Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inherently edge-preserving depth-map coding without explicit edge detection and approximation

In emerging 3D video coding, depth has significant importance in view synthesis, scene analysis, and 3D object reconstruction. Depth images can be characterized by sharp edges and smooth large regions. Most of the existing depth coding techniques use intra-coding mode and try to preserve edges explicitly with approximated edge modelling. However, edges can be implicitly preserved as long as the transformation is avoided. In this paper, we have demonstrated that inherent edge preserving encoding of inter-coded block residuals, uniformly quantized at pixel domain using motion data from associated texture components, is more efficient than explicitly edge preserving intra-coding techniques. Experimental results show that the proposed technique have achieved superior image quality of synthesized views against the new 3D-HEVC standard. Lossless applications of the proposed technique has achieved on average 66% and 23% bit-rate savings against 3D-HEVC with negligible quantization and perceptually unnoticeable view synthesis, respectively.
In vivo blockade of neural activity alters dendritic development of neonatal CA1 pyramidal cells

During development, neural activity has been proposed to promote neuronal growth. During the first postnatal week, the hippocampus is characterized by an oscillating neural network activity and a rapid neuronal growth. In the present study we tested in vivo, by injecting tetanus toxin into the hippocampus of P1 rats, whether this neural activity indeed promotes growth of pyramidal cells. We have previously shown that tetanus toxin injection leads to a strong reduction in the frequency of spontaneous GABA and glutamatergic synaptic currents, and to a complete blockade of the early neural network activity during the first postnatal week. Morphology of neurobiotin‐filled CA1 pyramidal cells was analyzed at the end of the first postnatal week (P6–10). In activity‐reduced neurons, the total length of basal dendritic tree was three times less than control. The number, but not the length, of basal dendritic branches was affected. The growth impairment was restricted to the basal dendrites. The apical dendrite, the axons, or the soma grew normally during activity deprivation. Thus, the in vivo neural activity in the neonate hippocampus seems to promote neuronal growth by initiating novel branches.
Treating Erectile Dysfunction through Electronic Consultation: A Pilot Study

We investigated a group of men suffering from electric dysfunction (ED) who visited the website www.erectie. info and who had received consultation through the Internet (n = 219). We measured the treatment's effectiveness using the 5-item version of the International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF-5; Rosen et al., 1996; Rosen, Cappelleri, Smith, Lipsky, & Pena, 1999) and a global assessment question (GAQ). We investigated the motives and characteristics of the users of electronics consultation using a questionnaire. After a few months, the consultation group showed a considerably higher IIEF-5 score compared with their baseline score. Eighty-one percent replied in the affirmative to the GAQ. E-consultation is likely to be effective when treating ED, especially among men who find the medium convenient and for men who experience much embarrassment.
Nesprin-2 mediated nuclear trafficking and its clinical implications

Nuclear translocation of proteins has a crucial role in the pathogenesis of cancer, Alzheimer disease and viral infections. A complete understanding of nuclear trafficking mechanisms is therefore necessary in order to establish effective intervention strategies. Here we elucidate the role of Nesprin-2 in Ca2+/Calmodulin mediated nuclear transport. Nesprin-2 is an actin-binding nuclear envelope (NE) protein with roles in maintaining nuclear structure and location, regulation of transcription and mechanotransduction. Upon depletion of Nesprin-2 using shRNA, HaCaT cells show abnormal localization of the shuttling proteins BRCA1 and NF-κB. We show that their nuclear transport is unlikely due to the canonical RAN mediated nuclear import, but rather to a RAN independent Ca2+/Calmodulin driven mechanism involving Nesprin-2. We report novel interactions between the actin-binding domain of Nesprin-2 and Calmodulin and between the NLS containing region of BRCA1 and Calmodulin. Strikingly, displacing Nesprins from the NE resulted in increased steady state Ca2+ concentrations in the cytoplasm suggesting a previously unidentified role of Nesprins in Ca2+ regulation. On comparing Nesprin-2 and BRCA1 localization in the ovarian cancer cell lines SKOV-3 and Caov-3, Nesprin-2 and BRCA1 were localized to the NE envelope and the nucleus in SKOV-3, respectively, and to the cytoplasm in Caov-3 cells. Fibroblasts obtained from EDMD5 (Emery Dreifuss muscular dystrophy) patients showed loss of Nesprin-2 from the nuclear envelope, corresponding reduced nuclear localization of BRCA1 and enhanced cytoplasmic Ca2+. Taken together, the data suggests a novel role of Nesprin-2 in Ca2+/Calmodulin mediated nuclear trafficking and provides new insights which can guide future therapies.
Somatic Genetics Empowers the Mouse for Modeling and Interrogating Developmental and Disease Processes

