Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combined Image Compressor and Denoiser based on Tree-adapted Wavelet Shrinkage

An algorithm is described for simultaneously compressing and denoising images. The algorithm is called tree-adapted wavelet shrinkage and compression (TAWS-Comp). TAWS-Comp is a synthesis of an image compression algorithm, adaptively scanned wavelet difference reduction (ASWDR), and a denoising algorithm, tree-adapted wavelet shrink age (TAWS). As a Compression procedure, TAWS-Comp inherits all of the advantages of ASWDR: its ability to achieve a precise bit-rate assigned before compressing, its scalability of decompression, and its capability for enhancing regions-of interest. Such a full range of features has not been available with previous compressor plus denoiser algorithms. As a denoising procedure, TAWS-Comp is nearly as effective as TAWS alone. TAWS has been shown to have good performance, comparable to state of the art denoisers. In many cases, TAWS-Comp matches the performance of TAWS while simultaneously performing compression. TAWS-Comp is compared with other combined compressor/denoisers, in terms of error reduction and compressed bit-rates. Simultaneous compression and denoising is needed when images are acquired from a noisy source and storage or transmission capacity is severely limited (as in some video coding applications). An application is described where the features of TAWS-Comp as both compressor and denoiser are exploited.
Tamper-evident, history-independent, subliminal-free data structures on PROM storage -or- how to store ballots on a voting machine

We enumerate requirements and give constructions for the vote storage unit of an electronic voting machine. In this application, the record of votes must survive even an unexpected failure of the machine; hence the data structure should be durable. At the same time, the order in which votes are cast must be hidden to protect the privacy of voters, so the data structure should be history-independent. Adversaries may try to surreptitiously add or delete votes from the storage unit after the election has concluded, so the storage should be tamper-evident. Finally, we must guard against an adversarial voting machine's attempts to mark ballots through the representation of the data structure, so we desire a subliminal-free representation. We leverage the properties of Programmable Read Only Memory (PROM), a special kind of write-once storage medium, to meet these requirements. We give constructions for data structures on PROM storage that simultaneously satisfy all our desired properties. Our techniques can significantly reduce the need to verify code running on a voting machine
Structural Breaks in the Mexico's Integration into the World Stock Market

This article investigates the evolution of the Mexican stock market integration into the world market. First, we estimate the time-varying Mexican degree of market integration using an international conditional version of the CAPM with segmentation effects. Second, we study the structural breaks in this series. Finally, we relate the obtained results to important facts and economic events
Antibiotic resistance patterns in children hospitalized for urinary tract infections.

BACKGROUND Children admitted to the hospital with urinary tract infections (UTIs) receive empirical antibiotic therapy. There is limited information on bacterial resistance to commonly prescribed intravenous antibiotics or on the risk factors for increased resistance in these patients. OBJECTIVES To determine the antibiotic resistance pattern in children admitted to the hospital with UTIs, and to determine if history of UTI, antibiotic prophylaxis, or vesicoureteral reflux increases the risk of resistant organisms. DESIGN/METHODS We reviewed all of the cases of UTI in children up to 18 years of age who were admitted during a 5-year period to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. We recorded age, sex, culture and sensitivity results, imaging that was performed, and past medical history. RESULTS We identified 361 patients with UTIs. Escherichia coli caused 87% of the infections, although E coli was significantly less common in children receiving prophylactic antibiotics (58%; P<.001) or in children with a history of UTI (74%; P<.001). Resistance to cefotaxime sodium was 3% in the patients not receiving antibiotic prophylaxis, but was 27% in the children receiving prophylactic antibiotics (relative risk, 9.9; 95% confidence interval, 4.0-24.5; P<.001). Resistance to aminoglycoside antibiotics was 1% in the children not receiving prophylaxis and 5% in the children receiving prophylactic antibiotics. CONCLUSIONS Children who are receiving prophylactic antibiotics and are admitted to the hospital for a UTI are often infected with an organism that is resistant to third-generation cephalosporins. These children are more appropriately treated with an aminoglycoside antibiotic.
Assessing the Stability of Structural Learning Measures

Abstract : The study explored two related research questions: (1) Are structural learning measures stable? Sorting concepts printed on cards has traditionally been used for a variety of cognitive modeling applications; Pathfinder is a more recently developed developed, but widely used measure of mental model and concept network learning. Are these measures stable, based on test-retest indices? (2) As students learn more about the topic, does the structural learning measures' stability increase? Does the card sort or Pathfinder learning measure show increased stability as students' long-term memory structures develop?
A fast SAT solver algorithm best suited to reconfigurable hardware

