Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Outlier Detection in Energy Disaggregation Using Subspace Learning and Gaussian Mixture Model

Special Complex non-Gaussian processes may have dynamic operation scenario shifts so that the traditional Outlier detection approaches become ill-suited. This paper proposes a new outlier detection approach based on using subspace learning and Gaussian mixture model(GMM) in energy disaggregation. Locality preserving projections(LPP) of subspace learning can optimally preserve the neighborhood structure, reveal the intrinsic manifold structure of the data and keep outliers far away from the normal sample compared with the principal component analysis (PCA). The results show proposed approach can significantly improve performance of outlier detection in energy disaggregation, increase the fraction true-positive from 93.8% to 97%, decrease the fraction false-positive from 35.48% to 25.8%.
Eosinophil granules function extracellularly as receptor-mediated secretory organelles

Intracellular granules in several types of leukocytes contain preformed proteins whose secretions contribute to immune and inflammatory functions of leukocytes, including eosinophils, cells notably associated with asthma, allergic inflammation, and helminthic infections. Cytokines and chemokines typically elicit extracellular secretion of granule proteins by engaging receptors expressed externally on the plasma membranes of cells, including eosinophils. Eosinophil granules, in addition to being intracellular organelles, are found as intact membrane-bound structures extracellularly in tissue sites of eosinophil-associated diseases. Neither the secretory capacities of cell-free eosinophil granules nor the presence of functional cytokine and chemokine receptors on membranes of leukocyte granules have been recognized. Here, we show that granules of human eosinophils express membrane receptors for a cytokine, IFN-γ, and G protein–coupled membrane receptors for a chemokine, eotaxin, and that these receptors function by activating signal-transducing pathways within granules to elicit secretion from within granules. Capacities of intracellular granule organelles to function autonomously outside of eosinophils as independent, ligand-responsive, secretion-competent structures constitute a novel postcytolytic mechanism for regulated secretion of eosinophil granule proteins that may contribute to eosinophil-mediated inflammation and immunomodulation.
A Comparative Analysis of Interleaving Methods for Aggregated Search

A result page of a modern search engine often goes beyond a simple list of “10 blue links. ” Many specific user needs (e.g., News, Image, Video) are addressed by so-called aggregated or vertical search solutions: specially presented documents, often retrieved from specific sources, that stand out from the regular organic Web search results. When it comes to evaluating ranking systems, such complex result layouts raise their own challenges. This is especially true for so-called interleaving methods that have arisen as an important type of online evaluation: by mixing results from two different result pages, interleaving can easily break the desired Web layout in which vertical documents are grouped together, and hence hurt the user experience. We conduct an analysis of different interleaving methods as applied to aggregated search engine result pages. Apart from conventional interleaving methods, we propose two vertical-aware methods: one derived from the widely used Team-Draft Interleaving method by adjusting it in such a way that it respects vertical document groupings, and another based on the recently introduced Optimized Interleaving framework. We show that our proposed methods are better at preserving the user experience than existing interleaving methods while still performing well as a tool for comparing ranking systems. For evaluating our proposed vertical-aware interleaving methods, we use real-world click data as well as simulated clicks and simulated ranking systems.
Different Profiles of Wheat Antigens Are Recognised by Patients Suffering from Coeliac Disease and IgE-Mediated Food Allergy

Background: Dietary intake of wheat can cause two distinct immunologically mediated diseases with severe gastrointestinal manifestations, coeliac disease (CD) and IgE-mediated food allergy. The pathomechanisms underlying these diseases are different, but the profile of the target antigens in wheat has not been compared for the two diseases. Methods: We compared IgA- and IgE-reactive antigens in wheat using sera from patients with coeliac disease (n = 35) and food allergy to wheat (n = 16) by one- and two-dimensional immunoblotting. Furthermore, the IgG subclass (IgG1–IgG4) reactivity to wheat antigens was studied by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: IgA antibodies from CD patients and IgE antibodies from allergic patients recognised distinct profiles of wheat antigens. Furthermore, the IgG subclass responses to wheat antigens were different in CD and wheat-allergic patients. Conclusion: This study thus demonstrates that wheat contains antigens/epitopes which are preferentially recognised by CD patients, whereas others elicit IgE-mediated food allergy. This finding suggests that the nature of a food antigen may influence the quality of the pathological immune response in the gut and has implications for the diagnosis and therapy of hypersensitivity to wheat.
Bilateral and Multilateral Exchanges for Peer-Assisted Content Distribution

