Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Topical sulindac combined with hydrogen peroxide in the treatment of actinic keratoses.

BACKGROUND Actinic keratoses (AKs) are a precancerous condition of the skin that have the potential to become squamous cell cancer (SCC). Sulindac is a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that has been shown to have clinically significant anticancer effects. Malignant cells may have a different response to oxidative stress than normal cells. OBJECTIVE To establish a role of increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the mechanism of cancer killing by sulindac in the presence of an oxidizing agent. To assess the tolerability and efficacy of the combination of gels containing sulindac and hydrogen peroxide in the treatment of patients with AKs. METHODS Cell culture studies were performed using a skin SCC cell line and normal human epidermal keratinocytes. After treatment with sulindac and an oxidizing agent, cell viability, and intracellular ROS levels were measured. An open-label clinical trial was performed using sulindac and hydrogen peroxide gels daily for 3 weeks on AKs involving the upper extremities. RESULTS In SCC cells, a combination of sulindac and an oxidizing agent lead to 400 to 500% increases in intracellular ROS, which resulted in significant cell death. In sharp contrast, normal keratinocytes did not show increases in ROS levels and were not killed. A clinical trial using the combination of sulindac and hydrogen peroxide therapy in 5 patients with AKs revealed that 60% of the treated AKs responded and 50% showed no residual AK on histopathology specimens after skin biopsy. LIMITATIONS The small number of patients and the lack of a placebo group. CONCLUSION Increased levels of ROS appear to be important in the selective killing of cancer cells in the presence of sulindac and oxidizing agents. Further studies are necessary to define the role of the combination of sulindac and oxidizing agent therapy in patients with AKs and skin cancer.
Facilitation of the Development of Critical Thinking Skills

Problem Statement: The economic and social changes in the 21st century have wide-ranging consequences for education systems. To acquire necessary competencies, what learners need most is to learn to learn by reflecting critically on their learning aims. To provide this kind of learning experience, teacher education curricula should be revised to promote critical thinking (CT). Purpose of Study: The purpose of this study is to investigate current teacher education curricula based on pre- development of CT skills (CTS). In order to fulfill that aim, courses in the curricula, teaching methods, evaluation and assessment methods, and the roles played by teachers were analyzed. Methods: In this study, a qualitative research design was used. 44 participants were selected using a purposive sampling method from the senior classes of different departments in the Faculty of Education. Three main questions including the three components of curricula (content,
Multimarket Contact, Strategic Alliances, and Firm Performance

Research on multimarket contact and firm performance has produced mixed results. To reconcile this discrepancy, we theorize how varying levels of multimarket contact may generate mutual forbearance that influences firm performance. We also examine how strategic alliances moderate the relationship between levels of multimarket contact and firm performance. Our analysis of 233 semiconductor firms across 52 markets reveals that multimarket contact has an inverted U-shaped relationship with a multimarket firm’s market share. The number of strategic alliances that a firm has helps to further extend the positive effect of multimarket contact and mitigate its negative effect on the firm’s market share. Accordingly, our study contributes to the literature on multimarket competition by shedding light on the conditions under which multimarket contact may increase/decrease firm performance.
On Continuous-Action Q-Learning via Tile Coding Function Approximation

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful machine-learning methodology that has an established theoretical foundation and has proven effective in a variety of small, simulated domains. There has been considerable work on applying RL, a method originally conceived for discrete state-action spaces, to problems with continuous states. The extension of RL to allow continuous actions, on the other hand, has seen relatively little research. One proposed approach to allowing continuous actions is to represent the value function using a tile-coding function approximator. We introduce a simulated domain for the controlled study of this method in conjunction with Q-learning and report empirical results on its performance under different parameterizations. Our experimental findings contribute a deeper understanding of the workings of tile coding in continuous-action domains, provide guidance to parameter choices, and point out an improvement on this method which we verify empirically.
3D-Assisted Coarse-to-Fine Extreme-Pose Facial Landmark Detection

We propose a novel 3D-assisted coarse-to-fine extreme-pose facial landmark detection system in this work. For a given face image, our system first refines the face bounding box with landmark locations inferred from a 3D face model generated by a Recurrent 3D Regressor at coarse level. Another R3R is then employed to fit a 3D face model onto the 2D face image cropped with the refined bounding box at fine-scale. 2D landmark locations inferred from the fitted 3D face are further adjusted with the popular 2D regression method, i.e. LBF. The 3D-assisted coarse-to-fine strategy and the 2D adjustment process explicitly ensure both the robustness to extreme face poses and bounding box disturbance and the accuracy towards pixel-level landmark displacement. Extensive experiments on the Menpo Challenge test sets demonstrate the superior performance of our system.
Detection of abandoned objects in crowded environments