The majority of the existing reconfigurable hardware SAT solvers employ some variation of the Davis-Putnam algorithm; we propose a new algorithm for organizing the search in SAT Solvers best suited to reconfigurable architectures due to its vector-like operations. Its essence is to view each negated clause as a cube in the n-dimensional Boolean search space, and realizing that each of these clause-cubes denotes a sub-region of the search space where no satisfying assignments can be found. Starting from the universal cube, which represents the whole space, we systematically subtract all clause-cubes until we end up with a satisfying cube or an empty cube if the SAT formula is unsatisfiable. The algorithm for cube subtraction is the D-Sharp algorithm. We implemented this strategy in the well-known zChaff SAT solver. Improvements in execution time and number of aborted instances have been observed for the new algorithm. The test suite includes several instances from IBM-CNF BMC and Microprocessor's Formal Verification benchmarks. Given the breadth of the experimental software evaluation, we claim that D-Sharp subtraction search is an effective algorithm for improving the performance of SAT solvers and due to its data structure and bit-to-bit operations it is very well suited to reconfigurable hardware implementations. Design Automation (EDA).
Functional morphology of the fin rays of teleost fishes

Ray‐finned fishes are notable for having flexible fins that allow for the control of fluid forces. A number of studies have addressed the muscular control, kinematics, and hydrodynamics of flexible fins, but little work has investigated just how flexible ray‐finned fish fin rays are, and how flexibility affects their response to environmental perturbations. Analysis of pectoral fin rays of bluegill sunfish showed that the more proximal portion of the fin ray is unsegmented while the distal 60% of the fin ray is segmented. We examined the range of motion and curvatures of the pectoral fin rays of bluegill sunfish during steady swimming, turning maneuvers, and hovering behaviors and during a vortex perturbation impacting the fin during the fin beat. Under normal swimming conditions, curvatures did not exceed 0.029 mm−1 in the proximal, unsegmented portion of the fin ray and 0.065 mm−1 in the distal, segmented portion of the fin ray. When perturbed by a vortex jet traveling at approximately 1 ms−1 (67 ± 2.3 mN s.e. of force at impact), the fin ray underwent a maximum curvature of 9.38 mm−1. Buckling of the fin ray was constrained to the area of impact and did not disrupt the motion of the pectoral fin during swimming. Flexural stiffness of the fin ray was calculated to be 565 × 10−6 Nm2. In computational fluid dynamic simulations of the fin‐vortex interaction, very flexible fin rays showed a combination of attraction and repulsion to impacting vortex dipoles. Due to their small bending rigidity (or flexural stiffness), impacting vortices transferred little force to the fin ray. Conversely, stiffer fin rays experienced rapid small‐amplitude oscillations from vortex impacts, with large impact forces all along the length of the fin ray. Segmentation is a key design feature of ray‐finned fish fin rays, and may serve as a means of making a flexible fin ray out of a rigid material (bone). This flexibility may offer intrinsic damping of environmental fluid perturbations encountered by swimming fish. J. Morphol. 274:1044–1059, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Spatially Ordered Treemaps

Existing treemap layout algorithms suffer to some extent from poor or inconsistent mappings between data order and visual ordering in their representation, reducing their cognitive plausibility. While attempts have been made to quantify this mismatch, and algorithms proposed to minimize inconsistency, solutions provided tend to concentrate on one-dimensional ordering. We propose extensions to the existing squarified layout algorithm that exploit the two-dimensional arrangement of treemap nodes more effectively. Our proposed spatial squarified layout algorithm provides a more consistent arrangement of nodes while maintaining low aspect ratios. It is suitable for the arrangement of data with a geographic component and can be used to create tessellated cartograms for geovisualization. Locational consistency is measured and visualized and a number of layout algorithms are compared. CIELab color space and displacement vector overlays are used to assess and emphasize the spatial layout of treemap nodes. A case study involving locations of tagged photographs in the Flickr database is described.
Common patterns of clinical motor dysfunction

An upper motor neuron syndrome often leads to the development of stereotypical patterns of deformity secondary to agonist muscle weakness, antagonist muscle spasticity and changes in the rheologic (stiffness) properties of spastic muscles. Indentification of the spastic muscles that contribute to deformity across a joint allows therapeutic denervation to be implemented with the maximum likelihood of success. Identifying responsible muscles can be complex, since many muscles may cross the joint involved, and not all muscles with the potential to cause deformity will be spastic. Strategies including polyelectromyography and diagnositc blocks with local anesthetics can be used to test hypoteses regarding the deformity, providing information for more long‐term denervation. In this review, we discuss frequently observed patterns of deformity associated with problematic spasticity, paresis, contracture, and impaired voluntary motor control © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Spasticity: Etiology, Evaluation, Management, and the Role of Botulinum Toxin Type A, MF Brin, editor. Muscle Nerve 1997;20(suppl 6):S21‐S35.
FIGO 1988 versus 2009 staging for endometrial carcinoma: a comparative study on prediction of survival and stage distribution according to histologic subtype

