Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Flooding and MRF-based Algorithms for Interactive Segmentation

We propose a method for interactive colour image segmentation. The goal is to detect an object from the background, when some markers on object(s) and the background are given. As features only probability distributions of the data are used. At first, all the labelled seeds are independently propagated for obtaining homogeneous connected components for each of them. Then the image is divided in blocks, which are classified according to their probabilistic distance from the classified regions. A topographic surface for each class is obtained, using Bayesian dissimilarities and a min-max criterion. Two algorithms are proposed: a regularized classification based on the topographic surface and incorporating an MRF model, and a priority multi-label flooding algorithm. Segmentation results on the LHI data set are presented.
First human study in treatment of unresectable liver metastases from colorectal cancer with irinotecan-loaded beads (DEBIRI)

The objective of this pilot clinical study was to assess the safety, technical feasibility, pharmacokinetic (PK) profile and tumour response of DC Bead™ with irinotecan (DEBIRI™) delivered by intra-arterial embolisation for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer. Eleven patients with unresectable liver metastases from CRC, tumour burden <30% of liver volume, adequate haematological, liver and renal function, performance status of <2 were included in this study. Patients received up to 4 sessions of TACE with DEBIRI at 3-week intervals. Feasibility of the procedure, safety and tumour response were assessed after each cycle. PK was measured after the first cycle. Patients were followed up to 24 weeks. Only mild to moderate adverse events were observed. DEBIRI is a technically feasibile procedure; no technical complications were observed. Average Cmax for irinotecan and SN-38 was 194 ng/ml and 16.7 ng/ml, respectively, with average t½ of 4.6 h and 12.4 h following administration of DEBIRI. Best overall response during the study showed disease control in 9 patients (2 patients with partial response and 7 with stable disease, overall response rate of 18%). Our study shows that transarterial chemoembolisation with irinotecan-loaded DC beads (DEBIRI) is safe, technically feasible and effective with a good PK profile.
UAS deployment and data processing during the Balkans flooding

This project paper provides a report on a real relief operation mission, jointly conducted by two European research projects, in response to the massive flooding in the Balkan in spring 2014. Un Unmanned Aerial System was deployed on-site in collaboration with traditional relief workers, to support them with damage assessment, area mapping, visual inspection and re-localizing the many explosive remnants of war which have been moved due to the flooding and landslides. Novel robotic technologies and data processing methodologies were brought from the research labs and directly applied onto the terrain in order to support the relief workers and minimize human suffering.
Hindi Word Sketches

Word sketches are one-page automatic, corpus-based summaries of a word’s grammatical and collocational behaviour. These are widely used for studying a language and in lexicography. Sketch Engine is a leading corpus tool which takes as input a corpus and generates word sketches for the words of that language. It also generates a thesaurus and ‘sketch differences’, which specify similarities and differences between near-synonyms. In this paper, we present the functionalities of Sketch Engine for Hindi. We collected HindiWaC, a web crawled corpus for Hindi with 240 million words. We lemmatized, POS tagged the corpus and then loaded it into Sketch Engine.
Dielectrophoresis‐assisted massively parallel cell pairing and fusion based on field constriction created by a micro‐orifice array sheet

In this paper, we present a novel electrofusion device that enables massive parallelism, using an electrically insulating sheet having a two‐dimensional micro‐orifice array. The sheet is sandwiched by a pair of micro‐chambers with immersed electrodes, and each chamber is filled with the suspensions of the two types of cells to be fused. Dielectrophoresis, assisted by sedimentation, is used to position the cells in the upper chamber down onto the orifices, then the device is flipped over to position the cells on the other side, so that cell pairs making contact in the orifice are formed. When a pulse voltage is applied to the electrodes, most voltage drop occurs around the orifice and impressed on the cell membrane in the orifice. This makes possible the application of size‐independent voltage to fuse two cells in contact at all orifices exclusively in 1:1 manner. In the experiment, cytoplasm of one of the cells is stained with a fluorescence dye, and the transfer of the fluorescence to the other cell is used as the indication of fusion events. The two‐dimensional orifice arrangement at the pitch of 50 μm realizes simultaneous fusion of 6×103 cells on a 4 mm diameter chip, and the fusion yield of 78–90% is achieved for various sizes and types of cells.
Bombs, Brains, and Science: The Role of Human and Physical Capital for the Creation of Scientific Knowledge

