Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Video retargeting for aesthetic enhancement

In this paper, we present a post-editing scheme for camera-work. It is based on video retargeting, but aims to enhance the aesthetic interest of home produced video sequences. The essential part of video clips are emphasized by automatically zooming in. The camera pans to preserve the important features within the frame while zooming in. Different from traditional video retargeting schemes, we use a variable zooming factor which is based on the motion saliency of frames.
Crecimiento del caracol de tinte Plicopurpura pansa en Baja California Sur, México Growth of the purple snail Plicopurpura pansa in Baja California Sur, Mexico

To study the growth of the purple snail Plicopurpura pansa at the northern limit of its distribution, from 1999 to 2001 monthly random samples were obtained from two beaches in the southern part of the Baja California Peninsula (Mexico): one on the Gulf of California and the other on the west coast of the peninsula. Mark and recapture experiments, as well as laboratory rearing were also done. The von Bertalanffy growth equation parameters derived from length frequency data were K = 0.17 and L∞ = 90 mm, and agree with those estimated from the mark and recapture data, but are lower that those reported in the literature for P. pansa from the central and southern Mexican Pacific. Snails maintained under laboratory conditions had low growth rates. These results could be used to implement models for the assessment of purple snail fisheries.
Complex settlement pattern extraction with multi-instance learning

Per-pixel (or single instance) based classification schemes which have proven to be very useful in thematic classification have shown to be inadequate when it comes to analyzing very high resolution remote sensing imagery. The main problem being that the pixel size (less than a meter) is too small as compared to the typical object size (100s of meters) and contains too little contextual information to accurately distinguish complex settlement types. One way to alleviate this problem is to consider a bigger window or patch/segment consisting a group of adjacent pixels which offers better spatial context than a single pixel. Unfortunately, this makes per-pixel based classification schemes ineffective. In this work, we look at a new class of machine learning approaches, called multi-instance learning, where instead of assigning class labels to individual instances (pixels), a label is assigned to the bag (all pixels in a window or segment). We applied this multi-instance learning approach for identifying two important urban patterns, namely formal and informal settlements. Experimental evaluation shows the better performance of multi-instance learning over several well-known single-instance classification schemes.
Effects of IT Capability and External Integration on Organizational Responsiveness: an Organizational Learning Perspective

Drawing upon the organizational learning perspective, this study focuses on the relationship between external integration and organizational responsiveness, and how such relationship is moderated by three kinds of information technology (IT) capability (i.e. inside-out, outside-in, spanning). The results of 197 firms in China reveal the positive relationship between external integration and organizational responsiveness. In addition, three kinds of IT capability play different roles in the relationship between external integration and organizational responsiveness. Specifically, outside-in IT capability and spanning IT capability positively moderate this relationship. In contrast, inside-out IT capability provides a negative moderating effect. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.
Integrating pitch and localisation cues at a speech fragment level

This paper proposes a novel speech-fragment based approach for processing binaural data to improve the estimation of speech source locations in reverberant, multi-speaker recordings. The technique employs two stages. First, a robust multipitch tracking algorithm is used to locate local spectro-temporal ‘speech fragments’ – regions where the energy in the mixture is dominated by a single speech source. Second, robust localisation estimates are formed by integrating interaural time difference cues over each speech fragment. The technique is applied to the analysis of more than five hours of two-party meetings that have been constructed from a mixture of binaural mannequin recordings. It is shown that estimating location at the speech fragment level produces better results than conventional location-estimate smoothing techniques leading to a an increase in relative frame accuracy rate of more than 35%. Index Terms: binaural localisation, pitch cues, speech fragment integration
Health risks associated with overweight and obesity

The intra-abdominal visceral deposition of adipose tissue,which characterizes upper body – central – obesity(assessed by waist circumference and/or waist : hip ratio)is a major contributor to the development of hypertension,elevated plasma insulin concentrations and insulin resis-tance, hyperglycaemia and hyperlipidaemia (metabolic syn-drome). The concept of the metabolic syndrome refers tothe phenomenon of risk-factor clustering – a collection ofmetabolic traits occurring in the same individual with theclustering presumably reﬂecting a unifying underlyingpathophysiology that requires a holistic approach to theirmanagement (5–7). Many of the health risks associated with increasing bodyweight begin to appear in children and young people. Ofgreat concern is the increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetesand associated medical complications in childhood (8–10). This early onset needs to be reﬂected by active managementand research priorities to reduce the consequential healthand economic burdens (11).
Circular chromatic index of type 1 Blanuša snarks

