Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Endoscopic stereo reconstruction: A comparative study

Advances in robotic surgery especially in minimally-invasive surgery (MIS) has increased the need for translating computer-vision algorithms in endoscopic imagery to support surgical decisions. While methods for stereo reconstruction have been extensively investigated for man-made environments, such an extensive and detailed study on the pros and cons of stereo reconstruction for endoscopic images. In this paper, we extensively compare several state-of-the-art methods on both simulated as well as real endoscopic images over controlled in-lab and phantom models observed by a daVinci stereo endoscope. The advantages and disadvantages of each compared method over the major steps of a stereo-reconstruction pipeline are discussed and supported by exhaustive experiments and discussions.
A complete and accurate analytical model for 802.11e EDCA under saturation conditions

Extensive research addressing IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) and 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) performance analysis, by means of analytical models, exists in the literature. It started mainly with the famous Bianchi's model and still continues today as several aspects have not been yet covered. Indeed, the ultimate goal is to obtain the model that provides the most accurate prediction of the performance metrics such as throughputs and delays. Unfortunately, the currently proposed models, even if there are numerous, do not reach this accuracy and are still not sufficiently complete, in the sense that they omit some important EDCA features. In this paper, we propose a complete analytical model for EDCA under saturation conditions. Based on the proposed model, saturated throughput and access delay of each EDCA Access category are given. Simulation is also performed to demonstrate that the proposed model has better accuracy than others.
GIS AND UNCERTAINTY MANAGEMENT

The contribution deals with issues that are very closely connected: Web services model, Dynamic GIS and the problem of uncertainty of spatial data and discusses the possibilities of the context use as a reflection of the system of understanding. The problem of the relation to the decision support system is addressed and GIS as a tool dealing with all phases of knowledge structure. GIS Web services architecture makes GIS more open and interoperable in using and offers wide range of context information. Web has a unique ability to integrate diverse data through shared location and GIS Web services offer real potential for meeting the demands of users. On one hand the use of very heterogeneous data available on Web – multi-sensor, multi-band and others in the combination with multi-criteria conditions evaluation causes increasing of uncertainty we meet in the processes and consequently in results. The paper discuss the problem of wide context (temporal, spatial, local, objective, attribute oriented, relation oriented) as a tool to compensate and to decrease the uncertainty of data, classification and analytical process at all process to increase the information value of decision support.
Tracking the evolution of communities in co-authorship networks: A semantically aware approach

This paper addresses the problem of tracking the time evolution of communities within co-authorship networks. We consider an evolutionary clustering approach which adapts the statistical framework of shrinkage estimation to obtain a smoothed version of the overall affinity matrix as the optimal weighted average between the matrices of past and current affinities. Moreover, the current affinity matrix at each time step is formed as the optimal mixing between the raw structural relationships between authors coupled with the semantic similarity of their published works, captured by performing LDA-based topic modeling on the corresponding corpora of abstracts. The proposed parametric weighting scheme is simultaneously optimized on a real co-authorship dataset emerging from the network of participants in the ICMB conferences, held from 2002 to 2013. Finally, community detection at each time step is conducted by employing spectral clustering on the estimated overall weight matrix. The obtained results justify that our approach provides a clearer revelation of the inherent authors' communities dynamics when compared against incremental cluster formations that rely exclusively on the structural information of the co-authorship network.
Chapter 1 Stumbling over consensus research : Misunderstandings and issues

The consensus problem has recently emerged as a major interest in systems conferences, yet the systems community tends to ignore most of the large body of theory on this subject. In this chapter, I examine why this might be so. I point out misunderstandings by the systems community of the theory. I also consider some issues in this work that remains to be addressed by the theory community.
Towards feature subset selection in intrusion detection

Intrusion is a serious issue in computer and network systems because a single intrusion can cause a heavy loss in few seconds. To prevent an intrusion, a robust intrusion detection system is highly needed. Existing intrusion detection techniques are not robust; the number of false alarms is high. One of the reasons of false alarms is due to the use of a raw dataset that includes redundancy. To overcome this issue, the recent approaches used (PCA) for feature subset selection where features are first transformed into an eigen space and then features are selected based on their variances (i.e. eigenvalues), but the features corresponding to the highest eigenvalues may not have the optimal sensitivity for the classifier. Instead of using traditional approach of selecting features with the highest eigenvalues, an optimization approach is needed because the selection of most discriminative subset of transformed features is an optimization problem. One research used genetic algorithm (GA) to search the most discriminative subset of transformed features which is evolutionary optimization approach. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) is another optimization approach based on the behavioral study of animals/birds that outperforms GA in some applications. Therefore, the PSO based method is proposed in feature subset selection in this research work.
Working with Students with Intellectual Disabilities: Guidance for the School Psychologist

