Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VISCERAL — VISual Concept Extraction challenge in RAdioLogy: ISBI 2014 Challenge Organization

The VISual Concept Extraction challenge in RAdioLogy (VISCERAL) project has been developed as a cloud–based infrastructure for the evaluation of medical image data in large data sets. As part of this project, the ISBI 2014 (International Symposium for Biomedical Imaging) challenge was organized using the VISCERAL data set and shared cloud– framework. Two tasks were selected to exploit and compare multiple state–of–the–art solutions designed for big data medical image analysis. Segmentation and landmark localization results from the submitted algorithms were compared to manually annotated ground truth in the VISCERAL data set. This paper presents an overview of the challenge setup and data set used as well as the evaluation metrics from the various results submitted to the challenge. The participants presented their algorithms during an organized session at ISBI 2014. There were lively discussions in which the importance of comparing approaches on tasks sharing a common data set was highlighted.
Browse by chunks: Topic mining and organizing on web-scale social media

The overwhelming amount of Web videos returned from search engines makes effective browsing and search a challenging task. Rather than conventional ranked list, it becomes necessary to organize the retrieved videos in alternative ways. In this article, we explore the issue of topic mining and organizing of the retrieved web videos in semantic clusters. We present a framework for clustering-based video retrieval and build a visualization user interface. A hierarchical topic structure is exploited to encode the characteristics of the retrieved video collection and a semi-supervised hierarchical topic model is proposed to guide the topic hierarchy discovery. Carefully designed experiments on web-scale video dataset collected from video sharing websites validate the proposed method and demonstrate that clustering-based video retrieval is practical to facilitate users for effective browsing.
An impulse radio UWB system for sensor networking

In this paper, we present a low complexity impulse radio UWB system suitable to sensor network applications where the low power consumption and low hardware cost and complexity are strongly needed. This UWB system is based on an energy detection receiver associated with a simple transmitter using SRD based impulse generation. An experimental platform has been realized with success. This platform can transmit more than 10 Mbits/s over several meters. An IR UWB signal coding scheme (TFS = trembling fixed sequence) is also proposed which can result in very simple and energy efficient CMOS friendly implementation in a low data rate sensor networking context.
Lung Cancer and Arsenic Concentrations in Drinking Water in Chile

Cities in northern Chile had arsenic concentrations of 860 &mgr;g/liter in drinking water in the period 1958–1970. Concentrations have since been reduced to 40 &mgr;g/liter. We investigated the relation between lung cancer and arsenic in drinking water in northern Chile in a case-control study involving patients diagnosed with lung cancer between 1994 and 1996 and frequency-matched hospital controls. The study identified 152 lung cancer cases and 419 controls. Participants were interviewed regarding drinking water sources, cigarette smoking, and other variables. Logistic regression analysis revealed a clear trend in lung cancer odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) with increasing concentration of arsenic in drinking water, as follows: 1, 1.6 (95% CI = 0.5–5.3), 3.9 (95% CI = 1.2–12.3), 5.2 (95% CI = 2.3–11.7), and 8.9 (95% CI = 4.0–19.6), for arsenic concentrations ranging from less than 10 &mgr;g/liter to a 65-year average concentration of 200–400 &mgr;g/liter. There was evidence of synergy between cigarette smoking and ingestion of arsenic in drinking water; the odds ratio for lung cancer was 32.0 (95% CI = 7.2–198.0) among smokers exposed to more than 200 &mgr;g/liter of arsenic in drinking water (lifetime average) compared with nonsmokers exposed to less than 50 &mgr;g/liter. This study provides strong evidence that ingestion of inorganic arsenic is associated with human lung cancer.
Effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on the hippocampus: Spatial behavior, electrophysiology, and neuroanatomy

Prenatal exposure to alcohol can result in fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), characterized by growth retardation, facial dysmorphologies, and a host of neurobehavioral impairments. Neurobehavioral effects in FAS, and in alcohol‐related neurodevelopmental disorder, include poor learning and memory, attentional deficits, and motor dysfunction. Many of these behavioral deficits can be modeled in rodents. This paper reviews the literature suggesting that many fetal alcohol effects result, at least in part, from teratogenic effects of alcohol on the hippocampus. Neurobehavioral studies show that animals exposed prenatally to alcohol are impaired in many of the same spatial learning and memory tasks sensitive to hippocampal damage, including T‐mazes, the Morris water maze, and the radial arm maze. Direct evidence for hippocampal involvement is provided by neuroanatomical studies of the hippocampus documenting reduced numbers of neurons, lower dendritic spine density on pyramidal neurons, and decreased morphological plasticity after environmental enrichment in rats exposed prenatally to alcohol. Electrophysiological studies also demonstrate changes in synaptic activity in in vitro hippocampal brain slices isolated from prenatal alcohol‐exposed animals. Considered together, these observations demonstrate that prenatal exposure to alcohol can result in abnormal hippocampal development and function. Such studies provide a better understanding of neurological deficits associated with FAS in humans, and may also contribute to the development of strategies to ameliorate the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on behavior. Hippocampus 2000;10:94–110. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
It's all in the eye of the beholder: The effects of personality on the social orienting of attention

