Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Motion Estimation Based on Mutual Information and Adaptive Multi-Scale Thresholding

This paper proposes a new method of calculating a matching metric for motion estimation. The proposed method splits the information in the source images into multiple scale and orientation subbands, reduces the subband values to a binary representation via an adaptive thresholding algorithm, and uses mutual information to model the similarity of corresponding square windows in each image. A moving window strategy is applied to recover a dense estimated motion field whose properties are explored. The proposed matching metric is a sum of mutual information scores across space, scale, and orientation. This facilitates the exploitation of information diversity in the source images. Experimental comparisons are performed amongst several related approaches, revealing that the proposed matching metric is better able to exploit information diversity, generating more accurate motion fields.
A Brief History of the BSD Fast File System

I first started working on the UNIX file system with Bill Joy in the late 1970s. I wrote the Fast File System, now called UFS, in the early 1980s. In this article, I have written a survey of the work that I and the others have done to improve the BSD file systems. Much of this research has been incorporated into other file system.
Let us talk about it: Safe adolescent sexual decision making

Purpose: To discuss important factors that influence teens and provide guidance for nurse practitioners (NPs) to promote safe adolescent sexual decision making. Data sources: A selective review of current professional literature and professional practice. Conclusions: To promote safe sexual decision making in adolescents, communication with parents, other significant adults, and teens is essential. Being knowledgeable about factors that influence the choices of adolescents and willing to discuss them openly is an important component of NP practice and could make a difference in the lives of many teens. Implications for practice: NPs are frontline healthcare providers who have many opportunities to promote safe adolescent sexual decision making. This article provides a guide to assist in this work.
Dependence of earthquake stress drop on critical slip-weakening distance

[1] Numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the dependence of the static stress drop of earthquakes on the critical slip-weakening distance. A fault model in a two-dimensional elastic medium is used, in which a locked zone (asperity) is assumed to exist between creeping zones. The presence of such a zone is commonly assumed for plate boundaries that have relatively low seismic coupling. Shear stress is concentrated at the edges of the locked zone and seismic rupture occurs when the strain energy release by rupture extension becomes sufficiently large to overcome the fracture energy. The static stress drop is calculated by taking the ratio of the average seismic slip to the length of seismic slip zone for the simulated earthquakes in the model, using various values for the normal stress applied to the fault and the characteristic slip distance of a rate- and state-dependent friction law. The simulation results indicate that the static stress drop is proportional to the square root of the product of the critical slip-weakening distance and the normal stress, when the seismic rupture starts near an edge of the locked zone. In contrast, when the seismic rupture starts near the center of the locked zone, the static stress drop increases linearly with normal stress and is independent of the critical slip-weakening distance. These simulation results may explain the relatively small depth dependence, as well as the large scatter, in observations of the static stress drop.
A method for predicting spatial distribution of evaporation using simple meteorological data

A methodology for predicting the spatial distribution of evaporation rate in a catchment based on the Penman-Monteith (P-M) equation is suggested. The prediction is resolved into the four basic controlling components: net radiation, aerodynamic resistance, saturation state of the atmosphere and canopy resistance. Computer models of each component were then devised based on digital terrain analysis and tested for validity against observed data for clear sky conditions. Predicted values of potential evaporation compared favourably with those calculated from the observed data with a model efficiency of 0.80 and actual evaporation values were calculated based on this success. The digital terrain analysis enabled interpolation of the P-M calculations throughout the catchment allowing prediction of the spatial distribution of evaporation. -from Authors
Detection of linear modulations in the presence of strong phase and frequency instabilities

The previously proposed noncoherent sequence detection (NSD) algorithms have a performance which approaches that of coherent detectors and are robust to phase negligible performance loss in the presence of a frequency offset, provided this offset does not exceed an order of 1% of the signaling frequency. For higher values, the performance rapidly degrades. In this paper, two detection schemes are proposed, characterized by high robustness to frequency offsets and capable of tolerating offset values up to 10% of the signaling frequency. More generally, these detection schemes are very robust to rapidly varying phase and frequency instabilities. The general case of coded linear modulations is addressed, with explicit reference to M-ary phase shift keying (M-PSK) and quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM).
Oncotargets and Therapy Dovepress Current Therapeutic Strategies for Invasive and Metastatic Bladder Cancer

