Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-sensor integration for unmanned terrain modeling

State-of-the-art unmanned ground vehicles are capable of understanding and adapting to arbitrary road terrain for navigation. The robotic mobility platforms mounted with sensors detect and report security concerns for subsequent action. Often, the information based on the localization of the unmanned vehicle is not sufficient for deploying army resources. In such a scenario, a three dimensional (3D) map of the area that the ground vehicle has surveyed in its trajectory would provide a priori spatial knowledge for directing resources in an efficient manner. To that end, we propose a mobile, modular imaging system that incorporates multi-modal sensors for mapping unstructured arbitrary terrain. Our proposed system leverages 3D laser-range sensors, video cameras, global positioning systems (GPS) and inertial measurement units (IMU) towards the generation of photo-realistic, geometrically accurate, geo-referenced 3D terrain models. Based on the summary of the state-of-the-art systems, we address the need and hence several challenges in the real-time deployment, integration and visualization of data from multiple sensors. We document design issues concerning each of these sensors and present a simple temporal alignment method to integrate multi-sensor data into textured 3D models. These 3D models, in addition to serving as a priori for path planning, can also be used in simulators that study vehicle-terrain interaction. Furthermore, we show our 3D models possessing the required accuracy even for crack detection towards road surface inspection in airfields and highways.
Development of a Novel Prohealing Stent Designed to Deliver Sirolimus From a Biodegradable Abluminal Matrix

Background—We aimed to demonstrate that, by separating endothelial progenitor cell capture from sirolimus delivery through the application of drug to the abluminal surface of the stent, the degree of endothelialization can be enhanced. Methods and Results—Stainless steel R Stents, with biodegradable SynBiosys polymer coating with sirolimus abluminally applied and surface modified with anti-CD34 antibody were prepared at 2 dosages (low-dose sirolimus [LD-Combo, 2.5 &mgr;g sirolimus/mm] and full-dose sirolimus [Combo, 5 &mgr;g sirolimus/mm). These Combo stents and the Cypher stent (10 &mgr;g sirolimus/mm) were deployed in 98 normal porcine arteries and harvested for pharmacokinetic analysis at 0.25, 1, 3, 7, 14, 28, and 35 days. The LD-Combo stents showed faster early release (50% total dose in 72 hours) than the Combo and Cypher. At 30 days, drug release was near complete with both Combo stents, whereas 20% of drug remained on the Cypher stents. To assess efficacy, a total of 50 stents (Xience V=8, Cypher=8, Genous bioengineered R stent=6, LD-Combo=14, and Combo=14) were implanted in 18 pigs for 14 and 28 days. Optical coherence tomography was performed, and stents were harvested for histology. At 28 days, there was less neointimal thickness with Combo (0.173±0.088 mm) compared with Cypher (0.358±0.225 mm), LD-Combo (0.316±0.228 mm), and Xience V (0.305±0.252 mm; P<0.00001). Immunohistochemical analysis of endothelialization showed that Genous bioengineered R stent had the highest degree of platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule expression (87%) followed by the Combo (75%), LD-Combo (65%), and Cypher (58%). Conclusions—Both optical coherence tomography and histology demonstrate that anti-CD34 sirolimus-eluting stents promote endothelialization while reducing neointimal formation and inflammation.
Global asymptotic stability of stochastic neural networks with time-varying delays

This paper is concerned with asymptotic stability of stochastic neural networks with time-varying delay. Distinct difference from other analytical approach lies in ldquolinearizationrdquo of neural network model, by which the considered neural network model is transformed into a linear time-variant system. A sufficient condition is derived such that for all admissible disturbance, the considered neural network is asymptotic stability in the mean square. The stability criterion is formulated by means of the feasibility of a LMI, which can be easily checked in practice. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the developed method.
Should we aggressively treat unilateral congenital cataracts?

