Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of mosquito larvicidal activity of Jasminum species (Oleaceae) crude extracts against the filarial vector Culex quinquefasciatus Say (Diptera: Culicidae)

India is endemic to mosquito-borne diseases which are major health problems in tropical regions. Chemical pesticides have been used for several decades in controlling pests and vectors of various human diseases but resulted in several problems such as resistance and resurgence of pests, affecting human health and ecosystem being disrupted leading to the threat that their continued use may further harm the environment. This necessitated the need for environmentally safe and biodegradable indigenous method of vector control. Plant products are considered to be a potential alternative approach as they are environmentally safe, target specific and biodegradable. In the present study, the crude hexane and chloroform flower extracts of Jasminum auriculatum, Jasminum grandiflorum and Jasminum officinale were tested for the larvicidal efficacy against the third instar larvae of Culex quinquefasciatus at concentrations of 62.5, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 and 8000 mg/L. Mortality was recorded after 24 and 48 h. Amongst the crude flower extracts of Jasminum species tested, the crude chloroform extract of Jasminum grandiflorum was found to be effective showing 100% mortality at 500 mg/L and LC50 value of 212.10 mg/L after 48 h. Further investigations are needed to elucidate the larvicidal activity of Jasminum grandiflorum crude chloroform flower extract against a wide range of all stages of mosquito species and also the active ingredient(s) of the extract responsible for larvicidal activity should be
A fast texture synthesis method based on cooccurrence matrix analysis

A synthetical algorithm on texture synthesizing based on Texture Detail intensity calculating by using co-occurrence matrix analysis is proposed in the paper. Classifying the texture into the random texture part and the structural texture part using the co-occurrence matrix analysis to synthesis the two different parts respectively . To do this, we combine the advantages of two approaches so that we can speed up the time and gain a better result. Meanwhile, we presents an efficient algorithm applies the multiresolution method into the random texture synthesizing. Further, this paper provides experimental results to demonstrate the influence caused by the different neighborhood size applied to the experiment.
Humanoid robot walking control on inclined planes

The humanoid bipedal structure is suitable for a assitive robot functioning in the human environment. However, the bipedal walk is a difficult control problem. Walking just on even floor is not satisfactory for the applicability of a humanoid robot. This paper presents a study on bipedal walk on inclined planes. A Zero Moment Point (ZMP) based reference generation technique is employed. The orientation of the feet is adjusted online by a fuzzy logic system to adapt to different walking surface slopes. This system uses a sampling time larger than the one of the joint space position controllers. The average value of the body pitch angle is used as the inputs to the fuzzy logic system. A foot pitch orientation compensator implemented independently for the two feet complements the fuzyy controller. A 12-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) biped robot model is used in the full-dynamics 3-D simulations. Simulations are carried out on even floor and inclined planes with different slopes. The results indicate that the control method presented is successful in enabling the robot to climb slopes of 8.5 degrees (15 percent grade).
Pareto-Based Dominant Graph: An Efficient Indexing Structure to Answer Top-K Queries

Given a record set D and a query score function F, a top-k query returns k records from D, whose values of function F on their attributes are the highest. In this paper, we investigate the intrinsic connection between top-k queries and dominant relationships between records, and based on which, we propose an efficient layer-based indexing structure, Pareto-Based Dominant Graph (DG), to improve the query efficiency. Specifically, DG is built offline to express the dominant relationship between records and top-k query is implemented as a graph traversal problem, i.e., Traveler algorithm. We prove theoretically that the size of search space (that is the number of retrieved records from the record set to answer top-k query) in our algorithm is directly related to the cardinality of skyline points in the record set (see Theorem 3). Considering I/O cost, we propose cluster-based storage schema to reduce I/O cost in Traveler algorithm. We also propose the cost estimation methods in this paper. Based on cost analysis, we propose an optimization technique, pseudorecord, to further improve the search efficiency. In order to handle the top-k query in the high-dimension record set, we also propose N-Way Traveler algorithm. In order to handle DG maintenance efficiently, we propose “Insertion” and “Deletion” algorithms for DG. Finally, extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed methods have significant improvement over its counterparts, including both classical and state art of top-k algorithms.
Racial disparities in diabetic complications in an underinsured population.

