Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intercepting a Target with Sensor Swarms

This paper introduces a new coordination method to intercept a mobile target in urban areas with a team of sensor platforms. The task is to intercept the target before it leaves the area. The approach combines algorithmic concepts from ant colony and particle swarm optimization in order to bias the search and to spread the team in the search area. The algorithms introduced are tested in simulation experiments on grids. The success probabilities measured are relatively high for most parameter combinations, and the target is intercepted in roughly half the simulation time on average. Furthermore, the experiments reveal robust behavior with regard to the parameter setting.
Contrast Enhanced Beamforming for Breast Cancer Detection

The early identiflcation of malignant tissue is one of the most signiflcant factors in the successful treatment of breast cancer. Microwave imaging is an emerging breast screening modality based on the dielectric contrast between normal and cancerous tissues at microwave frequencies. When the breast is illuminated with an Ultrawideband (UWB) microwave pulse, the dielectric contrast between normal and cancerous tissues generates electromagnetic re∞ections. These re∞ected signals, containing tumor backscatter, are spatially focused using a beamformer which can compensate for attenuation and phase efiects as the signal propagates through the breast. However, recent studies have shown the breast to be a dielectrically heterogeneous entity. High levels of heterogeneity reduce the dielectric contrast between normal and cancerous tissue, limiting the efiectiveness of beamforming algorithms. One possible method to assist in the diagnoses of cancer in a heterogeneously dense breast is the use of contrast agents. Contrast agents modify the dielectric properties of a malignant tumor site in order to increase the dielectric contrast with flbroglandular tissue. In this paper, a number of beamforming algorithms are applied to MRI-derived models with endogenous and contrast enhanced malignant tissue properties. Two contrast agents are applied to heterogeneously dense breast phantoms and simulations are carried out prior and post contrast agent delivery. A range of tumor diameters are simulated and a number of beamforming algorithms are applied to the simulated data. The resulting difierential scans are then compared across a range of appropriate metrics.
A fragile watermarking scheme for image authentication with localization and recovery

A fragile, block-wise, and content-based watermarking for image authentication and recovery is presented. In this scheme, the watermark of each block is an encrypted form of its signature, which includes the block location, a content-feature of another block, and a CRC checksum. While the CRC checksum is to authenticating the signature, the mixture of the location indices of one block with the feature of a randomly selected block complicates the VQ attack. The encryption further strengthens the security. That all security parameters are user dependent and can be computed at both ends individually based on Diffie-Hellman key exchange method makes the scheme not only robust against collage attack but also truly oblivious. The experiments demonstrate that our scheme can detect and localize any tampering of size 8/spl times/8 pixels and above and can recover a 40% damaged image to an intelligible one with 24 dB. As for incidentally manipulated images, our scheme can invalidate all the blocks but does not further degrade the images. Comparing with the scheme of Celik et al. (2002), ours has better tamper localization accuracy while trading off 2-3 dB of the PSNR of watermarked images for recovery.
A SAFE approach towards early design space exploration of fault-tolerant multimedia MPSoCs

With the reduction in feature size, transient errors start to play an important role in modern embedded systems. It is therefore important to make fault-tolerance a first-class citizen in embedded system design. Fault-tolerance patterns are techniques to make an application fault-tolerant. Not only do fault-tolerance patterns affect the quality of the embedded system (like performance, energy and cost), but there also are many ways of applying them. In this paper, we present the SAFE simulation framework that supports the early exploration of the different possibilities to apply fault-tolerance patterns to MPSoC-based embedded multimedia systems. The SAFE model incorporates fault injection, detection and correction. As a result, a Pareto front can be obtained that not only shows the trade-off between metrics like performance, energy, cost, but also captures reliability metrics like frame drops due to soft errors and the number of unresolvable faults.
The Effect of Hypnotherapeutic Ego Strengthening with Female Spouses of South African Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery Patients

Abstract In addition to exacerbating morbidity in male coronary artery bypass surgery (CABS) patients, their plight can also impose considerable strain on their female spouses' mood states, resulting in compromised quality of life. The current study was aimed at determining the impact of pre postoperative hypnotherapeutic ego strengthening (HES) on anxiety and depression in female spouses. It was conducted simultaneously with a recently published study of their CABS husbands' response to HES. Spouses whose husbands had been randomly assigned to an experimental group, were designated the experimental spouse group (n = 25) and spouses whose husbands constituted the control group, likewise comprised the control spouse group (n = 25). Assessment occurred preoperatively, on the day of discharge and at six week follow-up. Spouses in the experimental group (n = 25) were introduced to hypnotherapeutic ego strengthening (HES), pre and postoperatively. In the postoperative assessment experimental female spouses showed significantly reduced morbidity levels, which were maintained at follow-up. In contrast, females in the control group (n = 25) showed no change. The results supported the value of brief hypnotherapy as a means of psychologically empowering spouses whose husbands' were undergoing CABS.
Symbol Grounding from Natural Conversation for Human-Robot Communication