Background: Bladder cancer is one of the most common cancers in Europe, the United States, and Northern African countries. Muscle-invasive bladder cancer is an aggressive epithelial tumor, with a high rate of early systemic dissemination. Superficial, noninvasive bladder cancer can most often be cured; a good proportion of invasive cases can also be cured by a combined modality approach of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Recurrences are common and mostly manifest as metastatic disease. Those with distant metastatic disease can sometime achieve partial or complete remission with combination chemotherapy. Recent developments: Better understanding of the biology of the disease has led to the incorporation of molecular and genetic features along with factors such as tumor grade, lympho-vascular invasion, and aberrant histology, thereby allowing identification of 'favorable' and 'unfavorable' cancers which helps a more accurate informed and objective selection of patients who would benefit from neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy. Gene expression profiling has been used to find molecular signature patterns that can potentially be predictive of drug sensitivity and metastasis. Understanding the molecular pathways of invasive bladder cancer has led to clinical investigation of several targeted therapeutics such as anti-angiogenics, mTOR inhibitors, and anti-EGFR agents. Conclusion: With improvements in the understanding of the biology of bladder cancer, clinical trials studying novel and targeted agents alone or in combination with chemotherapy have increased the armamentarium for the treatment of bladder cancer. Although the novel biomarkers and gene expression profiles have been shown to provide important predictive and prognostic information and are anticipated to be incorporated in clinical decision-making, their exact utility and relevance calls for a larger prospective validation.
Secure Data Outsourcing Based on Threshold Secret Sharing ; Towards a More Practical Solution

Database outsourcing is a noteworthy solution to improve quality of services while reducing data management costs. When data is stored and processed out of the territory of its owner, security becomes the first concern. Confidentiality of the outsourced data, correctness assurance of query results, and preserving users' access privacy are the primary requirements of secure data outsourcing. Nevertheless, most of research activities concentrate on confidentiality based on different encryption schemes. This paper reports some aspects of our ongoing research on secure data outsourcing plus our future directions. We propose a framework to provide confidentiality and privacy based on the threshold secret sharing. We discuss the extension points of the framework to satisfy other requirements of secure data outsourcing as well.
Mutation Discovery in Regions of Segmental Cancer Genome Amplifications with CoNAn-SNV: A Mixture Model for Next Generation Sequencing of Tumors

Next generation sequencing has now enabled a cost-effective enumeration of the full mutational complement of a tumor genome—in particular single nucleotide variants (SNVs). Most current computational and statistical models for analyzing next generation sequencing data, however, do not account for cancer-specific biological properties, including somatic segmental copy number alterations (CNAs)—which require special treatment of the data. Here we present CoNAn-SNV (Copy Number Annotated SNV): a novel algorithm for the inference of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) that overlap copy number alterations. The method is based on modelling the notion that genomic regions of segmental duplication and amplification induce an extended genotype space where a subset of genotypes will exhibit heavily skewed allelic distributions in SNVs (and therefore render them undetectable by methods that assume diploidy). We introduce the concept of modelling allelic counts from sequencing data using a panel of Binomial mixture models where the number of mixtures for a given locus in the genome is informed by a discrete copy number state given as input. We applied CoNAn-SNV to a previously published whole genome shotgun data set obtained from a lobular breast cancer and show that it is able to discover 21 experimentally revalidated somatic non-synonymous mutations in a lobular breast cancer genome that were not detected using copy number insensitive SNV detection algorithms. Importantly, ROC analysis shows that the increased sensitivity of CoNAn-SNV does not result in disproportionate loss of specificity. This was also supported by analysis of a recently published lymphoma genome with a relatively quiescent karyotype, where CoNAn-SNV showed similar results to other callers except in regions of copy number gain where increased sensitivity was conferred. Our results indicate that in genomically unstable tumors, copy number annotation for SNV detection will be critical to fully characterize the mutational landscape of cancer genomes.
World Congress on the Insulin Resistance Syndrome, 2009

This is the third of four articles summarizing presentations at the seventh World Congress on the Insulin Resistance Syndrome, held in San Francisco, California, on 5–7 November 2009. This article pertains to the kidney, the liver, and insulin resistance. ### The kidney and insulin resistance Eberhard Ritz (Heidelberg, Germany) discussed insulin resistance (IR), metabolic syndrome, and the kidney, noting that obesity, which causes IR, is currently at epidemic levels and begins in childhood. Ritz also pointed to the association of obesity with hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, and a variety of complications. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with obesity (1), with a BMI >25 kg/m2 in young adulthood tripling the risk of subsequent CKD (2) and end-stage renal disease (3) in a fashion comparable with the more recognized association of obesity with coronary disease. Both high and low birth weight also increase CKD risk (4) since intrauterine growth retardation is a risk factor for decreased renal function among young adults (5). The effect of obesity varies with ethnicity as seen with CKD beginning to increase at a BMI of 22 kg/m2 among Japanese subjects (6). The link between obesity and end-stage renal disease appears in part due to diabetes and hypertension (7), but there are also the direct effects of overweight on the kidney (8). Proinflammatory and growth-promoting cytokines associated with obesity might have direct adverse renal effects (9). A mechanism may be the association of obesity and IR with hyperfiltration (10) and the consequent renal damage based on sodium excess, which may cause glomerulomegaly and may be in part an effect of IR. Ritz noted that exogenous insulin does not directly cause these effects (11). Obesity is associated with increased intraglomerular pressure, which increases the filtration fraction (12). Weight loss with bariatric surgery in morbid obesity decreases the glomerular filtration rate and renal …
A comparison principle for equations of the Hamilton-Jacobi type in set-membership filtering

