Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Efficient Fog Removal Method Using Retinex and DWT Algorithms

In this paper, we proposed an improved fog-removing method in order to make the images becoming clearer and easier to recognition. The proposed method combines the Retinex algorithm and wavelet transform algorithm. The proposed method firstly use Retinex algorithm to enhance the image, then the wavelet transform algorithm is used to enhance the details of the image, finally a clearly image which are removed fog can be obtained after reduce the non-important coefficients. Through analyzing the PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) of the image contrast, the images which are processed by our proposed method have the PSNR values higher than the traditional Retinex algorithm's. Introduction: Recent years, haze weather became very serious everywhere. This kind of common weather phenomena will produce whitening effect, will cause the image to degenerate, even fuzzy, which will bring the serious influence for the transportation system and the outdoors vision system. Therefore there is a new requirement to deal with to fog image clarity and realistic. With the continuous development of computer hardware and software technology, it became possible to remove fog from the massive images. Images of outdoor scenes often contain degradation due to haze, resulting in contrast reduction and color fading. For many reasons one may need to remove these effects. Unfortunately haze removal is a difficult problem due the inherent ambiguity between the haze and the underlying scene. All images contain some noise due to sensor error that can be amplified in the haze removal process if ignored. Haze or fog can be a useful depth clue for scene understanding. A bad hazy image can be put to good use. In this dark channel prior is method is used for haze removal. DEFINATION OF FOG: The official definition of fog is when visibility is less than 1000m, which is often used with reference to aviation.However, for the general public and motorists, thick fog is considered to be a visibility of 200m or less, with dense fog 50m or less – the point at which severe disruption to transport occurs.
Utilization of Planned Routes and Dead Reckoning Positions to Improve Situation Awareness at Sea

Understanding a ship’s present position has been one of the most important tasks during a ship’s voyage, in both ancient and modern times. Particularly, a ship’s dead reckoning (DR) has been used for predicting traffic situations and collision avoidance actions. However, the current system that uses the traditional method of calculating DR employs the received position and speed data only. Therefore, it is not applicable for predicting navigation within the harbor limits, owing to the frequent changes in the ship’s course and speed in this region. In this study, planned routes were applied for improving the reliability of the proposed system and predicting the traffic patterns in advance. The proposed method of determining the dead reckoning position (DRP) uses not only the ships’ received data but also the navigational patterns and tracking data in harbor limits. The Mercator sailing formulas were used for calculating the ships’ DRPs and planned routes. The data on the traffic patterns were collected from the automatic identification system and analyzed using MATLAB. Two randomly chosen ships were analyzed for simulating their tracks and comparing the DR method during the timeframes of the ships’ movement. The proposed method of calculating DR, combined with the information on planned routes and DRPs, is expected to contribute towards improving the decision-making abilities of operators.
A “FOXO” in sight: Targeting Foxo proteins from conception to cancer

The successful treatment for multiple disease entities can rest heavily upon the ability to elucidate the intricate relationships that govern cellular proliferation, metabolism, survival, and inflammation. Here we discuss the therapeutic potential of the mammalian forkhead transcription factors predominantly in the O class, FoxO1, FoxO3, FoxO4, and FoxO6, which play a significant role during normal cellular function as well as during progressive disease. These transcription factors are integrated with several signal transduction pathways, such as Wnt proteins, that can regulate a broad array of cellular process that include stem cell proliferation, aging, and malignancy. FoxO transcription factors are attractive considerations for strategies directed against human cancer in light of their pro‐apoptotic effects and ability to lead to cell cycle arrest. Yet, FoxO proteins can be associated with infertility, cellular degeneration, and unchecked cellular proliferation. As our knowledge continues to develop for this novel family of proteins, potential clinical applications for the FoxO family should heighten our ability to limit disease progression without clinical compromise. © 2008 Wiley periodicals, Inc. Med Res Rev, 29, No. 3, 395‐418, 2009
Discrete-time controller synthesis of a piezoelectric cantilever beam with the consideration of finite precision

This paper describes a typical application of controlling the slope of a piezoelectric cantilever. An analytical model for the cantilever beam describing the dynamic relationship between tip slope and the applied voltage is introduced. With closed loop feedback control strategy, the trajectory tracking error of the cantilever deflection angle is evaluated. To control the slope of the cantilever precisely with discrete-time devices, a suitable processor with enough resolution is necessary. With the consideration of limited resolution, an estimation method of required wordlength for the digitalized controllers is also proposed. A discrete-time LQR controller realized with different resolutions was used to validate the proposed method.
Complex models for animating synthetic actors

