Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining strings and necklaces for interactive three-dimensional segmentation of spinal images using an Integral deformable spine model

Segmentation of the spine directly from three-dimensional (3-D) image data is desirable to accurately capture its morphological properties. We describe a method that allows true 3-D spinal image segmentation using a deformable integral spine model. The method learns the appearance of vertebrae from multiple continuous features recorded along vertebra boundaries in a given training set of images. Important summarizing statistics are encoded into a necklace model on which landmarks are differentiated on their free dimensions. The landmarks are used within a priority segmentation scheme to reduce the complexity of the segmentation problem. Necklace models are coupled by string models. The string models describe in detail the biological variability in the appearance of spinal curvatures from multiple continuous features recorded in the training set. In the segmentation phase, the necklace and string models are used to interactively detect vertebral structures in new image data via elastic deformation reminiscent of a marionette with strings allowing for movement between interrelated structures. Strings constrain the deformation of the spine model within feasible solutions. The driving application in this work is analysis of computed tomography scans of the human lumbar spine. An illustration of the segmentation process shows that the method is promising for segmentation of the spine and for assessment of its morphological properties.
Fast and reliable estimation schemes in RFID systems

RFID tags are being used in many diverse applications in increasingly large numbers. These capabilities of these tags span from very dumb passive tags to smart active tags, with the cost of these tags correspondingly ranging from a few pennies to many dollars. One of the common problems that arise in any RFID deployment is the problem of quick estimation of the number of tags in the field up to a desired level of accuracy. Prior work in this area has focused on the identification of tags, which needs more time, and is unsuitable for many situations, especially where the tag set is dense. We take a different, more practical approach, and provide very fast and reliable estimation mechanisms. In particular, we analyze our estimation schemes and show that the time needed to estimate the number of tags in the system for a given accuracy is much better than schemes presented in related work. We show that one can estimate the cardinality of tag-sets of any size in near-constant time, for a given accuracy of estimation.
Terminalia Gum as a Directly Compressible Excipient for Controlled Drug Delivery

ABSTRACTThe exudates from the incised trunk of Terminalia randii has been evaluated as controlled release excipient in comparison with xanthan gum and hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC) using carvedilol (water insoluble) and theophylline (water soluble) as model drugs. Matrix tablets were prepared by direct compression and the effects of polymer concentration and excipients—spray dried lactose, microcrystalline cellulose and dicalcium phosphate dihydrate on the mechanical (crushing strength (CS) friability (F) and crushing strength–friability ratio (CSFR)) and drug release properties of the matrix tablets were evaluated. The drug release data were fitted into different release kinetics equations to determine the drug release mechanism(s) from the matrix tablets. The results showed that the CS and CSFR increased with increase in polymer concentration while F decreased. The ranking of CS and CSFR was HPMC > terminalia > xanthan while the ranking was reverse for F. The ranking for t25 (i.e. time for 25% drug release) at a polymer concentration of 60% was xanthan > terminalia = HPMC. The dissolution time, t25, of theophylline matrices was significantly lower (p < 0.001) than those of carvedilol matrix tablets. Drug release from the matrices was by swelling, diffusion and erosion. The mechanical and drug release properties of the tablets were significantly (p < 0.05) dependent on the type and concentration of polymer and excipients used with the release mechanisms varying from Fickian to anomalous. Terminalia gum compared favourably with standard polymers when used in controlled release matrices and could serve as a suitable alternative to the standard polymers in drug delivery.
Tadpole begging behavior and parent-offspring interactions in the mimic poison frog

Studies on offspring begging behavior have focused on whether the behavior communicates offspring need and guides parental food provisioning in the context of honest signaling theory. However, despite the plethora of empirical work on this issue applied to avian systems, begging occurs in the absence of direct sibling interactions in some species, and so may not be selected for solely in the context of intrabrood dynamics, as traditionally hypothesized. Here we broaden the taxonomic scope of investigations into the phenomenon by studying begging behavior in the Peruvian mimic poison frog (Ranitomeya imitator). This system presents several advantages, including individually housed and cared for offspring (eliminating the confounding influence of sibling competition on begging behavior). We specifically investigated in R. imitator, a) whether begging is an honest signal of need, or a signal of quality (or neither), b) if begging is costly, and c) if food-provisioning by parents depends on offspring need. First, under manipulation of long-term diet, cumulative nutritional deficits significantly affected begging behavior, with food-limited tadpoles begging increasingly more over the course of development. In a second experiment, tadpoles induced to beg suffered a cost of taking longer to reach developmental marker stages. Compared to the control group, begging tadpoles also had marginally lower growth rates. Finally, in an experiment testing parental response to tadpoles experiencing different levels of nutrition, parents were more likely to feed the tadpole that did not receive any supplemental food over its food-supplemented sibling. Congruently, the non-supplemented tadpoles were on average fed relatively more frequently. Together, the findings from this study suggest that in the mimic poison frog, offspring begging behavior acts as an honest signal of offspring need and influences how provisioning parents differentially allocate food among their offspring.
A modified gradient-based backpropagation training method for neural networks

