel Coding: General Formulation and Special Cases

Representing images by compact codes has proven beneficial for many visual recognition tasks. Most existing techniques, however, perform this coding step directly in image feature space, where the distributions of the different classes are typically entangled. In contrast, here, we study the problem of performing coding in a high-dimensional Hilbert space, where the classes are expected to be more easily separable. To this end, we introduce a general coding formulation that englobes the most popular techniques, such as bag of words, sparse coding and locality-based coding, and show how this formulation and its special cases can be kernelized. Importantly, we address several aspects of learning in our general formulation, such as kernel learning, dictionary learning and supervised kernel coding. Our experimental evaluation on several visual recognition tasks demonstrates the benefits of performing coding in Hilbert space, and in particular of jointly learning the kernel, the dictionary and the classifier.
Single nucleotide polymorphisms of the tenomodulin gene (TNMD) in age-related macular degeneration

Purpose Tenomodulin (TNMD) is located in the X-chromosome encoding a putative angiogenesis inhibitor which is expressed in retina. Associations of single nucleotide polymorphisms of TNMD with the prevalence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) were examined. Methods Six markers covering 75% of the common sequence variation in the coding region of TNMD and 10 kb up- and downstream were genotyped in a sample consisting of 89 men and 175 women with exudative AMD, 18 men and 25 women with atrophic AMD, and 55 men and 113 women without AMD. All participants were over 65 years old and did not have diabetes mellitus. Due to the chromosomal locus, the association of genotypes with AMD was assessed genderwise. Results Three markers, rs1155974, rs2073163, and rs7890586, were associated with a risk of AMD in women. In comparison to women with other genotypes, the women who were homozygous for the minor allele (genotypes rs1155974-TT or rs2073163-CC) had 2.6 fold (p=0.021) or 1.9 fold (p=0.067) risk for having AMD, respectively. These differences were due to the unequal prevalence of exudative AMD. In comparison to women who were homozygous for the major alleles, the women with rs1155974-TT genotype had a 2.8 fold risk (p=0.021 in additive model; p=0.022 in recessive model) for exudative AMD, and the women with rs2073163-CC genotype had a 1.8 fold risk (p=0.09 in additive model; p=0.038 in recessive model). Furthermore, women carrying the rare rs7890586-AA genotype had a significantly smaller risk for having AMD than women with the other genotypes (odds ratio 0.083; p=0.001 in recessive model), but due to the low frequency of this genotype, this finding must be interpreted cautiously. The false discovery rate was <10% for all of the aforementioned results. Conclusions On the basis of the putative antiangiogenic role of TNMD and the present genetic associations of TNMD with AMD in women, we suggest that TNMD could be a novel candidate gene for AMD. These results should be confirmed in further studies.
Visually Lossless Strategies to Decode and Transmit JPEG2000 Imagery

Visually lossless coding allows image codecs to achieve high compression ratios while producing images without visually noticeable distortion. In general, visually lossless coding is approached from the point of view of the encoder, so most methods are not applicable to already compressed codestreams. This paper presents two algorithms focused on the visually lossless decoding and transmission of JPEG2000 codestreams. The proposed strategies can be employed by a decoder, or a JPIP server, to reduce the decoding or transmission rate without penalizing the visual quality of the resulting images.
N-(2,3-Dichlorophenyl)-4-methylbenzenesulfonamide

The title compound, C13H11Cl2NO2S, contains two molecules in the asymmetric unit in which the dihedral angles between the benzene rings are 76.0 (1) and 79.9 (1)°. The conformations of the N—H bonds with respect to their adjacent ortho-chlorine atoms are syn. In the crystal, N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link the molecules into dimers.
Reduced Tumor Oxygenation by Treatment with Vinblastine 1

