Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Image retrieval using visual attention

The retrieval of digital images is hindered by the semantic gap. The semantic gap is the disparity between a user's high-level interpretation of an image and the information that can be extracted from an image's physical properties. Content-based image retrieval systems are particularly vulnerable to the semantic gap due to their reliance on low-level visual features for describing image content. The semantic gap can be narrowed by including high-level, user-generated information. High-level descriptions of images are more capable of capturing the semantic meaning of image content, but it is not always practical to collect this information. Thus, both content-based and human-generated information is considered in this work. A content-based method of retrieving images using a computational model of visual attention was proposed, implemented, and evaluated. This work is based on a study of contemporary research in the field of vision science, particularly computational models of bottom-up visual attention. The use of computational models of visual attention to detect salient by design regions of interest in images is investigated. The method is then refined to detect objects of interest in broad image databases that are not necessarily salient by design. An interface for image retrieval, organization, and annotation that is compatible with the attention-based retrieval method has also been implemented. It incorporates the ability to simultaneously execute querying by image content, keyword, and collaborative filtering. The user is central to the design and evaluation of the system. A game was developed to evaluate the entire system, which includes the user, the user interface, and retrieval methods.
Automatic Cinemagraph Portraits

Cinemagraphs are a popular new type of visual media that lie in‐between photos and video; some parts of the frame are animated and loop seamlessly, while other parts of the frame remain completely still. Cinemagraphs are especially effective for portraits because they capture the nuances of our dynamic facial expressions. We present a completely automatic algorithm for generating portrait cinemagraphs from a short video captured with a hand‐held camera. Our algorithm uses a combination of face tracking and point tracking to segment face motions into two classes: gross, large‐scale motions that should be removed from the video, and dynamic facial expressions that should be preserved. This segmentation informs a spatially‐varying warp that removes the large‐scale motion, and a graph‐cut segmentation of the frame into dynamic and still regions that preserves the finer‐scale facial expression motions. We demonstrate the success of our method with a variety of results and a comparison to previous work.
TORNADO: A Spatio-Temporal Convolutional Regression Network for Video Action Proposal

Given a video clip, action proposal aims to quickly generate a number of spatio-temporal tubes that enclose candidate human activities. Recently, the regression-based networks and long-term recurrent convolutional network (L-RCN) have demonstrated superior performance in object detection and action recognition. However, the regression-based detectors perform inference without considering the temporal context among neighboring frames, and the LRC-N using global visual percepts lacks the capability to capture local temporal dynamics. In this paper, we present a novel framework called TORNADO for human action proposal detection in un-trimmed video clips. Specifically, we propose a spatio-temporal convolutional network that combines the advantages of regression-based detector and L-RCN by empowering Convolutional LSTM with regression capability. Our approach consists of a temporal convolutional regression network (T-CRN) and a spatial regression network (S-CRN) which are trained end-to-end on both RGB and optical flow streams. They fuse appearance, motion and temporal contexts to regress the bounding boxes of candidate human actions simultaneously in 28 FPS. The action proposals are constructed by solving dynamic programming with peak trimming of the generated action boxes. Extensive experiments on the challenging UCF-101 and UCF-Sports datasets show that our method achieves superior performance as compared with the state-of-the-arts.
Effect of differential tracer washout during SPECT acquisition.

A central assumption in SPECT is that the projection data are "consistent," that is, the camera views an unchanging distribution during acquisition. Several new radiotracers of interest, including 99mTc-teboroxime (Cardiotec), have rapid clearance from the myocardium. Furthermore, the washout is different in normal and ischemic tissues. We used computer simulations to estimate the effect of this differential washout on quantification of the severity of ischemia. We simulated defect-to-normal myocardial activity ratios of 1 (no defect), 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2, and 0 (complete defect), with single defects placed either in the lateral wall or apex, and SPECT acquisitions of 1, 3, 6, 12, and 24 total minutes. We modeled washout with a monoexponential curve whose clearance half-time was 5.9 min for "normal myocardium" and 9.3 min for "ischemic myocardium. " We found that differential washout from normal and ischemic zones produced image artifacts and errors in defect quantification for acquisitions longer than 3 min. With longer acquisitions, the degree of ischemia was significantly underestimated, with increasing error at longer acquisition times. In addition, in the "no defect" situation an apparent small lateral wall defect (relative to the apex) was present. Finally, lateral wall defects produced artifacts (streaks and reduced apparent activity) in the opposite (medial) wall. Differential normal/ischemic zone washout during SPECT acquisition produces artifacts and errors in quantification, whose severity is dependent on acquisition length, actual defect severity, and defect location.
Repression of Clostridium difficile toxin gene expression by CodY