Preface: General Rules for the Assessment of Students with Disabilities 1. Focus on student needs. ▫ Student needs dictate interventions, not simply what’s convenient for adults. 2. There is no such thing as bad data. ▫ There are bad data interpretations. 3. Use tests don’t let them use you. ▫ School psychologists make psycho-educational recommendations, tests don’t. 4. Everything is data. ▫ There are many ways to understand a student and develop recommendations. 5. Never draw a conclusion from a single data source. ▫ Look for multiple sources of agreement before coming to any conclusion. 4
Psychology of Ownership and Asset Defense: Why People Value Their Personal Information Beyond Privacy

Analysts, investors and entrepreneurs have for long recognized the value of comprehensive user profiles. While there is a market for trading such personal information among companies, the users, who are actually the providers of such information, are not asked to the negotiations table. To date, there is little information on how users value their personal information. In an online survey-based experiment 1059 Facebook users revealed how much they would be willing to pay for keeping their personal information. Our study reveals that as soon as people learn that some third party is interested in their personal information (asset consciousness prime), the value their information to a much higher degree than without this prime and start to defend their asset. Furthermore, we found that people develop a psychology of ownership towards their personal information. In fact, this construct is a significant contributor to information valuation, much higher than privacy concerns.
Pavol Návrat Pavol Barto 2

This paper describes aims, progress and some results of a research conducted in a project that is aimed at devising ways of processing of information and knowledge in a heterogeneous environment, in particular at acquiring, organising and presenting information and knowledge from the Web. Important part of the project are pilot applications. Their main purpose is to test the devised methods and tools as extensively and realistically as possible. From the two pilot applications that are planned, we have already developed the rst one, devoted to o ers and requests on the job market. It is designed as a framework that allows incorporating most of the tools. They show usefulness in supporting the user when looking for new job positions, when mediating services connected with employment or when selecting an applicant for a job for various job positions.
Handwriting Recognition – “ Offline ” Approach

There are many things we humans have in common. But there are other things that are very unique to every individual DNA, fingerprints, etc. Handwriting is one other such thing that is unique to every individual, which the recent studies on Handwriting analysis have already proved. Although arguable is this issue, that handwriting can be mimicked and forgery becoming a huge issue, there is certain level of individuality and uniqueness (like the way of holding the pen, the strokes used in the writing and the amount of pressure put on paper, to name a few) that cannot be mimicked or forged. As computerization is becoming more prominent these days, Handwriting Recognition is gaining importance in various fields eg. Authentication of signatures in banks, recognizing ZIP codes addresses on letters, forensic evidence, etc. Furthermore, letting a large scale computational systems do all the analysis and the authentication work in the bank and other agencies reduced much of the burden. But how would a computer recognize the handwriting of an individual? Owing to the fact that each individual has his own way of presenting his/her ideas on paper, there is a certain level of complexity involved in this subject. An overview of some methodologies and recognition algorithms, particularly off-line recognition methods are presented here.
Single Channel Function of Inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate Receptor Type-1 and -2 Isoform Domain-Swap Chimeras

