Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Etude des propriétés microphysiques et optiques de l'aérosol en zone periurbaine durant ESCOMPTE : estimation de l'impact radiatif direct

Il est maintenant clairement reconnu que les aerosols anthropiques modifient le climat terrestre sous la forme de trois effets differents. Tout d'abord, certains aerosols hydrophiles sont susceptibles de faire condenser de la vapeur d'eau a leur surface, entrainant une modification des proprietes nuageuses, c'est l'effet indirect. Lors de ciels clairs, les aerosols sont aussi susceptibles de diffuser et/ou d'absorber le rayonnement solaire ou tellurique, on parle alors de l'effet direct. Retroactivement, cette absorption de l'energie solaire peut conduire a un echauffement de certaines couches atmospheriques, ce dernier effet est l'effet semi-direct. Le principal objectif de ce travail de these a ete d'estimer le forcage radiatif direct exerce par les differentes particules anthropiques en zone peri urbaine, lors de phenomenes de pollutions intenses, durant la campagne ESCOMPTE, avec un interet particulier portant sur le forcage en surface. Pour cela, nous avons developpe une methodologie s'appuyant sur des mesures in situ, satellitales et photometriques, permettant dans un premier temps de caracteriser les proprietes optiques des principales especes anthropiques (BC, POM, AS, N) de l'aerosol, puis d'estimer l'impact radiatif direct a l'echelle locale. Les principaux resultats montrent tout d'abord que 90 % de l'extinction du rayonnement solaire est due a l'aerosol anthropique. Le sulfate d'ammonium (AS) contribue pour 45 % a l'extinction, le carbone suie pour 20 % et la matiere organique particulaire (POM) pour 20 % egalement. L'albedo de simple diffusion de la couche limite, prenant en compte les differentes especes, a une valeur de 0. 85 indiquant une forte absorption du rayonnement solaire. Le facteur d'asymetrie est egal a 0. 59. Les comparaisons avec les inversions AERONET indiquent des resultats coherents (0. 86 /0. 64). Cette couche d'aerosol anthropique diminue le flux net recu a la surface terrestre (- 32 Wm 2) par reflexion du rayonnement solaire (-7 Wm-2) mais surtout en grande partie par absorption du rayonnement solaire (25 Wm-2). L'energie disponible dans les basses couches atmospheriques augmente sa temperature radiative (1. 68 Kjour l). Notre etude montre que le (BC) contribue fortement a la diminution de l'energie solaire atteignant la surface (50 % du forcage), alors que le sulfate d'ammonium n'y contribue que pour 10%. Les proprietes optiques et le forcage radiatif direct local ont finalement ete etudies dans le cas d'un melange interne. Alors que le facteur d'asymetrie reste relativement constant, l'albedo de simple diffusion est au contraire tres sensible; il peut diminuer de 15 %, augmentant ainsi l'absorption du rayonnement. Compare au melange externe, l'energie solaire atteignant la surface est reduite de 25 % (-42 Wm"2 ). Ceci est du en grande partie a l'augmentation de l'energie absorbee (38 Wm"2) dans la couche atmospherique
EPIPOLAR IMAGES FOR CLOSE RANGE APPLICATIONS

Digital Photogrammetric Stations (DPS’s) have been mainly designed to be used in aerial case issues and barely in close range photogrammetric problems. It is well known that the rotation angles, , and are quite larger in close range in contrast to the aerial case. When the rotation angles of a stereo pair are larger than certain values, very often, stereo viewing is hardly been established. In cases where stereo viewing is not feasible, useful graphical elements for DTM generation, such as mass points and breaklines cannot be collected. In such circumstances –not having mass points and breaklines-, the commercial software for automatic DTM generation, is generally unable to generate a precise DTM. The developed non-commercial software, has the ability to use simultaneously more than two epipolar images (a DPS can use just a pair), create the new interior orientation of epipolar images and executes a multi-image matching process. In this paper a technique is presented which explains how more than two epipolar images finally are used in a 3D restitution and multi-image point matching process in a successful way. The epipolar images as well as the matching process have been achieved on a DPS. Statistical tests in a case study close range problem are presented to support the proposed algorithm.
Statistical mechanics of charged black holes in induced Einstein-Maxwell gravity

The statistical origin of the entropy of charged black holes in models of induced Einstein-Maxwell gravity is investigated. The constituents inducing the Einstein-Maxwell action are charged and interact with an external gauge potential. This new feature, however, does not change the divergences of the statistical-mechanical entropy of the constituents near the horizon. It is demonstrated that the mechanism of the generation of Bekenstein-Hawking entropy in induced gravity is universal and it is basically the same for charged and neutral black holes. The concrete computations are carried out for induced Einstein-Maxwell gravity with a negative cosmological constant in three space-time dimensions.
Offline Signature Verification using Feature Point Extraction