Early surgery for unilateral congenital cataracts—why? Some might protest that visual results are notoriously poor after surgery for a unilateral congenital cataract. Why drag the family and child through all the turmoil required for the treatment of infantile cataracts for, at best, a “spare eye”? The answer is simple: two eyes are better than one. Two eyes give us a larger field of view, a reserve if one eye is lost, and that wonderful trait of binocular vision with stereopsis. Sure, you can get along with one eye but if there is any reasonable possibility for obtaining two functioning eyes, then we should go for it! I have both a personal and a professional interest in unilateral cataract as my sister had technically successful unilateral congenital cataract surgery at 21⁄2 years, followed by three strabismus surgeries. She had a childhood of being teased, an adult life of concern for her one good eye and corrected vision of counting fingers in the aphakic eye.
Analysis Of Face Recognition-A Case Study On Feature Selection And Feature Normalization

In this the effects of feature selection and feature normalization to the face recognition scheme is presented. From the local features that are extracted using block-base discrete cosine transform (DCT), three feature sets are derived. These local feature vectors are normalized in two different ways by making them unit norm and by dividing each coefficient to its standard deviation that is learned from the training set. In this work use local information by using block based discrete cosine transform. Here the main idea is to mitigate the effects of expression, illumination and occlusion variations by performing local analysis and by fusing the outputs of extracted local features at the feature and at the decision
NBTI in Si0.55Ge0.45 cladding p-FinFETs: Porting the superior reliability from planar to 3D architectures

SiGe channel planar pMOSFETs have been recently shown to offer improved NBTI reliability, owing to reduced hole trapping into pre-existing oxide defects and reduced interface state generation. In this paper we report a broad set of experimental data of SiGe cladding finFETs with varying fin widths, and we show that the intrinsically superior NBTI reliability can be ported to 3D architectures of relevance for N10 and beyond. The underlying physical mechanisms are discussed and compared to planar technologies.
Enhancing the hiding capacity of audio steganography based on block mapping

With the rapid growth in exchanging personal and confidential data through an unsecure channel like the internet and exposing it though disclosing by intruders, the necessity of information security became a great demand. As a result, data hiding or steganography appeared as a vital solution. Audio hiding is a concept of injecting the secret data in an audio carrier. This paper proposes a scheme known as ECA-BM, to improve the performance of the audio steganography. ECA-BM contributes in: (1) increases the hiding capacity, (2) maintains the transparency of carrier and (3) enhance the security of the proposed model. To increase the hiding capacity, fractal coding is adopted to create a mapping between the cover and secret blocks in order to encode the secret data into a set of coefficients with minimum size. To maintain the fidelity of the stego file, only 1-LSB from each cover sample is used for embedding. To increase the security of the ECA-BM, the cover samples for embedding are selected in a chaotic manner. LSB technique is utilized for embedding after converting secret coefficients into a binary sequence. Objective metrics, SNR, HC, and NC is used to evaluate the performance of ECA-BM. The Experimental results show a significant increase in the hiding capacity compared with some related studies. Moreover, the fidelity of the stego and reconstructed secret file are preserved.
Design of adaptive antenna systems for LTE using Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper presents design and performance evaluation of an intelligent adaptive antenna system for LTE networks. The design is based on a resource optimization problem, which adjusts the antenna gains of LTE eNodeBs in a geographic area. By adaptively changing the cellular coverage patterns of eNodeBs, our proposed design maximizes the network coverage and capacity while minimizing the total transmission power and inter-cell interference. The resource optimization problem is multi-objective and is very difficult to solve optimally, if possible. First, the solution of the problem is obtained using Genetic Algorithm. Then a faster converging Particle Swarm Optimization approach is proposed. System level simulations for LTE are conducted to evaluate the performance of our proposed schemes. Numerical results show significant performance improvement in terms of coverage, system throughput, and power minimization with respect to the existing fixed antenna gain schemes in LTE.
Basal concentrations of oestradiol may predict the outcome of in-vitro maturation in regularly menstruating women.

