Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A weighted image reconstruction based on PCA for pedestrian detection

Pedestrian detection is a task usually associated with security and surveillance systems. The development of a pedestrian detection system poses a hard challenge, because of its inherently complex nature. In this work, we present an analysis of an existing pedestrian detection model based on PCA reconstruction errors. We investigate how the method works and where changes can be made to improve its original performance. The proposed improvements enhance the system's accuracy by using weights, that are found in an automated way using a genetic algorithm. We also found that some reconstruction errors used by the original method are not strictly necessary and therefore they can be eliminated to reduce the classifying time by half.
Object-Oriented Computer Simulations of Physical Systems Using Dual Reciprocity Boundary Element Methodology

Models of physical systems are essential in every engineering eld. This work deals with computer simulations of physical systems that can be mathematically modelled by dierential equations together with sucient boundary conditions. The computer simulations are based on object-oriented technology and the dual reciprocity boundary element method which is a universal solution scheme for various types of partial dierential equations (e.g. Laplace, Poisson, diusion, convection-diusion, and steady Navier-Stokes equation). This technique fullls eciency criteria like precision, robustness, versatility, programmability, user-friendliness, need of computational time and computer memory to a very high degree. This is demonstrated by three examples: Laplace’s solution for a potential flow problem, Poisson’s solution for a torsion problem, and the diusion solution for cooling a metal piece.
Statistical methods for studying modularity: a reply to Mitteroecker and Bookstein.

A major focus in studies of multivariate evolution is on trying to understand the biological and evolutionary forces that shape patterns of covariance between organismal traits. This is particularly true with respect to studies concerned with the topics of phenotypic integration and modularity (see Chernoff and Magwene 1999, for a review). In a recent paper published in Systematic Biology on the topic of modularity and integration, Mitteroecker and Bookstein (2007) reviewed the use of “Wrightstyle” factor analysis to characterize and study patterns of morphological integration. These authors compared their preferred approach with a number of frameworks that previous investigators have employed to address similar questions. Among the methods that Mitteroecker and Bookstein comment on is an approach, described in Magwene (2001), for studying modularity and integration using Gaussian graphical models (GGMs). Mitteroecker and Bookstein (hereafter M&B) assert that the methods described in Magwene (2001) are unsuitable for the study of morphological integration because they are only applicable to modules with 2 variables. In their words “Magwene’s example . a ccidentally worked because all modules consisted of two variables only. ” Below I demonstrate that M&B’s assertion is incorrect and there is no inherent limitation in terms of the size of the modules that can be distinguished using the GGM approach. I discuss conditional independence relationships and briefly describe what might be termed a “Wright-style” approach based on graphical modeling. I also highlight a number of recent biological applications of graphical modeling.
Challenges and Opportunities in the Design of TRILL: A Routed Layer 2 Technology

This paper describes some of the interesting technical issues that arose in the design of TRILL (TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links), a technology being standardized in IETF, that combines the ease of configuration usually associated with layer 2, with the flexibility, robustness, and route optimizations usually associated with layer 3. In addition to describing the issues, we describe the alternative proposals, and the rationale behind the resolutions.
Credit Scoring, Statistical Techniques and Evaluation Criteria: A Review of the Literature

Credit scoring has been regarded as a core appraisal tool of different institutions during the last few decades and has been widely investigated in different areas, such as finance and accounting. Different scoring techniques are being used in areas of classification and prediction, where statistical techniques have conventionally been used. Both sophisticated and traditional techniques, as well as performance evaluation criteria, are investigated in the literature. The principal aim of this paper, in general, is to carry out a comprehensive review of 214 articles/books/theses that involve credit scoring applications in various areas but in particular primarily in finance and banking. This paper also aims to investigate how credit scoring has developed in importance and to identify the key determinants in the construction of a scoring model, by means of a widespread review of different statistical techniques and performance evaluation criteria. Our review of literature revealed that there is no overall best statistical technique used in building scoring models and the best technique for all circumstances does not yet exist. Also, the applications of the scoring methodologies have been widely extended to include different areas, and this subsequently can help decision makers, particularly in banking, to predict their clients' behaviour. Finally, this paper also suggests a number of directions for future research
Natural Variation in RPS2-Mediated Resistance among Arabidopsis Accessions: Correlation between Gene Expression Profiles and Phenotypic Responses[W]

Natural variation in gene expression (expression traits or e-traits) is increasingly used for the discovery of genes controlling traits. An important question is whether a particular e-trait is correlated with a phenotypic trait. Here, we examined the correlations between phenotypic traits and e-traits among 10 Arabidopsis thaliana accessions. We studied defense against Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato DC3000 (Pst), with a focus on resistance gene–mediated resistance triggered by the type III effector protein AvrRpt2. As phenotypic traits, we measured growth of the bacteria and extent of the hypersensitive response (HR) as measured by electrolyte leakage. Genetic variation among accessions affected growth of Pst both with (Pst avrRpt2) and without (Pst) the AvrRpt2 effector. Variation in HR was not correlated with variation in bacterial growth. We also collected gene expression profiles 6 h after mock and Pst avrRpt2 inoculation using a custom microarray. Clusters of genes whose expression levels are correlated with bacterial growth or electrolyte leakage were identified. Thus, we demonstrated that variation in gene expression profiles of Arabidopsis accessions collected at one time point under one experimental condition has the power to explain variation in phenotypic responses to pathogen attack.
Flicker Mitigation by Active Power Control of Variable-Speed Wind Turbines With Full-Scale Back-to-Back Power Converters