This paper proposes a new approach for research on chat-like conversational systems that enable robots to acquire physically grounded knowledge through natural interaction with humans. The proposed approach combines research on chat-like conversational systems, language acquisition, and symbol grounding in order to realize physically situated and natural human-robot interaction. In contrast to previous approaches for chat-like conversation, the proposed approach focuses on utterances which are situated in physical environments surrounding humans and robots. Based on the proposed approach, we develop a concrete method that enables robots to learn object image concepts and the words describe them from object-teaching utterances made by humans. The method is composed of two processes:(1) the detection of object-teaching utterances from chat-like conversation and (2) the learning of object image concepts and the words describing them. It applies a linear support vector machine, multimodal hierarchical Dirichlet process, and term frequency-inverse document frequency process. The experimental results show that the method enabled robots to learn object image concepts and the words that describe them through multimodal chat-like interactions with humans.
Context-aware systems for mobile communication in healthcare: a user oriented approach

A variety of communication problems is a common phenomenon in the current hospital setting. Physicians need a mobile context-aware communication system in their daily practice. Our approach, based on an initial study performed at the Oncology Department at the University Hospital of North Norway and an extensive collection of user needs according to CSCW and use case methodology, will develop a reliable communication system to help physicians accomplish their tasks.
Clustering of hypermethylated genes in neuroblastoma

CpG‐island hypermethylation of gene promoters is a frequent mechanism for gene inactivation in tumors. Many neuroblastomas have hypermethylation and down‐regulation of CASP8, leading to resistance to tumor necrosis factor–related apoptosis‐inducing ligand (TRAIL). We recently found hypermethylation of the four TRAIL receptors in 9 neuroblastoma cell lines. Here, we analyzed methylation of 34 genes in 22 neuroblastoma cell lines. Of the 29 newly analyzed genes, only FLIP at chromosome band 2q33 was methylated in 8/22 cell lines. The FLIP protein is a negative regulator of Caspase 8. FLIP maps adjacent to CASP8, and their methylation patterns showed a moderate correlation. Furthermore, co‐methylation patterns were observed for the TRAIL receptor pairs DCR1 and DCR2 and between DR4 and DR5. All four receptors co‐localize in chromosome band 8p21. The 6 genes methylated in neuroblastomas appeared to occur in pairs. The genes within each pair have a strong sequence homology and originated from gene duplication. We found no evidence for regional spreading of methylation, given that we did not observe de novo methylation in additional local CpG islands. However, the gene pairs showed a striking co‐regulation at the mRNA expression level. Down‐regulation of FLIP strongly corresponds with down‐regulation of CASP8, and this was also found for DCR1 and DCR2. Only a subset of the down‐regulated genes was methylated. This suggests a mechanism of co‐regulated transcriptional silencing of the gene pairs, followed by a methylation event that is less penetrating. The methylation pattern therefore supports a model in which CpG islands are not randomly targeted by methylation in cancer. Specific transcriptional silencing probably marks genes that can become methylated. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Chaos theory based mathematical modelling as manifested from scalp EEG using frequency analysis

The EEG (Electroencephalogram) signals are brain mapped signals that contain information about the brain's complexity and uncertainty. The EEG signals though are useful but due to a large variety of data in them, may look random in nature. We have to extract the proper information from the data by computational modelling of scalp EEG signals. The chaos theory helps in analysing the neurobiological parameters which include Lyapunov Exponent, Approximate Entropy and Hurst Exponent. The frequency filtering of the data helps us in calculation of parameters for different frequency range. It is found that the different classes of data can be catalogued by computing parameters in a specific range of frequencies. As the different frequency band represents different states of mind so the value of parameter for subjects of same classes exhibit same pattern and can be easily distinguished from the other class of benign subjects. Moreover the data is testified by the values of Hurst Exponent for auto correlation.
Situating emotional experience

Psychological construction approaches to emotion suggest that emotional experience is situated and dynamic. Fear, for example, is typically studied in a physical danger context (e.g., threatening snake), but in the real world, it often occurs in social contexts, especially those involving social evaluation (e.g., public speaking). Understanding situated emotional experience is critical because adaptive responding is guided by situational context (e.g., inferring the intention of another in a social evaluation situation vs. monitoring the environment in a physical danger situation). In an fMRI study, we assessed situated emotional experience using a newly developed paradigm in which participants vividly imagine different scenarios from a first-person perspective, in this case scenarios involving either social evaluation or physical danger. We hypothesized that distributed neural patterns would underlie immersion in social evaluation and physical danger situations, with shared activity patterns across both situations in multiple sensory modalities and in circuitry involved in integrating salient sensory information, and with unique activity patterns for each situation type in coordinated large-scale networks that reflect situated responding. More specifically, we predicted that networks underlying the social inference and mentalizing involved in responding to a social threat (in regions that make up the “default mode” network) would be reliably more active during social evaluation situations. In contrast, networks underlying the visuospatial attention and action planning involved in responding to a physical threat would be reliably more active during physical danger situations. The results supported these hypotheses. In line with emerging psychological construction approaches, the findings suggest that coordinated brain networks offer a systematic way to interpret the distributed patterns that underlie the diverse situational contexts characterizing emotional life.
Farnesoid X Receptor Deficiency in Mice Leads to Increased Intestinal Epithelial Cell Proliferation and Tumor Development