With recent advances in genomic technologies, candidate human disease genes are being mapped at an accelerated pace. There is a clear need to move forward with genetic tools that can efficiently validate these mutations in vivo. Murine somatic mutagenesis is evolving to fulfill these needs with tools such as somatic transgenesis, humanized rodents, and forward genetics. By combining these resources one is not only able to model disease for in vivo verification, but also to screen for mutations and pathways integral to disease progression and therapeutic intervention. In this review, we briefly outline the current advances in somatic mutagenesis and discuss how these new tools, especially the piggyBac transposon system, can be applied to decipher human biology and disease.
Digital estimation and compensation of I/Q imbalance for full-duplex dual-band OFDM radio

With the increasing demand of wireless applications, current radio transceivers are challenged by the requirement of high data rate and high flexibility. Full-Duplex Dual-Band OFDM radio transceiver is a very promising radio technique to approach this goal. However, the mutual undesirable signal leakages due to the I/Q imbalance in the Full-Duplex Dual-Band RF front-end lead to a significant performance degradation in the radio link. In this paper, a practical and suitable digital I/Q imbalance estimation and compensation method for mitigating the I/Q imbalance in this flexible radio transceivers is developed and evaluated. The developed I/Q imbalance estimation method is based on the character of the frequency-flat-fading of the self-interference channel. The ADS-Matlab co-simulation results show that the developed digital compensation method can significantly reduce the impact of the I/Q imbalance on the Full-Duplex Dual-Band OFDM radio receivers.
Mutual benefit aware task assignment in a bipartite labor market

As one of the three major steps (question design, task assignment, answer aggregation) in crowdsourcing, task assignment directly affects the quality of the crowdsourcing result. A good assignment will not only improve the answers' quality, but also boost the workers' willingness to participate. Although a lot of works have been made to produce better assignment, most of them neglected one of its most important properties: the bipartition, which exists widely in real world scenarios. Such ignorance greatly limits their application under general settings.
The Influence of Fungicide Treatments on Mycobiota of Grapes and Its Evolution During Fermentation Evaluated by Metagenomic and Culture-Dependent Methods

The present study evaluated the impact of organic and conventional fungicide treatments compared with untreated samples (no fungicides were used) on the grape berry yeast community of the Montepulciano variety. The yeast dynamics during the spontaneous fermentation using culture-dependent and -independent methods was also evaluated. Results showed a reduction of yeast biodiversity by conventional treatments determining a negative influence on fermenting yeasts in favor of oxidative yeasts such as Aerobasidium pullulans. Starmerella bacillaris was significantly more present in organic samples (detected by next generation sequencing (NGS)), while Hanseniaspopa uvarum was significantly less present in untreated samples (detected by the culture-dependent method). The fermenting yeasts, developed during the spontaneous fermentation, were differently present depending on the fungicide treatments used. Culture-dependent and -independent methods exhibited the same most abundant yeast species during the spontaneous fermentation but a different relative abundance. Differently, the NGS method was able to detect a greater biodiversity (lower abundant species) in comparison with the culture-dependent method. In this regard, the methodologies used gave a different picture of yeast dynamics during the fermentation process. The results indicated that the fungal treatments can influence the yeast community of grapes leading must fermentation and the final composition of wine.
Scheduling in Single-Hop Multiple Access Wireless Networks with Successive Interference Cancellation

We study the optimal scheduling problem for minimizing the length of the schedule required to satisfy the traffic demands of the links in single-hop multiple access wireless networks using Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC). We first formulate the optimal scheduling as a Linear Programming (LP) problem where each variable represents the time allocated to a subset of the links sorted according to their decoding order for SIC at the receiver. Since the LP formulation requires a high number of variables exponential in the decoding capability of the receiver, we propose a Column Generation Method (CGM) based heuristic algorithm. This algorithm is based on decomposing the original problem into Restricted Master Problem (RMP) and Pricing Problem (PP), and approximating the exponentially complex PP by a greedy heuristic algorithm. Compared to the CGM based heuristic algorithms previously proposed for minimum length scheduling problem in various types of networks, the formulation of the PP and the heuristic algorithm proposed for PP are different due to the requirement of including the decoding order of simultaneous transmissions in SIC based networks. We demonstrate via simulations that the proposed algorithm performs very close to the optimal LP formulation with runtime robust to the increasing number of the links and decoding capability of the receiver, and much smaller than that of the optimal algorithm.
Punjabi Automatic Speech Recognition Using HTK

T his paper aims to discuss the implementation of an isolated word Automatic Speech Recognition system (ASR) for an Indian regional language Punjabi. The HTK toolkit based on Hidden Markov Model (HMM), a statistical approach, is used to develop the system. Initially the system is trained for 115 distinct Punjabi words by collecting data from eight speakers and then is tested by using samples from six speakers in real time environments. To make the system more interactive and fast a GUI has been developed using JAVA platform for implementing the testing module. The paper also describes the role of each HTK tool, used in various phases of system development, by presenting a detailed architecture of an ASR system developed using HTK library modules and tools. The experimental results show that the overall system performance is 95.63% and 94.08%.
Psychology Research and Behavior Management Dovepress Enhancing Early Engagement with Mental Health Services by Young People