Users of the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol and its variants are incentivized to contribute their upload capacity in a bilateral manner: Downloading is possible in return for uploading to the same user. An alternative is to use multilateral exchange to match user demand for content to available supply at other users in the system. We provide a formal comparison of peer-to-peer system designs based on bilateral exchange with those that enable multilateral exchange via a price-based market mechanism to match supply and demand. First, we compare the two types of exchange in terms of the equilibria that arise. A multilateral equilibrium allocation is Pareto-efficient, while we demonstrate that bilateral equilibrium allocations are not Pareto-efficient in general. We show that Pareto efficiency represents the “gap” between bilateral and multilateral equilibria: A bilateral equilibrium allocation corresponds to a multilateral equilibrium allocation if and only if it is Pareto-efficient. Our proof exploits the fact that Pareto efficiency implies reversibility of an appropriately constructed Markov chain. Second, we compare the two types of exchange through the expected percentage of users that can trade in a large system, assuming a fixed file popularity distribution. Our theoretical results as well as analysis of a BitTorrent dataset provide quantitative insight into regimes where bilateral exchange may perform quite well even though it does not always give rise to Pareto-efficient equilibrium allocations.
Statistical Approach to Shape from Shading : Reconstruction of 3 D Face Surfaces from Single 2 D

The human visual system is proocient in perceiving three-dimensional shape from the shading patterns in a two-dimensional image. How it does this is not well understood and continues to be a question of fundamental and practical interest. In this paper we present a new quantitative approach to shape-from-shading that may provide some answers. We suggest that the brain, through evolution or prior experience, has discovered that objects can be classiied into lower-dimensional object-classes as to their shape. Extraction of shape from shading is then equivalent to the much simpler problem of parameter estimation in a low dimensional space. We carry out this proposal for an important class of 3D objects; human heads. From an ensemble of several hundred laser-scanned 3D heads, we use principal component analysis to derive a low-dimensional parameterization of head shape space. An algorithm for solving shape-from-shading using this representation is presented. It works well even on real images where it is able to recover the 3D surface for a given person, maintaining facial detail and identity, from a single 2D image of their face. This algorithm has applications in face recognition and animation.
Measures of Perception of Bronchoconstriction and Clinical and Functional Data Are Not Interrelated in Asthma

Background: Sensitivity and absolute perceptual magnitude characterize the perception of bronchoconstriction (PB). Objectives: To define whether clinical and functional characteristics and level of bronchial hyperresponsiveness (BHR) correlate with these two PB indexes during bronchial challenge in asthma. Methods: PB on both the Borg scale and the visual-analogue scale (VAS) was assessed in 45 consecutive asthmatics during a methacholine-induced decrease in forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) and specifically quantified as Borg and VAS slope, as a measure of sensitivity, whereas scores at a 20% FEV1 decrease (PB20) were assessed as a measure of absolute perceptual magnitude. Clinical score and BHR were also assessed. Results: PB20 related to slope on both the Borg scale and the VAS (p < 0.0001). PB20 and slope related neither to clinical score nor to baseline functional data on both scales. The relationship between the level of BHR and PB20 on either scale was of questionable clinical significance (r2 = 7%). Conclusions: Irrespective of the scale employed, our data indicate the need for directly assessing PB rather than deriving it from clinical and functional data and level of BHR.
Determining canine myocardial area at risk with manganese-enhanced MR imaging.

PURPOSE To test whether manganese-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) imaging can safely depict the myocardial area at risk both during coronary artery occlusion and for at least 2 hours after reperfusion in dogs. MATERIALS AND METHODS All procedures were performed in accordance with the animal care and use committee of the National Institutes of Health. In eight dogs, the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery was occluded for 90 minutes, and 15 micromol of MnCl2 per kilogram of body weight was intravenously infused for 12 minutes. Phase-sensitive inversion-recovery MR imaging of the LAD arterial territory was performed before occlusion, during MnCl2 infusion, and for at least 2 hours after reperfusion. Hemodynamic responses were monitored continuously. Fluorescent microsphere enhancement was used as the reference standard for determining the area at risk ex vivo. Results are reported as percentages of left ventricular area. Correlation, Bland-Altman, and t test analyses were performed. RESULTS Significant differences in manganese-induced contrast enhancement of the area at risk, the normal myocardium, and the blood (P < .01) were measured during LAD artery occlusion and at least 2 hours after reperfusion. No significant changes in heart rate or blood pressure were detected during or after MnCl2 infusion. Measurements of the area at risk obtained with manganese-enhanced MR imaging during LAD artery occlusion and 2 hours after reperfusion correlated well with the size of the at-risk area demarcated by the fluorescent microspheres (during occlusion: y = 0.81x, R = 0.90; during reperfusion: y = 0.83x, R = 0.89). Bland-Altman analysis revealed small systematic errors in measurements at both occlusion and reperfusion. CONCLUSION Manganese-enhanced MR imaging can depict the area at risk during LAD artery occlusion and at least 2 hours after reperfusion without hemodynamic compromise.
Use of Montreal Cognitive Assessment in Patients With Stroke

