Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Approach to Video Coding Using Parameter Estimation in the Decoding Process

In this paper, a novel image authentication scheme is proposed based on Sudoku puzzle. The goal of this scheme is to verify the integrity of an image against network attackers with malice. Sudoku is a logic-based combinatorial number-placement puzzle. Sudoku rule as its name means that the digits must be single. Here, it is used to be the verification code, instead of material watermarks, for the image. In this way the message receiver will not hold the verification code or watermarks when in the tampering detection. He or she only needs to examine the validity of the Sudoku grid. Simulation results showed that the proposed scheme can detect any an alteration and accurately mark where the tampered regions are.
EXPERIMENTAL AND SIMULATION ANALYSIS OF BREAK-LOCK IN PHASE LOCKED LOOP SYNTHESIZER FOR FREQUENCY TRACKING APPLICATIONS

Modern missile seekers invariably employ monopulse radar with phase locked loop (PLL) as a frequency (angle) tracking subsystem in the receiver. The frequency locking and/or unlocking of these receivers can be achieved either by introducing imperfections in the monopulse design or using multiple repeater sources. In the present paper, the break-lock of PLL synthesizer in the monopulse radar receiver is presented. The linear frequency modulated (LFM) signal has been used as a repeater interference signal, which is injected into the PLL along with radar echo signal. The frequency deviation as a function of LFM signal power required to break-lock is presented for different values of modulation rate and echo signal power. The simulation results show that breaklock is achieved at frequency deviation of 0.36 MHz (0.35 MHz measured value) for a typical jammer power of -14 dBm and modulation rate of 200 kHz with radar echo signal power of -14 dBm at the PLL input. The measured results show that at a typical jammer power of -14 dBm, break-lock is achieved at frequency deviations of 0.35 and 0.9 MHz for modulation rates of 200 and 500 kHz respectively, revealing that at lower values of modulation rate, breaklock is achieved at lower values of frequency deviation. The computer simulation is carried out for performance prediction and experimental measurement results are presented in support of the simulated results. With fairly good and consistent agreement between the measured and simulated results, the PLL is well suited to be integrated within monopulse radar receivers for LFM jamming.
Cognition, Emotion, and Neurobiological Development: Mediating the Relation Between Maltreatment and Aggression

Child maltreatment has been consistently linked to aggression, yet there have been few attempts to conceptualize precisely how maltreatment influences the development of aggression. This review proposes that biases in cognitive, emotional, and neurobiological development mediate the relation between childhood maltreatment and the development of aggression. In addition, it is posited that physical abuse and neglect may have differential effects on development: Physical abuse may result in hypervigilance to threat and a hostile attributional bias, whereas neglect may result in difficulties with emotion regulation because of a lack of emotional interactions. These processes may be “hardwired” into neural networks via the overactivation of certain brain regions and dysfunctional cognitive processes. The theoretical and necessarily speculative nature of this article is intended to stimulate hypotheses for future research. Only when the adverse effects of maltreatment on brain and cognitive development are understood can scholars hope to develop more effective interventions to alter the developmental pathway to aggression.
Effects of enhanced external counterpulsation on anginal symptoms and improvements in objective measures of myocardial ischaemia

Summary Background Enhanced external counterpulsation (EECP) is a novel, potentially beneficial adjunct therapy used for angina pectoris. We assessed the efficacy of this method in relieving angina and improving objective measures of myocardial ischaemia. Methods All patients (67) who referred for EECP to Shahid Chamran Hospital, Isfahan, Iran from 2002 to 2005 were included. Demographic data, coronary artery disease (CAD) risk factors and baseline angiographic data were collected. Anginal symptoms, Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) functional class, echocardiographic parameters (ejection fraction, left ventricular end-diastolic and end-systolic diameters) and exercise test duration before and after the treatment were compared. Results Seventy-seven per cent of patients who had undergone EECP had a positive clinical response. Exercise test duration and CCS functional class improved after the treatment. However, EECP had no significant effect on echocardiographic parameters. Efficacy was independent of age, gender, CAD risk factors, prior CCS functional class and echocardiographic parameters. Patients without left main artery involvement and those who had at least one non-obstructed artery demonstrated a greater likelihood of improvement. Conclusion The results of this study suggested that EECP is a safe, well tolerated, and significantly effective treatment for angina pectoris.
Structure and photoluminescence evolution of nanodots during pyrolysis of citric acid: from molecular nanoclusters to carbogenic nanoparticles