Abstract I examine the role of human and physical capital for the creation of scientific knowledge. I address the endogeneity of human and physical capital with two exogenous shocks: the dismissal of scientists in Nazi Germany and World War II bombings. A 10% shock to human capital reduced output by 0.2 SD in the short run, and the reduction persisted in the long run. A 10% shock to physical capital reduced output by 0.05 SD in the short run, and the reduction did not persist. The dismissal of star scientists caused much larger reductions in output because they are key for attracting other successful scientists.
Narrow bus encoding for low power systems

High integration in integrated circuits often leads to the problem of running out of pins. Narrow data buses can he used to alleviate this problem at the cost of performance degradation due to wait cycles. In this paper, we address bus coding methods for low power core-based systems incorporating narrow buses. Although the conventional bus-invert code performs well for completely random patterns, we show that transition signaling combined with bus-invert, which we call BITS coding, can achieve much more power saving for data patterns of typical DSP applications. The application of BITS coding to a real circuit design is limited by the overhead of the encoder and decoder circuits and the extra bus line introduced. We propose an approximate version of BITS coding, which does not require the extra bus line while retaining the advantage of BITS coding.
Influence of Age and Nutritional Status on the Performance of the Tuberculin Skin Test and QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube in Young Children Evaluated for Tuberculosis in Southern India

Background: Reliable identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection or tuberculosis (TB) disease in young children is vital to assure adequate preventive and curative treatment. The tuberculin skin test (TST) and IFN&ggr;-release assays may supplement the diagnosis of pediatric TB as cases are typically bacteriologically unconfirmed. However, it is unclear to what extent the performance of TST and QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube (QFT; Cellestis’ IFN&ggr;-release assay test) depends on the demographic, clinical and nutritional characteristics of children in whom they are tested. Methods: During a 2-year prospective observational study of 4382 neonates in Southern India, children with suspected TB were investigated and classified by a standard TB diagnostic algorithm. Results: Clinical TB was diagnosed in 13 of 705 children referred for case verification with suspected TB. TST and QFT had a susceptibility for clinical TB of 31% and 23%, respectively, in this group. Children <2 years were more likely to test QFT indeterminate. A height-for-age Z score within the lowest quartile increased the odds ratio (OR) for a positive or indeterminate QFT result [OR 2.46 (1.19–5.06), OR 3.08 (1.10–8.58)], whereas the OR for a positive TST was reduced with a weight-for-height Z score within the lowest quartile [OR 0.17 (0.06–0.47)]. Conclusion: The sensitivities of the TST and QFT for clinical TB in children <3 years of age were equally poor in this population. Stunted children were more susceptible to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and more prone to indeterminate QFT results. TST was less reliable in children with wasting.
Aggregating sentence-level features for Chinese near-duplicate document detection

Detecting near-duplicate documents efficiently is an indispensable capability for many applications, such as searching engines, information retrieval systems, and recommendation systems. In this paper, we propose a novel content presentation method for near-duplicate document detection from a large collection of Chinese documents. The proposed method, called multi-aggregation fingerprint (MAF), consists of sentence-level feature extraction and multi-feature aggregation. Compared with terms, sentences are more representative and contain more abundant and integrated information. Thus, we extract the crucial information of sentences to form the sentence features. To improve the accuracy and efficiency of near-duplicate document detection, we exploit both holistic characteristics of sentence features in the dataset and the statistic information of sentence features belonging to a document. Accordingly, we split the sentence feature space based on the distribution of features in the dataset. Each sentence feature is assigned to the nearest partition of the feature space, and multiple sentence features are aggregated into a compact and global fingerprint. Experimental results show the proposed MAF method can produce competitive results on the Chinese document dataset.
The Applications Of Genetic Algorithms InStock Market Data Mining Optimisation