This paper gives comparison principles for first-order PDEs of the Hamilton-Jacobi- Bellman type that arise in the problem of filtering under unknown disturbances with set-membership bounds on the uncertainty. The exact solutions of this problem, given in set-theoretic terms as "infor- mation sets," are expressed as level sets to the solutions of some specific types of the HJB equation. But these solutions require complicated calculations. This paper presents an alternative approach that avoids exact solutions in favor of their upper and lower bounds, which in many cases may suffice for solving the required problems. For systems with linear structure ellipsoidal estimates are given, which ensure tight approximations of the convex information sets. 1. Introduction. The solution to many problems of state estimation and control synthesis for systems described by ODEs may be reduced to the investigation of first order PDEs of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) type and their modifications. HJB equations may also be used to calculate forward and backward reachability sets for control systems without disturbances, and the HJBI (HJB-Isaacs) equation may be used for systems with unknown but bounded disturbances (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Another application for Hamiltonian techniques is the solution of the "guaran- teed" or "set-membership" filtering problem, which is to estimate the state of a dynamic system, based on observations corrupted by unknown and bounded noise with no statistical description. The solution to such a filtering problem is given by "information sets" of states consistent with the system dynamics and the available measurements. In turn, the information sets may be expressed as level sets of certain functions, called"information states," which are the solutions to special types of the HJB equation. The problem of calculating the information sets turns into one of finding reachability sets under state constraints that arrive on-line, in contrast with problems in which state constraints that are given in advance (8, 9, 10, 11, 12). Solutions to equations of the HJB type are rather difficult to c and the design of computational algorithms is still under development (14, 15). However, for many applied problems one may often be satisfied with approximate solutions that � We dedicate this paper to Professor Tyrone E. Duncan on the occasion of his birthday, in
The Aerosol Model OPAC - Contents and New Software

OPAC (Optical Properties of Aerosols and Clouds) was published in 1998 as an aerosol and cloud model, consisting of a microphysical description of aerosol, as a combination of variable components, and clouds with different types. All relating optical properties, valid for 8 values of relative humidity, can be extracted from a database of Mie calculations covering the wavelength range from 0.2 to 40 micrometers. The extraction software is part of the package. OPAC has meanwhile been downloaded, and probably used, by several hundred researchers all over the world. Since 1998, new possibilities have been developed to describe the microphysical properties of particles and their corresponding radiative properties. Therefore, we intend to improve OPAC by introducing, for instance, nonspherical particles, an improved description of humidity effects, and additional aerosol components which may be missing. As a starting point for these improvements, the original OPAC Fortran77 software has been rewritten completely as an object oriented Python program. We will present the current status and planned future additions, as a basis for discussions about possible needs of the OPAC users.
On Recall Rate of Interest Point Detectors

In this paper we provide a method for evaluating interest point detectors independently of image descriptors. This is possible because we have compiled a unique data set enabling us to determine if common interest points are found. The data contains 60 scenes of a wide range of object types, and for each scene we have 119 precisely located camera positions obtained from a camera mounted on an industrial robot arm. The scene surfaces have been scanned using structured light, providing precise 3D ground truth. We have investigated a number of the most popular interest point detectors. This is done in relation to the number of interest points, the recall rate as a function of camera position and light variation, and the sensitivity relative to model parameter change. The overall conclusion is that the Harris corner detector has a very high recall rate, but is sensitive to change in scale. The Hessian corners perform overall well followed by MSER (Maximally Stable Extremal Regions), whereas the FAST corner detector, IBR (Intensity Based Regions) and EBR (Edge Based Regions) performs poorly. Furthermore, the repeatability of the corner detectors is quite unaffected by the parameter setting, and only the number of interest points change.
Performance analysis of single-symbol maximum likelihood decodable linear STBCs

Performance of space-time block codes can be improved using the coordinate interleaving of the input symbols from rotated M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) and M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) constellations. This paper is on the performance analysis of coordinate-interleaved space-time codes, which are a subset of single-symbol maximum likelihood decodable linear space-time block codes, for wireless multiple antenna terminals. The analytical and simulation results show that full diversity is achievable. Using the equivalent single-input single-output model, simple expressions for the average bit error rates are derived over flat uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. Optimum rotation angles are found by finding the minimum of the average bit error rate curves.
Characterization of the binding sites for 123I-ADAM and the relationship to the serotonin transporter in rat and mouse brains using quantitative autoradiography.