Retrospectively it was examined whether the number of retrieved oocytes, the maturation rate and cleavage rate can be predicted in regularly menstruating women by the use of the following predictive variables on cycle day 3-4: the concentration of FSH, oestradiol, inhibin B and inhibin A in serum and and the number of ovarian follicles seen by vaginal ultrasound. The study included 132 consecutive aspirations in 100 women attending the clinic for in-vitro maturation due to male factor and/or tubal factor. Fifteen pregnancies were obtained after transfer in 83 cycles, giving a pregnancy rate of 15/132 (11%) per aspiration and 15/83 (18%) per transfer. The concentration of FSH and the number of follicles on day 3 predicted the number of oocytes retrieved, whereas these parameters did not predict the subsequent development of oocytes. No correlation was found between the inhibin B, inhibin A, oestradiol and the number of oocytes respectively. The group with a low concentration of oestradiol on cycle day 3 (threshold <200 pmol/l) (group 1, n = 106 cycles) had a significantly higher pregnancy rate compared to the group with a higher concentration (group 2, n = 26 cycles) (14 versus 0% per aspiration, P = 0.03). The group with a low concentration of oestradiol was subdivided according to the concentration of inhibin A. Group 1a: low inhibin A (threshold <10 pg/ml, n = 84 cycles) and group 1b: high inhibin A concentration (> or =10 pg/ml, n = 19). The pregnancy rate in group 1a (14/84, 17%) differed significantly from group 1b (0/19, 0%) (P = 0.03). It is concluded that a low basal concentration of oestradiol (<200 pmol/l) was shown to be a useful prognostic factor of pregnancy in IVM. The concentration of inhibin A (<10 pg/ml) was of added value.
A mouse model for studies of mucosal immunity to vaginal infection by herpes simplex virus type 2.

BACKGROUND The role of mucosal immunity in defense of the female genital tract against pathogens such as herpes simplex virus-2 (HSV-2) is poorly understood. Here we explored the use of a new mouse model to determine whether local immune events in the vagina of immune animals may protect them against genital herpes. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN The effect of the estrous cycle, pregnancy, and sex hormones on vaginal infection of adult mice by HSV-2 was determined by immunolabeling of virus proteins. The immune response to infection was studied by immunolabeling of T lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, and plasma cells in the vagina of infected mice. RESULTS Inoculation of attenuated virus (TK-HSV-2) or wild-type virus (TK+HSV-2) into the vagina on day 6 of pregnancy or after treatment with Depo-Provera (DP) caused infection of the vaginal epithelium. In contrast, these viruses did not cause infection after vaginal inoculation at estrus, metestrus, or after treatment with Depo-Estradiol. Infected mice showed immunolabeling of virus in the vaginal epithelium from 24 hrs to 5 days after virus inoculation. The immune response to infection included upregulation of class II MHC antigen in vaginal epithelium, CD8+ T cells in epithelium and stroma, and plasma cells and lymphoid nodules in the stroma. Mice that were infected with TK-HSV-2 did not exhibit infection of vaginal epithelium when challenged 6 weeks later with TK+HSV-2. CONCLUSIONS Progesterone-dominated adult mice become infected after intravaginal inoculation with HSV-2, but estradiol-dominated mice are refractory. Vaginal infection with attenuated HSV-2 produces immunity that protects mice against later infection by wild-type virus. This immunity either prevents infection of vaginal epithelium or severely inhibits viral replication in the epithelium. The observations suggest that the E/DP-treated adult mouse should be a useful model for studies of mucosal immunity to vaginal infection by HSV-2.
Transcriptional Dynamics of LTR Retrotransposons in Early Generation and Ancient Sunflower Hybrids