With concerns about terrorism and global security on the rise, it has become vital to have in place efficient threat detection systems that can detect and recognize potentially dangerous situations, and alert the authorities to take appropriate action. Of particular significance is the case of unattended objects in mass transit areas. This paper describes a general framework that recognizes the event of someone leaving a piece of baggage unattended in forbidden areas. Our approach involves the recognition of four sub-events that characterize the activity of interest. When an unaccompanied bag is detected, the system analyzes its history to determine its most likely owner(s), where the owner is defined as the person who brought the bag into the scene before leaving it unattended. Through subsequent frames, the system keeps a lookout for the owner, whose presence in or disappearance from the scene defines the status of the bag, and decides the appropriate course of action. The system was successfully tested on the i-LIDS dataset.
Applying the Expectancy-Value Theory to Foreign Language Learning Motivation: A Case Study on Takming College Students

Being inspired by Gardner’s (Gardner, Tremblay, & Masgoret, 1997) plea to expand the spectrum of the social-educational model to different learning contexts, in terms of culture, language, and educational policies, this paper aims to examine other variables that affect the motivation of Asian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. Expectancy-Value Theory (Lewin, 1951) is introduced to the model to strengthen the study. The sample consisted of 451 first-year college students with Mandarin as their first language. The proposed model was tested using the linear structural equation analysis. It was concluded that the new motivational factors, such as Expectancy, Perceived Ability, Valence, add to our understanding of motivation in learning English as a foreign language among Asian learners.
One-Factorizations of Regular Graphs of Order 12

Algorithms for classifying one-factorizations of regular graphs are studied. The smallest open case is currently graphs of order 12; one-factorizations of $r$-regular graphs of order 12 are here classified for $r\leq 6$ and $r=10,11$. Two different approaches are used for regular graphs of small degree; these proceed one-factor by one-factor and vertex by vertex, respectively. For degree $r=11$, we have one-factorizations of $K_{12}$. These have earlier been classified, but a new approach is presented which views these as certain triple systems on $4n-1$ points and utilizes an approach developed for classifying Steiner triple systems. Some properties of the classified one-factorizations are also tabulated.
Relationship between weight-related teasing and levels of physical activity

Weight-related teasing is associated with predictors of physical activity such as self-efficacy and social support. It is possible that more frequent weight-related teasing is directly associated with engagement in physical activity. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between weight-related teasing and engagement in physical activity, body composition and physical activity enjoyment among female college students. This study also investigated the possibility that physical activity enjoyment mediates the relationship between weight-related teasing and physical activity. Fifty-seven female college students participated in the study. Participants completed the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale to measure how much they enjoyed participating in physical activity and the Perception of Teasing Scale to evaluate experiences of weight teasing. Participants also wore the Actigraph GT3X+ accelerometers for seven days. Finally, body composition was analyzed using bioelectrical impedance. Body fat percentage was negatively correlated to physical activity enjoyment (r = -.313, p < .05) and vigorous physical activity (r = -.296, p < .05), and positively correlated to teasing frequency (r = .397, p < .05). Physical activity enjoyment was negatively related to frequency of weight-related teasing (r = -.313, p < .05), and positively correlated to the physical activity habit variables (r = .543, p < .05). Weightrelated teasing was negatively correlated to vigorous physical activity (r = -.232, p < .05). Weight-related teasing was not a significant predictor of vigorous physical activity (F1,55 = 3.14; p = .082; r2 = .05), but it was a significant predictor of physical activity enjoyment (F1,55 = 16.4; p < .01; r2 = .23). Finally, physical activity enjoyment was a significant predictor of vigorous physical activity (F1,55 = 5.96; p = .018; r2 = .10). It is important to design physical activity programs that participants find enjoyable and safe, specially overweight and obese female participants. Fitness instructors should be educated about the effects of teasing on physical activity enjoyment and engagement in vigorous physical activity. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WEIGHT-RELATED TEASING AND LEVELS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts
Video background subtracion using improved Adaptive-K Gaussian Mixture Model

Video stream segmentation is a critical step in many computer vision applications. Background subtraction based on Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is a commonly used technique for video segmentation. In this paper, an improved Adaptive-K Gaussian Mixture Model (AKGMM) method was presented for updating background. The dimension of the parameter space at each pixel can be adjusted adaptively according to the frequency of pixel value changes. The number of GMM reflected the complexity of pattern at the pixel. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method is more adaptive and robust than some existing approaches.
Developmental Changes in Real Life Decision Making: Performance on a Gambling Task Previously Shown to Depend on the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex

Patients with bilateral lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, when performing gambling tasks modeling real-life decision-making, opt for choices that yield high immediate gains in spite of higher future losses. Under the hypothesis that the prefrontal cortex is the last brain region to mature, it was examined whether young children would show a similar preference for immediate prospects. In Experiment 1, 4 age groups (6-9, 10-12, 13-15 and 18-25 years olds) performed 2 versions of a computerized variant of the original Iowa gambling task under 3 different feedback conditions (no feedback, global feedback, and option-specific feedback) and completed the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices as an index of inductive reasoning ability. In Experiment 2, 3 age groups (7-8, 11-12, and 15-16 year olds) performed both task versions in addition to a working memory task ('Digit Span Backwards'). Results showed a developmental increase in the sensitivity to future consequences, positive or negative, that could not be explained by developmental changes in working memory capacity or inductive reasoning. It was concluded that young children share with ventromedial prefrontal patients the failure to anticipate on future outcomes.
Preserving Location Privacy for a Group of Users

Location privacy is an interesting problem that has been receiving considerable attention. This problem has been widely discussed from the individual point of view; however, there exist only a few works that support location privacy for a group of users. In this paper we consider the problem of supporting location privacy for a group of users during the use of location-based services (LBSs). We assume a group of users who want to benefit from a LBS and find the nearest meeting place that minimizes their aggregate distance. Each user in this scenario wants to protect his or her location from the LBS, outside attackers, and other group members. We show that individual solutions for location privacy cannot be directly applied to the group location privacy problem and a special solution must be developed. We identify the privacy issues for this group scenario and propose a resource-aware solution in order to satisfy these group privacy issues. Our solution is based on secure multiparty computation and the anonymous veto network protocol. The proposed protocol decreases the number of group queries to a large extent, as it only sends a single query to the LBS. Consequently, the LBS overhead to evaluate the query and the size of the LBS result are significantly decreased. The proposed protocol also protects the LBS from the excessive disclosure of points of interest and the LBS provider only needs to apply an existing private nearest neighbor (NN) query algorithm instead of an aggregate NN query algorithm. The performance and security analysis show that the protocol is secure against a partial collusion attack and a denialof-service attack in a malicious model.
Lost in the detail: Prosecutors' perceptions of the utility of video recorded police interviews as rape complainant evidence

This study explored the perceptions of ten Crown Prosecutors about the utility of police interviews as video evidence-in-chief for adult sexual assault complainants to determine how to improve these interviews. A themed analysis of prosecutors' responses indicated three major concerns about these interviews: the interviewer using wordy instructions, the lack of chronology and logical structure, and the relentless pursuit of unnecessary detail. These findings suggest that prosecutors' concerns are primarily due to police using cognitive interview methods that attempt to enhance the amount of detail recalled by a complainant. The authors discuss why generating large amounts of detail may be problematic in interviews with sexual assault complainants and provide recommendations for how police can adapt interview practices to better meet evidential needs.
Widespread Disruption of Repressor Element-1 Silencing Transcription Factor/Neuron-Restrictive Silencer Factor Occupancy at Its Target Genes in Huntington's Disease

Huntingtin is a protein that is mutated in Huntington's disease (HD), a dominant inherited neurodegenerative disorder. We previously proposed that, in addition to the gained toxic activity of the mutant protein, selective molecular dysfunctions in HD may represent the consequences of the loss of wild-type protein activity. We first reported that wild-type huntingtin positively affects the transcription of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene, a cortically derived survival factor for the striatal neurons that are mainly affected in the disease. Mutation in huntingtin decreases BDNF gene transcription. One mechanism involves the activation of repressor element 1/neuron-restrictive silencer element (RE1/NRSE) located within the BDNF promoter. We now show that increased binding of the RE1 silencing transcription factor/neuron-restrictive silencer factor (REST/NRSF) repressor occurs at multiple genomic RE1/NRSE loci in HD cells, in animal models, and in postmortem brains, resulting in a decrease of RE1/NRSE-mediated gene transcription. The same molecular phenotype is produced in cells and brain tissue depleted of endogenous huntingtin, thereby directly validating the loss-of-function hypothesis of HD. Through a ChIP (chromatin immunoprecipitation)-on-chip approach, we examined occupancy of multiple REST/NRSF target genes in the postmortem HD brain, providing the first example of the application of this technology to neurodegenerative diseases. Finally, we show that attenuation of REST/NRSF binding restores BDNF levels, suggesting that relief of REST/NRSF mediated repression can restore aberrant neuronal gene transcription in HD.
Electrically small fractal antennas