CONTEXT It is unclear whether there is a racial difference in the incidence of diabetic complications in underinsured populations. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to investigate racial disparities in the incidence of diabetic complications within the Louisiana State University (LSU) Hospital System. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS This study (1997-2009) was conducted on a diabetic cohort enrolled in the LSU Hospital-Based Longitudinal Study. The cohort included 16,808 non-Hispanic white men, 21,983 non-Hispanic white women, 20,621 African-American men, and 33,753 African-American women who were 30-96 yr of age and had a mean value of family income of $9641/yr at baseline. RESULTS The study cohort had a mean follow-up of 4.4 years. The age- and sex-adjusted incidence rates and 95% confidence intervals of end-stage renal disease (ESRD), coronary heart disease (CHD), heart failure (HF), and stroke for white diabetic patients were 15.1 (14.3-15.8), 80.9 (78.9-82.9), 48.0 (46.6-49.4), and 21.4 (20.5-22.2) per 1000 person-years, respectively. Compared with white diabetic patients, African-American diabetic patients experienced higher incident rates of ESRD [17.3 (16.6-18.0)] and lower rates of CHD [47.5 (46.3-48.6)], HF [40.7 (39.6-41.8)], and stroke [19.1 (18.4-19.9)]. Female diabetic patients had lower rates of the four complications than male diabetic patients. Results of the Cox proportional hazard models confirmed sex and race disparity observed in the age-adjusted incidence rates. CONCLUSIONS Despite equal access to care, diabetic African-Americans have a higher risk of ESRD than their white counterparts, whereas diabetic whites have higher risks of CHD, HF, and stroke than their African-American counterparts.
Markov types and minimax redundancy for Markov sources

Redundancy of universal codes for a class of sources determines by how much the actual code length exceeds the optimal code length. In the minimax scenario, one designs the best code for the worst source within the class. Such minimax redundancy comes in two flavors: average minimax or worst case minimax. We study the worst case minimax redundancy of universal block codes for Markovian sources of any order. We prove that the maximal minimax redundancy for Markov sources of order r is asymptotically equal to 1/2m/sup r/(m-1)log/sub 2/n+log/sub 2/A/sub m//sup r/-(lnlnm/sup 1/(m-1)/)/lnm+o(1), where n is the length of a source sequence, m is the size of the alphabet, and A/sub m//sup r/ is an explicit constant (e.g., we find that for a binary alphabet m=2 and Markov of order r=1 the constant A/sub 2//sup 1/=16/spl middot/G/spl ap/14.655449504 where G is the Catalan number). Unlike previous attempts, we view the redundancy problem as an asymptotic evaluation of certain sums over a set of matrices representing Markov types. The enumeration of Markov types is accomplished by reducing it to counting Eulerian paths in a multigraph. In particular, we propose exact and asymptotic formulas for the number of strings of a given Markov type. All of these findings are obtained by analytic and combinatorial tools of analysis of algorithms.
Modeling neural plasticity in echo state networks for time series prediction

In this paper, we investigate the influence of neural plasticity on the learning performance of echo state networks (ESNs) and supervised learning algorithms in training readout connections for two time series prediction problems including the sunspot time series and the Mackey Glass chaotic system. We implement two different plasticity rules that are expected to improve the prediction performance, namely, anti-Oja learning rule and the Bienenstock-Cooper-Munro (BCM) learning rule combined with both offline and online learning of the readout connections. Our experimental results have demonstrated that the neural plasticity can more significantly enhance the learning in offline learning than in online learning.
Distributed Cognition in the Management of Design Requirements