The InsP3R proteins have three recognized domains, the InsP3-binding, regulatory/coupling, and channel domains (Mignery, G.A., and T.C. Südhof. 1990. EMBO J. 9:3893–3898). The InsP3 binding domain and the channel-forming domain are at opposite ends of the protein. Ligand regulation of the channel must involve communication between these different regions of the protein. This communication likely involves the interceding sequence (i.e., the regulatory/coupling domain). The single channel functional attributes of the full-length recombinant type-1, -2, and -3 InsP3R channels have been defined. Here, two type-1/type-2 InsP3R regulatory/coupling domain chimeras were created and their single channel function defined. One chimera (1-2-1) contained the type-2 regulatory/coupling domain in a type-1 backbone. The other chimera (2-1-2) contained the type-1 regulatory/coupling domain in a type-2 backbone. These chimeric proteins were expressed in COS cells, isolated, and then reconstituted in proteoliposomes. The proteoliposomes were incorporated into artificial planar lipid bilayers and the single-channel function of the chimeras defined. The chimeras had permeation properties like that of wild-type channels. The ligand regulatory properties of the chimeras were altered. The InsP3 and Ca2+ regulation had some unique features but also had features in common with wild-type channels. These results suggest that different independent structural determinants govern InsP3R permeation and ligand regulation. It also suggests that ligand regulation is a multideterminant process that involves several different regions of the protein. This study also demonstrates that a chimera approach can be applied to define InsP3R structure-function.
MITOSIS IN DEVELOPING CARDIAC MUSCLE

The myocardium of the developing chick undergoes a rapid increase in size and complexity during embryonic life. Cell division occurs throughout the myocardium during this period, but decreases as embryonic development progresses. The mitotic indices for different regions of the developing heart have been determined in the light microscopic observations of Grohmann (1) for the entire period of embryonic life.
The Open University ’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Using language technologies to support individual formative feedback Conference Item

Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. Abstract In modern educational environments for group learning it is often challenging for tutors to provide timely individual formative feedback to learners. Taking the case of undergraduate Medicine, we have found that formative feedback is generally provided to learners on an ad-hoc basis, usually at the group, rather than individual, level. Consequently, conceptual issues for individuals often remain undetected until summative assessment. In many subject domains, learners will typically produce written materials to record their study activities. One way for tutors to diagnose conceptual development issues for an individual learner would be to analyse the contents of the learning materials they produce, which would be a significant undertaking. CONSPECT is one of six core web-based services of the Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning (LTfLL) project. This European Union Framework 7-funded project seeks to make use of Language Technologies to provide semi-automated analysis of the large quantities of text generated by learners through the course of their learning. CONSPECT aims to provide formative feedback and monitoring of learners' conceptual development. It uses a Natural Language Processing method, based on Latent Semantic Analysis, to compare learner materials to reference models generated from reference or learning materials. This paper provides a summary of the service development alongside results from validation of Version 1.0 of the service.
Proof Planning in Ω mega with Semantic Guidance

Proof planning is an application of AI-planning in mathematical domains. The planning operators, called methods, encode proving steps. One of the strength of proof planning comes from the usage of mathematical knowledge that heuristically restricts the search space. Semantically guided proof planning uses semantic information as search control heuristics. In this report we describe the realisation of semantically guided proof planning in the framework of the Ωmega system. We realised a module that answers queries from Multi, a multi-strategy proof planner of Ωmega, whether a concrete method application is suitable with respect to the semantic information as well as how promising the method application is. Provided with this information Multi rejects unsuitable method applications and prefers the most promising ones.
Evaluating the Performance of Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines on a Torus Array Processor

The basic linear algebra subroutines (BLAS) are standard operations to efficiently solve the linear algebra problems on high performance and parallel systems. In this paper, we study the implementation of some important BLAS operations on a NtimesN torus array processor. We show that the performance of the Level-3 BLAS represented by the nxn matrix multiply-add operation, n>N, approaches the theoretical peak as n increases since the degree of data reusing is high. While the performance of Level-1 and Level-2 BLAS operations is low as a result of low data reusing. Fortunately, many applications are based on intensive use of Level-3 BLAS with small percentage of Level-1 and Level-2 BLAS.
Persistence and Potential Viable but Non-culturable State of Pathogenic Bacteria during Storage of Digestates from Agricultural Biogas Plants