A improved gradient-based backpropagation training method is proposed for neural networks in this paper. Based on the Barzilai and Borwein steplength update and some technique of Resilient Propagation method, we adapt the new learning rate to improves the speed and the success rate. Experimental results show that the proposed method has considerably improved convergence speed, and for the chosen test problems, outperforms other well-known training methods.
A CLASSIFICATION MODEL FOR PREDICTING THE SUITABLE STUDY TRACK FOR SCHOOL STUDENTS

One of the most important issues to succeed in the academic life is to assign students to the right track when they arrive to the end of the basic education stage. The main problem in the selection of an academic track in basic Jordanian schools is the lack of useful knowledge for students to support their planning. This paper utilized data mining techniques to provide a classification approach to support basic school students in selecting the suitable track. For this purpose, a decision tree classification model was developed to determine which track is suitable for each student. There are a set classification rules that were extracted from the decision tree to predict and classify the class label for each student. A confusion matrix is built to evaluate the model where the 10-fold Cross Validation method was used for accuracy estimation of the model. The overall accuracy of the model was 87.9% where 218 students were correctly classified out of the 248 students.
A novel analysis technique for investigating transient performance of queueing systems

Conventional analysis techniques of queueing systems typically assume that the stochastic process under study is already in steady state. This assumption is, however, not valid if the life cycle of the process is not large enough. Previous work in transient analysis of queueing systems usually focuses on Markov models. This paper, in contrast, presents an analysis technique for investigating transient performance of queueing systems that are not necessarily Markovian.
Assessing the Impact of a Student Loan Program on Time-to-Degree: The Case of a Program in Peru

This paper evaluates the impact of a student loan program on time-to-degree for undergraduate students at a large university in Peru. The loans have been provided to low-income students who display satisfactory academic performance. The decision whether to apply for a loan depends on each student; therefore, simple regression analysis may fail to estimate the impact due to the problem of endogenous regresor. In this study, an instrumental variable approach is employed, and it is found that students with loans obtain their degrees more rapidly than similar students without loans. JEL Classification-JEL: C13, C14, C21, I22
Dynamic demand adjustment and exchange rate volatility

This thesis consists of four self-contained essays.Essay 1 studies the implications of relaxing the assumption that the elasticity of international substitution is constant over time horizons, through the modeling of habit formation. Compared to the standard model without habits, the proposed dynamic demand model exhibits substantially more volatile exchange rates and it can generate higher real exchange rate persistence in the presence of interest-rate smoothing. Moreover, welfare-maximizing monetary policy results in even stronger exchange rate responses to shocks than does the classical Taylor rule.Essay 2 evaluates the effects of changes in the replacement rate of unemployment benefits on wages and unemployment in an estimated DSGE model. Allowing for permanent shocks to the replacement rate, we find a semielasticity of unemployment of 1.22. Our rich model of the wage bargain further allows us to determine the relative importance of match separation and strike/lockout in wage bargaining. Results from our main specification indicate that breakdowns are more important threat points than conflicts in negotiations when wages are determined.Essay 3 examines the econometric methodology of the empirical literature on the elasticity of international substitution following Feenstra (1994), looking in more detail at the effect on the results of the non-linear mapping between reduced-form and structural parameters. Our main contribution is the use of bootstrap methods, which can explain why researchers applying the Feenstra method may tend to find high estimates. The bootstrap further allows us to better characterize the accuracy of the obtained estimates, a point vastly overlooked by the literature.In Essay 4 we estimate the elasticity of substitution of a country's imports, and that of its exports on the world market, for EU countries using sector level trade data. We present a new empirical strategy based on the identification scheme by Feenstra (1994), which enables the estimation of elasticities from data on exports. We obtain aggregate elasticities for the EU27 countries, with a mean of 3.5 for imports and 4.0 for exports, bringing us closer to traditional estimates and bridging the gap between the newer micro data estimates and the more traditional estimates found in the macroeconomic literature.
The UK-Nigeria Remittance Corridor: Challenges of Embracing Formal Transfer Systems in a Dual Financial Environment

The United Kingdom (UK) -Nigeria remittance corridor has an equal dominance of formal and informal remittance intermediaries. Although several formal financial institutions for transferring money exist in the UK, many people choose to send money informally. More collaboration between the UK and Nigeria is necessary to develop the remittance market, to encourage the use of formal channels, and to enhance the development potential. Among its benefits, the remittance country partnership (RCP) between UK and Nigeria aims to reduce the cost of remittance transfers. The Nigerian government is engaging its diaspora to help spur economic growth. This report recommends that each government focus on improving data collection at its end of the corridor and do more research to provide its policymakers and its private sector with accurate information.
Discovery of α-Aminoazaheterocycle-Methylglyoxal Adducts as a New Class of High-Affinity Inhibitors of Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator Chloride Channels