Vinblastine (VLB) previously has been shown to perturb tumor blood flow, but the effect of these perturbations on tissue oxygenation is not known. The recent development of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) oximetry now has made it feasible to measure the effects of changes of perfusion on the pO2 in tumors and normal tissues as a function of time and dose. We measured changes in tumor perfusion by Patent blue staining, tumor blood volume and microvascular permeability by contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging, and tumor oxygenation by EPR in s.c. SA-1 murine tumors. We found that treatment with VLB induced dose-dependent reduction in tumor perfusion. One hour after i.p. treatment of mice with 2.5 mg/kg VLB, tumor perfusion was reduced to 20% of the pretreatment value and returned to close to original values within 48 h. A transient tumor blood flow-modifying effect of VLB was demonstrated also by contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging; reduction of tumor blood volume and microvascular permeability was found. Reduced tumor oxygenation was found as measured by EPR oximetry, with the same time course of changes in tumor blood flow. Tumor oxygenation was reduced to 50% of pretreatment value 1 h after the treatment with 2.5 mg/kg VLB and returned to pretreatment levels within 24 h after the treatment. Although the directions of the changes in perfusion and oxygenation were similar, they were quantitatively different. Reduction in oxygenation of normal tissues, muscle, and subcutis also occurred but was smaller and returned to pretreatment values more quickly compared to the changes induced in the tumors. In conclusion, the present study demonstrates that VLB causes a profound reduction in tumor blood flow and oxygenation, which may have implications in controlling side effects of therapy and the planning of combined treatment with VLB, either with other chemotherapeutic drugs or with radiotherapy.
Latency and bandwidth efficient communication through system customization for embedded multiprocessors

We present a cross-layer customization methodology for latency and bandwidth efficient inter-core communication in embedded multiprocessors. The methodology integrates compiler, operating system, and hardware support to achieve a bandwidth efficient, snoop- free, and coherence cache miss-free shared memory communication between synchronized producer and consumers cores. A compiler- driven code transformation is introduced that utilizes a simple ISA support in the form of a special write-through store instruction. It ensures that producer writes are propagated to the consumers with a single bus transaction per cache block when the producer performs the last write to that cache line before exiting its synchronization region. Information regarding the shared buffers involved in the communications is captured by the OS and provided to the cores with the purpose of filtering bus traffic and performing remote updates when necessary. The end result of the proposed methodology is a single bus transaction per shared cache block and snoop-free communication between a producer and a set of consumers with no intervening coherence misses on the consumer caches. Our experiments demonstrate the significant reductions in both bus traffic and cache misses for a set of multiprocessor benchmarks.
Spatial epidemiology of parasitic infections and optimal survey design

Recent years have seen a shift towards integrated control of a number of tropical diseases. Such a strategy, however, relies on an understanding of the spatial distribution and overlap of different diseases. Using a combination of fieldwork, spatial and economic analyses and computerized simulations, optimal survey designs were explored for soil-transmitted helminths (STHs), Schistosoma mansoni and Plasmodium /alciparum in East Africa, and the potential of an integrated survey approach was evaluated. For STH, analysis indicated that hookworm clusters over larger scales than Ascaris lumbricoides and Trichuris trichiura, and that surveying small numbers of children, from four to five schools per district, provides a rapid and cost-effective approach to target treatment at district levels. For S. mansoni, Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) was compared to a geostatistical survey design that allows spatial prediction at unsurveyed locations based on a subset of schools. Results showed that targeted treatment was more cost-effective than presumptive treatment and that, whilst LQAS correctly classified a higher proportion of schools requiring treatment, a geostatistical design proved more cost-effective. An investigation into the optimal spatial scale to conduct surveys for STH, S. mansoni and P. /alciparum in Kenya found that, over various cost scenarios, surveying fifty children from three randomly selected sites per sub-district provided a balance of performance and cost-effectiveness for all species. In sub-districts of low S. manson; and P.alciparum prevalence, LQAS should be used to target treatment. This thesis has shown that species-specific differences in spatial heterogeneity of infection and the costs of both mapping surveys and programme intervention have important implications for the optimal design of surveys. A two stage framework for integrated surveys is proposed allowing for a flexible approach to mapping. Similar studies in different settings are crucial and would help to assess whether changes in survey strategy are required as transmission drops due to control activities.
Dependent defaults in models of portfolio credit risk

We analyse the mathematical structure of portfolio credit risk models with particular regard to the modelling of dependence between default events in these models. We explore the role of copulas in latent variable models (the approach that underlies KMV and CreditMetrics) and use non-Gaussian copulas to present extensions to standard industry models. We explore the role of the mixing distribution in Bernoulli mixture models (the approach underlying CreditRisk) and derive large portfolio approximations for the loss distribution. We show that all currently used latent variable models can be mapped into equivalent mixture models, which facilitates their simulation, statistical fitting and the study of their large portfolio properties. Finally we develop and test several approaches to model calibration based on the Bernoulli mixture representation; we find that maximum likelihood estimation of parametric mixture models generally outperforms simple moment estimation methods. J.E. L. Subject Classification: G31, G11, C15
PCR restriction fragment length polymorphism in detection of YMDD variants of viral polymerase in hepatitis B virus patients treated with lamivudine.

