Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Warped Document Image Restoration Using Shape-from-Shading and Physically-Based Modeling

With the pervasive use of handheld digital devices such as camera phones and PDAs, people have started to capture images as a way of recording information. However, due to the non-planar geometric shapes of some documents such as thick bound book pages, rolled scripts, etc, the captured images are often warped. This causes problems for many document analysis and retrieval tasks. This paper proposes a dewarping approach that first reconstructs the surface using a shape-from-shading (SFS) technique and then flattens the warped surface using a physically-based deformable model. The SFS method is based on the viscosity framework and considers perspective projection under oblique light source. The recovered surface is represented as a triangular mesh and is restored to its planar state through a numerical integration process. We have tested the proposed approach on both synthetic and real images. The synthetic images are mainly used to evaluate the SFS method and the results are compared with those of a prior SFS method. The reconstructed surfaces of real document images are also compared with the actual shapes captured using a 3D scanner and the restored images are evaluated with those obtained from range-scanned surface shapes
Production improves memory equivalently following elaborative vs non-elaborative processing

Words that are read aloud are better remembered than those read silently. Recent research has suggested that, rather than reflecting a benefit for produced items, this production effect may reflect a cost to reading silently in a list containing both aloud and silent items (Bodner, Taikh, & Fawcett, 2013). This cost is argued to occur because silent items are lazily read, receiving less attention than aloud items which require an overt response. We examined the possible role of lazy reading in the production effect by testing whether the effect would be reduced under elaborative encoding, which precludes lazy reading of silent items. Contrary to a lazy reading account, we found that production benefited generated words as much as read words (Experiment 1) and deeply imagined words as much as shallowly imagined words (Experiment 2). We conclude that production stands out as equally distinct—and consequently as equally memorable—regardless of whether it accompanies deep or shallow processing, evidence that is inconsistent with a lazy reading account.
Phosphorothioate 2′ Deoxyribose Oligomers as Microbicides That Inhibit Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1) Infection and Block Toll-Like Receptor 7 (TLR7) and TLR9 Triggering by HIV-1

ABSTRACT Topical microbicides may prove to be an important strategy for preventing human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) transmission. We examined the safety and efficacy of sequence-nonspecific phosphorothioate 2′ deoxyribose oligomers as potential novel microbicides. A short, 13-mer poly(T) phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotide (OPB-T) significantly inhibited infection of primary peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) by high-titer HIV-1Ba-L and simian immunodeficiency virus mac251 (SIVmac251). Continuous exposure of human vaginal and foreskin tissue explants to OPB-T showed no toxicity. An abasic 14-mer phosphorothioate 2′ deoxyribose backbone (PDB) demonstrated enhanced anti-HIV-1 activity relative to OPB-T and other homo-oligodeoxynucleotide analogs. When PDB was used to pretreat HIV-1, PDB was effective against R5 and X4 isolates at a half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of <1 μM in both PBMC and P4-R5 MAGI cell infections. PDB also reduced HIV-1 infectivity following the binding of virus to target cells. This novel topical microbicide candidate exhibited an excellent in vitro safety profile in human PBMC and endocervical epithelial cells. PDB also retained activity in hydroxyethylcellulose gel at pH 4.4 and after transition to a neutral pH and was stable in this formulation for 30 days at room temperature. Furthermore, the compound displayed potent antiviral activity following incubation with a Lactobacillus strain derived from normal vaginal flora. Most importantly, PDB can inhibit HIV-1-induced alpha interferon production. Phosphorothioate 2′ deoxyribose oligomers may therefore be promising microbicide candidates that inhibit HIV-1 infection and also dampen the inflammation which is critical for the initial spread of the virus.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis Rv3651 is a triple sensor‐domain protein

The genome of the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) encodes ∼4,400 proteins, but one third of them have unknown functions. We solved the crystal structure of Rv3651, a hypothetical protein with no discernible similarity to proteins with known function. Rv3651 has a three‐domain architecture that combines one cGMP‐specific phosphodiesterases, adenylyl cyclases and FhlA (GAF) domain and two Per‐ARNT‐Sim (PAS) domains. GAF and PAS domains are sensor domains that are typically linked to signaling effector molecules. Unlike these sensor‐effector proteins, Rv3651 is an unusual sensor domain‐only protein with highly divergent sequence. The structure suggests that Rv3651 integrates multiple different signals and serves as a scaffold to facilitate signal transfer.
Uncertainty Shocks, Asset Supply and Pricing Over the Business Cycle

This article estimates a business cycle model with endogenous financial asset supply and ambiguity averse investors. Firms’ shareholders choose not only production and investment, but also capital structure and payout policy subject to financial frictions. An increase in uncertainty about profits lowers stock prices and leads firms to substitute away from debt as well as reduce shareholder payout. This mechanism parsimoniously accounts for the postwar comovement in investment, stock prices, leverage, and payout, at both business cycle and medium term cycle frequencies. Ambiguity aversion permits a Markov-switching VAR representation of the model, while preserving the effect of uncertainty shocks on the time variation in the equity premium.
Summer habitat use of plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) in response to winter livestock grazing in the alpine steppe Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