Requirements processes in contemporary information systems development efforts have become increasingly distributed across organizational and temporal boundaries. This trend has created a range of challenges and opportunities for IT design professionals. In the present study, we combine the insights from a multiple-case study research effort and the framework provided by the theory of distributed cognition to development a model of distributed requirements practice. The model reveals that systems development projects reflect social, structural, and temporal forms of distributed cognition as they pursue effective design outcomes.
Isolating individual trees in a savanna woodland using small footprint lidar data

This study presents a new method of detecting individual treetops from lidar data and applies marker-controlled watershed segmentation into isolating individual trees in savanna woodland. The treetops were detected by searching local maxima in a canopy maxima model (CMM) with variable window sizes. Different from previous methods, the variable windows sizes were determined by the lower-limit of the prediction intervals of the regression curve between crown size and tree height. The canopy maxima model was created to reduce the commission errors of treetop detection. Treetops were also detected based on the fact that they are typically located around the center of crowns. The tree delineation accuracy was evaluated by a five-fold, cross-validation method. Results showed that the absolute accuracy of tree isolation was 64.1 percent, which was much higher than the accuracy of the method, which only searched local maxima within window sizes determined by the regression curve (37.0 percent).
The primary-backup approach

Such fault tolerant services are generally structured in one of two ways One approach is to replicate the service state at all servers and to present the client requests in the same order to all non faulty servers This service architecture is commonly called active replication or the state machine approach and is discussed in Chapter The other approach is to designate one server as the primary and all the others as backups Clients make requests by sending messages only to the primary If the primary fails then a failover occurs and one of the backups takes over This service architecture is commonly called the primary backup or the primary copy approach and has been widely used in commercial fault tolerant systems
Phonological parsing for reversible letter-to-sound/sound-to-letter generation

In this paper, we describe a reversible letter-to-sound/sound-to-letter generation system based on an approach which combines a rule-based formalism with data-driven techniques. We adopt a probabilistic parsing strategy to provide a hierarchical lexical analysis of a word, including information such as morphology, stress, syllabification, phonemics and graphemics. Long-distance constraints are propagated by enforcing local constraints throughout the hierarchy. Our training and testing corpora are derived from the high-frequency portion of the Brown Corpus (10,000 words), augmented with markers indicating stress and word morphology. We evaluated our performance on both letter-to-sound and sound-to-letter generation in terms of whole word accuracy and phoneme/letter accuracy. Using 26 letters and 52 phonemes with an unseen test set, we achieved a word accuracy of 69.3% and a phoneme accuracy of 91.7% for letter-to-sound generation, and a word accuracy of 51.9% and letter accuracy of 88.6% for sound-to-letter generation. <<ETX>>
The case for reconfigurable I/O channels

Datacenter environments are increasingly layered, with multicore parallelism, OS virtualisation and NUMA memory all introducing variable latency and throughput for data transmission. For a programmer deploying applications in such a shifting environment, it is unclear how best to use venerable interfaces such as the sockets layer. Kernel hackers realise there is some performance hit to all the software layering, but quantitative figures are hard to find. This is a position paper of two rather different halves. We first seek to understand just how big the impact of NUMA layouts and OS virtualisation have been on I/O performance. To do this, we implemented a variety of IPC mechanisms (from TCP sockets to shared memory) and benchmarked them under modern multicore hardware and Xen. We discovered a large variance in throughput and latency under different scheduling conditions (over an order of magnitude in some cases), and also some rather inexplicable results which point to the extreme difficulty of predicting crosslayer performance. In the second half, we describe the early design of a system which aims to overcome these multiplexed I/O scheduling issues. It provides an efficient, zero-copy data transmission interface that automates the selection of the underlying transport, and the facility to dynamically reconfigure transports as system conditions change. Finally, we discuss the implications of extending the OS with explicit I/O flow tracking—eliminating contention, transparent transport-level security and an easy upgrade path to multi-path TCP.
Rituximab-CD20 Complexes Are Shaved from Z138 Mantle Cell Lymphoma Cells in Intravenous and Subcutaneous SCID Mouse Models1