OBJECTIVE To analyse the emergence of YMDD motif (tyrosine-methionine-aspartate-aspartate) variants in patients with hepatitis B treated with lamivudine. METHODS The amino acid substitution from methionine or isoleucine at the YMDD motif at the HBV polymerase gene is a main mutation resistant to lamivudine treatment. Generated from a fragment of domain C of the polymerase gene, patients' HBV DNA, which had been positive previously became positive again ever since it had been negative during lamivudine therapy. Variants were detected by cleavage of the products of the three PCRs with following enzymes: FokI, SspI, Alw441. The results of PCR-RELP were analysed by 8.4% polypropylene acidemide gel electrophoresis. PCR-RFLP assay was compared to direct sequencing. RESULTS HBV DNA was positive again in 33 patients and positive for one year in 2 patients. YMDD variants were detected in serum 14 of 35 patients, YIDD variants in 4, YVDD variants in 6, and YI/MDD variants in 1; all were in concordance with the results of direct sequencing. The samples of other 3 patients showed YI/VDD mutations, as shown by direct sequencing. The results of PCR-RFLP assay of the mixed sera of YIDD and YVDD variants were similar to those sera of YI/VDD variants. CONCLUSION PCR-RFLP is suitable for rapid detection of YMDD variants of viral polymerase in hepatitis B virus patients treated with lamivudine.
Toward an Autopoietic Perspective on Information Systems Organization

This paper applies autopoietic theory to examine the nature of IS–organization relationships involving coevolutionary processes among an organization and its IS, IS organization issues, and the impacts on an organization’s competitive advantage. By drawing on a longitudinal field study in an international investment banking organization, where the development of a core IS has been studied since 1999, this paper (1) presents the distinct characteristics of the autopoietic approach; (2) demonstrates its explanatory power for understanding the IS–organization coevolutionary processes and IS organization, and (3) shows the implications of these autopoietic explanations for the firm’s current and future competitive advantage.
Dialogue Act Recognition Approaches

This paper deals with automatic dialogue act (DA) recognition. Dialogue acts are sentence-level units that represent states of a dialogue, such as questions, statements, hesitations, etc. The knowledge of dialogue act realizations in a discourse or dialogue is part of the speech understanding and dialogue analysis process. It is of great importance for many applications: dialogue systems, speech recognition, automatic machine translation, etc. The main goal of this paper is to study the existing works about DA recognition and to discuss their respective advantages and drawbacks. A major concern in the DA recognition domain is that, although a few DA annotation schemes seem now to emerge as standards, most of the time, these DA tag-sets have to be adapted to the specificities of a given application, which prevents the deployment of standardized DA databases and evaluation procedures. The focus of this review is put on the various kinds of information that can be used to recognize DAs, such as prosody, lexical, etc., and on the types of models proposed so far to capture this information. Combining these information sources tends to appear nowadays as a prerequisite to recognize DAs.
Continua: An Interoperable Personal Healthcare Ecosystem

The healthcare industry must improve its delivery methods and reduce costs to address current and anticipated needs. Various technologies could help by extending treatment and care beyond traditional clinical settings into personal and home settings. However, creating such a personal telehealth ecosystem will require interoperability. Device connectivity to enterprise services is currently very proprietary. In an effort to develop interoperability guidelines for the emerging personal telehealth ecosystem, we formed the Continua Health Alliance (www.continuaalliance.org), an international alliance of more than 133 companies. The guidelines will be based on a comprehensive set of industry standards, which will serve as a blueprint for integrating a product into the ecosystem.
Spectral shape, epsilon and record selection

Selection of earthquake ground motions is considered with the goal of accurately estimating the response of a structure at a specified ground motion intensity, as measured by spectral acceleration at the first‐mode period of the structure, Sa(T1). Consideration is given to the magnitude, distance and epsilon (ε) values of ground motions. First, it is seen that selecting records based on their ε values is more effective than selecting records based on magnitude and distance. Second, a method is discussed for finding the conditional response spectrum of a ground motion, given a level of Sa(T1) and its associated mean (disaggregation‐based) causal magnitude, distance and ε value. Records can then be selected to match the mean of this target spectrum, and the same benefits are achieved as when records are selected based on ε. This mean target spectrum differs from a Uniform Hazard Spectrum, and it is argued that this new spectrum is a more appropriate target for record selection. When properly selecting records based on either spectral shape or ε, the reductions in bias and variance of resulting structural response estimates are comparable to the reductions achieved by using a vector‐valued measure of earthquake intensity. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Why Some Workers Remain in the Labor Force Beyond the Typical Age of Retirement