Increased dietary fat consumption is associated with colon cancer development. The exact mechanism by which fat induces colon cancer is not clear, however, increased bile acid excretion in response to high-fat diet may promote colon carcinogenesis. The farnesoid X receptor (FXR) is a member of the nuclear receptor superfamily, and bile acids are endogenous ligands of FXR. FXR is highly expressed in the intestine and liver where FXR is essential for maintaining bile acid homeostasis. The role of FXR in intestine cancer development is not known. The current study evaluated the effects of FXR deficiency in mice on intestinal cell proliferation and cancer development. The results showed that FXR deficiency resulted in increased colon cell proliferation, which was accompanied by an up-regulation in the expression of genes involved in cell cycle progression and inflammation, including cyclin D1 and interleukin-6. Most importantly, FXR deficiency led to an increase in the size of small intestine adenocarcinomas in adenomatous polyposis coli mutant mice. Furthermore, after treatment with a colon carcinogen, azoxymethane, FXR deficiency increased the adenocarcinoma multiplicity and size in colon and rectum of C57BL/6 mice. Loss of FXR function also increased the intestinal lymphoid nodule numbers in the intestine. Taken together, the current study is the first to show that FXR deficiency promotes cell proliferation, inflammation, and tumorigenesis in the intestine, suggesting that activation of FXR by nonbile acid ligands may protect against intestinal carcinogenesis.
An Emotional Compass. Harvesting Geo-located Emotional States from User Generated Content on Social Networks and Using them to Create a Novel Experience of Cities

This paper describes the design and implementation of a novel mobile interface under the form of an emotional compass. The interface has been created using the possibility to access large number of geo-located user generated contents across multiple social networks, which have then been processed using Natural Language Analysis techniques, to understand the emotions expressed by Internet users in urban environments. This possibility gives rise to the innovative interface for urban navigation presented in this paper, and opens up the opportunity to conceptualize and implement novel forms of services.
Vibration suppression control of robot arms using a homogeneous-type electrorheological fluid

A variable viscous damper using electrorheological (ER) fluid is developed to suppress torsional vibration of industrial robot. An integrated system consisting of drive motor, harmonic drive, arm linkage and ER damper was measured experimentally and found to be able to reduce the resonance/antiresonance phenomenon by increasing the viscosity of ER damper. A position control system, which is based on both the conventional semi-closed loop control and this new type ER damper, is analyzed and the relation between the ER damping coefficient and the bandwidth of the system is discussed using pole assignment technique. It is shown that the ER damper provides both vibration suppression and disturbance rejection.
Visual sensitivity to color errors in images of natural scenes

Simple color-difference formulae and pictorial images have traditionally been used to estimate the visual impact of color errors introduced by image-reproduction processes. But the limited gamut of RGB cameras constrains such analyses, particularly of natural scenes. The purpose of this work was to estimate visual sensitivity to color errors introduced deliberately into pictures synthesized from hyperspectral images of natural scenes without gamut constraints and to compare discrimination thresholds expressed in CIELAB and S-CIELAB color spaces. From each original image, a set of approximate images with variable color errors were generated and displayed on a calibrated RGB color monitor. The threshold for perceptibility of the errors was determined in a paired-comparison experiment. In agreement with previous studies, it was found that discrimination between original and approximate images needed on average a CIELAB color difference ΔEab* of about 2.2. Although a large variation of performance across the nine images tested was found when errors were expressed in CIELAB units, little variation was obtained when they were expressed in S-CIELAB units.
Trypanosoma cruzi: Gene Expression Surveyed by Proteomic Analysis Reveals Interaction between Different Genotypes in Mixed In Vitro Cultures