ABSTRACT Plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae), burrowing lagomorphs endemic to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), are considered pests by Chinese authorities because of their association with grasslands that are characterized as degraded. Officials typically blame pikas for causing the degraded conditions, whereas studies increasingly suggest that sparse vegetation encourages population growth and high densities of pikas. Correlational investigations that document pika density while simultaneously describing grassland conditions can quantify this association, but are uninformative regarding causation. We used livestock exclosures and pika reductions in partially controlled experiments to examine how pika habitat use responds to changes in vegetation structure caused by wintertime livestock grazing. Mean counts of pikas were higher on grazed than ungrazed plots. Linear models accounting for experimental pika reduction as well as seasonal phenology indicated that grazing significantly increased pika use compared with ungrazed plots. These results show that moderate livestock density is likely consistent with both biodiversity conservation and economic activity, and that high pika populations alone are not responsible for observed degradation of the QTP alpine grasslands. Moderate levels of livestock grazing and pika presence are consistent with maintaining the integrity of the alpine steppe ecosystem of the QTP.
Visualization-based analysis of quality for large-scale software systems

We propose an approach for complex software analysis based on visualization. Our work is motivated by the fact that in spite of years of research and practice, software development and maintenance are still time and resource consuming, and high-risk activities. The most important reason in our opinion is the complexity of many phenomena related to software, such as its evolution and its reliability. In fact, there is very little theory explaining them. Today, we have a unique opportunity to empirically study these phenomena, thanks to large sets of software data available through open-source programs and open repositories. Automatic analysis techniques, such as statistics and machine learning, are usually limited when studying phenomena with unknown or poorly-understood influence factors. We claim that hybrid techniques that combine automatic analysis with human expertise through visualization are excellent alternatives to them. In this paper, we propose a visualization framework that supports quality analysis of large-scale software systems. We circumvent the problem of size by exploiting perception capabilities of the human visual system.
Correctness by Construction: Developing a Commercial Secure System

Praxis Critical Systems recently developed a secure certification authority for smart cards that had to satisfy performance and usability requirements while meeting stringent security constraints. The authors used a systematic process from requirements elicitation through formal specification, user interface prototyping, rigorous design, and coding to ensure these objectives' achievement. They show how a process that achieves normal commercial productivity can deliver a highly reliable system that meets all its throughput and usability goals.
Outage-based ergodic link adaptation for fading channels with delayed CSIT

To deal with a time-varying nature of the wireless channel, the most modern wireless systems use link adaptation in which the transmission rate is adjusted according to the current fading status to ensure reliable communication. For example, the current long-term evolution (LTE) standards require the user equipment (UE) to report channel quality indicator (CQI) to the base station (BS) to determine the data rate of a transmission (code) block. Such link adaptation effectively eliminates fading-induced outage and provides ergodic throughput in the long run. When there is delay in CQI feedback, however, such knowledge of the channel status is inevitably outdated, and outage becomes problematic again. In this paper, we characterize a future channel in which the reported CQI is actually used as a conditional random variable given current channel observation. The dependence of the future channel to the current observation is captured by channel correlation. By considering an outage event as a failed transmission, we can compute probability of successful transmission for each value of transmission rate to determine the best transmission rate which maximizes the expected throughput. If ergodicity holds for a channel process, then such expected throughput becomes close to an empirical throughput in the long run.
High-output-voltage single-phase UPS based on series connection of low-output-voltage modular UPS

Critical loads are usually provided by sources of uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Such devices have output voltages equivalent to levels found in commercial power grids. However, when high output voltages are required there is still no standard solution to achieve the desired level of voltage. This paper presents a proposal for developing a high-output-voltage single-phase UPS. This proposal is based on the series connection of several single-phase modules, which are compact, commercially available and of low cost, making this an attractive solution for use in industry. In this context, this paper introduces some principles regarding the series connection of UPS, which translates into the serial connection of voltage source inverters (VSIs). Furthermore, the study provides the experimental verification of the proposed system through the development of a prototype of 660V and 15kVA, obtained from the connection of three single-phase modules of 220V and 5kVA.
Challenges in Using Cultured Primary Rodent Hepatocytes or Cell Lines to Study Hepatic HDL Receptor SR-BI Regulation by Its Cytoplasmic Adaptor PDZK1