A classification of models for animating synthetic actors is proposed. The classification depends on the motion control method used (geometric, physical, or behavioral) and the type of actor interaction (single actor, actor-actor, actor-environment, and animator-actor). These interactions and models give rise to a classification array with four rows and three columns. Each case represents existing and potential approaches to animation control. The characteristics of each motion control method and interaction type are examined. <<ETX>>
Lowering the Reset Current and Power Consumption of Phase-Change Memories with Carbon-Doped Ge2Sb2Te5

In this paper, a detailed investigation of the electrical performances of Phase-Change Memory test devices integrating carbon-doped Ge2Sb2Te5 (named GST-C) is reported. PCM devices with 5% of carbon atomic content yields more than 50% of current reduction compared to reference GST devices, with a programming window widely superior to two orders of magnitude and a cycling endurance up to 108 cycles. The reset current reduction is finally validated on shrinked "μ-Wall" test devices, proving that carbon- doped GST is a high promising material for future PCM technology.
Bioavailability in Dose and Exposure Assessment of Organic Contaminants in (Eco)toxicology

The dose is an essential element in toxicology and risk assessment. In most cases, the dose is expressed as a concentration in the external environment. The internal dose is a more direct measure for the exposure in toxicological assays, because it takes differences in bioavailability into account. Because the internal dose is often not measurable, the effective free concentration in a medium or the environment is a useful alternative. This short review discusses the advantages of free concentration measurements of organic compounds for interpretation of effects in sediment and soil tests as well as for in vitro assays.
A Linear-Time and Linear-Space Algorithm for the Minimum Vertex Cover Problem on Giant Graphs

In this paper, we develop the message passing based linear-time and linear-space MVC algorithm (MVC-MPL) for solving the minimum vertex cover (MVC) problem. MVC-MPL is based on heuristics derived from a theoretical analysis of message passing algorithms in the context of belief propagation. We show that MVC-MPL produces smaller vertex covers than other linear-time and linear-space algorithms.
A case study of an organisation development of duality

This paper seeks to comprehend what the organisational circumstances (conditions) look like that induces an organisation to develop its exploitation and exploration capabilities to duality. This is done by studying changes in the organisational characteristics in a Danish manufacturer of accessories for house windows during the expansion leading to global operation. The study comprises 2? years of detailed study and a retrospective study of approximately 30 years. The data collection was mainly based on semi-structured interviews. The findings add a new approach to continuous innovation theory by uncovering how organisational conditions affect the development and integration of exploitation and exploration capabilities.
Using Public Procurement to Achieve Social Equity Goals: Evidence from U.S. Local Governments

Public procurement, the purchase of goods and services by government, has long been used in the U.S. to achieve multiple public policy goals. Since the 1960’s, federal, state, and local governments have used their procurement power to help reduce income inequality and address past discrimination in government contracting by including targets for women, minority-owned and other disadvantaged business enterprises in government procurement contracts. However, with the exception of some federal programs, the effectiveness of the policies to include disadvantaged businesses in government contracts has been an area of limited scholarship. In the first part of this paper, we discuss the development, prevalence, and legal challenges to the use of government procurement policy to achieve social equity policy goals by local U.S. governments. In the second part of this paper, we examine six cases of water infrastructure construction using a value chain analytic framework (Gereffi, Humphrey, & Sturgeon, 2005) to understand where disadvantaged businesses have been successfully included in the design, construction and maintenance of municipal water infrastructure contracts. We find that the level of DBE participation is consistent with an industry governance explanation regarding supplier capability as an important factor for inclusion in the water infrastructure value chain. We conclude with an examination of implications for policy and discuss additional areas for future research.
The Alanine Racemase of Mycobacterium smegmatis Is Essential for Growth in the Absence of d-Alanine

ABSTRACT Alanine racemase, encoded by the gene alr, is an important enzyme in the synthesis of d-alanine for peptidoglycan biosynthesis. Strains of Mycobacterium smegmatis with a deletion mutation of the alr gene were found to require d-alanine for growth in both rich and minimal media. This indicates that alanine racemase is the only source of d-alanine for cell wall biosynthesis in M. smegmatis and confirms alanine racemase as a viable target gene for antimycobacterial drug development.
Pulse wave velocity in retinal arteries of healthy volunteers

Background/aims Measurement of pulse wave velocity (PWV) in large vessels has been used extensively in clinical practice as an indirect measure of arterial stiffness and an indicator of cardiovascular risk factors. Arterial stiffness increases with age and in coronary artery disease. An in vivo clinical method to characterise arterial stiffness of the central microcirculation was developed. Methods Time-dependent alterations of retinal vessel diameter were examined by the dynamic vessel analyzer in a randomly chosen eye of 10 young (26.0 (23.5, 27.0) years old (median (1st quartile, 3rd quartile)) and 10 old (67.0 (61.3, 69.5)) years old) healthy volunteers. Two segments of a retinal artery were measured simultaneously. The distance between the segments was measured using retinal photographs. The data were filtered and analysed using signal analysis methods in order to calculate PWV in the assessed retinal artery (rPWV). Results rPWV differed significantly between young (21.5 (17.9, 4.6) mm/s) and old (243.8 (186.1, 347.7) mm/s) volunteers: (p=0.0001, Mann–Whitney test with Bonferroni correction). Conclusions This study demonstrates a higher rPWV in elderly people than in young people. Therefore this new parameter resembles large artery PWV. This suggests that dynamic in vivo imaging of the central microcirculation enables the measurement of local microvascular stiffness with a commercially available medical device.
Molecular pathways involved in neural in vitro differentiation of marrow stromal stem cells