We tend to shift our attention to wherever other people are looking, a phenomenon known as gaze-driven attentional orienting (Driver et al., 1999; Friesen & Kingstone, 1998). Gaze triggers attentional orienting primarily due to its social importance, and the reflexive shift of attention in the direction of another person’s gaze is widely documented (Friesen, Ristic, & Kingstone, 2004). Although much research has investigated the facial stimulus used to trigger orienting and how features of the face affect gaze cueing, few studies have examined the characteristics of the observer and how this might impact gaze driven attention. The present research used the gazecueing paradigm (Posner, 1980) to investigate whether the personality of the observer would influence reflexive orienting to gaze cues, and whether the observer’s personality characteristics would interact with stimulus characteristics such as perceived social dominance (experiment 1 and 2) and emotional expression (experiment 2) to impact the magnitude of the gaze cueing effect. Both reaction time and accuracy to a briefly presented target letter were measured to assess the magnitude of gaze cueing. The results showed that observer personality did not impact the magnitude of gaze cueing, although the effect of extroversion approached significance. Interestingly, the results also indicated that while dominance affects reaction time it does not affect accuracy. The effect of social dominance on gaze cueing was modulated by extroversion. Experiment 2 showed that emotional expressions did not influence gaze cueing magnitude, nor did emotional expression interact with either personality or perceived social dominance. The results provides some very preliminary suggestions that certain personality characteristics are associated with stronger gaze cueing and the effects of observer personality on gaze cueing magnitude should be further explored.
Performance of on-off traffic stemming from live adaptive segmented HTTP video streaming

A large number of live segmented adaptive HTTP video streaming services exist in the Internet today. These quasi-live solutions have been shown to scale to a large number of concurrent users, but the characteristic on-off traffic pattern makes TCP behave differently compared to the bulk transfers the protocol is designed for. In this paper, we analyze the TCP performance of such live on-off sources, and we investigate possible improvements in order to increase the resource utilization on the server side. We observe that the problem is the bandwidth wastage because of the synchronization of the on period. We investigate four different techniques to mitigate this problem. We first evaluate the techniques on pure on-off traffic using a fixed quality and then repeat the experiments with quality adaptation.
Pseudoporphyria and Nonsteroidal Antiinflammatory Agents in Children with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Abstract: Pseudoporphyria is characterized by erythema, blistering, and scarring on sun‐exposed skin. Nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are implicated in the etiology of this condition. In a 1‐year prospective study of children attending the pediatric rheumatology clinic in Edinburgh we found a prevalence of pseudoporphyria of 10.9% in children taking NSAIDs for juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Naproxen was the most commonly implicated NSAID, independent of dosage. Blue/gray eye color was an independent risk factor for the development of pseudoporphyria. We would advise caution in prescribing naproxen in these children to prevent disfiguring facial scarring.
Covert Channel Forensics on the Internet: Issues, Approaches, and Experiences

The exponential growth of the Internet (WWW in particular) has opened-up several avenues for covert channel communication. Steganographic communication is one such avenue. Hiding secret messages in digital data such as images using steganographic software tools is becoming easier. These digital images posted in public Web sites can then be downloaded at the receiver and the hidden messages may be extracted securely. To thwart covert channels on the Internet new types of search engines that can identify, detect and track these channels are necessary. Traditional search algorithms will fail to identify these channels. In this paper, we discuss various key issues involved in developing a stego (forensic) Web search engine. We also propose approaches to address some of these issues. Finally, we discuss a prototype forensic search engine that we developed called STEALTH and discuss in detail its architecture. Some experimental results are also reported.
Adeno-Associated Virus Antibody Profiles in Newborns, Children, and Adolescents

ABSTRACT Neutralizing antibodies (NAb) to an adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector due to previous natural infection with wild-type AAV can significantly limit gene transfer. NAb titers to AAV serotype 2 (AAV2) and AAV8 in human subjects (0 to 18 years) were studied. NAb prevalence is moderate at birth, decreases markedly from 7 to 11 months, and then progressively increases through childhood and adolescence.
Planning with State Uncertainty via Contingency Planning and Execution Monitoring