Citric-acid-derived carbon nanodots are increasingly being explored as novel fluorescent nanomaterials due to their strong photoluminescence (PL). However, an accurate picture of the formation of carbon nanodots and an exhaustive structure–property correlation are still lacking. Herein we present a systematic investigation of the formation mechanism of carbon nanodots by following the pyrolysis of a citric acid–diethylenetriamine precursor at different temperatures. The collective nanodots are investigated by dynamic rheological measurements, exhibiting a strong pyrolytic temperature dependence of the viscoelastic properties. Atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy reveal that the synthesized “dots” at different pyrolytic temperatures are different in essence, and the transition of their chemical structure from molecular clusters to carbogenic nanoparticles during pyrolysis is highly verified. We find that a molecular fluorophore with intense PL predominates at low temperature (<250 °C), but a newly created quasi-molecular fluorophore with blue-shifted and decreased PL quantum yield predominates at high temperatures (300 °C). Time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy suggests that the strong PL suppression at high temperature is due mostly to a dramatic increase in the nonradiative decay rate of the quasi-molecular electronic state.
Thrombospondin 1 as an effective gene therapeutic strategy in collagen-induced arthritis.

OBJECTIVE Because thrombospondin 1 (TSP-1) inhibits angiogenesis and activates latent transforming growth factor beta (TGFbeta), a potent immunosuppressive and antiinflammatory cytokine, we investigated the prophylactic and therapeutic effects of TSP-1 gene transfer in the collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) model in rats. METHODS Adenoviral vectors encoding mouse TSP-1 (AdTSP-1) or beta-galactosidase (AdLacZ) as the control were administered by intraarticular injection into CIA rats. The treated ankles were assessed clinically, radiographically, and histologically. Furthermore, expression levels of TSP-1, TGFbeta, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta) were examined in the synovial tissue. RESULTS Intraarticular administration of AdTSP-1 reduced the severity of CIA as revealed by examination of the clinical, radiographic, and histologic aspects. Rats treated with AdTSP-1, as compared with AdLacZ-treated controls, were found to have fewer blood vessels (mean +/- SEM 21.0 +/- 0.6 versus 45.3 +/- 2.3/mm(2); P < 0.001) and lower production of VEGF (17 +/- 4 versus 45 +/- 10 pg/mg of total protein; P < 0.05) and IL-1beta (374 +/- 41 versus 526 +/- 39 pg/mg of total protein; P < 0.05), as well as higher levels of TSP-1 and TGFbeta in the synovial tissue. CONCLUSION Direct intraarticular administration of adenoviral vectors encoding TSP-1 significantly ameliorated the clinical course of CIA, accompanied by reduction of synovial hypertrophy and fewer blood vessels. These results suggest that TSP-1 gene therapy may have therapeutic potential for the management of rheumatoid arthritis.
On the generation of ERS/ENVISAT DInSAR time-series via the SBAS technique

We exploit the small baseline subset (SBAS) algorithm for generating deformation time-series from SAR data acquired by sensors with different characteristics but with the same illumination geometry. In particular, our approach is focused on the use of European Remote Sensing (ERS) and ENVISAT satellite data, the latter acquired by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar sensor on the IS2 swath. The proposed solution is oriented to investigate large-scale displacements with a relatively low spatial resolution (about 100/spl times/100 m) and implements an easy but effective combination of ERS and ENVISAT multilook interferograms which benefits of the temporal overlap between the acquisitions of the two sensors. Moreover, the algorithm does not rely on specific hypothesis on the spatial or temporal characteristics of the investigated deformations. Presented results, achieved on a synthetic aperture radar dataset relevant to the Napoli city area (Italy), confirm the validity of the approach.
Suicidal ideation and behaviour among community and health care seeking populations in five low- and middle-income countries: a cross-sectional study