Objective The surgical staging system for endometrial carcinoma developed by International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) in 1988 was revised in 2009. Given the importance of continuous validation of the prognostic performance of staging systems, we analyzed the disease specific survival for patients with endometrial carcinoma using FIGO 1988 and 2009 systems. Further, the stage distribution of endometrioid and nonendometrioid carcinomas was studied. Methods Eight hundred twenty-one women with endometrial carcinoma were retrospectively staged using FIGO 1988 and 2009 systems. Results FIGO 1988 IC was associated with an inferior survival compared with IA-IB. Survival overlapped for 1988 IA and IB, for 1988 IC and IIA, and for 2009 IB and II. FIGO 2009 IA-II patients with negative peritoneal cytology had a superior survival compared with 1988 IIIA patients with positive cytology only. The survival was similar for 1988 IIIA with positive cytology only and for 2009 IIIA. Cox proportional hazards model recognized grade 3 endometrioid and nonendometrioid histology, tumor spread beyond the uterine corpus and cervix, and positive peritoneal cytology as significant predictors of death. Among 2009 IIIC substages, the proportion of IIIC2 tumors was higher for nonendometrioid than for endometrioid carcinomas (p=0.003). Conclusion Stage I with deep myometrial invasion and stage II endometrial carcinoma seem to have similar survival outcomes. Although positive peritoneal cytology does not alter the stage according to the FIGO 2009 system, it should be considered a poor prognostic sign. The high proportion of nonendometrioid carcinomas in the stage IIIC2 category may reflect different patterns of retroperitoneal spread among tumors with different histologic subtypes.
Meat, fish, poultry and egg consumption in relation to risk of pancreatic cancer: A prospective study

High meat consumption has been associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer in several, although not all, case‐control studies. However, prospective data on this relationship are sparse, and the results have been inconsistent. We prospectively evaluated meat, fish, poultry, and egg consumption in relation to pancreatic cancer incidence in a population‐based cohort of 61,433 Swedish women. Diet was assessed with a food‐frequency questionnaire at baseline (1987–1990) and again in 1997. Pancreatic cancers were ascertained through linkage to the Swedish Cancer Register. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate multivariate hazard ratios with 95% confidence intervals (CI). During the 941,218 person‐years of follow‐up, from 1987 through 2004, 172 incident cases of pancreatic cancer were diagnosed. Long‐term red meat consumption (using data from both dietary questionnaires) was positively associated with risk of pancreatic cancer (p‐trend = 0.01), whereas long‐term poultry consumption was inversely (p‐trend = 0.04) associated with risk. The multivariate hazard ratios for the highest versus the lowest category of consumption were 1.73 (95% CI = 0.99–2.98) for red meat and 0.44 (95% CI = 0.20–0.97) for poultry. There were no significant associations with processed meat, fish or egg consumption. Findings from this prospective study suggest that substituting poultry for red meat might reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Effect of P6 acustimulation on post‐operative nausea and vomiting in patients undergoing a laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background Non‐pharmacologic techniques such as electrical acustimulation may mitigate post‐operative nausea and vomiting (PONV). The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of acustimulation on attenuating PONV. Moreover, we tested whether a pre‐ or a post‐induction application of acustimulation results in differences in PONV reduction.
Quantification of Software Quality Parameters Using Fuzzy Multi Criteria Approach

Software quality is the measure of appropriateness of the design of the software and how well it adheres to that design. There are some metrics and measurements to determine the software quality. Software quality measurement is possible only by quantifying the characteristics affecting the software quality. For measuring the quality, the parameters or quality factors are considered that vary over a domain of discourse. The quality factors stated in ISO/IEC 9126 model are used in this paper. Due to the unpredictable nature of these factors or attributes fuzzy approach has been used to estimate the software quality.
X chromosome choice occurs independently of asynchronous replication timing