Despite the development of on-farm anaerobic digestion as a process for making profitable use of animal by-products, factors leading to the inactivation of pathogenic bacteria during storage of digestates remain poorly described. Here, a microcosm approach was used to evaluate the persistence of three pathogenic bacteria (Salmonella enterica Derby, Campylobacter coli and Listeria monocytogenes) in digestates from farms, stored for later land spreading. Nine samples, including raw digestates, liquid fractions of digestate and composted digestates, were inoculated with each pathogen and maintained for 40 days at 24°C. Concentrations of pathogens were monitored using culture and qPCR methods. The persistence of L. monocytogenes, detected up to 20 days after inoculation, was higher than that of Salmonella Derby, detected for 7–20 days, and of C. coli (not detected after 7 days). In some digestates, the concentration of the pathogens by qPCR assay was several orders of magnitude higher than the concentration of culturable cells, suggesting a potential loss of culturability and induction of Viable but Non-Culturable (VBNC) state. The potential VBNC state which was generally not observed in the same digestate for the three pathogens, occurred more frequently for C. coli and L. monocytogenes than for Salmonella Derby. Composting a digestate reduced the persistence of seeded L. monocytogenes but promoted the maintenance of Salmonella Derby. The effect of NH4+/NH3 on the culturability of C. coli and Salmonella Derby was also shown. The loss of culturability may be the underlying mechanism for the regrowth of pathogens. We have also demonstrated the importance of using molecular tools to monitor pathogens in environmental samples since culture methods may underestimate cell concentration. Our results underline the importance of considering VBNC cells when evaluating the sanitary effect of an anaerobic digestion process and the persistence of pathogens during the storage of digestates and subsequent land spreading.
Integral points of fixed degree and bounded height

By Northcott's Theorem there are only finitely many algebraic points in affine $n$-space of fixed degree over a given number field and of height at most $X$. For large $X$ the asymptotics of these cardinalities have been investigated by Schanuel, Schmidt, Gao, Masser and Vaaler, and the author. In this paper we study the case where the coordinates of the points are restricted to algebraic integers, and we derive the analogues of Schanuel's, Schmidt's, Gao's and the author's results.
Matrix Reordering Methods for Table and Network Visualization

This survey provides a description of algorithms to reorder visual matrices of tabular data and adjacency matrix of Networks. The goal of this survey is to provide a comprehensive list of reordering algorithms published in different fields such as statistics, bioinformatics, or graph theory. While several of these algorithms are described in publications and others are available in software libraries and programs, there is little awareness of what is done across all fields. Our survey aims at describing these reordering algorithms in a unified manner to enable a wide audience to understand their differences and subtleties. We organize this corpus in a consistent manner, independently of the application or research field. We also provide practical guidance on how to select appropriate algorithms depending on the structure and size of the matrix to reorder, and point to implementations when available.
Introduction to the universal delta model

There are currently no shared formalization of the output of diff algorithms, the so called deltas. From a theoretical point of view, without such a formalization it is difficult to compare the output of different algorithms. In more practical terms, the lack of a shared formalization makes it hard to create tools that support more than one diff algorithm. This paper introduces the universal delta model: a formal definition of changes (the pieces of information that records that something has changed), operations (the definitions of the kind of change that happened) and deltas (coherent summaries of what has changed between two documents). The fundamental mechanism that makes the changes as defined in the universal delta model a very expressive tool, is the use of encapsulation relations between changes: changes are not only simple records of what has changed, they can also be combined into more complex changes to express the fact that the algorithm has detected more nuanced kinds of changes. The universal delta model has been applied successfully in various projects that served as an evaluation for the model. In addition to the model itself, this paper briefly describes one of these projects: the measurement of objective qualities of deltas as produced by various diff algorithms.
Chinese Spelling Checker Based on an Inverted Index List with a Rescoring Mechanism

An approach is proposed for Chinese spelling error detection and correction, in which an inverted index list with a rescoring mechanism is used. The inverted index list is a structure for mapping from word to desired sentence, and for representing nodes in lattices constructed through character expansion (according to predefined phonologically and visually similar character sets). Pruning based on a contextual dependency confidence measure was used to markedly reduce the search space and computational complexity. Relevant mapping relations between the original input and desired input were obtained using a scoring mechanism composed of class-based language and maximum entropy correction models containing character, word, and contextual features. The proposed method was evaluated using data sets provided by SigHan 7 bakeoff. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieved acceptable performance in terms of recall rate or precision rate in error sentence detection and error location detection, and it outperformed other approaches in error location detection and correction.
The effects of norms and self-monitoring on helping behavior

A scenario-based experiment was used to test five hypotheses concerning group and individual predictors of individual intentions to perform helping behavior in a group. The results of an ANCOVA indicated that descriptive helping norms, personal helping norms, and selfmonitoring perceptions were positively associated with individual intentions to perform helping behavior. The findings underscore the value of considering the group context in which helping behavior operates. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.