Aims Suicidal behaviour is an under-reported and hidden cause of death in most low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) due to lack of national systematic reporting for cause-specific mortality, high levels of stigma and religious or cultural sanctions. The lack of information on non-fatal suicidal behaviour (ideation, plans and attempts) in LMIC is a major barrier to design and implementation of prevention strategies. This study aims to determine the prevalence of non-fatal suicidal behaviour within community- and health facility-based populations in LMIC. Methods Twelve-month prevalence of suicidal ideation, plans and attempts were established through community samples (n = 6689) and primary care attendees (n = 6470) from districts in Ethiopia, Uganda, South Africa, India and Nepal using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview suicidality module. Participants were also screened for depression and alcohol use disorder. Results We found that one out of ten persons (10.3%) presenting at primary care facilities reported suicidal ideation within the past year, and 1 out of 45 (2.2%) reported attempting suicide in the same period. The range of suicidal ideation was 3.5–11.1% in community samples and 5.0–14.8% in health facility samples. A higher proportion of facility attendees reported suicidal ideation than community residents (10.3 and 8.1%, respectively). Adults in the South African facilities were most likely to endorse suicidal ideation (14.8%), planning (9.5%) and attempts (7.4%). Risk profiles associated with suicidal behaviour (i.e. being female, younger age, current mental disorders and lower educational and economic status) were highly consistent across countries. Conclusion The high prevalence of suicidal ideation in primary care points towards important opportunities to implement suicide risk reduction initiatives. Evidence-supported strategies including screening and treatment of depression in primary care can be implemented through the World Health Organization's mental health Global Action Programme suicide prevention and depression treatment guidelines. Suicidal ideation and behaviours in the community sample will require detection strategies to identify at risks persons not presenting to health facilities.
Alpha Cyano-4-Hydroxy-3-Methoxycinnamic Acid Inhibits Proliferation and Induces Apoptosis in Human Breast Cancer Cells

This study investigated the underlying mechanism of 4-hydroxy-3-methoxycinnamic acid (ACCA), on the growth of breast cancer cells and normal immortal epithelial cells, and compared their cytotoxic effects responses. Treatment of breast cancer cells (MCF-7, T47D, and MDA-231) with ACCA resulted in dose- and time-dependent decrease of cell proliferation, viability in colony formation assay, and programmed cell death (apoptosis) with minimal effects on non-tumoral cells. The ability of ACCA to suppress growth in cancer cells not expressing or containing defects in p53 gene indicates a lack of involvement of this critical tumor suppressor element in mediating ACCA-induced growth inhibition. Induction of apoptosis correlated with an increase in Bax protein, an established inducer of programmed cell death, and the ratio of Bax to Bcl-2, an established inhibitor of apoptosis. We also documented the ability of ACCA to inhibit the migration and invasion of MDA-231 cells with ACCA in vitro. Additionally, tumor growth of MDA-231 breast cancer cells in vivo was dramatically affected with ACCA. On the basis of its selective anticancer inhibitory activity on tumor cells, ACCA may represent a promising therapeutic drug that should be further evaluated as a chemotherapeutic agent for human breast cancer.
Inter‐ and intraspecific variation in the distribution and number of pit organs (free neuromasts) of sharks and rays