UNLABELLED Imaging of serotonin transporter (SERT) in the central nervous system may provide an important tool to evaluate some psychiatric disorders. Recently, a novel (123)I-labeled radiotracer, 2-((2-((dimethylamino)methyl)phenyl)thio)-5-iodophenylamine ((123)I-ADAM), has been developed that exhibited a high selectivity for SERT. The aim of this study was to characterize the biodistribution and specificity of (123)I-ADAM to SERT using quantitative autoradiography in both control and neurotoxin-treated animals. METHODS (123)I-ADAM (74 MBq) was injected intravenously into the mice to access its biodistribution in the brain via quantitative autoradiography. Further, rats with serotonin depleted by intraperitoneal injection of p-chloroamphetamine (PCA) were used to evaluate the specificity of (123)I-ADAM to SERT. The levels of biogenic amines were then measured and correlated with quantitative (123)I-ADAM labeling in control and PCA-treated rat brains. RESULTS The autoradiographic results showed that (123)I-ADAM accumulated in SERT-rich brain areas after systemic injection, including the globus pallidus, thalamus, hypothalamus, substantia nigra, interpeduncular nucleus, amygdala, and raphe nucleus. The dorsal raphe nucleus had the highest initial uptake with a peak specific binding ratio (i.e., [target - cerebellum]/cerebellum) at 120 min after injection. (123)I-ADAM uptake was dramatically decreased in the hippocampus, thalamus, amygdala, geniculate nuclei, hypothalamus, raphe nucleus, and substantia nigra in PCA-lesioned rats. The decrement in radioactivity was more prominent at higher dosages of PCA and was in parallel with the changes in amounts of serotonin and 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid in the prefrontal cortex. CONCLUSION This study demonstrates that regional distribution of (123)I-ADAM radioactivity is similar to the SERT localization in both rat and mouse brains. We also validated that destruction on central serotonergic neurons after PCA treatment inhibits the uptake of (123)I-ADAM in serotonin-rich brain regions. High specific binding to SERT in vivo makes (123)I-ADAM an appropriate radiotracer for solitary studies of serotonin functions in living humans.
A Study for Developing a Database System for Intercultural Training Programs as an Educational Support Tool in Japan

As the number of foreign people living in Japan has rapidly increased in the last decade, the necessity for intercultural understanding among Japanese people and foreigners alike is becoming more imperative. In the higher education system of Fukui prefecture in Japan, the researcher and her co-researchers aim at developing an original Intercultural Training program using information and communication technology. It intends to help teachers save time in lesson preparation; to spend more time on rational explanation of intercultural understanding and intercultural communication studies in lectures; to overcome a problem concerning a lack of intercultural understanding teachers; and to make Intercultural Training more widespread. This original computer and training program with a self-learning function; an analysis system; a discussion room called a forum which allows students to view and exchange opinions on-line, and game elements is under progress. This study has just started and is supported by a grant from Fukui prefecture in Japan. In this paper, the progress of our study will be shown.
Evaluation of Adiposity-Related Biomarkers as Metabolic Syndrome Indicators

Recent studies have suggested a relationship of the increased circulating adipokines and inflammatory cytokine, and the risk of metabolic syndrome (MetS). The objective of this study was to identify adiposity-related factors that reflect MetS in order to establish early intervention targets. We performed a cross-sectional study which included 108 MetS subjects and 91 controls. Blood adiponectin, leptin, vascular-, and intercellular adhension molecules (VCAM, ICAM), monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP1), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), oxidized LDL (oxLDL), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) were measured. The correlation analysis indicated that the MetS score (sum of the number of MetS risk factors) had an inverse relationship with adiponectin (p < 0.0001), and positive correlations with leptin (p < 0.05), ICAM (p < 0.01), MCP1 (p < 0.05), oxLDL (p < 0.05), TNF-α (p < 0.0001), IL-6 (p < 0.05) and hsCRP (p < 0.01). In multivariate logistic regression analyses, plasma triglyceride (TG) was independently associated with adiponectin, ICAM and TNF-α with the standardized β coefficients of -0.213, 0.197, and 0.193, respectively. Plasma HDL-cholesterol was independently associated with ICAM and hsCRP with the standardized β coefficients of -0.150 and -0.173. Adiponectin, TNF-α, and hsCRP were the most proximate markers reflecting MetS. Among MetS components, TG and HDL-cholesterol concentrations displayed the relationship with inflammatory markers measured in this study.