Background PDZK1 is a four PDZ-domain containing cytoplasmic protein that binds to a variety of membrane proteins via their C-termini and can influence the abundance, localization and/or function of its target proteins. One of these targets in hepatocytes in vivo is the HDL receptor SR-BI. Normal hepatic expression of SR-BI protein requires PDZK1 - <5% of normal hepatic SR-BI is seen in the livers of PDZK1 knockout mice. Progress has been made in identifying features of PDZK1 required to control hepatic SR-BI in vivo using hepatic expression of wild-type and mutant forms of PDZK1 in wild-type and PDZK1 KO transgenic mice. Such in vivo studies are time consuming and expensive, and cannot readily be used to explore many features of the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we have explored the potential to use either primary rodent hepatocytes in culture using 2D collagen gels with newly developed optimized conditions or PDZK1/SR-BI co-transfected cultured cell lines (COS, HEK293) for such studies. SR-BI and PDZK1 protein and mRNA expression levels fell rapidly in primary hepatocyte cultures, indicating this system does not adequately mimic hepatocytes in vivo for analysis of the PDZK1 dependence of SR-BI. Although PDZK1 did alter SR-BI protein expression in the cell lines, its influence was independent of SR-BI’s C-terminus, and thus is not likely to occur via the same mechanism as that which occurs in hepatocytes in vivo. Conclusions/Significance Caution must be exercised in using primary hepatocytes or cultured cell lines when studying the mechanism underlying the regulation of hepatic SR-BI by PDZK1. It may be possible to use SR-BI and PDZK1 expression as sensitive markers for the in vivo-like state of hepatocytes to further improve primary hepatocyte cell culture conditions.
Microbial coagulation of alfalfa green juice

Of the different bacterial strains isolated from alfalfa raw material, nine were able to coagulate the protein fraction of alfalfa green juice. The two strains showing the highest efficiency were further used for coagulation experiments. They were classified as Erwinia carotovora and Escherichia coli. Juice samples inoculated (1:10 to 1:100) with stationary-phase cultures were efficiently coagulated. The amount of protein recovered was equivalent to that obtained when the juice was heat treated. A minimal incubation temperature of 30 degrees C was required. The protein coagulum appeared after 8 to 10 h of incubation. During this period no bacterial growth was apparent, but glucose was actively fermented. For both strains no extracellular enzymatic activity could be shown in the culture supernatants. The fermentative metabolism during the incubation period seems to be responsible for protein coagulation.
Effect of Ionic Liquid on the Determination of Aromatic Amines as Contaminants in Hair Dyes by Liquid Chromatography Coupled to Electrochemical Detection

The room temperature ionic liquid (IL) 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis-(trifluorometanesulfonyl)imide BMIm[NTf2] was used as a novel medium for improvement of separation and quantization of 16 aromatic amines typically present as contaminants in consumer products and detected by HPLC coupled to an electrochemical detector. The aromatic amines, namely 4,4'-diaminodiphenylmethane, 4-chloroaniline, 2-methoxy-5-methyl-aniline, 3,3'-dimethylbenzidine, 2,4-diaminotoluidine, 2-chloro-4-nitroaniline, 4,4'-oxydianiline, aniline, 3,3'-dichlorobenzidine, benzidine, 4-aminobiphenyl, o-dianisidine, o-anisidine, o-toluidine, 4,4'-methylene-bis-2-chloroaniline and 2-naphthyl-amine are oxidized in methanol/BMIm[NTf2] at a potential around +0.68V to +0.93V vs. Ag/AgCl at a glassy carbon electrode, which is the base for their determination by HPLC/ED. Using the optimized conditions of methanol/BMIm[NTf2] 70:30 (v/v) as mobile phase, flow-rate of 0.8 mL·min−1, column CLC-ODS, Eap = +1.0 V and T = 40 °C analytical curves were constructed for each of the tested amines. Good linearity was obtained in the concentration range of 1.09 mg·L−1 to 217 mg·L−1, with excellent correlation coefficients. The limits of detection reached 0.021 mg·L−1 to 0.246 mg·L−1 and good relative standard deviations (RSD, n = 3) were obtained from the measurements. Satisfactory recovery for each aromatic amine was achieved, ranging from 95 to 103%. The developed method was successfully applied to determine six aromatic amines present as contaminants in commercial hair dye samples.
Selective Condensation Drives Partitioning and Sequential Secretion of Cyst Wall Proteins in Differentiating Giardia lamblia