In the stock market, a technical trading rule is a popular tool for analysts and users to carry out their research and decide to buy or sell their shares. The key issue for the success of a trading rule is the selection of values for all parameters and their combinations. However, the range of parameters can vary in a large domain, so it is difficult for users to find the best parameter combination. In this paper, we present the Genetic Algorithm (GA) to overcome the problem in two steps: first, setting a sub-domain of the parameters with GA; second, finding a near optimal value in the sub domain with GA in a very reasonable time.
Be Happy in your Work: The Role of Positive Psychology in Working with Change and Performance

ABSTRACT This narrative targets the role of happiness (subjective well-being) in change and performance in the workforce. Grounded within the paradigm of positive psychology, we draw on theory and research from several performance-related domains (including sport and physical activity) to describe the development of happiness in organizations and associated benefits to individuals and groups. Our review highlights the physical and mental health benefits of happiness, bidirectional associations between happiness and work-based performance (occupational success), and the contribution of individual differences (genetics and personality) to happiness and well-being. Moreover, we list a series of empirically guided techniques – often utilized in the domain of sport and performance psychology – that might be considered in the development of happiness in organizations. These include positive mental imagery, hypothetical thinking, cognitive reappraisal (and the development of a challenge state), physical activity, and writing-based interventions. We conclude by offering potential avenues for research inquiry as they relate to change and performance in organizations.
Demoralization in opioid dependent patients : a comparative study with cancer patients and community subjects

Aim: To study existential distress or demoralization expressed as meaninglessness and helplessness in opioid de- pendent patients. Method: Comparison of existential distress between opioid dependent patients (n=131), patients with advanced cancer (n=100) and a community based sample without severe psychiatric or somatic disorders (n=190) as measured with the De- moralization Scale. Results: Community controls without somatic or psychiatric disorders have significantly lower scores on all Demoralization Subscales. Opioid dependent patients are strikingly more demoralized than patients with cancer. Conclusion: Opioid dependent patients suffer from severe existential distress (meaninglessness, helplessness) which can ex- plain the high prevalence of suicide in this group.
Single-molecule spectroscopy reveals chaperone-mediated expansion of substrate protein

Significance Molecular chaperones are a group of proteins that are essential for avoiding the aggregation of other proteins in the crowded cellular environment. Chaperones function by interacting with these substrate proteins in different ways. However, it has remained a challenge to measure the changes that occur in the substrate proteins and understand how these changes prevent misfolding or aggregation. Here we investigate a chaperone system that keeps the substrate protein denatured by clamping the polypeptide chain. We observe an expansion of the substrate protein chain up to 30-fold in volume owing to steric repulsion between multiple copies of the chaperone bound to a single substrate protein. In this way, unwanted interactions within or between substrate proteins can be prevented. Molecular chaperones are an essential part of the machinery that avoids protein aggregation and misfolding in vivo. However, understanding the molecular basis of how chaperones prevent such undesirable interactions requires the conformational changes within substrate proteins to be probed during chaperone action. Here we use single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy to investigate how the DnaJ–DnaK chaperone system alters the conformational distribution of the denatured substrate protein rhodanese. We find that in a first step the ATP-independent binding of DnaJ to denatured rhodanese results in a compact denatured ensemble of the substrate protein. The following ATP-dependent binding of multiple DnaK molecules, however, leads to a surprisingly large expansion of denatured rhodanese. Molecular simulations indicate that hard-core repulsion between the multiple DnaK molecules provides the underlying mechanism for disrupting even strong interactions within the substrate protein and preparing it for processing by downstream chaperone systems.
DOA estimation with compressing sensing based array interpolation technique in multi-carrier frequency MIMO HFSWR