Infusion of standard-dose rituximab (RTX) in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients promotes rapid complement activation and deposition of C3 fragments on CLL B cells. However, immediately after RTX infusions, there is substantial loss (shaving) of CD20 from circulating malignant cells. Because shaving can compromise efficacies of anticancer immunotherapeutic mAbs, we investigated whether shaving occurs in SCID mouse models. Z138 cells, a B cell line derived from human mantle cell lymphoma, were infused i.v. or s.c. The i.v. model recapitulates findings we previously reported for therapeutic RTX in CLL: i.v. infused RTX rapidly binds to Z138 cells in lungs, and binding is accompanied by deposition of C3 fragments. However, within 1 h targeted cells lose bound RTX and CD20, and these shaved cells are still demonstrable 40 h after RTX infusion. Z138 cells grow in tumors at s.c. injection sites, and infusion of large amounts of RTX (0.50 mg on each of 4 days) leads to considerable loss of CD20 from these cells. Human i.v. Ig blocked shaving, suggesting that FcγRI on cells of the mononuclear phagocytic system promote shaving. Examination of frozen tumor sections from treated mice by immunofluorescence revealed large areas of B cells devoid of CD20, with CD20 intact in adjacent areas; it is likely that RTX had opsonized Z138 cells closest to capillaries, and these cells were shaved by monocyte/macrophages. The shaving reaction occurs in neoplastic B cells in tissue and in peripheral blood, and strategies to enhance therapeutic targeting and block shaving are under development.
Approaches for Automatically Enriching Wikipedia

We have been exploring the use of Web-derived knowledge bases through the development of Wikitology - a hybrid knowledge base of structured and unstructured information extracted from Wikipedia augmented by RDF data from DBpedia and other Linked Open Data resources. In this paper, we describe approaches that aid in enriching Wikipedia and thus the resources that derive from Wikipedia such as the Wikitology knowledge base, DBpedia, Freebase and Powerset.
A 45-GHz SiGe HBT amplifier at greater than 25 % efficiency and 30 mW output power

An efficient power amplifier (PA) is demonstrated in a 0.12-µm silicon germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS process at 45 GHz. The amplifier is a single stage common-emitter amplifier (CE). The voltage handling capability of the amplifier is extended by a low impedance biasing network. The amplifier achieves a peak power-added efficiency (PAE) of 25 % at an output power of 13 dBm in linear operation and 31% in class B mode at an output power of 13.3 dBm. The maximum saturated output power Psat is 14.8 dBm, at which the circuit consumes 77 mW. The chip occupies an area of 0.27 mm2 including pads.
CLUSTERING VERY LARGE DATA SETS USING A LOW MEMORY MATRIX FACTORED REPRESENTATION

A scalable method to cluster data sets too large to fit in memory is presented. This method does not depend on random subsampling, but does scan every individual data sample in a deterministic way. The original data are represented in factored form by the product of two matrices, one or both of which is very sparse. This factored form avoids the need to multiply together these two matrices by using a variant of the Principal Direction Divisive Partitioning (PDDP) algorithm which does not depend on computing the distances between the individual samples. The resulting clustering algorithm is Piecemeal PDDP (PMPDDP), in which the original data are broken up into sections which will fit into memory and clustered. The cluster centers are used to create approximations to the original data items, and each original data item is represented by a linear combination of these centers. We evaluate the performance of PMPDDP on three real data sets, and observe that the quality of the clusters of PMPDDP is comparable to PDDP for the data sets examined.
Linear Compositional Distributional Semantics and Structural Kernels

In this paper, we want to start the analysis of the models for compositional distributional semantics (CDS) with respect to the distributional similarity. We believe that this simple analysis of the properties of the similarity can help to better investigate new CDS models. We show that, looking at CDS models from this point of view, these models are strictly related with convolution kernels (Haussler, 1999), e.g.: tree kernels (Collins and Duffy, 2002). We will then examine how the distributed tree kernels (Zanzotto and Dell’Arciprete, 2012) are an interesting result to draw a stronger link between CDS models and convolution kernels.
Advances in superresolution using L-curve