The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) represents the main Cl– channel in the apical membrane of epithelial cells for cAMP-dependent Cl– secretion. Here we report on the synthesis and screening of a small library of nontoxic α-aminoazaheterocycle-methylglyoxal adducts, inhibitors of wild-type (WT) CFTR and G551D-, G1349D-, and F508del-CFTR Cl– channels. In whole-cell patch-clamp experiments of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells expressing WT-CFTR, we recorded rapid and reversible inhibition of forskolin-activated CFTR currents in the presence of the adducts 5a and 8a,b at 10 pM concentrations. Using iodide efflux experiments, we compared concentration-dependent inhibition of CFTR with glibenclamide (IC50 = 14.7 μM), 3-[(3-trifluoromethyl)phenyl]-5-[(4-carboxyphenyl-)methylene]-2-thioxo-4-thiazolidinone (CFTRinh-172) (IC50 = 1.2 μM), and α-aminoazaheterocycle-methylglyoxal adducts and identified compounds 5a (IC50 = 71 pM), 8a,b (IC50 = 2.5 nM), and 7a,b (IC50 = 3.4 nM) as the most potent inhibitors of WT-CFTR channels. Similar ranges of inhibition were also found when these compounds were evaluated on CFTR channels with the cystic fibrosis mutations F508del (in temperature-corrected human airway epithelial F508del/F508del CF15 cells)-, G551D-, and G1349D-CFTR (expressed in CHO and COS-7 cells). No effect of compound 5a was detected on the volume-regulated or calcium-regulated iodide efflux. Picomolar inhibition of WT-CFTR with adduct 5a was also found using a 6-methoxy-N-(3-sulfopropyl)-quinolinium fluorescent probe applied to the human tracheobronchial epithelial cell line 16HBE14o–. Finally, we found comparable inhibition by 5a or by CFTRinh-172 of forskolin-dependent short-circuit currents in mouse colon. To the best of our knowledge, these new nontoxic α-aminoazaheterocycle-methylglyoxal adducts represent the most potent compounds reported to inhibit CFTR chloride channels.
4 A Tentative Model of a Cerebral Area Network

Modeling explicitly the links between cognitive functions and networks of cerebral areas is necessitated both by the understanding of the clinical outcomes of brain lesions and by the interpretation of activation data provided by functional neuroimaging techniques. At this global level of representation, the human brain can be best modeled by a probabilistic functional causal network. Our modeling approach is based on the anatomical connection pattern, the information processing within cerebral areas and the causal influences that connected regions exert on each other. The information processing within a region is implemented by a causal network of functional primitives that are the interpretation of integrated biological properties. This explicit modeling approach allows the formulation and the simulation of functional and physiological assumptions.
Graphics card processing: accelerating profile-profile alignment

Alignment is the fundamental operation in molecular biology for comparing biomolecular sequences. The most widely used method for aligning groups of alignments is based on the alignment of the profiles corresponding to the groups. We show that profile-profile alignment can be significantly speeded up by general purpose computing on a modern commodity graphics card. Wavefront and matrix-matrix product approaches for implementing profile-profile alignment onto graphics processor are analyzed. The average speed-up obtained is one order of magnitude even when overheads are considered. Thus the computational power of graphics cards can be exploited to develop improved solutions for multiple sequence alignment.
Co-Transplantation of Endothelial Progenitor Cells and Pancreatic Islets to Induce Long-Lasting Normoglycemia in Streptozotocin-Treated Diabetic Rats

Graft vascularization is a crucial step to obtain stable normoglycemia in pancreatic islet transplantation. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) contribute to neoangiogenesis and to the revascularization process during ischaemic events and play a key role in the response to pancreatic islet injury. In this work we co-transplanted EPCs and islets in the portal vein of chemically-induced diabetic rats to restore islet vascularization and to improve graft survival. Syngenic islets were transplanted, either alone or with EPCs derived from green fluorescent protein (GFP) transgenic rats, into the portal vein of streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. Blood glucose levels were monitored and intraperitoneal glucose tolerance tests were performed. Real time-PCR was carried out to evaluate the gene expression of angiogenic factors. Diabetic-induced rats showed long-lasting (6 months) normoglycemia upon co-transplantation of syngenic islets and EPCs. After 3–5 days from transplantation, hyperglycaemic levels dropped to normal values and lasted unmodified as long as they were checked. Further, glucose tolerance tests revealed the animals' ability to produce insulin on-demand as indexed by a prompt response in blood glucose clearance. Graft neovascularization was evaluated by immunohistochemistry: for the first time the measure of endothelial thickness revealed a donor-EPC-related neovascularization supporting viable islets up to six months after transplant. Our results highlight the importance of a newly formed viable vascular network together with pancreatic islets to provide de novo adequate supply in order to obtain enduring normoglycemia and prevent diabetes-related long-term health hazards.
TCP performance enhancement over IEEE 802.11