In order to improve the angle resolution of MIMO HFSWR for high-resolution direction of arrival (DOA) estimation. We use large spaced multi-carrier frequencies to extend the virtual aperture of the MIMO HFSWR. The case of sources with the same amplitude at the employed frequencies is considered, which permits the use of multi-carrier frequency measurements at the receive array to construct a virtual measurement corresponding to a virtual non-uniform linear array (VNLA) at a single carrier frequency. A compressive sensing (CS) based array interpolation method is developed to fully utilize the extended aperture offered by the VNLA. Simulation results show the validity and efficiency of the proposed method.
A JADE-based Autonomous Workflow Management System for Collaborative IC Design

This paper proposes a multi-agent system to manage the distributed collaborative design environment. The JADE-based autonomous workflow management system (JAWMS) uses a workflow enactment mechanism and an agent integration mechanism. The workflow enactment mechanism is the system kernel and follows the specifications of the workflow reference model. The system kernel supports five agents to manage the workflow and the integration mechanism supports an agent to interact with other platforms and to coordinate and monitor the workflow. JAWMS facilitates integrated circuit design and team interaction in a collaborative but distributed product development environment.
Restoring Connections: Social Workers' Practice Wisdom towards Achieving Social Justice

‘Restoring Connections’ was an action-research study that examined social work practice by focusing upon resilience and reconciliation with people who have experienced traumatic loss arising from social injustice or institutional abuse. The project examines the waysinwhichsocialworkerscanfosterlinks andrestoreconnectionsbetweentheexperiencesofpeople’sprivateexperienceofloss withpublicandstructuralissues.Thisresearch servedas a meansof understanding personal traumaarising from unjustsocialpolicyand practice, and how such affected people seek and obtain social justice. A focus group of social work practitioners met to discuss questions aimed at eliciting their practice wisdom about moving personal testimony associated with interpersonal practice towards the public sphere. The social justice insights and questions resulting from this focusgroupareexaminedusingFinnandJacobson’s‘JustPracticeFramework’andMargalit’swritingsaboutadecentsociety.Thefindingsfromthisgroupsupportpreviousstudies thatachievingsocialjusticeinsocialworkpracticeremainsadifficultbutintegralconcept in our work. This paper concludes with suggestions for strengthening socially just processes and practices in social work education and professional development through a stronger focus on the concepts of history and possibility.
Denoising of Hyperspectral Image Using Low-Rank Matrix Factorization

Restoration of hyperspectral images (HSIs) is a challenging task, owing to the reason that images are inevitably contaminated by a mixture of noise, including Gaussian noise, impulse noise, dead lines, and stripes, during their acquisition process. Recently, HSI denoising approaches based on low-rank matrix approximation have become an active research field in remote sensing and have achieved state-of-the-art performance. These approaches, however, unavoidably require to calculate full or partial singular value decomposition of large matrices, leading to the relatively high computational cost and limiting their flexibility. To address this issue, this letter proposes a method exploiting a low-rank matrix factorization scheme, in which the associated robust principal component analysis is solved by the matrix factorization of the low-rank component. Our method needs only an upper bound of the rank of the underlying low-rank matrix rather than the precise value. The experimental results on the simulated and real data sets demonstrate the performance of our method by removing the mixed noise and recovering the severely contaminated images.
Bounding Search Space Size via (Hyper)tree Decompositions

This paper develops a measure for bounding the performance of AND/OR search algorithms for solving a variety of queries over graphical models. We show how drawing a connection to the recent notion of hypertree decompositions allows to exploit determinism in the problem specification and produce tighter bounds. We demonstrate on a variety of practical problem instances that we are often able to improve upon existing bounds by several orders of magnitude.
Mr. Monk and the case of constructed identity: investigating culture in the televised portrayal of mental illness