Hybridization and abiotic stress are natural agents hypothesized to influence activation and proliferation of transposable elements in wild populations. In this report, we examine the effects of these agents on expression dynamics of both quiescent and transcriptionally active sublineages of long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons in wild sunflower species with a notable history of transposable element proliferation. For annual sunflower species Helianthus annuus and H. petiolaris, neither early generation hybridization nor abiotic stress, alone or in combination, induced transcriptional activation of quiescent sublineages of LTR retrotransposons. These treatments also failed to further induce expression of sublineages that are transcriptionally active; instead, expression of active sublineages in F1 and backcross hybrids was nondistinguishable from, or intermediate relative to, parental lines, and abiotic stress generally decreased normalized expression relative to controls. In contrast to findings for early generation hybridization between H. annuus and H. petiolaris, ancient sunflower hybrid species derived from these same two species and which have undergone massive proliferation events of LTR retrotransposons display 2× to 6× higher expression levels of transcriptionally active sublineages relative to parental sunflower species H. annuus and H. petiolaris. Implications and possible explanations for these findings are discussed.
An Acute Bout of Self-Myofascial Release Increases Range of Motion Without a Subsequent Decrease in Muscle Activation or Force

Abstract MacDonald, GZ, Penney, MDH, Mullaley, ME, Cuconato, AL, Drake, CDJ, Behm, DG, and Button, DC. An acute bout of self-myofascial release increases range of motion without a subsequent decrease in muscle activation or force. J Strength Cond Res 27(3): 812–821, 2013. Foam rolling is thought to improve muscular function, performance, overuse, and joint range of motion (ROM); however, there is no empirical evidence demonstrating this. Thus, the objective of the study was to determine the effect of self-myofascial release (SMR) via foam roller application on knee extensor force and activation and knee joint ROM. Eleven healthy male (height 178.9 ± 3.5 cm, mass 86.3 ± 7.4 kg, age 22.3 ± 3.8 years) subjects who were physically active participated. Subjects' quadriceps maximum voluntary contraction force, evoked force and activation, and knee joint ROM were measured before, 2 minutes, and 10 minutes after 2 conditions: (a) 2, 1-minute trials of SMR of the quadriceps via a foam roller and (b) no SMR (Control). A 2-way analysis of variance (condition × time) with repeated measures was performed on all dependent variables recorded in the precondition and postcondition tests. There were no significant differences between conditions for any of the neuromuscular dependent variables. However, after foam rolling, subjects' ROM significantly (p < 0.001) increased by 10° and 8° at 2 and 10 minutes, respectively. There was a significant (p < 0.01) negative correlation between subjects' force and ROM before foam rolling, which no longer existed after foam rolling. In conclusion, an acute bout of SMR of the quadriceps was an effective treatment to acutely enhance knee joint ROM without a concomitant deficit in muscle performance.
Relative efficiencies of the maximum-likelihood, neighbor-joining, and maximum-parsimony methods when substitution rate varies with site.

The relative efficiencies of the maximum-likelihood (ML), neighbor-joining (NJ), and maximum-parsimony (MP) methods in obtaining the correct topology and in estimating the branch lengths for the case of four DNA sequences were studied by computer simulation, under the assumption either that there is variation in substitution rate among different nucleotide sites or that there is no variation. For the NJ method, several different distance measures (Jukes-Cantor, Kimura two-parameter, and gamma distances) were used, whereas for the ML method three different transition/transversion ratios (R) were used. For the MP method, both the standard unweighted parsimony and the dynamically weighted parsimony methods were used. The results obtained are as follows: (1) When the R value is high, dynamically weighted parsimony is more efficient than unweighted parsimony in obtaining the correct topology. (2) However, both weighted and unweighted parsimony methods are generally less efficient than the NJ and ML methods even in the case where the MP method gives a consistent tree. (3) When all the assumptions of the ML method are satisfied, this method is slightly more efficient than the NJ method. However, when the assumptions are not satisfied, the NJ method with gamma distances is slightly better in obtaining the correct topology than is the ML method. In general, the two methods show more or less the same performance. The NJ method may give a correct topology even when the distance measures used are not unbiased estimators of nucleotide substitutions. (4) Branch length estimates of a tree with the correct topology are affected more easily than topology by violation of the assumptions of the mathematical model used, for both the ML and the NJ methods. Under certain conditions, branch lengths are seriously overestimated or underestimated. The MP method often gives serious underestimates for certain branches. (5) Distance measures that generate the correct topology, with high probability, do not necessarily give good estimates of branch lengths. (6) The likelihood-ratio test and the confidence-limit test, in Felsenstein's DNAML, for examining the statistical of branch length estimates are quite sensitive to violation of the assumptions and are generally too liberal to be used for actual data. Rzhetsky and Nei's branch length test is less sensitive to violation of the assumptions than is Felsenstein's test. (7) When the extent of sequence divergence is < or = 5% and when > or = 1,000 nucleotides are used, all three methods show essentially the same efficiency in obtaining the correct topology and in estimating branch lengths. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Improving foreground segmentations with probabilistic superpixel Markov random fields