We determine the exact value of the circular chromatic index of generalized Blanusa snarks of type 1 introduced by Watkins more than two decades ago. In this case, the index takes infinitely many values and can get arbitrarily close to 3. Generalized Blanusa snarks are the first explicit class with this property; until now only finitely many values of the circular chromatic index of snarks have been known. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 59: 89–96, 2008
Unexpected exome sequencing result: De novo TRPS1 mutation in an infant with infantile scoliosis, mild developmental delay, and history of consanguinity

Unexpected Exome Sequencing Result: De Novo TRPS1 Mutation in an Infant With Infantile Scoliosis, Mild Developmental Delay, and History of Consanguinity Ian Casci, William Accousti, and Yves Lacassie* Department of Genetics, LSU Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, Louisiana Department of Orthopedics, LSU Health Sciences Center and Children’s Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana Department of Pediatrics, Division of Genetics, LSU Health Sciences Center and Children’s Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana
Mumps Virus Decreases Testosterone Production and Gamma Interferon-Induced Protein 10 Secretion by Human Leydig Cells

ABSTRACT Mumps virus is responsible for sterility. Here, we show that the mumps virus infects Leydig cells in vitro and totally inhibits testosterone secretion and that ribavirin in mumps virus-infected Leydig cell cultures completely restores testosterone production. Moreover, we show that gamma interferon-induced protein 10 (IP-10) is highly expressed by mumps virus-infected Leydig cells and that ribavirin does not block IP-10 production.
Breaking the big-bang practice of traceability: Pushing timely trace recommendations to project stakeholders

In many software intensive systems traceability is used to support a variety of software engineering activities such as impact analysis, compliance verification, and requirements validation. However, in practice, traceability links are often created towards the end of the project specifically for approval or certification purposes. This practice can result in inaccurate and incomplete traces, and also means that traceability links are not available to support early development efforts. We address these problems by presenting a trace recommender system which pushes recommendations to project stakeholders as they create or modify traceable artifacts. We also introduce the novel concept of a trace obligation, which is used to track satisfaction relations between a target artifact and a set of source artifacts. We model traceability events and subsequent actions, including user recommendations, using the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). We demonstrate and evaluate the efficacy of our approach through an illustrative example and a simulation conducted using the software engineering artifacts of a robotic system for supporting arm rehabilitation. Our results show that tracking trace obligations and generating trace recommendations throughout the active phases of a project can lead to early construction of traceability knowledge.
Development and Application of an In-house Line Probe Assay for Hepatitis C Virus Genotyping

Background Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the major cause of chronic liver disease. HCV is a single stranded positive sense RNA of approximately 9.6 Kb. Because of high conservativeness of 5΄untranslated region of HCV genome, it is widely used for virus genotyping. Different methods are used for the virus genotyping, but all involve some difficulties. Objectives The aim of the present study was to develop an in-house reverse hybridization method as a line probe assay, for HCV genotyping. Materials and Methods Sixty serum samples were collected with newly diagnosis of HCV infection. Genotyping process had already been performed for the samples using RT-PCR RFLP method. After total RNA extraction from the samples and cDNA synthesis, nested PCR method was applied for amplification of the target sequence on the 5΄UTR. In the nested PCR, biotinylated oligonucleotides were used as inner primers. Optimized concentrations of the biotinylated inner primers (as positive control), two universal and seven specific probes were spotted onto nylon membrane stripes in a defined pattern. Hybridization process was conducted between the probes and the denaturized biotin labeled PCR products. Finally, the stripes were developed by using streptavidin conjugated alkaline phosphate as a signal generating agent. To determine the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of the home made LiPA, a panel containing 60 confirmed sera with positive results for HCV (and PCR-RFLP genotyped) was subjected to evaluate. Results Agarose gel electrophoresis of the nested PCR products using the outer and inner primers showed 305 and 234 bp fragments respectively. After performing hybridization and detection processes on the prepared strips, the colored bands were formed for the positive control, universal probes and the corresponding genotypes. HCV genotype results were found to be in 100% concordance through studying 60 sera that were successfully typed by the two methods. P-value of 0.045 conveys that the two methods were the same and had no significant difference. Conclusions The most common genotyping method in Iran is RT-PCR RFLP. Given the results and advantages of this homemade technique, such as high specificity and sensitivity, ability for detection of most genotypes, it provides possibility of evaluating much of the isolates without needing electrophoresis stage.
A self-adaptive switched-capacitor voltage converter with dynamic input load control for energy harvesting