CodY, a global regulator of gene expression in low G + C Gram‐positive bacteria, was found to repress toxin gene expression in Clostridium difficile. Inactivation of the codY gene resulted in derepression of all five genes of the C. difficile pathogenicity locus during exponential growth and stationary phase. CodY was found to bind with high affinity to a DNA fragment containing the promoter region of the tcdR gene, which encodes a sigma factor that permits RNA polymerase to recognize promoters of the two major toxin genes as well as its own promoter. CodY also bound, but with low affinity, to the toxin gene promoters, suggesting that the regulation of toxin gene expression by CodY occurs primarily through direct control of tcdR gene expression. Binding of CodY to the tcdR promoter region was enhanced in the presence of GTP and branched‐chain amino acids, suggesting a link between nutrient limitation and the expression of C. difficile toxin genes.
MATERIAL FAILURE AND PATTERN GROWTH IN SHOCK-DRIVEN ALUMINUM CYLINDERS AT THE PEGASUS FACILITY

Experiments on the Pegasus pulsed power facility have investigated material failure and the growth of sinusoidal perturbations machined on the free inner surface of both Al 1100 and Al 6061-T6 samples undergoing shocked acceleration. The material behind the free surface exhibits massive microspall resulting in a volume of low-density material. Rapid pattern growth in the failed material and subsequent pattern growth on the surface, including jetting in some cases, were seen. Shock pressures were 15 GPa and 50 GPa.
A New Approach to Time-Optimal Path Parameterization Based on Reachability Analysis

Time-optimal path parameterization (TOPP) is a well-studied problem in robotics and has a wide range of applications. There are two main families of methods to address TOPP: numerical integration (NI) and convex optimization (CO). The NI-based methods are fast but difficult to implement and suffer from robustness issues, while CO-based approaches are more robust but, at the same time, significantly slower. Here, we propose a new approach to TOPP based on reachability analysis. The key insight is to recursively compute reachable and controllable sets at discretized positions on the path by solving small linear programs. The resulting algorithm is faster than NI-based methods and as robust as CO-based ones (100% success rate), as confirmed by extensive numerical evaluations. Moreover, the proposed approach offers unique additional benefits: admissible velocity propagation and robustness to parametric uncertainty can be derived from it in a simple and natural way.
Enhancement of High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Heating by Short-Pulse Generated Cavitation

A target tissue can be thermally coagulated in high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) treatment noninvasively. HIFU thermal treatments have been clinically applied to various solid tumors. One of the problems in HIFU treatments is a long treatment time. Acoustically driven microbubbles can accelerate the ultrasonic heating, resulting in the significant reduction of the treatment time. In this paper, a method named “trigger HIFU exposure” which employs cavitation microbubbles is introduced and its results are reviewed. A trigger HIFU sequence consists of high-intensity short pulses followed by moderate-intensity long bursts. Cavitation bubbles induced in a multiple focal regions by rapidly scanning the focus of high-intensity pulses enhanced the temperature increase significantly and produced a large coagulation region with high efficiency.
Extraction of motion strength and motor activity signals from video recordings of neonatal seizures

Presents two methods developed to extract quantitative information from video recordings of neonatal seizures in the form of temporal motion strength and motor activity signals. Motion strength signals are extracted by measuring the area of the body parts that move during the seizure and the relative speed of motion using a combination of spatiotemporal subband decomposition of video, nonlinear filtering, and segmentation. Motor activity signals are extracted by tracking selected anatomical sites during the seizure using a modified version of a feature-tracking procedure developed for video, known as the Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi (KLT) algorithm. The experiments indicate that the temporal signals produced by the proposed methods provide the basis for differentiating myoclonic from focal clonic seizures and distinguishing these types of neonatal seizures from normal infant behaviors.
Epigenetically silenced GNG4 inhibits SDF1α/CXCR4 signaling in mesenchymal glioblastoma

The most common and aggressive form of primary brain tumor in adults is glioblastoma (GBM). From the global DNA methylation profiling study, previously published from our laboratory, we identified Guanine Nucleotide binding-protein Gamma subunit 4 (GNG4) to be one of the most hyper methylated and down regulated genes in GBM. GBM derived cell lines showed reduced GNG4 transcript levels, which could be reversed by methylation inhibitor treatment. Bisulphite sequencing confirmed the methylation status in glioblastoma tumor tissue and GBM derived cell lines. Overexpression of GNG4 was found to inhibit proliferation and colony formation of GBM cell lines and in vitro transformation of immortalized human astrocytes, thus suggesting a potential tumor suppressor role of GNG4 in GBM. Correlation of GNG4 transcript levels with that of all GPCRs from TCGA data revealed chemokine receptors as the potential target of GNG4. Furthermore, exogenous over expression of GNG4 inhibited SDF1α/CXCR4-dependent chemokine signaling as seen by reduced pERK and pJNK and GBM cell migration. The inhibitory association between GNG4 and SDF1α/CXCR4 was more evident in mesenchymal subtype of GBM. Thus, this study identifies GNG4 as an inhibitor of SDF1α/CXCR4-dependent signaling and emphasizes the significance of epigenetic inactivation of GNG4 in glioblastoma, especially in mesenchymal subtype.
Lignin Composition and Structure in Young versus Adult Eucalyptus globulus Plants1