More than 40% of stroke survivors are found with cognitive impairment (poststroke cognitive impairment [PSCI]) sometime after the event.1 Almost two thirds of these patients are affected by mild cognitive impairment (MCI). 2 A meta-analysis showed that 10% of patients had dementia before first stroke, 10% developed dementia soon after first stroke, and more than a third had dementia after recurrent stroke.3 Ideally, cognitive evaluation of patients with stroke should start early after the event, but this may be difficult. In fact, a cognitive evaluation is not a part of the routine assessment of patients with acute stroke in most centers, and items assessing cognitive functions are poorly represented in the most widely used acute stroke scales. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a brief screening instrument originally designed to identify MCI in elderly patients attending a memory clinic.4 MoCA is a 1-page, 30-point test, administrable in ≈10 minutes, which evaluates different domains: visuospatial abilities, executive functions, short-term memory recall, attention, concentration, working memory, language, and orientation to time and space (Figure). 5 A shortened version of MoCA has been proposed as a first assessment of patients with vascular cognitive impairment by a consensus conference.6 When compared with another widely used cognitive screening test, the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), one of the possible strengths of MoCA in the vascular patient setting is the assessment of executive functions and the presence of more demanding visual construction tasks.7 The consensus conference proposal was generally directed to not otherwise specified vascular cognitive impairment patients6; however, MoCA has recently been used by various groups in the research stroke setting (online-only Data Supplement). However, the use of MoCA in usual stroke practice is not frequent.8 Figure. The original English version of Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). In …
Human-machine interaction force control: using a model-referenced adaptive impedance device to control an index finger exoskeleton

Exoskeleton robots and their control methods have been extensively developed to aid post-stroke rehabilitation. Most of the existing methods using linear controllers are designed for position control and are not suitable for human-machine interaction (HMI) force control, as the interaction system between the human body and exoskeleton is uncertain and nonlinear. We present an approach for HMI force control via model reference adaptive impedance control (MRAIC) to solve this problem in case of index finger exoskeleton control. First, a dynamic HMI model, which is based on a position control inner loop, is formulated. Second, the theoretical MRAC framework is implemented in the control system. Then, the adaptive controllers are designed according to the Lyapunov stability theory. To verify the performance of the proposed method, we compare it with a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) method in the time domain with real experiments and in the frequency domain with simulations. The results illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method in solving the nonlinear HMI force control problem in hand exoskeleton.
DSP implementation of a distributed acoustical beamformer on a wireless sensor platform

In this paper, we consider the use of a Compaq iPAQ 3760s, equipped with a built-in microphone and an external wireless card, for acoustic acquisition and processing to perform a distributed acoustical beamforming. Time synchronization among the microphones is achieved by the reference-broadcast synchronization method. Two beamforming algorithms, based on the time difference of arrivals (TDOA) among the microphones followed by a least-squares estimation, and the maximum-likelihood (ML) parameter estimation method, are used to perform source detection, enhancement, localization, delay-steered beamforming, and direction-of-arrival estimation. Experimental beamforming results using the iPAQs and the wireless network are reported.
Delay effect on conversational quality in telecommunication networks: Do we mind?

Transmission delays are unwanted effects of every day telecommunication systems. These effects influence the overall quality of a telephony connection as perceived by end users. This article summarizes known subjective experiments testing the influence of delays on the perceived quality. In order to find a possible explanation for the differences in the results of those experiments a new conversational test was conducted. The new subjective tests are also presented and compared to already existing experiment results.
Natural gradient multichannel blind deconvolution and speech separation using causal FIR filters

Natural gradient adaptation is an especially convenient method for adapting the coefficients of a linear system in inverse filtering tasks such as convolutive blind source separation and multichannel blind deconvolution. When developing practical implementations of such methods, however, it is not clear how best to window the signals and truncate the filter impulse responses within the filtered gradient updates. We show how inadequate use of truncation of the filter impulse responses and signal windowing within a well-known natural gradient algorithm for multichannel blind deconvolution and source separation can introduce a bias into its steady-state solution. We then provide modifications of this algorithm that effectively mitigate these effects for estimating causal FIR solutions to single- and multichannel equalization and source separation tasks. The new multichannel blind deconvolution algorithm requires approximately 6.5 multiply/adds per adaptive filter coefficient, making its computational complexity about 63% greater than the originally-proposed version. Numerical experiments verify the robust convergence performance of the new method both in multichannel blind deconvolution tasks for i.i. d. sources and in convolutive BSS tasks for real-world acoustic sources, even for extremely-short separation filters.
Online Signature Verification Based on Kolmogorov-Smirnov Distribution Distance