Controlled secretion of a protective extracellular matrix is required for transmission of the infective stage of a large number of protozoan and metazoan parasites. Differentiating trophozoites of the highly minimized protozoan parasite Giardia lamblia secrete the proteinaceous portion of the cyst wall material (CWM) consisting of three paralogous cyst wall proteins (CWP1–3) via organelles termed encystation-specific vesicles (ESVs). Phylogenetic and molecular data indicate that Diplomonads have lost a classical Golgi during reductive evolution. However, neogenesis of ESVs in encysting Giardia trophozoites transiently provides basic Golgi functions by accumulating presorted CWM exported from the ER for maturation. Based on this “minimal Golgi” hypothesis we predicted maturation of ESVs to a trans Golgi-like stage, which would manifest as a sorting event before regulated secretion of the CWM. Here we show that proteolytic processing of pro-CWP2 in maturing ESVs coincides with partitioning of CWM into two fractions, which are sorted and secreted sequentially with different kinetics. This novel sorting function leads to rapid assembly of a structurally defined outer cyst wall, followed by slow secretion of the remaining components. Using live cell microscopy we find direct evidence for condensed core formation in maturing ESVs. Core formation suggests that a mechanism controlled by phase transitions of the CWM from fluid to condensed and back likely drives CWM partitioning and makes sorting and sequential secretion possible. Blocking of CWP2 processing by a protease inhibitor leads to mis-sorting of a CWP2 reporter. Nevertheless, partitioning and sequential secretion of two portions of the CWM are unaffected in these cells. Although these cysts have a normal appearance they are not water resistant and therefore not infective. Our findings suggest that sequential assembly is a basic architectural principle of protective wall formation and requires minimal Golgi sorting functions.
Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications Using a Significant Spanning Tree to Draw a Directed Graph

A directed graph can model any ordered relationship between objects. However, visualizing such graphs can be a challenging task. If the graph is undirected, a popular strategy is to choose a significant spanning tree, nominate a vertex as the root, for example the vertex whose distance from all other vertices is minimal, hang the significant spanning subtrees from this root and add in the remaining edges in some unobtrusive manner [19, 26, 27, 33]. In the directed case the spanning tree is a tree DAG and not simply a directed tree with one appropriate root. It may have multiple sources that all warrant root status and so the undirected approach must be modified somewhat. In this paper, we present a method of drawing directed graphs that emphasizes a significant spanning tree. It combines two steps of the Sugiyama framework [31] (leveling and crossing minimization) by finding, in linear time, a leveling of the graph that is level planar with respect to some spanning tree and restricting the permutations of the vertices on each level to those that constitute a level planar embedding of this subgraph. The edges of the spanning tree will therefore not cross each other. Using a globally oriented Fiedler vector we choose permutations of the vertices on each level that reduce the number of edge crossings between the remaining edges.
Method of tacit knowledge discovery based on domain knowledge under driven of problems

Now most of the knowledge discoveries are using the data mining technology and driven by data. This kind of knowledge discovery can't finish the discovery, exploration and applying of the tacit knowledge. According to the problem above, this paper proposes a domain knowledge-based of problem driven tacit knowledge discovery method. This paper designs a S-K-T algorithm and the related problem-knowledge mining algorithm to get the domain knowledge semantic tree and the problem-domain knowledge tree, and based on this through the spiral iteration to finish the discovery of the tacit knowledge under the driven of problems.
New Active Compensator Based on IEEE Std. 1459

IEEE Standard 1459-2000 includes new definitions for the measurement of electric power quantities under sinusoidal, non-sinusoidal, balanced or unbalanced conditions. This standard is the new reference for the measurement of the power quantities related with energy flows in electric systems. These new definitions affect directly to the design of the compensating systems used to improve the electric utility quality: only positive-sequence fundamental power must be present in efficient systems and all the other power terms are non-efficient. The reference currents of active compensators had to be adapted to this new definition of the efficient power in order to eliminate the non-efficient terms. This paper proposes the design of a new set of reference currents that provides IEEE standard 1459 compliance for a four-wire three-branch active compensator. Simulation results using a three-dimensional space vector pulse width modulation (3D-3B SVPWM) are included. The loads used are three single-phase rectifiers and three unbalanced resistive loads connected to a three-phase four-wire electric system. The proposed output current control uses a current regulator and a Space Vector modulator (SVPWM). The three-phase inverter is modeled using three half-bridges and a split DC bus. The proposed three-dimensional SVPWM allow to obtain more advantage of the DC bus and allow working with a constant switching frequency.
SentiML: functional annotation for multilingual sentiment analysis

Sentiment Analysis is the task of automatically identifying whether a text or a single sentence is intended to carry a positive or negative connotation. The commonly used Bag-of-Words approach that relies on counting positive and negative words, whose connotation is indicated by specially crafted sentiment dictionaries, is not ideal because it does not take into account the relations between words and how the connotation of single words changes according to the context. This paper proposes a way of identifying and analysing the targets of the opinions and their modifiers, along with their linkage (appraisal group) through an annotation schema called SentiML. Such schema has been developed in order to facilitate the identification of these elements and the annotation of their sentiment, along with advanced linguistic features such as their appraisal type according to the Appraisal Framework. The schema is XML-based and has been also designed to be language-independent. Preliminary results show that the schema allows more coverage than a sentiment dictionary, while achieving reasonably fast and reliable annotation in spite of its fine granularity.