This study explored the ways in which race, gender, and age moderated the effects of several determinants of labor force participation among people ages 60 to 80. The role of race, gender, and age in moderating the effect of various factors on labor force participation was examined using the 1998 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data. Binomial logistic regression models were used to evaluate the interaction between race, gender, age and other determinants of labor force participation. The effects of various factors on labor force participation differed by gender, race, and age. The negative effects of low education and poor health, respectively, were stronger for women and blacks. Also, the positive effect of low non-wage income was weaker for older workers, probably due partly to poorer health. Our findings suggest that different types of policies would help to encourage labor force participation among different groups. Because lack of access to employment may deter continued work among subgroups such as blacks and women with low education, job training or job search programs might provide incentives for employment in these groups. Additionally, employer flexibility regarding part-time work and work demands might make continued work attractive for more older workers.
Clonal analysis of the Mls system. A reappraisal of polymorphism and allelism among Mlsa, Mlsc, and Mlsd

Only two sets of antigenic determinants are recognized by T lymphocytes at uniquely high precursor frequencies: those encoded by the MHC and those encoded by Mls. The structural as well as functional characteristics of MHC products have been extensively analyzed. In contrast, little information concerning the nature of Mls genes or their products is available. Although it was originally described (5, 6) that the Mls locus on chromosome 1 is composed of four alleles that encode polymorphic cell surface structures, the issues of polymorphism and allelism in the Mls system have been controversial for some time. In the present study, T cell clones were generated by continuous stimulation of B10.BR (H-2k, Mlsb) T cells by CBA/J (H-2k, Mlsd) stimulators and they were used to analyze the relationship of putative Mlsa, Mlsc, and Mlsd determinants. All clones proliferated in response to determinants expressed by CBA/J stimulators. In addition, each of these clones exhibited a second reactivity to either AKR/J (H-2k, Mlsa) or C3H/HeJ (H-2k, Mlsc) stimulators. No clone responded to both AKR/J and C3H/HeJ. These second specificities were defined to be for Mlsa or Mlsc determinants, respectively, by the response patterns of clones and unprimed T cells to stimulators derived from congenic strains, recombinant inbred (RI) strains, and backcross mice. Moreover, a segregation analysis of the (CBA/J X B10.BR)F1 X B10.BR backcross indicated that the Mlsa-like and Mlsc-like determinants expressed on CBA/J (Mlsd) cells are in fact encoded by nonallelic, unlinked genes. These findings suggest a new concept of the polymorphism and genetics of the Mls system. It is proposed that two distinct and nonallelic gene products express, respectively, the noncrossreacting Mlsa and Mlsc determinants, and that the Mlsd phenotype does not represent an independent genotype but rather reflects the concurrent expression of Mlsa and Mlsc. The Mls system, therefore, consists of at least two systems that are distinct both genetically and antigenically, and that may be of different biologic or physiologic significance as well.
An informed synchronization scheme for audio data hiding

This paper deals with the problem of synchronization in the particular case of audio data hiding. In this kind of application the goal is to increase the information of an audio data set by inserting an imperceptible message. An innovating synchronization scheme that uses informed coding theory is proposed. The goal is to realize a complementary approach from two different techniques in order to obtain an enhanced synchronization system. To that end, the analysis of the classical spread spectrum synchronization is done and this classical scheme is improved by the use of side information. Informed coding theory is presented and revisited taking into account the problem of synchronization to enable the selection of signal realizations called Feature Time Points (FTP) which are correlated with a code. Such considerations yield to the definition of informed synchronization. The proposed scheme and the definition of FTP are after presented taking into account the robustness criterion. Finally, results and comparison with classical spread spectrum synchronization schemes are presented.
Dynamic Coordinated Condition-Based Maintenance for Multiple Components With External Conditions

This paper proposes a method to establish an optimal dynamic coordinated condition-based maintenance strategy that considers harsh external conditions, for example, harsh weather conditions. Component deterioration is modeled as a Markov process based on physical characteristics, with the effects of harsh external conditions represented as probabilistic models. The proposed model involves interactions between different maintenance strategies on various components, as well as influences on the operation of the entire system. The optimal maintenance strategies are obtained by optimizing the proposed model with the cost to go, including system reliability cost and maintenance cost. This proposed model is solved using a backward induction algorithm associated with a search space reduction approach developed to reduce the simulation time. Two IEEE systems and one actual system validate the proposed model. The results show that this optimal maintenance strategy model that considers harsh external conditions provides insight for scheduling appropriate maintenance activities.