We propose a novel post-processing framework to improve foreground segmentations with the use of Probabilistic Superpixel Markov Random Fields. First, we convert a given pixel-based segmentation into a probabilistic superpixel representation. Based on these probabilistic superpixels, a Markov random field exploits structural information and similarities to improve the segmentation. We evaluate our approach on all categories of the Change Detection 2012 dataset. Our approach improves all performance measures simultaneously for eight different basis foreground segmentation algorithms.
Exclusion of non‐synonymous SNPs and a polyglutamine tract in SMRT/N‐CoR2 as common deleterious mutation for bipolar disorder in the Sagnenay‐Lac‐St‐Jean population

Bipolar disorder (BP) is a psychiatric illness with both genetic and environmental components occurring with a prevalence of slightly more than 1%. Our previous linkage and case/control studies have pointed to a susceptibility locus for BP in the 12q24.31 chromosomal region. Here, we investigated the possible involvement of the SMRT/N‐CoR2 gene, which encodes for the nuclear receptor co‐repressor 2. SMRT/N‐CoR2 was retained as a candidate gene for BP because of its location within our candidate gene region and its interactions with thyroid hormone receptors. We screened SMRT/N‐CoR2 for the presence of polymorphism/mutation in coding sequences and exon–intron junctions. Four non‐synonymous SNPs and a polyglutamine tract (CAG repeat) in the coding exon 14 were analyzed in a case/control sample from the Saguenay‐Lac‐St‐Jean (SLSJ) area of Quebec (213 cases and 214 controls). Our data indicated no significant allelic/genotypic association between any of the five mutations and bipolar phenotype when they were considered either individually or as haplotypes. Finally, the CAG repeat observed in SMRT/N‐CoR2 did not demonstrate allelic instability and consequently it is unlikely that this polymorphism could be involved in the anticipation phenomenon reported for BP. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Computer-aided summarisation – what the user really wants

Computer-aided summarisation is a technology developed at the University of Wolverhampton as a complement to automatic summarisation, to produce high quality summaries with less effort. To achieve this, a user-friendly environment which incorporates several well-known summarisation methods has been developed. This paper presents the main features of the computer-aided summarisation environment and explains the changes introduced to it as a result of user feedback.
On reducing false sharing while improving locality on shared memory multiprocessors

The performance of applications on large shared-memory multiprocessors with coherent caches depends on the interaction between the granularity of data sharing, the size of the coherence unit and the spatial locality exhibited by the applications, in addition to the amount of parallelism in the applications. Large coherence units are helpful in exploiting spatial locality, but worsen the effects of false sharing. We present a mathematical framework that allows a clean description of the relationship between spatial locality and false sharing. We first show how to identify a severe form of multiple-writer false sharing and then demonstrate the importance of the interaction between optimization techniques aimed at enhancing locality and the techniques oriented toward reducing false sharing. Given the conflicting requirements, a compiler based approach to this problem holds promise. We investigate the use of data transformations in addressing spatial locality and false sharing, and derive an approach that balances the impact of the two. Experimental results demonstrate that such a balanced approach outperforms those approaches that consider only one of these two issues. On an eight-processor SGI Origin 2000 system, our approach brings an additional 9% improvement over a powerful locality optimization technique that uses both loop and data transformations. Also, our approach obtains an additional 19% improvement over an optimization technique that is oriented specifically toward reducing false sharing.