This paper presents an implementation of a fully-integrated switched capacitor voltage converter with self-adjusting source loading. A charge control unit ensures improved load matching to the power source, which can be an RFID antenna or vibration energy harvesting generator. In conjunction with an adaptive stacking scheme voltage-up conversion is also realized leading to capacitor storage voltages which are higher than the generator voltage amplitudes. This and the improved load matching result in a higher generator output power. In addition, due to the switched capacitor charge pump no diode for rectification is necessary. The converter design is completely implemented and fully-integrated in a standard 0.35 µm twin-well CMOS process. Generator powers of up to 780 µW can be treated, and maximum conversion efficiency is close to 48%. Input voltage amplitudes are possible between 0.5 V – 2.5 V , while the supply voltage range is 0.9 V – 3.6 V.
Not all content is created equal: effect of popularity and availability for content-centric opportunistic networking

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 data offloading problem and provide insights for its optimization.
Coded excitation for diverging wave cardiac imaging: a feasibility study

Diverging wave (DW) based cardiac imaging has gained increasing interest in recent years given its capacity to achieve ultrahigh frame rate. However, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast, and penetration depth of the resulting B-mode images are typically low as DWs spread energy over a large region. Coded excitation is known to be capable of increasing the SNR and penetration for ultrasound imaging. The aim of this study was therefore to test the feasibility of applying coded excitation in DW imaging to improve the corresponding SNR, contrast and penetration depth. To this end, two types of codes, i.e. a linear frequency modulated chirp code and a set of complementary Golay codes were tested in three different DW imaging schemes, i.e. 1 angle DW transmit without compounding, 3 and 5 angles DW transmits with coherent compounding. The performances (SNR, contrast ratio (CR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and penetration) of different imaging schemes were investigated by means of simulations and in vitro experiments. As for benchmark, corresponding DW imaging schemes with regular pulsed excitation as well as the conventional focused imaging scheme were also included. The results showed that the SNR was improved by about 10 dB using coded excitation while the penetration depth was increased by 2.5 cm and 1.8 cm using chirp code and Golay codes, respectively. The CNR and CR gains varied with the depth for different DW schemes using coded excitations. Specifically, for non-compounded DW imaging schemes, the gain in the CR was about 5 dB and 3 dB while the gain in the CNR was about 4.5 dB and 3.5 dB at larger depths using chirp code and Golay codes, respectively. For compounded imaging schemes, using coded excitation, the gain in the penetration and contrast were relatively smaller compared to non-compounded ones. Overall, these findings indicated the feasibility of coded excitation in improving the image quality of DW imaging. Preliminary in vivo cardiac images of a healthy volunteer were presented finally, and higher SNR and deeper penetration depth can be achieved by coded schemes.
Epithelial Cells Infected with Chlamydophila pneumoniae (Chlamydia pneumoniae) Are Resistant to Apoptosis

ABSTRACT The obligate intracellular pathogen Chlamydophila pneumoniae (Chlamydia pneumoniae) initiates infections in humans via the mucosal epithelia of the respiratory tract. Here, we report that epithelial cells infected with C. pneumoniae are resistant to apoptosis induced by treatment with drugs or by death receptor ligation. The induction of protection from apoptosis depended on the infection conditions since only cells containing large inclusions were protected. The underlying mechanism of infection-induced apoptosis resistance probably involves mitochondria, the major integrators of apoptotic signaling. In the infected cells, mitochondria did not respond to apoptotic stimuli by the release of apoptogenic factors required for the activation of caspases. Consequently, active caspase-3 was absent in infected cells. Our data suggest a direct modulation of apoptotic pathways in epithelial cells by C. pneumoniae.
Real-Time Ray Tracing of Complex Molecular Scenes

Molecular visualization is one of the cornerstones in structural bioinformatics and related fields. Today, rasterization is typically used for the interactive display of molecular scenes, while ray tracing aims at generating high-quality images, taking typically minutes to hours to generate and requiring the usage of an external off-line program. Recently, real-time ray tracing evolved to combine the interactivity of rasterization-based approaches with the superb image quality of ray tracing techniques. We demonstrate how real-time ray tracing integrated into a molecular modelling and visualization tool allows for better understanding of the structural arrangement of biomolecules and natural creation of publication-quality images in real-time. However, unlike most approaches, our technique naturaly integrates into the full-featured molecular modelling and visualization tool BALLView, seamlessly extending a standard workflow with interactive high-quality rendering.
Using mobile phones to determine transportation modes