Signature verification is one of the most widely used biometrics for authentication. The objective of the signature verification system is to discriminate between two classes: the original and the forgery, which are related to intrapersonal and interpersonal variability. Firstly, there exists great variation even between two signatures of the same person. They never start from the same position and neither do they terminate at the same position. Also, the angle of inclination of the signatures, the relative spacing between letters of the signatures, height of letters, all vary even for the same person. Hence it becomes a challenging task to compare between two signatures of the same person. The proposed an offline signature verification system to take care of that, which is based on depth for segmentation of signature image into different parts, after that geometric center of the each segment is find out as the feature point of that segment. The number of feature points extracted from signature image is equivalent to the number segment of the signature image that is produce by specifying value of depth. The classification of the feature points utilizes two statistical parameters like mean and variance. Our proposed model has three stages: image preprocessing, feature point’s extraction and classification & verification. The user introduces into the computer through scanned signature images, our technique modifies their quality by image enhancement and noise reduction techniques, to be followed by feature extraction and finally used Euclidean distance model to classification of signature either genuine or forgery. The proposed offline signature verification system used “GPDS360 signature database”. General Terms Euclidean distance model, signature verification and recognition,
Solving General Arithmetic Word Problems

This paper presents a novel approach to automatically solving arithmetic word problems. This is the first algorithmic approach that can handle arithmetic problems with multiple steps and operations, without depending on additional annotations or predefined templates. We develop a theory for expression trees that can be used to represent and evaluate the target arithmetic expressions; we use it to uniquely decompose the target arithmetic problem to multiple classification problems; we then compose an expression tree, combining these with world knowledge through a constrained inference framework. Our classifiers gain from the use of quantity schemas that supports better extraction of features. Experimental results show that our method outperforms existing systems, achieving state of the art performance on benchmark datasets of arithmetic word problems.
An Efficient Data Mining Approach on Compressed Transactions

— In an era of knowledge explosion, the growth of data increases rapidly day by day. Since data storage is a limited resource, how to reduce the data space in the process becomes a challenge issue. Data compression provides a good solution which can lower the required space. Data mining has many useful applications in recent years because it can help users discover interesting knowledge in large databases. However, existing compression algorithms are not appropriate for data mining. In [1, 2], two different approaches were proposed to compress databases and then perform the data mining process. However, they all lack the ability to decompress the data to their original state and improve the data mining performance. In this research a new approach called Mining Merged Transactions with the Quantification Table (M 2 TQT) was proposed to solve these problems. M 2 TQT uses the relationship of transactions to merge related transactions and builds a quantification table to prune the candidate itemsets which are impossible to become frequent in order to improve the performance of mining association rules. The experiments show that M 2 TQT performs better than existing approaches.
The novel atherosclerosis locus at 10q11 regulates plasma CXCL12 levels.

AIMS Two single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), rs1746048 and rs501120, from genome wide association studies of coronary artery disease (CAD) map to chromosome 10q11 ∼80 kb downstream of chemokine CXCL12. Therefore, we examined the relationship between these two SNPs and plasma CXCL12 levels. METHODS AND RESULTS We tested the association of two SNPs with plasma CXCL12 levels in a two-stage study (n= 2939): first in PennCath (n= 1182), a Caucasian, angiographic CAD case-control study, and second in PennCAC (n= 1757), a community-based study of CAD risk factors. Plasma CXCL12 levels increased with age and did not vary by gender. There was no linkage disequilibrium between these two SNPs and SNPs within CXCL12 gene. However, CAD risk alleles at rs1746048 (C allele, P= 0.034; CC 2.33 ± 0.49, CT 2.27 ± 0.46, and TT 2.21 ± 0.52 ng/mL) and rs501120 (T allele, P= 0.041; TT 2.34 ± 0.49, CT 2.28 ± 0.46, and CC 2.23 ± 0.53 ng/mL) were associated with higher plasma levels of CXCL12 in age and gender adjusted models. In Stage 2, we confirmed this association (rs501120, T allele, P= 0.007), and meta-analysis strengthened this finding (n= 2939, P= 6.0 × 10(-4)). Finally, in exploratory analysis, the rs1746048 risk allele tended to have higher transcript levels of CXCL12 in human natural killer cells and the liver. CONCLUSION Coronary artery disease risk alleles downstream of CXCL12 are associated with plasma protein levels of CXCL12 and appear to be related to CXCL12 transcript levels in two human cell lines. This implicates CXCL12 as potentially causal and supports CXCL12 as a potential therapeutic target for CAD.
A Survey on Intrusion-Tolerant System