In mammals, dosage compensation is achieved by X chromosome inactivation in female cells. Xist is required and sufficient for X inactivation, and Xist gene deletions result in completely skewed X inactivation. In this work, we analyzed skewing of X inactivation in mice with an Xist deletion encompassing sequence 5 KB upstream of the promoter through exon 3. We found that this mutation results in primary nonrandom X inactivation in which the wild-type X chromosome is always chosen for inactivation. To understand the molecular mechanisms that affect choice, we analyzed the role of replication timing in X inactivation choice. We found that the two Xist alleles and all regions tested on the X chromosome replicate asynchronously before the start of X inactivation. However, analysis of replication timing in cell lines with skewed X inactivation showed no preference for one of the two Xist alleles to replicate early in S-phase before the onset of X inactivation, indicating that asynchronous replication timing does not play a role in skewing of X inactivation.
Amino Acid Residues Involved in Autophosphorylation and Phosphotransfer Activities Are Distinct in Nucleoside Diphosphate Kinase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis*

Nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NdK) is a ubiquitous enzyme in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes and is primarily involved in the maintenance of cellular nucleotide pools. We have cloned ndk from Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain H37Ra and expressed it in Escherichia coli as a fusion protein with glutathione S-transferase. The purified protein, following thrombin cleavage and gel permeation chromatography, was found to be hexameric with a monomeric unit molecular mass of ∼16.5 kDa. The protein exhibited nucleotide binding, divalent cation-dependent autophosphorylation, and phosphate transfer ability from nucleoside triphosphate to nucleoside diphosphate. Although UDP inhibited the catalytic activity of the recombinant protein, the classic inhibitors, like cromoglycate, 5′-adenosine 3′-phosphate, and adenosine 3′-phosphate 5′-phosphosulfate, had no effect on the activity. Among three histidine residues in the protein, His-117 was found to be essential for autophosphorylation. However, in subsequent phosphate transfer, we observed that His-53 had a significant contribution. Consistent with this observation, substitution of His-53 with either Ala or Gln affected the ability of the recombinant protein to complement NdK function in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Furthermore, mutational analysis established critical roles for Tyr-50 and Arg-86 of the M. tuberculosis protein in maintaining phosphotransfer ability.
Optic nerve head segmentation using fundus images and optical coherence tomography images for glaucoma detection.

BACKGROUND Glaucoma is a common causes of blindness. The associated elevation in intra ocular pressure leads to progressive degeneration of the optic nerve and resultant structural changes with functional failure of the visual field. Since, glaucoma is asymptomatic in the early stages and the associated vision loss is irreparable, its early detection and timely medical treatment is essential to prevent further visual damage. OBJECTIVE This paper presents a novel method for glaucoma detection using digital fundus image and optical coherence tomography (OCT) image. METHOD The first section focuses on the features such as cup to disc ratio (CDR) and the inferior superior nasal temporal (ISNT) ratio which were obtained from fundus images.The above features were used for classifying the normal and glaucoma condition using back propagation neural network (BPN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers. In the second part of the article, features such as CDR and two novel features, cup depth and retinal thickness were obtained from the OCT image. These features were evaluated by the BPN and SVM classifier. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION The combined features from fundus and OCT images were analyzed. The system proposed here is able to classify glaucoma automatically. The accuracy of BPN and SVM Classifiers was 90.76% and 96.92% respectively.
Analyzing the Subspaces Obtained by Dimensionality Reduction for Human Action Recognition from 3d Data

Since depth measuring devices for real-world scenarios became available in the recent past, the use of 3d data now comes more in focus of human action recognition. Due to the increased amount of data it seems to be advisable to model the trajectory of every landmark in the context of all other landmarks which is commonly done by dimensionality reduction techniques like PCA. In this paper we present an approach to directly use the subspaces (i.e. their basis vectors) for extracting features and classification of actions instead of projecting the landmark data themselves. This yields a fixed-length description of action sequences disregarding the number of provided frames. We give a comparison of various global techniques for dimensionality reduction and analyze their suitability for our proposed scheme. Experiments performed on the CMU Motion Capture dataset show promising recognition rates as well as robustness in the presence of noise and incorrect detection of landmarks.
On the optimal power allocation for additive color noise parallel channels with limited access constraint

In this paper, we consider an (N;K)-limited access system consisting of N parallel additive noise channels with spatial dependency, where the receiver starts to decode the information being transmitted when at least K out of N channel outputs are received. We investigate the optimal power allocation that maximizes the minimum mutual information among all possible cases of partial reception. A universal guideline is then obtained for a group of permutation-invariant channels, in which the system mutual information remains unchanged when permuting the parameters that characterize the partial reception and signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) of channels, that a channel with less noise power should have larger SNR. When all N channels belong to a permutation-invariant group, we also have that the optimal power allocation problem can be transformed to an equivalent problem for K parallel channels without limited access constraint via a water-filling noise-power-redistribution process. The merit of this transformation can be more evidently seen when the channel input-noise pairs are reduced to be spatially independent with distributions scaled from a common random vector, for which the optimal power allocation solution can be simply obtained by a two-phase water-filling process.