In recent years several reports have claimed to demonstrate trans‐differentiation, namely that stem cells have been derived from a given tissue and have differentiated into phenotypes characteristic of different tissues following transplantation or in vitro treatment. For example, the mesenchymal stem cells, also referred to as marrow stromal stem cells (MSCs), present in bone marrow, have been induced to differentiate into neurons. We decided to investigate this phenomenon more in depth by a molecular and morphological follow‐up. We analyzed the biochemical pathways that are currently induced to trigger neuron‐like commitment and maturation of MSCs. Our studies suggest that: (i) the increase in cAMP, induced to differentiate MSCs, activates the classical PKA pathway and not through the exchange protein directly activated by cAMP (EPAC), a guanine nucleotide exchange factor for the small GTPase Rap1 and Rap2; (ii) MEK–ERK signaling could contribute to neural commitment and differentiation; (iii) CaM KII activity seems dispensable for neuron differentiation. On the contrary, its inhibition could contribute to rescuing differentiating cells from death. Our research also indicates that the currently used in vitro differentiation protocols, while they allow the early steps of neural differentiation to take place, are not able to further sustain this process. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Effect of Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation and Static Stretch Training on Running Mechanics

Caplan, N, Rogers, R, Parr, MK, and Hayes, PR. The effect of proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation and static stretch training on running mechanics. J Strength Cond Res 23(4): 1175-1180, 2009-There is a long-standing belief that increased range of movement (RoM) at the hip or knee will improve running mechanics; however, few studies have examined the effect of such an increase in RoM. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of 2 methods of stretch training (static and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation [PNF]) on high-velocity running. Eighteen rugby league players were assessed for maximum sprinting velocity. They were randomly allocated into 2 stretch training groups: PNF or static. Each group trained their hamstrings 4 d·w−1 for 5 weeks. Pre- and posttraining subjects were videoed while running at 80% of maximum velocity. The video was digitized to identify biomechanical changes in hip flexion (HF), knee extension (KE), stride length (SL), stride rate (SR), and contact time (tc). Stretch training resulted in gains (p < 0.05) in HF for the static stretch (SS) (4.9%) and PNF (7.6%) groups. There were reductions in KE (p < 0.05) for SS (1.0%) and PNF (1.6%) groups. Stride mechanics were also altered after training. There were increases in SL (p < 0.05) for SS (7.1%) and PNF (9.1%) and a concomitant reduction in SR (p < 0.05) for SS (1.9%) and PNF (4.3%). No changes were observed in tc in either group. In conclusion, both SS and PNF training improved HF RoM and running mechanics during high-velocity running. These findings suggest that stretch training undertaken at the end of regular training is effective in changing running mechanics.
Posttransfusional Hemolysis in Recipients of Glucose‐6‐Phoiphate Dehydrogenase‐Deficient Erythrocytes

To test the hypothesis that transfusion of blood donated by individuals with glucose‐6‐phosphate dehydrogenease (G6PD) deficiency may result in a hemolytic reaction, we conducted a prospective longitudinal study in which 10 patients transfused with 1 unit of G6PD‐deficient and 1 unit of normal red blood cells (RBC) were compared with 10 patients transfused with 2 units of age‐matched normal RBC. We found that 24 h after transfusion serum bilirubin (μmol/1) in the recipients of G6PD‐deficient RBC was significantly higher than in the recipients of normal RBC (36±14 vs. 18±5, respectively, p>0.004). A parallel increase was found in the serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH; IU/1) between the two groups (378±151 vs. 264±56, p<0.001). The difference in serum bilirubin(26±10 vs. 15±5, p<0.03) was still noted 48 h after transfusion, with only a marginal difference (p<0.08) in LDH. We conclude that an immediate posttransfusional hemolytic reaction can occur in recipients of G6PD‐deficient RBC and therefore suggest that the differential diagnosis of posttransfusional hemolysis, particularly in populations where G6PD deficiency is prevalent, includes transfusion of erythrocytes from G6PD‐deficient donors.
Hotel Grading, Service Quality, Satisfaction and Loyalty - Proposing a Theoretical Model and Relationship

Hotels strive to seek some kind of standardization to ensure consistent and comparable service quality, and one of the requirements is for them to have a reliable system which grades and certifies the hotel’s quality, including its facilities and services as meeting a certain international level. In light of the aforementioned, the objective of this paper is to review relevant literature and conceptualize and propose relationships between hotel grading, service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty. From the literature reviewed it is proposed that with respect to hotel customers,  service quality expectations are related to the hotel grading  service quality perceptions are related to the hotel grading  service satisfaction is associated with the hotel grading  customer loyalty is associated with the hotel grading  hotel grading is associate to customers’ service quality expectations, service quality perceptions, satisfaction and loyalty
Power consumption control method using pattern analysis for load distribution

In this paper, we propose a method to control an amount of electric power for load distribution of power grid. The proposed method is characteristic which evenly keeps the power consumption through curtailment control. The scheduler of demand/supply management system determines the curtailment state decision and control based on the predicted power demand information and the predicted renewable energy generation information. The dropped appliances are prevented to get the excessive power curtailment and the power grid is obtained the load distribution effect with time domain by the proposed system.
Mobile locator: Helping the context awareness

This paper presents a work related to context-awareness developed by Multimedia-EHU research group at the University of the Basque Country. The proposed context-awareness is oriented to acquire and utilize information about the physical position of the users through their wireless mobile devices in order to provide services that support users in their activities. In particular the context awareness includes the user's location based on a local Wi-Fi communication network interface to gather indoor location information capitalizing both the wireless Wi-Fi network of the buildings and the user's mobile devices. This technology could help improve the services of scenarios such as: hospitals, trade fair with several multi-storey buildings and enterprises.
Distributed Video Coding with Background Modeling for Wireless Video Surveillance

Video compression takes a very important part in multimedia communication. New applications require constrained resources in terms of power, computational complexity, memory and robustness. Distributed video coding (DVC) provides a solution to achieve such constraints. However, DVC has a low coding efficiency, the overall performance is lower than the H.264/AVC [1] codec. In low-motion scenes such as video conference or video surveillance, we can reduce the storage and transmission cost by using the long term background characteristics. In this paper, we propose a new DVC based on the background modeling of the scenes. We further analyze and design the corresponding optimized structure. We test different low motion video surveillance sequences, and show that the proposed block-based coding paradigm has a better performance compared with current DVC system. Experimental results show that the proposed background modeling method and coding scheme can save more than 14% bitrate and the overall rate-distortion (R-D) performance is increased 1.22 dB in average vs. Low-complexity DVC (LC-DVC) [2]. Our proposed codec architecture can support real time processing @15fps. Keyword; distributed Video Coding (DVC), dynamic GOP control, classification, video surveillance, background modeling, codec structure 2 Shuai Li, Joohee Kim, Ken Choi
Comparison of DNA Pyrosequencing with Alternative Methods for Identification of Mycobacteria

ABSTRACT Identification of mycobacterial clinical isolates by pyrosequencing within the hypervariable A region of the 16S rRNA gene was compared to other identification methods. For >90% of isolates, these identifications correlated to the level of complex or species. For identification of many mycobacteria, pyrosequencing offers an inexpensive alternative to traditional sequencing.
Information Systems and Healthcare Enterprises

Chapter.I. Introduction. 1 . Learning Objectives . 1 What It Is . 1 Technology History . 4 Biographical Perspective . 8 Challenges . 11 Trends . 18 Other Books . 20 Questions . 22
Ideological Constraint and the Quality of Governance in New and Established Democracies

The effectiveness of electoral accountability as a mechanism of citizen control in democracies has in the past been judged unfavorably, owing to the apparently low capacity of voters to organize their political beliefs in consistent ways—a concept known as ideological constraint. This paper suggests that such concerns are misplaced. I demonstrate that even though the quality of governance in new democracies is lower than in established democracies, this is not the result of an absence of opinion constraint among these countries’ voting publics. This paper also contributes a new methodology for measuring ideological constraint across multiple survey items, based upon the statistical technique of latent class analysis, that is especially suited for comparative research. The technique is applied to attitudes on economic and social policy issues using survey data from two large, cross-national public opinion studies. Results indicate that political belief systems in new democracies are just as coherent as those in established democracies. Low constraint is therefore not an impediment to accountability and governance. ∗Author’s note: For helpful discussions related to the development of this project, I wish to thank (in alphabetical order) Tanya Bagashka, Lisa Blaydes, Henry Brady, Pat Egan, James Honaker, Stephen Jessee, Jeffrey Lewis, Scott Moser, Ronald Rogowski, Nasos Roussias, J. Merrill Shanks, and John Zaller. Earlier versions of this research were presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association and the 2005 and 2006 Summer Meetings of the Society for Political Methodology. The Pew Global Attitudes Project bears no responsibility for the interpretations presented or conclusions reached based on analysis of the data presented here.