International studies have shown that the prevalence of mental illness, and the fundamental contribution it make to the overall disease burden, is greatest in children and young people. Despite this high burden, adolescents and young adults are the least likely population group to seek help or to access professional care for mental health problems. This issue is particularly problematic given that untreated, or poorly treated, mental disorders are associated with both short-and long-term functional impairment, including poorer education and employment opportunities, potential comorbidity, including drug and alcohol problems, and a greater risk for antisocial behavior, including violence and aggression. This cycle of poor mental health creates a significant burden for the young person, their family and friends, and society as a whole. Australia is enviably positioned to substantially enhance the well-being of young people, to improve their engagement with mental health services, and – ultimately – to improve mental health. High prevalence but potentially debilitating disorders, such as depression and anxiety, are targeted by the specialized youth mental health service, headspace: the National Youth Mental Health Foundation and a series of Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres, will provide early intervention specialist services for low prevalence, complex illnesses. Online services, such as ReachOut.com by Inspire Foundation, Youthbeyondblue, Kids Helpline, and Lifeline Australia, and evidence-based online interventions, such as MoodGYM, are also freely available, yet a major challenge still exists in ensuring that young people receive effective evidence-based care at the right time. This article describes Australian innovation in shaping a comprehensive youth mental health system, which is informed by an evidence-based approach, dedicated advocacy and, critically, the inclusion of young people in service design, development, and ongoing evaluation to ensure that services can be continuously improved.
A study of demand oblivious routing algorithms

Nowadays, people make use of communication networks (e.g. Internet) everyday and expect high quality from the offered services. Providing a good quality of service and optimizing the utilization of the network resources are the main objectives in designing a routing. It has always been believed that traffic demands play an important role in this design because the better the traffic demands are known, the more properly they can be allocated. However, understanding and estimating these traffic demands is not a trivial task. In 2002 Racke asked himself an important question: ``how important is accurate knowledge of traffic demands for obtaining good utilization of the network? " This marked the beginning of a new kind of routing algorithms: the demand oblivious routing algorithms or oblivious routing. These routing algorithms ignore the current status of the network when making routing decisions and they only base their decisions on the source, destination of the flows and, in certain cases, some random values. These kind of algorithms have evolved a lot during the last years in three different directions. Nevertheless, according to the knowledge of the author, there has been no study until now that evaluates the performance of algorithms from these three branches. Firstly, this thesis will present a complete and exhaustive study based on the three papers that originated the different kinds of oblivious routing. Then, a framework will be developed to compare these three algorithms under the same conditions and with a range of metrics from theoretical calculations to more practical ones. Finally, based on the results obtained, possible improvements for these families of algorithms will be suggested.
Research proposal accompanying management variant 2 of the RMP Implementation for western North Pacific Bryde ’ s whale

The Scientific Committee concluded that three of the four management variants used during the RMP Implementation for western North Pacific Bryde’s whale performed acceptably from a conservation perspective and recommended that those variants could be implemented without a research program. It also agreed that variant 2 was not acceptable without research. Conservation performance for variant 2 was ‘unacceptable’ for three ‘medium’ weight trials associated with sub-stock structure in sub-area 1 (stock structure scenario 4). This paper presents a research proposal focused to elucidate whether or not sub-stocks occur in sub-area 1. The research proposal is written following the pro-forma agreed by the Committee in 2007 for research programmes associated with the ‘variant with research option’. It also considers most of the specific suggestions offered by the Committee in 2007 on a previous draft of the proposal. The ultimate objective of the research program is to be able to provide information to the Committee so that it could modify (or confirm) its decisions regarding the appropriate plausibility level for the trials on which variant 2 performed ‘unacceptably’.
Differential Interaction Strengths and Prey Preferences Across Larval Mosquito Ontogeny by a Cohabiting Predatory Midge