Transmission Control protocol (TCP) establishes a connection between two host computers in a virtual network and exchanges streams of data. TCP ensures that transfer of data and packets will be delivered in the same order as they were sent. The network topology is designed in a wireless network environment which is IEEE 802.11. TCP is a connection-oriented, end-to-end reliable protocol which is existing in our network topology. In this simulation the total number of nodes is 10. Reno, New Reno are generally used in a network topologies to control congestion. But in these cases Packet Delivery Fraction (PDF) is not sufficient, delay is high, packet loss is also high as it takes longer time to detect and recover packet loss. In order to improve retransmission scheme we propose an updated version of New Reno. It does not have to wait for 3 duplicate acknowledgements, thus it can retransmit faster and doesn't reduce the window size too much prematurely. For evaluating this performance we use NS-2.34 which is the most suitable network simulator in wired and wireless network environment.
La medición del bienestar mediante indicadores de renta real: caracterización de un índice de bienestar tipo Theil

The purpose of this paper is to offer a characterization of a welfare index which depends positively on total income and negatively on Theil's first inequality measure. This welfare index belongs to a family of indicators which try to link measures of income and measures of welfare (real-income indices). El objeto de este trabajo consiste en la caracterizacion de una medida de bienestar que depende positivamente del nivel de renta total y negativamente del primer indice de Theil. Esta medida pertenece a una familia de indices de bienestar que se formulan en terminos de indicadores de "renta real", expresion que alude al proposito explicito de utilizar medidas de renta como indicadores de bienestar.
Extracting Key Terms from Chinese and Japanese texts

Key term extraction is very useful for information retrieval. Most term extraction methods use one of two approaches, namely lexical and grammatical. We argue that due to the diierences in linguistic and character set characteristics of Chinese and Japanese, a lexical approach is more suitable for Chinese whereas a grammatical approach is more suitable for Japanese. In this paper, we present two simple yet powerful systems for Chinese and Japanese key term extraction|CXtract and JBrat. CXtract uses predominantly statistical lexical information to nd term boundaries in large text. JBrat is based on morphosyn-tactic information of the Japanese character sets for terms. Evaluation results show that CXtract has a 80.24% average precision in term extraction, and JBrat has a 88.07% average precision.
Ju l 2 00 7 Short-time dynamics in presence of wave-particles interactions : a perturbative approach

The self-consistent interaction between a beam of charged particles and a wave is considered, within a Vlasov picture. The model is discussed with reference to the case of a Free Electron Laser. Starting with a spatially bunched waterbag distribution, we derive, via perturbative methods, closed analytical expressions for the time evolution of the main macroscopic observables. Predictions of the theory are shown to agree with direct numerical simulations. PACS numbers: 52.65. Ff, 41.60. Cr Short-time dynamics in presence of wave-particles interactions: a perturbative approach.2
Modified Elgamal Cryptosystem Algorithm (MECA)

In 1985 a powerful and public-key scheme was produced by ElGamal. ElGamal encryption/decryption algorithm is based on the difficulty of discrete logarithm problem where it is straight forward to raise numbers to large powers but it is much harder to do the inverse computation of the discrete logarithm. Now, there are so many algorithms available which can solve the discrete logarithm problem of small size numbers in a reasonable time. So to improve security, we proposed a Modified ElGamal Cryptosystem Algorithm (MECA) to enhance the security for encrypting long messages and also secure against mathematical and brute-force attack as well as Low-Modulus and Known-Plaintext attack on Elgamal. The security of this algorithm is based on the difficulty of solving the discrete logarithm problem and Integer factorization problem. This paper also presents comparison between MECA and ElGamal cryptosystem in respect of security and complexity.
Precision Pointing for Ultra-High-Resolution Wall Displays

Ultra-high-resolution wall displays have proven useful for displaying large quantities of information, but lack appropriate interaction techniques to manipulate the data efficiently. We explore the limits of existing modeless remote pointing techniques, originally designed for lower resolution displays, and show that they do not support high-precision pointing on such walls. We then consider techniques that combine a coarse positioning mode to approach the target's area with a precise pointing mode for acquiring the target. We compare both new and existing techniques through a controlled experiment, and find that techniques combining ray casting with relative positioning or angular movements enable the selection of targets as small as 4 millimeters while standing 2 meters away from the display.