Subsequent to the work of Kim, Bose, and Valenzuela in 1990 on the simultaneous filtering and interpolation of a registered sequence of undersampled noisy and shift-invariant blur degraded images, Bose and Boo tackled in 1998 the problem of reconstructing a high-resolution image from multiple undersampled, shifted, degraded frames with subpixel displacement errors. This led to a formulation involving a periodically shift-variant system model. Lertrattanapanich and Bose advanced in 1999 a procedure for construction of a high-resolution video mosaic following the estimation of motion parameters between successive frames in a video sequence generated from a video camera. Current research is focused on simultaneous blur identification and robust superresolution. The blur is not restricted to be linear shift-invariant and could not only be of the linear shift-variant type but also some nonlinear blurs could be accommodated. The optimal tuning parameter may, if desired, be calculated analytically and not by trial-and-error.
In vivo proton spectroscopy in presence of eddy currents

Spatially localized methods in spectroscopy often operate with magnetic field gradients for volume selection. The eddy currents induced by these gradients produce time‐dependent shifts of the resonance frequency in the selected volume, which results in a distortion of the spectrum after Fourier transformation. In whole‐body systems the complete compensation of eddy currents is a difficult procedure. To avoid this, a correction method is proposed for proton spectroscopy, which uses the signal of prominent water protons as a reference for the water‐suppressed signal. The correction is performed in the time domain, dividing the water‐suppressed signal by the phase factor of the water signal for each data point. The corrected spectra have a good resolution as shown by phantom measurements and brain and muscle spectra of volunteers. © 1990 Academic Press, Inc.
Impaired activity of volume‐sensitive Cl− channel is involved in cisplatin resistance of cancer cells

The platinum‐based drug cisplatin is a widely used anticancer drug which acts by causing the induction of apoptosis. However, resistance to the drug is a major problem. In this study we show that the KCP‐4 human epidermoid cancer cell line, which serves as a model of acquired resistance to cisplatin, has virtually no volume‐sensitive, outwardly rectifying (VSOR) chloride channel activity. The VSOR chloride channel's molecular identity has not yet been determined, and semi‐quantitative RT‐PCR experiments in this study suggested that the channel corresponds to none of three candidate genes. However, because it is known that the channel current plays an essential role in apoptosis, we hypothesized that lack of the current contributes to cisplatin resistance in these cells and that its restoration would reduce resistance. To test this hypothesis, we attempted to restore VSOR chloride current in KCP‐4 cells. It was found that treatment with trichostatin A (TSA), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, caused VSOR chloride channel function to be partially restored. Treatment of the cells with both TSA and cisplatin resulted in an increase in caspase‐3 activity at 24 h and a decrease in cell viability at 48 h. These effects were blocked by simultaneous treatment of the cells with a VSOR chloride channel blocker. These results indicate that restoration of the channel's functional expression by TSA treatment leads to a decrease in the cisplatin resistance of KCP‐4 cells. We thus conclude that impaired activity of the VSOR chloride channel is involved in the cisplatin resistance of KCP‐4 cancer cells. J. Cell. Physiol. 211: 513–521, 2007. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
IdiotPencil: An Interactive System for Generating Pencil Drawings from 3D Polygonal Models

This paper describes an interactive system, called "Idiot Pencil", that enables users to design pencil drawings directly from 3D polygonal models. The potential users of the system are professional designers or non-professional users. The system will automatically generates feature strokes, and provides fast and easy-to-use tools for hatching stroke design. Users only need to specify hatching carriers according to their experiences or intentions. The hatching tools can perceive hatching regions and arrange hatching strokes automatically. In this way, the system allocates most of manual, yet tedious works to the computer while retaining aesthetic control for users. Compared with the existing manual pencil drawing method, the system can speed up the user's drawing and reduce their drawing skill requirements. Several examples of drawings are given by the Idiot Pencil system. The compelling features are obtained from viewpoints of both handcrafted effect and high efficiency when using the computer-aided drawing system.