Lignin changes during plant growth were investigated in a selected Eucalyptus globulus clone. The lignin composition and structure were studied in situ by a new procedure enabling the acquisition of two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (2D-NMR) spectra on wood gels formed in the NMR tube as well as by analytical pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. In addition, milled-wood lignins were isolated and analyzed by 2D-NMR, pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and thioacidolysis. The data indicated that p-hydroxyphenyl and guaiacyl units are deposited at the earlier stages, whereas the woods are enriched in syringyl (S) lignin during late lignification. Wood 2D-NMR showed that β-O-4′ and resinol linkages were predominant in the eucalypt lignin, whereas other substructures were present in much lower amounts. Interestingly, open β-1′ structures could be detected in the isolated lignins. Phenylcoumarans and cinnamyl end groups were depleted with age, spirodienone abundance increased, and the main substructures (β-O-4′ and resinols) were scarcely modified. Thioacidolysis revealed a higher predominance of S units in the ether-linked lignin than in the total lignin and, in agreement with NMR, also indicated that resinols are the most important nonether linkages. Dimer analysis showed that most of the resinol-type structures comprised two S units (syringaresinol), the crossed guaiacyl-S resinol appearing as a minor substructure and pinoresinol being totally absent. Changes in hemicelluloses were also shown by the 2D-NMR spectra of the wood gels without polysaccharide isolation. These include decreases of methyl galacturonosyl, arabinosyl, and galactosyl (anomeric) signals, assigned to pectin and related neutral polysaccharides, and increases of xylosyl (which are approximately 50% acetylated) and 4-O-methylglucuronosyl signals.
Robust Query Processing in Co-Processor-accelerated Databases

Technology limitations are making the use of heterogeneous computing devices much more than an academic curiosity. In fact, the use of such devices is widely acknowledged to be the only promising way to achieve application-speedups that users urgently need and expect. However, building a robust and efficient query engine for heterogeneous co-processor environments is still a significant challenge. In this paper, we identify two effects that limit performance in case co-processor resources become scarce. Cache thrashing occurs when the working set of queries does not fit into the co-processor's data cache, resulting in performance degradations up to a factor of 24. Heap contention occurs when multiple operators run in parallel on a co-processor and when their accumulated memory footprint exceeds the main memory capacity of the co-processor, slowing down query execution by up to a factor of six. We propose solutions for both effects. Data-driven operator placement avoids data movements when they might be harmful; query chopping limits co-processor memory usage and thus avoids contention. The combined approach-data-driven query chopping-achieves robust and scalable performance on co-processors. We validate our proposal with our open-source GPU-accelerated database engine CoGaDB and the popular star schema and TPC-H benchmarks.
Lessons learned, challenges, and opportunities: the U.S. Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program.

In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act and amended the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) requiring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement a screening program to investigate the potential of pesticide chemicals and drinking water contaminants to adversely affect endocrine pathways. Consequently, the EPA launched the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) to develop and validate estrogen, androgen, and thyroid (EAT) pathway screening assays and to produce standardized and harmonized test guidelines for regulatory application. In 2009, the EPA issued the first set of test orders for EDSP screening and a total of 50 pesticide actives and 2 inert ingredients have been evaluated using the battery of EDSP Tier 1 screening assays (i.e., five in vitro assays and six in vivo assays). To provide a framework for retrospective analysis of the data generated and to collect the insight of multiple stakeholders involved in the testing, more than 240 scientists from government, industry, academia, and non-profit organizations recently participated in a workshop titled "Lessons Learned, Challenges, and Opportunities: The U.S. Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. " The workshop focused on the science and experience to date and was organized into three focal sessions: (a) Performance of the EDSP Tier 1 Screening Assays for Estrogen, Androgen, and Thyroid Pathways; (b) Practical Applications of Tier 1 Data; and (c) Indications and Opportunities for Future Endocrine Testing. A number of key learnings and recommendations related to future EDSP evaluations emanated from the collective sessions.
Symbols facilitate programming of industrial robots