Online signature verification methods examine the dynamics of the handwriting process to decide whether a signature is probably genuine or forged. Most of the previously proposed methods for online signature verification apply Neural Networks, Dynamic Time Warping, or Hidden Markov Model for classification and they consider several aspects, like planar coordinates, pressure, velocity, and acceleration with respect to time. Here we apply a non-parametric statistical test for a comparison of features and the verification of signatures.
Modeling Individual-Based Social Network with Spatial-Temporal Information

Traditional social network models mainly consider the logical relationships betweens social nodes. This paper added geographic spatial information into the nodes of typical city/town social network models, and proposed an individual-based social network model with spatial-temporal information. The collecting and pretreatment methods of social and geographic data were discussed, and in the research of detailed modeling methods, the theoretical methods and implementation measures of modeling individual social relationship chain and individual daily behavior spatial-temporal model were advanced intensively. This social network model could be extensively applied in many fields, such as epidemic spread simulation and analysis.
Public health and nonpasteurized fruit juices.

Well publicized outbreaks of foodborne illness have occurred in recent years due to consumption of commercial, nonpasteurized ("fresh" or "unpasteurized") fruit juices. Nonpasteurized and heat treated juices have been associated with at least 15 foodborne illness outbreaks since the early 1900s. Disease syndromes have included salmonellosis, typhoid fever, cyrptosporidiosis, Escherichia coli-related diarrhea, and hemolytic uremia. Mortality has occasionally occurred during these outbreaks. An increase in the number of reported outbreaks in recent years possibly reflects greater consumption of fresh juices and closer scrutiny of these products by medical and public health authorities. This article reviews the fruit juice borne outbreaks in the 1900s, methods to control pathogens, and regulatory issues related to production of nonpasteurized fruit juices in the U.S.
Toward the Improvement of Image-Guided Interventions for Minimally Invasive Surgery: Three Factors That Affect Performance

Objectives: The objectives were to measure the impact of specific features of imaging devices on tasks relevant to minimally invasive surgery (MIS) and to investigate cognitive and perceptual factors in such tasks. Background: Although image-guided interventions used in MIS provide benefits for patients, they pose drawbacks for surgeons, including degraded depth perception and reduced field of view (FOV). It is important to identify design factors that affect performance. Method: In two navigation experiments, observers fed a borescope through an object until it reached a target. Task completion time and object shape judgments were measured. In a motion perception experiment, observers reported the direction of a line that moved behind an aperture. A motion illusion associated with reduced FOV was measured. Results: Navigation through an object was faster when a preview of the object's exterior was provided. Judgments about the object's shape were more accurate with a preview (compared with none) and with active viewing (compared with passive viewing). The motion illusion decreased with a rectangular or rotating octagonal viewing aperture (compared with circular). Conclusions: Navigation performance may be enhanced when surgeons develop a mental model of the surgical environment, when surgeons (rather than assistants) control the camera, and when the shape of the image is designed to reduce visual illusions. Application: Unintentional contact between surgical tools and healthy tissues may be reduced during MIS when (a) visual aids permit surgeons to maintain a mental model of the surgical environment, (b) images are bound by noncircular apertures, and (c) surgeons manually control the camera.
Space‐in‐Time and Time‐in‐Space Self‐Organizing Maps for Exploring Spatiotemporal Patterns

Spatiotemporal data pose serious challenges to analysts in geographic and other domains. Owing to the complexity of the geospatial and temporal components, this kind of data cannot be analyzed by fully automatic methods but require the involvement of the human analyst's expertise. For a comprehensive analysis, the data need to be considered from two complementary perspectives: (1) as spatial distributions (situations) changing over time and (2) as profiles of local temporal variation distributed over space. In order to support the visual analysis of spatiotemporal data, we suggest a framework based on the “Self‐Organizing Map” (SOM) method combined with a set of interactive visual tools supporting both analytic perspectives. SOM can be considered as a combination of clustering and dimensionality reduction. In the first perspective, SOM is applied to the spatial situations at different time moments or intervals. In the other perspective, SOM is applied to the local temporal evolution profiles. The integrated visual analytics environment includes interactive coordinated displays enabling various transformations of spatiotemporal data and post‐processing of SOM results. The SOM matrix display offers an overview of the groupings of data objects and their two‐dimensional arrangement by similarity. This view is linked to a cartographic map display, a time series graph, and a periodic pattern view. The linkage of these views supports the analysis of SOM results in both the spatial and temporal contexts. The variable SOM grid coloring serves as an instrument for linking the SOM with the corresponding items in the other displays. The framework has been validated on a large dataset with real city traffic data, where expected spatiotemporal patterns have been successfully uncovered. We also describe the use of the framework for discovery of previously unknown patterns in 41‐years time series of 7 crime rate attributes in the states of the USA.