This paper proposes a fast alternative to POMDP planning for domains with deterministic state-changing actions but probabilistic observation-making actions and partial observability of the initial state. This class of planning problems, which we call quasi-deterministic problems, includes important real-world domains such as planning for Mars rovers. The approach we take is to reformulate the quasi-deterministic problem into a completely observable problem and build a contingency plan where branches in the plan occur wherever an observational action is used to determine the value of some state variable. The plan for the completely observable problem is constructed assuming that state variables can be determined exactly at execution time using these observational actions. Since this is often not the case due to imperfect sensing of the world, we then use execution monitoring to select additional actions at execution time to determine the value of the state variable sufficiently accurately. We use a value of information calculation to determine which information gathering actions to perform and when to stop gathering information and continue execution of the branching plan. We show empirically that while the plans found are not optimal, they can be generated much faster, and are of better quality than other approaches.
Social- and Interactive-Television Applications Based on Real-Time Ambient-Audio Identification

This paper describes mass personalization, a framework for combining mass media with a highly personalized Web-based experience. We introduce four applications for mass personalization: personalized content layers, ad hoc social communities, real-time popularity ratings and virtual media library services. Using the ambient audio originating from the television, the four applications are available with no more effort than simple television channel surfing. Our audio identification system does not use dedicated interactive TV hardware and does not compromise the user’s privacy. Feasibility tests of the proposed applications are provided both with controlled conversational interference and with “living-room” evaluations.
Prospective Study of Human Metapneumovirus Detection in Clinical Samples by Use of Light Diagnostics Direct Immunofluorescence Reagent and Real-Time PCR

ABSTRACT A Light Diagnostics human metapneumovirus (HMPV) monoclonal antibody reagent was evaluated using cytospin-enhanced direct immunofluorescence (DFA), and the results were compared to those for TaqMan reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR). Of the 202 samples tested, 48 were positive by RT-PCR, and 41 (85.4%) of these were positive by DFA (P = 0.0771). The commercial availability of an HMPV DFA reagent will be of significant benefit to clinical laboratories.
CD14+ Cells with the Phenotype of Infiltrated Monocytes Consist of Distinct Populations Characterized by Anti-inflammatory as well as Pro-inflammatory Activity in Gouty Arthritis

It has been suggested that inflammasome-mediated IL-1β production in monocytic cells is responsible for the acute inflammatory response in gouty arthritis. However, phenotypical and functional analyses of monocytes during gouty arthritis have yet to be conducted. Therefore, we investigated the characteristics of monocytes/macrophages in the synovial fluid cells of patients with acute gout. The number and frequency of monocytes/macrophages in the synovial fluid mononuclear cells (SFMCs) of patients was examined. The expression of markers for monocyte recruitment and tissue-resident macrophages, the production of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines, and phagocytosis were analyzed in the monocytes/macrophages of patients with acute gout attacks. The number and frequency of CD14+CD3−CD19−CD56− monocytes/macrophages was markedly increased in the SFMCs of patients with gout compared to those of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). CD14+ cells showed the phenotypes of infiltrated monocytes rather than tissue-resident macrophages, characterized by a high expression of CCR2, MRP8, and MRP14, but a low expression of MERTK and 25F9. These cells had the capacity to produce pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α and IL-1β after stimulation with lipopolysaccharides. In addition, anti-inflammatory features, including CD163 expression and IL-10 production from CD14+ cells, were significantly higher in patients with gout than in those with RA. CD14+ cells with phenotype of M2 macrophages had high phagocytic activity for monosodium urate crystals. Thus, our results indicate that monocytes/macrophages from patients with gout have the phenotype of infiltrated monocytes, and these cells consist of different populations characterized by anti-inflammatory activities as well as pro-inflammatory functions.
The PEIS-Ecology project: Vision and results

The vision of an ecology of physically embedded intelligent systems, or PEIS-Ecology, combines insights from the fields of autonomous robotics and ambient intelligence to provide a new approach to building robotic systems in the service of people. In this paper, we present this vision, and we report the results of a four-year collaborative research project between Sweden and Korea aimed at the concrete realization of this vision.We focus in particular on three results: a robotic middleware able to cope with highly heterogeneous systems; a technique for autonomous self-configuration and reconfiguration; and a study of the problem of sharing information of both physical and digital nature.
The ET-1-mediated carbonylation and degradation of ANXA1 induce inflammatory phenotype and proliferation of pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells in HPS