The design of electrically small antennas continues to be a challenging effort, primarily due to the tradeoffs involved in reducing antenna electrical size while attempting to maintain some level of acceptable impedance and bandwidth at lower frequencies, especially in HF band applications. Fractal geometries offer a practical solution to these challenges by providing a method for generating complex structures within a bounded region in achieving performance goals with electrically small designs. Fractal geometries can offer a suitable alternative when design requirements and restrictions on maximum height and volume would otherwise not support self-resonance at a lower required frequency. Several new antenna designs developed using fractal concepts are presented along with comparative results.
Efficient maximum likelihood estimation of linear models with APL

Maximum likelihood estimators used in statistics and econometrics have desirable properties, however, due to the complexity of their solution maximum likelihood techniques are not widely used. This paper examines an APL implementation of one of the most efficient algorithms used to estimate the parameters of the univariate ARMA process. The straight-forward use of APL is found to be unacceptable and so a systematic search for optimizations is made. This search results in an approximate solution for the ML estimator, the use of &#9633;NA and FORTRAN, and special matrix techniques to increase the efficiency of the algorithm. The matrix techniques used are implementations of sparse, banded, and block diagonal data structures. Additional matrix techniques involve incremental updating of matrices. The effect of these optimizations is to bring the computational cost from an O(N*3) problem to an O(N*1) problem. This translates into a significant reduction in computer requirements. For example, to estimate a three parameter ARMA model with 5000 observations, memory requirements fall from approximately 95 megabytes to 300 kilobytes. Computer time falls from about 6.4 years to under 1 minute.
Value of a novel Neisseria meningitidis--specific polymerase chain reaction assay in skin biopsy specimens as a diagnostic tool in chronic meningococcemia.

BACKGROUND Chronic meningococcemia (CM) is a diagnostic challenge. Skin lesions are frequent but in most cases nonspecific. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based diagnosis has been validated in blood and cerebrospinal fluid for acute Neisseria meningitidis infection, in patients in whom routine microbiologic tests have failed to isolate the bacteria. In 2 patients with CM, we established the diagnosis by a newly developed PCR-based approach performed on skin biopsy specimens. OBSERVATIONS Two patients presented with fever together with systemic and cutaneous manifestations suggestive of CM. Although findings from blood cultures remained negative, we were able to identify N meningitidis in the skin lesions by a newly developed PCR assay. In 1 patient, an N meningitidis strain of the same serogroup was also isolated from a throat swab specimen. Both patients rapidly improved after appropriate antibiotherapy. CONCLUSIONS To our knowledge, we report the first cases of CM diagnosed by PCR testing on skin biopsy specimens. It is noteworthy that, although N meningitidis-specific PCR is highly sensitive in blood and cerebrospinal fluid in acute infections, our observations underscore the usefulness of PCR performed on skin lesions for the diagnosis of chronic N meningitidis infections. Whenever possible, this approach should be systematically employed in patients for whom N meningitidis infection cannot be confirmed by routine microbiologic investigations.
Losing your creativity - storytelling comparison between children and adolescents

In this paper we study pico projector based storytelling among adolescents. We compare the results of our user study of 17 students to the results of our earlier study among young children. Our main focus was on creativity, playfulness and fun as well as on the ubiquitous nature of the technology and use of environment. The comparison highlighted interesting differences. The nature of creativity seems to be changing, but the sources of fun and playfulness still share similarities. Groups also utilize surroundings and the ubiquitous nature of the technology in a slightly different manner. The perceived capabilities of the provided technology also had a more profound effect on the adolescents, even to the extent of it restricting their creativity.
Pyramid coordinates for morphing and deformation

Many model editing operations, such as morphing, blending, and shape deformation requires the ability to interactively transform the surface of a model in response to some control mechanism. For most computer graphics applications, it is important to preserve the local shape properties of input models during editing operations. We introduce the mesh editing technique that explicitly preserves local shape properties. The method is based on a local shape representation, which we refer to as pyramid coordinates. The pyramid coordinates capture the local shape of the mesh around each vertex and help maintain this shape under various editing operations. They are based on a set of angles and lengths relating a vertex to its immediate neighbors. This representation is invariant under rigid transformations. Using pyramid coordinates, we introduce A technique for mesh deformation and morphing based on a small number of user-specified control vertices. Our algorithm generates natural looking deformations and morphing sequences in seconds with minimal user interaction.