In recent years only large scale enterprises have applied industrial robots, but with decreasing prime cost their application is getting more and more interesting for medium sized companies. But the cost of programming is still comparatively high: The huge variety of different manufacturer-dependent and complex offline-programming tools require high-qualified personnel for the whole process of software development. Furthermore most of the text-oriented programming systems lack user-friendly interfaces and the graphic-supported systems with simulation tools and CAD-data interfaces are still too expensive. Due to these reasons, the Institute for Production Automation at the University of Kaiserslautern developed a new offline programming tool for industrial robots, based on the technique of visual programming. The advantages of this technique is already used in a lot of software applications and is offering a good support especially for non-experts. With the help of this tool, called ROBICON, the user is able to design, build and document any robot program in any code, by using graphical symbols. The knowledge of a textual programming language is not necessary anymore.
Topical Application of Ochratoxin A Causes DNA Damage and Tumor Initiation in Mouse Skin

Skin cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer and 2–3 million new cases are being diagnosed globally each year. Along with UV rays, environmental pollutants/chemicals including mycotoxins, contaminants of various foods and feed stuffs, could be one of the aetiological factors of skin cancer. In the present study, we evaluated the DNA damaging potential and dermal carcinogenicity of a mycotoxin, ochratoxin A (OTA), with the rationale that dermal exposure to OTA in workers may occur during their involvement in pre and post harvest stages of agriculture. A single topical application of OTA (20–80 µg/mouse) resulted in significant DNA damage along with elevated γ-H2AX level in skin. Alteration in oxidative stress markers such as lipid peroxidation, protein carbonyl, glutathione content and antioxidant enzymes was observed in a dose (20–80 µg/mouse) and time-dependent (12–72 h) manner. The oxidative stress was further emphasized by the suppression of Nrf2 translocation to nucleus following a single topical application of OTA (80 µg/mouse) after 24 h. OTA (80 µg/mouse) application for 12–72 h caused significant enhancement in- (a) reactive oxygen species generation, (b) activation of ERK1/2, p38 and JNK MAPKs, (c) cell cycle arrest at G0/G1 phase (37–67%), (d) induction of apoptosis (2.0–11.0 fold), (e) expression of p53, p21/waf1, (f) Bax/Bcl-2 ratio, (g) cytochrome c level, (h) activities of caspase 9 (1.2–1.8 fold) and 3 (1.7–2.2 fold) as well as poly ADP ribose polymerase cleavage. In a two-stage mouse skin tumorigenesis protocol, it was observed that a single topical application of OTA (80 µg/mouse) followed by twice weekly application of 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate for 24 week leads to tumor formation. These results suggest that OTA has skin tumor initiating property which may be related to oxidative stress, MAPKs signaling and DNA damage.
Word-level Formal Verification Using Abstract Satisfaction

With the ever-increasing complexity of hardware (HW) and SoC-based designs for mobile platforms, demand for scalable formal verification tools in the semi-conductor industry is always growing. The scalability of hardware model checking tools depends on three key factors: the design representation, the verification engine, and the proof engine. Conventional SAT-based bit-level formal property checking tools for hardware, as shown in the top flow of Figure 1, converts the design into a netlist, typically represented using And-Inverter graphs (AIGs). These tools can not exploit the word-level structure of designs given at the register transfer level (RTL). Over the last decade, formal hardware verification tools have therefore implemented a word-level representation of the transition relation, typically represented using BLIF format or tool-specific word-level formats, thus enabling the use of modern solvers for Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT). However, the performance of word-level symbolic execution engine is determined by the level of abstraction of the symbolic expressions and the power of the rewrite engines used by the SMT solvers. State-of-the-art bitlevel and word-level formal verification tools scale up to block level or small IP level circuits. These tools generally do not scale to large IPs, subsystems, or full SoC designs. Figure 1 presents a conventional bit-level hardware/software co-
Optimization of large-scale offshore wind farm

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Proxy Caching System for MPEG-4 Video Streaming with Quality Adjustment Mechanism

With the growth of computing power and the proliferation of the Internet, video streaming services become widely deployed. In this paper, we propose, design, implement, and evaluate a proxy caching system for MPEG-4 video streaming services. With our system, the high-quality, low-delay, and scalable video distribution can be accomplished. In our system, a video stream is divided into blocks for efficient use of the cache buffer and the bandwidth. A proxy retrieves a block from a server, deposits it in its local cache buffer, and provides a requesting client with the block in time. It maintains the cache with limited capacity by replacing unnecessary cached blocks with a newly retrieved block. The proxy cache server also prefetches video blocks that are expected to be required in the near future in order to avoid cache-misses. In addition, the proxy server adjusts the quality of cached or retrieved video block appropriately, because clients are heterogeneous, in terms of the available bandwidth, end-system performance, and user preferences on the perceived video quality. Through evaluations conducted from several performance aspects, we proved that our proxy caching system can provide users with a continuous and high-quality video streaming service in a heterogeneous environment. key words: video streaming service, proxy caching, quality adjustment, MPEG-4