We have analyzed the comportment in in vitro culture of 2 different genotypes of Trypanosoma cruzi, the agent of Chagas disease, pertaining to 2 major genetic subdivisions (near-clades) of this parasite. One of the stocks was a fast-growing one, highly virulent in mice, while the other one was slow- growing, mildly virulent in mice. The working hypothesis was that mixtures of genotypes interact, a pattern that has been observed by us in empirical experimental studies. Genotype mixtures were followed every 7 days and characterized by the DIGE technology of proteomic analysis. Proteic spots of interest were characterized by the SAMESPOT software. Patterns were compared to those of pure genotypes that were also evaluated every 7 days. One hundred and three spots exhibited changes in time by comparison with T = 0. The major part of these spots (58%) exhibited an under-expression pattern by comparison with the pure genotypes. 32% of the spots wereover-expressed; 10% of spots were not different from those of pure genotypes. Interestingly, interaction started a few minutes after the mixtures were performed. We have retained 43 different proteins that clearly exhibited either under- or over-expression. Proteins showing interaction were characterized by mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF). Close to 50% of them were either tubulins or heat shock proteins. This study confirms that mixed genotypes of T. cruzi interact at the molecular level. This is of great interest because mixtures of genotypes are very frequent in Chagas natural cycles, both in insect vectors and in mammalian hosts, and may play an important role in the transmission and severity of Chagas disease. The methodology proposed here is potentially applicable to any micropathogen, including fungi, bacteria and viruses. It should be of great interest in the case of bacteria, for which the epidemiological and clinical consequences of mixed infections could be underestimated.
Detection means of the effects of electromagnetic field on membrane nano-pore forming proteins

Alteration of membrane surface charges and membrane Channel activity represents one of the most interesting effects of the electromagnetic exposure on biological structures. Here channel protein activity was recorded in real time by the voltage clamp method. The effect of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields in ultra high frequency (UHF) on the physical behavior of protein, OmpF, was investigated and by our preliminary analysis, we saw these effects in the feature of increasing in voltage sensitivity of this nano pore forming channel. Also increasing the fast flickering of the channel and tendency of the protein to go to the closure state can be considered as the effects of the inserted electromagnetic field.
Inverse Problems Related to Ion Channel Selectivity

Ion channels control many biological processes in cells, and, consequently, a large amount of research is devoted to this topic. Great progress in the understanding of channel function has been made recently using advanced mathematical modeling and simulation. This paper investigates another interesting mathematical topic, namely inverse problems, in connection with ion channels. We concentrate on problems that arise when we try to determine (“identify”) one of the structural features of a channel—its permanent charge—from measurements of its function, namely current‐voltage curves in many solutions. We also try to design channels with desirable properties—for example with particular selectivity properties—using the methods of inverse problems. The use of mathematical methods of identification will help in the design of efficient experiments to determine the properties of ion channels. Closely related mathematical methods will allow the rational design of ion channels useful in many applications, technolo.
Specificity and Emotional Characteristics of the Autobiographical Memories of Male and Female Criminal Offenders

Research on autobiographical memory (AM) has identified problems with remembering specific events in clinical populations, which appear to be related to impaired executive functioning. This study explored whether offenders presented an overgeneral AM (OAM), as problems in executive functioning have been reported in offenders. We compared specificity, spontaneity, and phenomenological characteristics of AMs in offenders (46 men, 46 women) and in a control group (45 men, 47 women). This study also analyzed how depressive symptoms, verbal fluency, and problem-solving skills interacted with AM characteristics. Offenders recalled less specific positive, but not negative, memories compared with controls. Specificity for positive events was related to verbal fluency, but only for male offenders. Positive specificity was related to emotional aspects only for female offenders. The results are discussed in light of the cognitive mechanisms underlying OAM and possible implications for the study of criminal behavior.
Tumor Markers in Neuroendocrine Tumors

Most neuroendocrine tumors produce and secrete a multitude of peptide hormones and amines. Some of these substances cause a specific clinical syndrome: carcinoid, Zollinger-Ellison, hyperglycemic, glucagonoma and WDHA syndrome. Specific markers for these syndromes are basal and/or stimulated levels of urinary 5-HIAA, serum or plasma gastrin, insulin, glucagon and vasoactive intestinal polypeptide, respectively. Some carcinoid tumors and about one third of endocrine pancreatic tumors do not present any clinical symptoms and are called ‘nonfunctioning’ tumors. Therefore, general tumor markers such as chromogranin A, pancreatic polypeptide, serum neuron-specific enolase and subunits of glycoprotein hormones have been used for screening purposes in patients without distinct clinical hormone-related symptoms. Among these general tumor markers chromogranin A, although its precise function is not yet established, has been shown to be a very sensitive and specific serum marker for various types of neuroendocrine tumors. This is because it may also be elevated in many cases of less well-differentiated tumors of neuroendocrine origin that do not secrete known hormones. At the moment, chromogranin A is considered the best general neuroendocrine serum or plasma marker available both for diagnosis and therapeutic evaluation and is increased in 50–100% of patients with various neuroendocrine tumors. Chromogranin A serum or plasma levels reflect tumor load, and it may be an independent marker of prognosis in patients with midgut carcinoids.