The distribution of pit organs (free neuromasts) has previously been documented for several species of pelagic sharks, but is relatively poorly known for rays and bottom‐dwelling (demersal) sharks. In the present study, the complete distribution of pit organs was mapped in the demersal sharks Heterodontus portusjacksoni, Orectolobus maculatus, Hemiscyllium ocellatum, Chiloscyllium punctatum, and Asymbolus analis, and the rays Rhinobatos typus, Aptychotrema rostrata, Trygonorrhina sp. A, Raja sp. A, and Myliobatis australis. All of these species had pit organs scattered over the dorsolateral surface. The sharks also had “mandibular” pit organs (and “umbilical” pit organs in C. punctatum and A. analis) on the ventral surface, while pit organs were sparse or absent on the ventral surface of rays. All of the species examined here, except for M. australis, also had a “spiracular” group of pit organs adjacent to the eye and/or spiracle. Spiracular pit organs were also recorded for the sawshark Pristiophorus sp. A and the skate Pavoraja nitida, although the remainder of pit organs were not mapped in these species. The distribution and number of pit organs varied both within and among species. Pit organ distribution was asymmetrical in each individual examined, but no particular trend towards left or right “handedness” was observed in any species. Although rays have been thought to have fewer pit organs than sharks in general, this was not the case in the present study. All of the species examined here had few pit organs compared to the pelagic sharks previously documented, but it is not clear whether this is due to ecological or phylogenetic causes. J. Morphol. 256:89–102, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Column Generation Algorithm for Choice-Based Network Revenue Management

During the past few years, there has been a trend to enrich traditional revenue management models built upon the independent demand paradigm by accounting for customer choice behavior. This extension involves both modeling and computational challenges. One way to describe choice behavior is to assume that each customer belongs to a segment, which is characterized by a consideration set, i.e., a subset of the products provided by the firm that a customer views as options. Customers choose a particular product according to a multinomial-logit criterion, a model widely used in the marketing literature. In this paper, we consider the choice-based, deterministic, linear programming model (CDLP) of Gallego et al. (2004) [Gallego, G. , G. Iyengar, R. Phillips, A. Dubey. 2004. Managing flexible products on a network. Technical Report CORC TR-2004-01, Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York], and the follow-up dynamic programming decomposition heuristic of van Ryzin and Liu (2008) [van Ryzin, G. J., Q. Liu. 2008. On the choice-based linear programming model for network revenue management. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management10(2) 288--310]. We focus on the more general version of these models, where customers belong to overlapping segments. To solve the CDLP for real-size networks, we need to develop a column generation algorithm. We prove that the associated column generation subproblem is indeed NP-hard and propose a simple, greedy heuristic to overcome the complexity of an exact algorithm. Our computational results show that the heuristic is quite effective and that the overall approach leads to high-quality, practical solutions.
Robust object detection for tiny and dense targets in VHR aerial images

Object detection in Very High Resolution (VHR) optical remote sensing images is a challenged work for objects are usually dense and tiny. With random orientation, various backgrounds as well as unpredictable noise make traditional image processing methods perform badly. In this paper, we propose using state-of-art Region-based fully convolutional networks to solve object detection tasks in aerial images. To make the whole system efficient we choose to utilize position-sensitive score maps which not only fully take advantage of the convolutional feature maps but also achieve a balance between translation-variance in object detection and translation-invariance in classification. In addition, with 101-layer Residual networks as feature extractors, we achieve a satisfying result which is low time consuming and shows 99.45 percent and 94.41 percent precision respectively on two datasets.
Neonatal mortality in intensive care units of Central Brazil.