of MR. MONK AND THE CASE OF CONSTRUCTED IDENTITY: INVESTIGATING CULTURE IN THE TELEVISED PORTRAYAL OF MENTAL ILLNESS by Kathleen Grove Derby Rooted in cultural studies and critical theory, this thesis examines the portrayal of mental illness in the television series Monk. In response to popular readings of the text as a positive depiction of a character with a mental illness, which is in contrast to a history stigmatizing portrayals, textual analysis is used to explore the discursive construction of the identity of main character, Adrian Monk. Since the multiple meanings within a text are representative of the culture that produces it, this analysis explores textual insights into prevailing attitudes and beliefs about people with mental illnesses against the backdrop of continuing progress in the area of mental health. As a supportive framework, Burkean themes of motivation and struggle within a social hierarchy are used in the rhetorical analysis of representations of identification, marginalization, maintenance of the status quo, and change. ________________________________ Committee Chair Michele Foss-Snowden
Failure of oral DHEA treatment to increase local salivary androgen outputs of female patients with Sjögren's syndrome

Objectives: Sjögren's syndrome (SS) is a female-dominant autoimmune disease characterized by androgen depletion and defective dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) processing enzymatic machinery in the salivary glands. We hypothesized that, because of these local failures, DHEA replacement therapy would be unable to improve the local androgen deficiency in SS salivary glands. Methods: DHEA-deficient female SS patients (n = 12) were treated with placebo for 4 months followed by DHEA 50 mg q.d. for 4 months. Serum and saliva, collected in the morning before the trial and after both periods, were analysed for pro-hormones, androgens, and androgen metabolite using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results: DHEA treatment increased serum DHEA-sulfate from 1.3 ± 0.1 to 6.4 ± 1.3 µM (p = 0.005), DHEA from 16.5 ± 2.8 to 34.8 ± 8.2 nM (p = 0.012), androstenedione from 3.1 ± 0.3 to 17.2 ± 1.9 nM (p = 0.002), free testosterone from 2.2 ± 0.1 to 7.7 ± 1.1 pM (p = 0.002), DHT from 275.5 ± 24.4 to 834.6 ± 122.8 pM (p = 0.002) and 3-α-diol-G from 3.8 ± 0.6 to 13.6 ± 2.0 nM (p = 0.001). However, only salivary DHEA and DHT outputs increased significantly and 25% of the patients showed no increases, except for DHEA itself. Outputs of active androgens (T, DHT) and 3-α-diol-G metabolite correlated with salivation. Conclusions: The local androgen deficiency in SS salivary glands is not only caused by low serum DHEA(-S) because restoration of systemic androgen levels by DHEA treatment did not correct local androgen depletion. This could be explained by low or no capacity of DHEA-substituted patients to convert the pro-steroid to active androgen metabolites. Such intracrine failures affect women in particular, who must produce their salivary T and DHT locally from DHEA.
Circadian Regulation of Hippocampal Long-Term Potentiation

The goal of this study is to investigate the possible circadian regulation of hippocampal excitability and long-term potentiation (LTP) measured by stimulating the Schaffer collaterals (SC) and recording the field excitatory postsynaptic potential (fEPSP) from the CA1 dendritic layer or the population spike (PS) from the soma in brain slices of C3H and C57 mice. These 2 strains of mice were of interest because the C3H mice secrete melatonin rhythmically while the C57 mice do not. The authors found that the magnitude of the enhancement of the PS was significantly greater in LTP recorded from night slices compared to day slices of both C3H and C57 mice. They also found significant diurnal variation in the decay of LTP measured with fEPSPs, with the decay slower during the night in both strains of mice. There was evidence for a diurnal rhythm in the input/output function of pyramidal neurons measured at the soma in C57 but not C3H mice. Furthermore, LTP in the PS, measured in slices prepared during the day but recorded during the night, had a profile remarkably similar to the night group. Finally, PS recordings were carried out in slices from C3H mice maintained in constant darkness prior to experimentation. Again, the authors found that the magnitude of the enhancement of the PS was significantly greater in LTP recorded from subjective night slices compared to subjective day slices. These results provide the 1st evidence that an endogenous circadian oscillator modulates synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus.