Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ImageNet MPEG-7 Visual Descriptors - Technical Report

ImageNet is a large scale and publicly available image database. It currently offers more than 14 millions of images, organised according to the WordNet hierarchy. One of the main objective of the creators is to provide to the research community a relevant database for visual recognition applications such as object recognition, image classification or object localisation. However, only a few visual descriptors of the images are available to be used by the researchers. Only SIFT-based features have been extracted from a subset of the collection. This technical report presents the extraction of some MPEG-7 visual descriptors from the ImageNet database. These descriptors are made publicly available in an effort towards open research.
Efficient Action Localization with Approximately Normalized Fisher Vectors

The Fisher vector (FV) representation is a high-dimensional extension of the popular bag-of-word representation. Transformation of the FV by power and ℓ2 normalizations has shown to significantly improve its performance, and led to state-of-the-art results for a range of image and video classification and retrieval tasks. These normalizations, however, render the representation non-additive over local descriptors. Combined with its high dimensionality, this makes the FV computationally expensive for the purpose of localization tasks. In this paper we present approximations to both these normalizations, which yield significant improvements in the memory and computational costs of the FV when used for localization. Second, we show how these approximations can be used to define upper-bounds on the score function that can be efficiently evaluated, which enables the use of branch-and-bound search as an alternative to exhaustive sliding window search. We present experimental evaluation results on classification and temporal localization of actions in videos. These show that the our approximations lead to a speedup of at least one order of magnitude, while maintaining state-of-the-art action recognition and localization performance.
Body composition explains sex differential in physical performance among older adults.

BACKGROUND Older women have higher percent body fat, poorer physical function, lower strength, and higher rates of nonfatal chronic conditions than men. We sought to determine whether these differences explained physical performance differences between men and women. METHODS Physical performance was assessed in the Health, Aging and Body Composition study in 2,863 men and women aged 70-79 with a composite 0-4 point score consisting of chair stands, standing balance including one-leg stand, and 6-m usual and narrow walk tests. Total body composition was measured by dual x-ray absorptiometry, thigh composition by computed tomography, and knee extensor strength by isokinetic dynamometer. Analysis of covariance estimated least square mean performance scores for men and women. RESULTS Men had higher performance scores than women (least square means: 2.33±0.02 vs 2.03±0.02, p < .0001), adjusted for race, study site, age, and height. Body composition measures (total body fat and thigh muscle area, muscle density, subcutaneous fat, and intermuscular fat) accounted for differences between men and women (least square means: 2.15±0.02 vs 2.17±0.02, p = .53). Higher strength in men partly explained the sex difference (least square means: 2.28±0.02 vs 2.12±0.02, p < .0001). Strength attenuated the association of thigh muscle mass with performance. Chronic health conditions did not explain the sex difference. CONCLUSIONS In a well-functioning cohort, poorer physical function in women compared with men can be explained predominantly by their higher fat mass, but also by other body composition differences. The higher proportion of body fat in women may put them at significant biomechanical disadvantage for greater disability in old age.
No disks around low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the young (cid:27) Orionis cluster?

We report on the analysis of 2MASS near-infrared data of a sample of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the (cid:27) Orionis cluster. Youth and cluster membership have been spectroscopically con(cid:12)rmed using the Li i spectral line. We (cid:12)nd little evidence in the JHK s colour-colour diagram for near-infrared excess emission for these cluster members. By comparison with model expectations, at most 2 out of 34 stars show ( H − K s ) colour consistent with a near-infrared excess. This scarcity of near-infrared signatures of circumstellar disks in the lower-mass and substellar regimes of this cluster contrasts with (cid:12)ndings in younger clusters, hinting at an age dependence of the disk frequency. Taking into account the apparent cluster age, our result supports the idea of a relatively fast (few Myr) disk dissipation and extends this conclusion to the substellar regime. We also (cid:12)nd some evidence that, in this cluster, the disk frequency as measured by the K s -band excess may be mass dependent.
Effect of Axial Force on the Performance of Micromachined Vibratory Rate Gyroscopes

It is reported in the published literature that the resonant frequency of a silicon micromachined gyroscope decreases linearly with increasing temperature. However, when the axial force is considerable, the resonant frequency might increase as the temperature increases. The axial force is mainly induced by thermal stress due to the mismatch between the thermal expansion coefficients of the structure and substrate. In this paper, two types of micromachined suspended vibratory gyroscopes with slanted beams were proposed to evaluate the effect of the axial force. One type was suspended with a clamped-free (C-F) beam and the other one was suspended with a clamped-clamped (C-C) beam. Their drive modes are the bending of the slanted beam, and their sense modes are the torsion of the slanted beam. The relationships between the resonant frequencies of the two types were developed. The prototypes were packaged by vacuum under 0.1 mbar and an analytical solution for the axial force effect on the resonant frequency was obtained. The temperature dependent performances of the operated mode responses of the micromachined gyroscopes were measured. The experimental values of the temperature coefficients of resonant frequencies (TCF) due to axial force were 101.5 ppm/°C for the drive mode and 21.6 ppm/°C for the sense mode. The axial force has a great influence on the modal frequency of the micromachined gyroscopes suspended with a C-C beam, especially for the flexure mode. The quality factors of the operated modes decreased with increasing temperature, and changed drastically when the micromachined gyroscopes worked at higher temperatures.
An attempt to measure the quality of questions in question time of the Australian Federal Parliament

This paper uses standard information retrieval techniques to measure the quality of information exchange during Question Time in the Australian Federal Parliament's House of Representatives from 1998 to 2012. A search engine is used to index all answers to questions, and then runs each question as a query, recording the rank of the actual answer in the returned list of documents. Using this rank as a measure of quality, Question Time has deteriorated over the last decade. The main deterioration has been in information exchange in "Dorothy Dixer" questions. The corpus used for this study is available from the author's web page for further investigations.
Subcategorization Acquisition and Evaluation for Chinese Verbs

This paper describes the technology and an experiment of subcategorization acquisition for Chinese verbs. The SCF hypotheses are generated by means of linguistic heuristic information and filtered via statistical methods. Evaluation on the acquisition of 20 multi-pattern verbs shows that our experiment achieved the similar precision and recall with former researches. Besides, simple application of the acquired lexicon to a PCFG parser indicates great potentialities of subcategorization information in the fields of NLP.
Using Process Enactment Data Analysis to Support Orthogonal Defect Classification for Software Process Improvement

Defects occur in many software development projects. It is important to extract semantic information from defects to investigate their root causes and improve the process. In this study, enactment data of a software development process in which defects originated was used to support Orthogonal Defect Classification (ODC). In a sample project of a CMMI ML3 organization ODC was applied to the defects and the utilization of the process enactment data was found to be effective and efficient in providing information about the root causes of the defects and deriving improvement actions. The defect attributes were analyzed and compared before and after applying suggested improvement actions. The comparison between the initial and the improved defect trigger and origin distributions showed that there was a positive change in the software development process of the project.
Outage analysis of MIMO multiuser broadcast scheduling with MMSE receiver

In future wireless communication systems, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique and multi-user scheduling may play a key role in enhancing link reliability and spectral efficiency. In addition, linear signal processing is near-optimal when the number of the antennas becomes very large in the next generation wireless network. In this paper, we aim to investigate overall outage performance of multi-user MIMO broadcast system using minimum mean squared error receivers. Several scheduling algorithms are considered over Rayleigh fading channel. Tight and closed-form upper bounds of the overall outage probabilities are derived for two round-robin scheduling algorithms and two feedback-based opportunistic scheduling algorithms. Our analysis indicates that there exists an performance gap between opportunistic scheduling algorithm and stream-specific opportunistic scheduling algorithm. This gap is related to the number of transmit data streams Nt and the number of users K, and the gap becomes larger as Nt and K increase.
Output performance investigation of self-phase-modulation-based 2R regenerator using bismuth oxide nonlinear fiber

We investigate the feasibility of the use of 1-m length of our fabricated bismuth oxide-based nonlinear fiber (Bi-NLF) for the implementation of a Mamyshev-type 2R regenerator that is based on self-phase-modulation-induced spectral broadening followed by spectral filtering, and evaluate the regeneration performance in both experimental and theoretical ways from a perspective of system application. Owing to the excellent dispersion and chi(3) nonlinearity characteristics of our 1-m-long Bi-NLF, a nonlinear S-shape power transfer curve is readily obtained. A Q-factor improvement of a noisy 10-Gb/s return-to-zero signal by 1.2 dB is achieved by use of the regenerator
Motion tracking of left ventricle and coronaries in 4D CTA

In this paper, we present a novel approach for simultaneous motion tracking of left ventricle and coronary arteries from cardiac Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) images. We first use the multi-scale vesselness filter proposed by Frangi et al.1 to enhance vessels in the cardiac CTA images. The vessel centrelines are then extracted as the minimal cost path from the enhanced images. The centrelines at end-diastolic (ED) are used as prior input for the motion tracking. All other centrelines are used to evaluate the accuracy of the motion tracking. To segment the left ventricle automatically, we perform three levels of registration using a cardiac atlas obtained from MR images. The cardiac motion is derived from cardiac CTA sequences by using local-phase information to derive a non-rigid registration algorithm. The CTA image at each time frame is registered to the ED frame by maximising the proposed similarity function and following a serial registration scheme. Once the images have been aligned, a dynamic motion model of the left ventricle can be obtained by applying the computed free-form deformations to the segmented left ventricle at ED phase. A similar propagation method also applies to the coronary arteries. To validate the accuracy of the motion model we compare the actual position of the coronaries and left ventricle in each time frame with the predicted ones as estimated from the proposed tracking method.
User and Group Profiling in Touristic Web Portals Through Social Networks Analysis

Touristic Web Portals can be considered windows on cultural cities. By providing all the necessary information in one single portal, the user is free to decide her/his preferred items/activities without the need of consulting different information sources. However, this kind of interface introduces the typical information overload problem. In this work, we present our framework for profiling both a single user and a group of users that relies on a not intrusive analysis of the users’ behaviors on social networks/media. By using data drawn from social networks, it is possible to obtain useful indirect information to profile occasional users. Moreover, the analysis of the behavior of small close groups on social networks may help an automatic system in the merge of the different preferences the users may have, simulating somehow a decision process similar to a natural interaction. In this direction, our aim is to identify key users taking in account concepts from research on users’ connectivity and on users’ communication activity.
Chemotactic peptide-induced changes in neutrophil actin conformation

The effect of the chemotatic peptide, N- formylmethionylleucylphenylalanine (FMLP), on actin conformation in human neutrophils (PMN) was studied by flow cytometry using fluorescent 7-nitrobenz-2-oxa-1,3-diazole (NBD)-phallacidin to quantitate cellular F-actin content. Uptake of NBD-phallacidin by fixed PMN was saturable and inhibited by fluid phase F-actin but not G-actin. Stimulation of PMN by greater than 1 nM FMLP resulted in a dose-dependent and reversible increase in F-actin in 70-95% of PMN by 30 s. The induced increase in F-actin was blocked by 30 microM cytochalasin B or by a t- BOC peptide that competitively inhibits FMLP binding. Under fluorescence microscopy, NBD-phallacidin stained, unstimulated PMN had faint homogeneous cytoplasmic fluorescence while cells exposed to FMLP for 30 s prior to NBD-phallacidin staining had accentuated subcortical fluorescence. In the continued presence of an initial stimulatory dose of FMLP, PMN could respond with increased F-actin content to the addition of an increased concentration of FMLP. Thus, FMLP binding to PMN induces a rapid transient conversion of unpolymerized actin to subcortical F-actin and repetitive stimulation of F-actin formation can be induced by increasing chemoattractant concentration. The directed movement of PMN in response to chemoattractant gradients may require similar rapid reversible changes in actin conformation.
Design and Error Analysis of Accelerometer-Based Inertial Navigation Systems

We examine the feasibility of designing an accelerometer-based (or gyroscope-free) inertial navigation system that uses only accelerome-ters to compute the linear and angular motions of a rigid body. The accelerometer output equation is derived to relate the linear and an-gular motions of a rigid body relative to a fixed inertial frame. A suf-ficient condition is given to determine if a configuration of accelerom-eters is feasible. If the condition is satisfied, the angular and linear motions can be computed separately using two decoupled equations of an input-output dynamical system; a state equation for angular velocity and an output equation for linear acceleration. This simple computation scheme is derived from the corresponding dynamical sys-tem equations for a special cube configuration for which the angular acceleration is expressed as a linear combination of the accelerometer outputs. The effects of accelerometer location and orientation errors are analysed. Algorithms that identify and compensate these errors are developed. Keywords gyroscope-free, configuration of accelerometers, feasibility, input-output dynamical system realisation, error sensitivity analysis.
Shaker potassium channel gating. III: Evaluation of kinetic models for activation

Predictions of different classes of gating models involving identical conformational changes in each of four subunits were compared to the gating behavior of Shaker potassium channels without N-type inactivation. Each model was tested to see if it could simulate the voltage dependence of the steady state open probability, and the kinetics of the single-channel currents, macroscopic ionic currents and macroscopic gating currents using a single set of parameters. Activation schemes based upon four identical single-step activation processes were found to be incompatible with the experimental results, as were those involving a concerted, opening transition. A model where the opening of the channel requires two conformational changes in each of the four subunits can adequately account for the steady state and kinetic behavior of the channel. In this model, the gating in each subunit is independent except for a stabilization of the open state when all four subunits are activated, and an unstable closed conformation that the channel enters after opening. A small amount of negative cooperativity between the subunits must be added to account quantitatively for the dependence of the activation time course on holding voltage.
Genetic differentiation among various populations of the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella Lepidoptera Yponomeutidae

Abstract Genetic variation among 14 populations of Plutella xylostella (Linnaeus) from USA (Geneva, New York), Brazil (Brasilia), Japan (Okayama), The Philippines (Caragan de Oyo), Uzbekistan (Tashkent), France (Montpellier), Benin (Cotonou), South Africa (Johannesburg), Réunion Island (Montvert), and five localities in Australia (Adelaide, Brisbane, Mareeba, Melbourne, Sydney) were assessed by analysis of allozyme frequencies at seven polymorphic loci. Most of the populations were not in Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium and had a deficit in heterozygotes. The global differentiation among populations was estimated by the fixation index (Fst) at 0.103 for the 14 populations and at 0.047 when populations from Australia and Japan, which differed most and had a strong genetic structure, were excluded from the analysis. By contrast, the populations from Benin (West Africa) and Brazil (South America) were very similar to each other. Genetic differentiation among the populations was not correlated with geographical distance.
The Knowledge-Leveraging Paradox: How to Achieve Scale without Making Knowledge Imitable

Tacit knowledge, one of the most promising resources, is among the toughest toleverage. It is important because it is often inimitable. However, increasing its scalemay require codification, which may make it imitable. We explore and illustrate anapproach to applying information technologies to leverage scarce expertise withoutcodifying or transferring knowledge. Such technology may allow individuals to furtherspecialize and generate more tacit knowledge, preserving the strategic propertiesof knowledge while scaling up.
Novel roles of cell cycle regulator E2F1 in the CNS: Implications for synaptic damage in HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders

HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) are comprised of a host of cognitive, motor, and behavioral impairments affecting approximately 30-50% of HIV-infected individuals. Despite the development of combination antiretrovirals as a therapy to suppress viral replication, there is currently no effective treatment for HAND-associated neurological symptoms. Advanced understanding of HAND neuropathogenesis is necessary to identify novel therapeutic targets that mediate the neuronal damage and neuronal death associated with this disease. One of the molecular pathways implicated in HAND progression is the aberrant activation of the cell cycle machinery. Activation of the cell cycle machinery leads to the coordinated disinhibiton of the transcription factor E2F1, which initiates the irreversible entry from G1 to S phase in cycling cells, leading to neuronal dysfunction and death. Although E2F1 is well-studied in the context of neuronal death, little is known regarding its physiologic role in the healthy central nervous system (CNS). In the present dissertation work, we aimed to elucidate the role of E2F1 in the healthy CNS, providing implications for E2F1 contribution to HAND neuropathogenesis. We first provided data to suggest that E2F1 does not mediate neuronal damage through its classical functions as a transcriptional regulator of apoptotic and cell cycle-related genes in vitro model of HIV-associated toxicity. Next, we characterized the agedependent behavioral deficits and synaptic disruptions and the impairment in adult neurogenesis in mice with E2F1 gene mutation. Furthermore, we verified that E2F1 can regulate the expression of postsynaptic density protein-95 and neuronal morphology independently from of its effects on neurogenesis. We also found that E2F1 in the brain, unlike in other peripheral tissues, is regulated through alternative splicing. Lastly, we presented evidence that mice classically described as E2F1 null animals do indeed express residual mutant E2F1 mRNA transcript and protein. Taken together, our results suggest that E2F1 plays additional roles in the CNS and that E2F1 is regulated by unique mechanisms in the CNS. Understanding these new functions of E2F1 and how they are regulated will provide new insights into CNS development, disease and therapeutic intervention. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Neuroscience First Advisor Kelly L. Jordan-Sciutto
Micromechanical model of dry friction hybrid polymer composite clutch facings

Modelling the complex coupled thermomechanical and tribological contact of a dry friction clutch system between cast iron flywheel and scatter-wound hybrid composite clutch facing requires a thought through investigation of the friction material properties and behaviour. Challenges of the creation of a mechanical stiffness matrix for such a complex material are described in this paper along with simplification ideas and solutions.
Quantification of cytomegalovirus viral load

Cytomegalovirus (CMV), a member of the Herpesviridae family, is worldwide distributed. After the primary infection, CMV induces a latent infection with possible reactivation(s). It is responsible for severe to life-threatening diseases in immunocompromised patients and in foetuses and newborns of infected mothers. For monitoring CMV load, classical techniques based on rapid culture or pp65 antigenemia are progressively replaced by quantitative nuclear acid tests (QNAT), easier to implement and standardize. A large variety of QNAT are available from laboratory-developed assays to fully-automated commercial tests. The indications of CMV quantification include CMV infection during pregnancy and in newborns, and viral surveillance of grafted and non-grafted immunocompromised patients, patients with bowel inflammatory diseases and those hospitalised in intensive care unit. A close cooperation between virologists and clinicians is essential for optimizing the benefit of CMV DNA monitoring.