OBJECTIVE To identify potential prognostic factors for neonatal mortality among newborns referred to intensive care units. METHODS A live-birth cohort study was carried out in Goiânia, Central Brazil, from November 1999 to October 2000. Linked birth and infant death certificates were used to ascertain the cohort of live born infants. An additional active surveillance system of neonatal-based mortality was implemented. Exposure variables were collected from birth and death certificates. The outcome was survivors (n=713) and deaths (n=162) in all intensive care units in the study period. Cox's proportional hazards model was applied and a Receiver Operating Characteristic curve was used to compare the performance of statistically significant variables in the multivariable model. Adjusted mortality rates by birth weight and 5-min Apgar score were calculated for each intensive care unit. RESULTS Low birth weight and 5-min Apgar score remained independently associated to death. Birth weight equal to 2,500 g had 0.71 accuracy (95% CI: 0.65-0.77) for predicting neonatal death (sensitivity =72.2%). A wide variation in the mortality rates was found among intensive care units (9.5-48.1%) and two of them remained with significant high mortality rates even after adjusting for birth weight and 5-min Apgar score. CONCLUSIONS This study corroborates birth weight as a sensitive screening variable in surveillance programs for neonatal death and also to target intensive care units with high mortality rates for implementing preventive actions and interventions during the delivery period.
Top down saliency detection via Kullback-Leibler divergence for object recognition

In this paper, we propose a definition of saliency which is useful for object recognition. The desired saliency needs to satisfy the requirements in three levels: 1) representative, it should be a feature of the interest object; 2) discriminative, it needs to be helpful for distinguishing the interest object from the other objects and the background, the usual definitions of saliency for object recognition are able to achieve this goal; 3) easily matched, the saliency of the interest object has to be easy to match correctly. This character, ignored by the usual definitions, is useful for locating the object and estimating the scale and the pose of the object during the recognition. In the proposed definition, the easiness of matching correctly and the discrimination are both measured by the Kullback-Leibler (K-L) divergence. In order to apply the definition to a much broader range of situations, the probability density functions (pdfs) involved in the K-L divergence are not necessary to be restricted to the parametrized families of pdfs, and the K-L divergence is estimated using samples without predicting explicitly the involved pdfs. The experimental results show that the proposed definition of saliency not only is useful for detecting the discriminative features of the interest object, but also improves the accuracy of estimating the support of the object by matching the most salient features.
A General Psychopathology Factor (P Factor) in Children: Structural Model Analysis and External Validation Through Familial Risk and Child Global Executive Function

High rates of comorbidities and poor validity of disorder diagnostic criteria for mental disorders hamper advances in mental health research. Recent work has suggested the utility of continuous cross-cutting dimensions, including general psychopathology and specific factors of externalizing and internalizing (e.g., distress and fear) syndromes. The current study evaluated the reliability of competing structural models of psychopathology and examined external validity of the best fitting model on the basis of family risk and child global executive function (EF). A community sample of 8,012 families from Brazil with children ages 6–12 years completed structured interviews about the child and parental psychiatric syndromes, and a subsample of 2,395 children completed tasks assessing EF (i.e., working memory, inhibitory control, and time processing). Confirmatory factor analyses tested a series of structural models of psychopathology in both parents and children. The model with a general psychopathology factor (“P factor”) with 3 specific factors (fear, distress, and externalizing) exhibited the best fit. The general P factor accounted for most of the variance in all models, with little residual variance explained by each of the 3 specific factors. In addition, associations between child and parental factors were mainly significant for the P factors and nonsignificant for the specific factors from the respective models. Likewise, the child P factor—but not the specific factors—was significantly associated with global child EF. Overall, our results provide support for a latent overarching P factor characterizing child psychopathology, supported by familial associations and child EF.
COOPERATIVE COEVOLUTION OF MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS

In certain tasks such as pursuit and evasion, multiple agent s need to coordinate their behavior to achieve a common goal. An interesting question is, how can such behav ior best be evolved? When the agents are controlled with neural networks, a powerful method is to coevolve them in separate subpopulations, and test together in the common task. In this paper, such a met hod, called Multi-Agent ESP (Enforced Subpopulations) is presented, and demonstrated in a prey-c apture task. The approach is shown more efficient and robust than evolving a single central controller for all agents. The role of communication in such domains is also studied, and shown to be unnecessary and even trimental if effective behavior in the task can be expressed as role-based cooperation rather than sync hronization.