Hepatopulmonary syndrome (HPS) is a serious complication of advanced liver disease, which markedly increases mortality. Pulmonary vascular remodelling (PVR) induced by circulating mediators plays an important role in the pathogenesis of HPS, while the underlying mechanism remains undefined. In the present study, we reported that endothelin-1 (ET-1) is up-regulated and annexin A1(ANXA1) is down-regulated in HPS rat, and ET-1 decreases the ANXA1 expression in a dose-dependent manner in rat pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells (PASMCs). Then, we showed that ANXA1 can decrease nuclear p-ERK1/2 accumulation and decrease the cyclin D1 expression, thus resulting in the subsequent inhibition of PASMCs proliferation. As previously reported, we confirmed that ET-1 decreases the ANXA1 protein levels by the carbonylation and degradation of ANXA1. In conclusion, our research links the signaling cascade of ET1-ANXA1-cell proliferation to a potential therapeutic strategy for blocking IPS-associated PVR.
A new approach to object oriented programming for real-time targets

An object oriented approach has been developed using Lab VIEW RT. This real-time variant of the well known graphical programming language is based on the PharLap OS. This approach allows for two different scenarios. First, existing object oriented code developed for MS-Windows and Linux platforms can be reused on a real-time platform, next to a time critical loop with high priority. The reusability of existing code drastically reduces the development time for complex data acquisition and control systems, based on PXI or cPCI platforms. Second, small PAC systems like the FieldPoint series from National Instruments have limited CPU power and memory. However, dedicated classes allow the usage of an object oriented approach and serve to integrate such sub-systems to larger SCADA systems
Robust Blind Separation of Statistically Dependent Sources using Dual Tree Wavelets

Blind source separation (BSS) problem is commonly solved by means of independent component analysis (ICA) assuming statistically independent and non-Gaussian sources. The strict independence assumption can be relaxed to existence of subbands where signals are less dependent. In this paper, we use dual tree complex wavelets for the subband decomposition of observed signals and small cummulant based approximation of mutual information for finding the most independent subband(s). We compare the proposed method to previously reported shift invariant and decimated wavelet packet based approach, as well as to innovations based approach. We found proposed dual tree wavelets scheme as an efficient and robust solution of the BSS problem of statistically dependent sources. One important application of the proposed method is related to unsupervised segmentation of medical and remotely sensed multispectral images.
Molecular characterization of Mycoplasma synoviae isolated from broiler chickens of West Azarbaijan province by PCR of vlhA gene

Mycoplasma synoviae (MS) is a pathogen responsible for respiratory and locomotor disorders and causes major economic losses in poultry industry. Early and accurate diagnosis of MS infection plays a major role in control of the infection. This study was conducted to characterize Iranian field isolates of MS isolated from broiler chickens of West Azarbaijan province (Northwest of Iran), and differentiate them from vaccine strain MS-H. Two encoding genes, 16S rRNA and vlhA were employed. PCR results using primers related to 16s rRNA and vlhA genes were analyzed and compared. Out of 21 field samples, eight samples (38.0%) were positive using both sets of primers. Amplified products of vlhA gene were sequenced for MS strain identification. The results showed that Iranian field isolates of MS had high nucleotide and amino acid similarity. Iranian field isolates were distinct from vaccine strain MS-H. Results presented in this study showed that characterization of field isolates of MS by sequencing of vlhA gene and is beneficial for strain typing and differentiating them from vaccine strain. To our knowledge, this is the first study characterizing vlhA gene of MS isolates from broiler chickens in the West Azarbaijan province.
Prussian blue modified iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles and their high peroxidase-like activity

Prussian blue (PB) modified γ-Fe2O3 magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) featuring varying PB proportions were synthesized and characterized by TEM, FTIR, UV-vis, EDS, XRD and XPS. The magnetic properties and peroxidase-like catalytic activity of the synthesized nanoparticles were investigated. With increasing PB content, the magnetism could still maintain a high level. Peroxidase-like activity was enhanced as the PB proportion increased. Catalysis was found to follow Michaelis–Menten kinetics. The calculated kinetic parameters exhibited strong affinity with substrates and high catalytic activity, which are three orders of magnitudes larger than that for magnetite nanoparticles of similar size. Based on the high activity, an enzyme immunoassay model was established: staphylococcal protein A (SPA) was conjugated onto the surface of the nanoparticles to construct a new nanoprobe which was employed to detect IgG immobilized to 96-well plates. The results presented a linear absorbance enhancement with concentration of IgG, suggesting that PBMNPs serve as an inexpensive horseradish peroxidase (HRP) mimic enzyme with potential applications in bio-detection.