Many information systems that provide useful services to people are connected to the Internet for convenience and efficiency. However, improper accessibility might make the systems susceptible to a variety of attacks. Although existing security solutions such as an intrusion detection system, intrusion prevention system, and firewalls have been designed to protect against such attacks, it is impossible to block all kinds of attacks. Furthermore, most of the proposed solutions require information about attacks for efficient prevention. Research on intrusion-tolerant systems (ITSs) have been conducted in order to continue providing proper services in threatening environments. The purpose of an ITS is to survive against every intrusion, rather than to prevent them. In this paper, previous studies on ITS are introduced and classified according to the centric scheme as middleware-based ITS, hardware-based ITS, and recovery-based ITS. Recent research focusing on adaptive transformation schemes is also introduced.
Extended Minimum Classification Error Training in Voice Activity Detection

Voice Activity Detection (VAD) is a fundamental part of speech processing. Combination of multiple acoustic features is an effective approach to make VAD more robust against various noise conditions. There have been proposed several feature combination methods, in which weights for feature values are optimized based on Minimum Classification Error (MCE) training. We improve these MCE-based methods by introducing a novel discriminative function for whole frames. The proposed method optimizes combination weights taking into account the ratio between false acceptance and false rejection rates as well as the effect of the use of shaping procedures such as hangover.
Developing a digital data collection platform to measure the prevalence of sepsis in Wales

OBJECTIVE To develop a secure, efficient, and easy-to-use data collection platform to measure the prevalence of sepsis in Wales over 24 hours. MATERIALS AND METHODS Open Data Kit was used on Android devices with Google App Engine and a digital data collection form. RESULTS A total of 184 students participated in the study using 59 devices across 16 hospitals, 1198 datasets were submitted, and 97% of participants found the Open Data Kit form easy to use. DISCUSSION We successfully demonstrated that by combining a reliable Android device, a free open-source data collection framework, a scalable cloud-based server, and a team of 184 medical students, we can deliver a low-cost, highly reliable platform that requires little training or maintenance, providing results immediately on completion of data collection. CONCLUSION Our platform allowed us to measure, for the first time, the prevalence of sepsis in Wales over 24 hours.
Protein S-100β in Brain and Serum after Deep Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest in Rabbits: Relationship to Perivascular Astrocytic Swelling

Abstract The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the kinetic patterns of the protein S-100β an astroglial cell marker, and its immunohistochemical expression in the brain in rabbits that underwent cardiopulmonary bypass with deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. Fourteen New Zealand rabbits (weight, 3.1±0.25 kg) were anaesthetised, intubated and mechanically ventilated. Four animals were not connected to the cardiopulmonary bypass and served as controls. Ten animals were perfused according to a uniform protocol. After systemic cooling, deep hypothermic circulatory arrest was induced for 60 minutes. After reperfusion and rewarming, the animals were weaned from bypass and sacrificed. In the brain, astrocyte reactivity for S-100β was evaluated immunocytochemically (DPC® Immustain) and the serum concentrations of S-100β were analysed using a commercially available immunoluminometric kit (Byk-Sangtec®, Dietzenbach, Germany). In all experimental animals a significant increase of the serum concentration of the protein S-100β was found immediately after reperfusion and the termination of cardiopulmonary bypass. In comparison with the control animals, increased staining of S-100β was found in the astroglial cells and swollen astrocytic end-feet in the perivascular regions. There were fewer signs of neuronal cell injury of neurones in the hippocampus structure. In conclusion, astrocytic activation and S-100β over-expression seems to precede the neurodegeneration following deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. The marked perivascular cell swelling may support the assumption of reperfusion injury of the astroglial cell complex that forms the blood-brain barrier, which may be indicative of the source of the released S-100β into the blood stream.
Attention Capabilities for AI Systems

Much of present AI research is based on the assumption of computational systems with infinite resources, an assumption that is either explicitly stated or implicit in the work as researchers ignore the fact that most real-world tasks must be finished within certain time limits, and it is the role of intelligence to effectively deal with such limitations. Expecting AI systems to give equal treatment to every piece of data they encounter is not appropriate in most real-world cases; available resources are likely to be insufficient for keeping up with available data in even moderately complex environments. Even if sufficient resources are available, they might possibly be put to better use than blindly applying them to every possible piece of data. Finding inspiration for more intelligent resource management schemes is not hard, we need to look no further than ourselves. This paper explores what human attention has to offer in terms of ideas and concepts for implementing intelligent resource management and how the resulting principles can be extended to levels beyond human attention. We also discuss some ideas for the principles behind attention mechanisms for artificial (general) intelligences.
Effects of Content Popularity on the Performance of Content-Centric Opportunistic Networking: An Analytical Approach and Applications