Abstract Understandings of natural enemy efficacy are reliant on robust quantifications of interaction strengths under context-dependencies. For medically important mosquitoes, rapid growth during aquatic larval stages could impede natural enemy impacts through size refuge effects. The identification of biocontrol agents which are unimpeded by ontogenic size variability of prey is therefore vital. We use functional response and prey preference experiments to examine the interaction strengths and selectivity traits of larvae of the cohabiting predatory midge Chaoborus flavicans (Meigen 1830) (Diptera: Chaoboridae) towards larval stages of the Culex pipiens (Diptera: Culicidae) mosquito complex. Moreover, we examine the influence of search area variation on selectivity traits, given its importance in consumer-resource interactions. Chaoborids were able to capture and consume mosquito prey across their larval ontogeny. When prey types were available individually, a destabilizing Type II functional response was exhibited towards late instar mosquito prey, whereas a more stabilizing Type III functional response was displayed towards early instars. Accordingly, search efficiencies were lowest towards early instar prey, whereas, conversely, maximum feeding rates were highest towards this smaller prey type. However, when the prey types were present simultaneously, C. flavicans exhibited a significant positive preference for late instar prey, irrespective of water volume. Our results identify larval chaoborids as efficacious natural enemies of mosquito prey, with which they frequently coexist in aquatic environments. In particular, an ability to prey on mosquitoes across their larval stages, coupled with a preference for late instar prey, could enable high population-level offtake rates and negate compensatory reductions in intraspecific competition through size refuge.
Similarities in Object and Event Segmentation: A Geometric Approach to Event Path Segmentation

Abstract Events, like objects, can be decomposed into parts. Path, the spatiotemporal trajectory of an object during an event, is the most commonly labeled event feature across the world's languages, provides important social information, and is increasingly central to theories of general event segmentation. However, little is understood about how adults visually segment paths. We apply theories developed for object segmentation to help understand path segmentation. Overall subjects segmented equivalent object shapes and event paths in similar ways following patterns predicted by Singh and Hoffman's (2001) geometric analysis of object parts. There were two notable differences between object and event segmentation: (1) event parsing occurred at points of negative curvature minima and positive curvature maxima as opposed to simply negative curvature minima; and (2) event parsing was more frequent and variable than object parsing. Implications of these results for event perception and categorization are discussed.
Improved Electromagnetic Interference Shielding Properties Through the Use of Segregate Carbon Nanotube Networks

We report the enhanced electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding properties of hybrid carbon nanotube (CNT) composites consisting of more than two kinds of fillers through the use of segregate conducting networks. An excluded volume was created by micro-sized silica particles that concentrate the CNT network, resulting in improved electrical conductivity and microwave properties. To achieve the optimal dispersion of CNTs and silica particles, high shear force was applied to the pre-cured composite mixture via three-roll milling. Depending on the micro-silica content ratio, we observed improved electrical conductivity and EMI shielding properties. For a quantitative comparison to observe the excluded-volume effects, a CNT composite without micro-silica was measured in parallel with the other sample.
Excretion of flagellin by a short-flagella mutant of Salmonella typhimurium

A nonmotile mutant of Salmonella typhimurium, SJW1254, has very short flagella (less than 0.1 micron long) due to a mutation in the structural gene of flagellin (H2). When ammonium sulfate was added to the culture medium of SJW1254 grown to the late-log phase, a large amount of protein precipitated. Gel electrophoresis and immunodiffusion showed that more than 90% (wt/wt) of the precipitated protein was flagellin. The mutant flagellin appeared to be excreted in the monomeric form, in an amount comparable to the amount in the flagellar filaments of wildtype bacteria. No such precipitate was obtained from the medium of wild-type bacteria. The mutant flagellin had the same apparent molecular weight (55,000) and isoelectric point (5.3) as the wild-type flagellin, but differed in mobility in polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis under nondenaturing conditions. Moreover, the mutant flagellin did not polymerize in vitro under various conditions in which wild-type flagellin polymerized. These results suggested that the mutant bacteria excreted flagellin because the flagellin polymerized poorly and therefore could not be trapped at the tip of the flagellar filament. This short-flagella mutant should be useful for studying the mechanism of flagellin transport.
Physician attire in the intensive care unit and patient family perceptions of physician professional characteristics.

P hysician attire is a modifiable factor that has been demonstrated to influence the patient-physician relationship. However, patient-physician interactions in the intensive care unit (ICU) differ from other health care settings. Patients admitted to the ICU typically do not have a preexisting long-term relationship with their ICU physician, and therefore trust needs to be established over a short time frame. The severity of patient illness frequently results in the active participation of family as surrogate decision makers, complicating the patient-physician relationship. The high acuity of the ICU makes for a wide range of attires worn, from scrubs to suits. We therefore conducted a survey in 3 ICUs to examine ICU patient family perceptions and preferences for physician attire.
AN ENSEMBLE METHOD FOR BINARY CLASSIFICATION OF ADVERSE DRUG REACTIONS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA

This paper describes the system we developed for PSB 2016 social media mining shared task on binary classification of adverse drug reactions (ADRs). The task focuses on automatic classification of ADR assertive user posts. We propose a weighted average ensemble of four classifiers: (1) a concept-matching classifier based on ADR lexicon; (2) a maximum entropy (ME) classifier with word-level n-gram features and TFIDF weighting scheme; (3) a ME classifier based on word-level n-grams using naive Bayes (NB) log-count ratios as feature values; and (4) a ME classifier with word embedding features. Our system is ranked 2nd with ADR class F-score of 41.82%.