As mobile phones advance in functionality and capability, they are being used for more than just communication. Increasingly, these devices are being employed as instruments for introspection into habits and situations of individuals and communities. Many of the applications enabled by this new use of mobile phones rely on contextual information. The focus of this work is on one dimension of context, the transportation mode of an individual when outside. We create a convenient (no specific position and orientation setting) classification system that uses a mobile phone with a built-in GPS receiver and an accelerometer. The transportation modes identified include whether an individual is stationary, walking, running, biking, or in motorized transport. The overall classification system consists of a decision tree followed by a first-order discrete Hidden Markov Model and achieves an accuracy level of 93.6% when tested on a dataset obtained from sixteen individuals.
Dynamic spectrum access with traffic prioritization in Cognitive Radio networks

Cognitive Radio networks (CRN) enable cognitive users to use portions of the licensed spectrum of the primary users (PU). Dynamic spectrum access (DSA) is a design aspect that facilitates the transmission of cognitive radio (CR) users over idle channels. In many cases, it is not preferable that CR users to be treated equally. Provisioning quality of service (QoS) to some CR users is a challenge in DSA design. In this situation, The CR user traffic is divided into high and low priority classes. Sub-channel reservation (SCR) scheme is the most traditional scheme to provide priority to CR users in admission. In this paper, a new scheme named “low priority bounding” (LPB) scheme is used to provide QoS for CR users. The LPB scheme provides priority by restricting the number of low priority CR users by a threshold. This scheme maintains a suitable level of service to high priority users (as provided by SCR scheme) while improve the level of service for low priority ones. So the revenue gained from LPB scheme is optimized in comparison with SCR scheme. The impact of LPB scheme in the provided QoS is evaluated in terms of blocking probability, service termination rate, and service completion rate. Simulation results are compared with SCR scheme and it shows that the LPB scheme can significantly improve the revenue gained over the traditional SCR scheme.
Optimal Vertex Fault Tolerant Spanners (for fixed stretch)

A $k$-spanner of a graph $G$ is a sparse subgraph $H$ whose shortest path distances match those of $G$ up to a multiplicative error $k$. In this paper we study spanners that are resistant to faults. A subgraph $H \subseteq G$ is an $f$ vertex fault tolerant (VFT) $k$-spanner if $H \setminus F$ is a $k$-spanner of $G \setminus F$ for any small set $F$ of $f$ vertices that might "fail. " One of the main questions in the area is: what is the minimum size of an $f$ fault tolerant $k$-spanner that holds for all $n$ node graphs (as a function of $f$, $k$ and $n$)? This question was first studied in the context of geometric graphs [Levcopoulos et al. STOC '98, Czumaj and Zhao SoCG '03] and has more recently been considered in general undirected graphs [Chechik et al. STOC '09, Dinitz and Krauthgamer PODC '11]. In this paper, we settle the question of the optimal size of a VFT spanner, in the setting where the stretch factor $k$ is fixed. Specifically, we prove that every (undirected, possibly weighted) $n$-node graph $G$ has a $(2k-1)$-spanner resilient to $f$ vertex faults with $O_k(f^{1 - 1/k} n^{1 + 1/k})$ edges, and this is fully optimal (unless the famous Erdos Girth Conjecture is false). Our lower bound even generalizes to imply that no data structure capable of approximating $dist_{G \setminus F}(s, t)$ similarly can beat the space usage of our spanner in the worst case. We also consider the edge fault tolerant (EFT) model, defined analogously with edge failures rather than vertex failures. We show that the same spanner upper bound applies in this setting. Our data structure lower bound extends to the case $k=2$ (and hence we close the EFT problem for $3$-approximations), but it falls to $\Omega(f^{1/2 - 1/(2k)} \cdot n^{1 + 1/k})$ for $k \ge 3$. We leave it as an open problem to close this gap.
Ventral Prefrontal Cortex Is Not Essential for Working Memory

It is widely held that the prefrontal cortex is important for working memory. It has been suggested that the inferior convexity (IC) may play a special role in working memory for form and color (Wilson et al., 1993). We have therefore assessed the ability of monkeys with IC lesions to perform visual pattern association tasks and color-matching tasks, both with and without delay. In experiment 1, six monkeys were trained on a visual association task with delays of up to 2 sec. Conservative IC lesions that removed lateral area 47/12 in three animals had no effect on the task. Further experiments showed that these lesions had no effect on the postoperative new learning of a color-matching task with delays of up to 2 sec or versions of the visual association task involving delays of up to 8 sec. In experiment 2, larger lesions of both areas 47/12 and 45A were made in the three control animals. This lesion caused a profound deficit in the ability to relearn simultaneous color matching, but subsequent matching with delays of up to 8 sec was clearly unimpaired. We suggest that the IC may be more important for stimulus selection and attention as opposed to working memory.