Mobile users are envisioned to exploit direct communication opportunities between their portable devices, in order to enrich the set of services they can access through cellular or WiFi networks. Sharing contents of common interest or providing access to resources or services between peers can enhance a mobile node's capabilities, offload the cellular network, and disseminate information to nodes without Internet access. Interest patterns, i.e., how many nodes are interested in each content or service (popularity), as well as how many users can provide a content or service (availability) impact the performance and feasibility of envisioned applications. In this paper, we establish an analytical framework to study the effects of these factors on the delay and success probability of a content/service access request through opportunistic communication. We also apply our framework to the mobile data offloading problem and provide insights for the optimization of its performance. We validate our model and results through realistic simulations, using datasets of real opportunistic networks.
Déjà vu - A study of duplicate citations in Medline

MOTIVATION Duplicate publication impacts the quality of the scientific corpus, has been difficult to detect, and studies this far have been limited in scope and size. Using text similarity searches, we were able to identify signatures of duplicate citations among a body of abstracts. RESULTS A sample of 62,213 Medline citations was examined and a database of manually verified duplicate citations was created to study author publication behavior. We found that 0.04% of the citations with no shared authors were highly similar and are thus potential cases of plagiarism. 1.35% with shared authors were sufficiently similar to be considered a duplicate. Extrapolating, this would correspond to 3500 and 117,500 duplicate citations in total, respectively. AVAILABILITY eTBLAST, an automated citation matching tool, and Déjà vu, the duplicate citation database, are freely available at http://invention.swmed. edu/ and http://spore.swmed. edu/dejavu
Explaining inequalities in under-five mortality risk in the Indonesian mega-urban regions of Jabotabek, Bandung and Surabaya

The Indonesian mega-urban regions of J abotabek (Jakarta Extended Metropolitan Region), Bandung and Surabaya have each experienced high rates of population growth in recent decades and have expanded beyond conventional administrative boundaries. This rapid growth has potential negative consequences, in particular the provision of vital services and the effect on health status of the large and socio-economically heterogeneous population. This thesis seeks to establish the socio-economic inequalities in the under-five mortality rate (U5MR) in the complex setting of these mega-urban regions. Furthermore, it aims to ascertain how socio-economic patterns of health service utilisation explain these inequalities. The Mosley-Chen framework is applied to disentangle the various determinants of early age mortality risk. Firstly, the focus is on the socio-economic determinants. The full count 2000 Indonesian Census, which allows for the extraction of data at the small area level, demonstrates the large socio-economic heterogeneity both within and between the population of each mega-urban region. Because the Census only provides child survival data, the suitability of the Brass methods for indirect estimation of mortality in these mega-urban regions is examined. Next, application of the indirect methods reveals substantial inequalities in the U5MR, especially by place of residence and mother's education. In some sub-districts in the periphery the U5MR is far higher than for all Indonesia. Cox regression analysis of socio-economic variables for urban Indonesia from the 2Q02/03 Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) also demonstrates large differences in the likelihood of mortality by these factors. To explain the causes of such large inequalities, the proximate determinants in the Mosley-Chen framework are examined. The epidemiological profile of urban Indonesia, where neonatal factors are the major cause of under-five death and the proportion of deaths occurring in the neonatal period is high, suggests that care during the pregnancy, delivery and postnatal periods is vital. Analysis of the 2002/03 IDHS confirms the type of antenatal care provider and birth attendant are particularly important in explaining under-five mortality risk in urban Indonesia.
Wavelet Transform and High-lever PDE for Image Zooming

To improve the image resolution, a new algorithm that wavelet transform and high-lever PDE for image zooming is proposed in this paper, which is based on the improving traditional wavelet transform. Compared with the traditional methods, the The effective combination of wavelet transform and high-lever PDE can keep the image's detail characteristics. Both visual perception and experimental results have verified that the algorithm can achieve the better effective of image zooming.
A Case of Ovine Female XY Sex Reversal Syndrome Not Related to Anomalies in the Sex-Determining Region Y (SRY)

The human XY gonadal sex reversal is a rare disease. Primary amenorrhea, lack of secondary sexual characteristics and the possible existence of streak gonads are the most common signs of this syndrome. Five cases of this syndrome have been described in the last 42 years in bovines. However, to the knowledge of the authors, no similar descriptions are available in sheep. In the present report, we are presenting the case of a 4 year old ewe 2n = 54,XY showing primary sterility and total absence of masculinization signs. The promoter and the complete coding segment of the sex determining region Y (SRY) were sequenced and found to be absolutely normal. The presence of the testis-specific protein gene (TSPY) was also verified by means of PCR. Necropsy findings include short vagina, lack of uterus and complete absence of masculine remains. Streak gonads concordant with previous descriptions in humans were also found.