Grid-connected wind turbines are fluctuating power sources that may produce flicker during continuous operation. This paper presents a simulation model of a megawatt-level variable-speed wind turbine with a full-scale back-to-back power converter developed in the simulation tool of PSCAD/EMTDC. Flicker emission of this system is investigated. Reactive power compensation is mostly adopted for flicker mitigation. However, the flicker mitigation technique shows its limits, when the grid impedance angle is low in some distribution networks. A new method of flicker mitigation by controlling active power is proposed. It smoothes the 3p active power oscillations from wind shear and tower shadow effects of the wind turbine by varying the dc-link voltage of the full-scale converter. Simulation results show that damping the 3p active power oscillation by using the flicker mitigation controller is an effective means for flicker mitigation of variable-speed wind turbines with full-scale back-to-back power converters during continuous operation.
Proteolytic cleavage and activation of PAK2 during UV irradiation‐induced apoptosis in A431 cells

Exposure of mammalian cells to ultraviolet (UV) light elicits a cellular response and can also lead to apoptotic cell death. In this report, we show that a 36‐kDa myelin basic protein (MBP) kinase detected by an in‐gel kinase assay can be dramatically activated during the early stages of UV irradiation‐triggered apoptosis of A431 cells. Immunoblot analysis revealed that this 36‐kDa MBP kinase could be recognized by an antibody against the C‐terminal regions of a family of p21Cdc42/Rac‐activated kinases (PAKs). By using this antibody and a PAK2‐specific antibody against the N‐terminal region of PAK2 as studying tools, we further demonstrated that UV irradiation caused cleavage of PAK2 to generate a 36‐kDa C‐terminal catalytic fragment and a 30‐kDa N‐terminal fragment in A431 cells. The appearance of the 36‐kDa C‐terminal catalytic fragment of PAK2 matched exactly with the activation of the 36‐kDa MBP kinase in A431 cells upon UV irradiation. In addition, UV irradiation also led to activation of CPP32/caspase‐3, but not ICH‐1L/caspase‐2 and ICE/caspase‐1, in A431 cells and the kinetics of activation of CPP32/caspase‐3 appeared to correlate well with that of DNA fragmentation and of cleavage/activation of PAK2, respectively. Moreover, blockage of activation of CPP32/caspase‐3 by pretreating the cells with two specific tetrapeptidic inhibitors for caspases (Ac‐DEVD‐cho and Ac‐YVAD‐cmk) could significantly attenuate the extent of cleavage/activation of PAK2 induced by UV irradiation. Collectively, the results demonstrate that cleavage and activation of PAK2 can be induced during the early stages of UV irradiation‐triggered apoptosis and indicate the involvement of CPP32/caspase‐3 in this process. J. Cell. Biochem. 70:442‐454, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Linear receiver interfaces for multiuser MIMO communications

We consider the uplink of a DS-CDMA wireless communication system with multiple users equipped with several transmit antennas. We assume that a multiple-antenna subsystem is added to an existing multiuser detector and we compare the performance of this receiver and that of an optimum receiver accounting for both spatial and multiple-access interference simultaneously. In the former case we say that the receiver is separate whereas in the latter we say that the receiver is joint. Several classes of separate and joint linear receivers are considered and their performance is evaluated asymptotically and by simulation.
The response of Arabidopsis root water transport to a challenging environment implicates reactive oxygen species- and phosphorylation-dependent internalization of aquaporins

Aquaporins, which facilitate the diffusion of water across biological membranes, are key molecules for the regulation of water transport at the cell and organ levels. We recently reported that hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) acts as an intermediate in the regulation of Arabidopsis root water transport and aquaporins in response to NaCl and salicylic acid (SA). 1 Its action involves signaling pathways and an internalization of aquaporins from the cell surface. The present addendum connects these findings to another recent work which describes multiple phosphorylations in the C-terminus of aquaporins expressed in the Arabidopsis root plasma membrane.2 A novel role for phosphorylation in the process of salt-induced relocalization of AtPIP2;1, one of the most abundant root aquaporins, was unraveled. Altogether, the data delineate reactive oxygen species (ROS)-dependent signaling mechanisms which, in response to a variety of abiotic and biotic stresses, can trigger phosphorylation-dependent PIP aquaporin intracellular trafficking and root water transport down-regulation. Addendum to: Boursiac Y, Boudet J, Postaire O, Luu DT, Tournaire-Roux C, Maurel C. Stimulus-induced down-regulation of root water transport involves reactive oxygen species-activated cell signalling and plasma membrane intrinsic protein internalization. Plant J 2008; doi. 10.1111/j.1365-313X.2008. 03594.
Directional Multiscale Amplitude and Phase Decomposition by the Monogenic Curvelet Transform

We reconsider the continuous curvelet transform from a signal processing point of view. We show that the analyzing elements of the curvelet transform, the curvelets, can be understood as analytic signals in the sense of the partial Hilbert transform. We then generalize the usual curvelets by the monogenic curvelets, which are analytic signals in the sense of the Riesz transform. They yield a new transform, called the monogenic curvelet transform. This transform has the useful property that it behaves at the fine scales like the usual curvelet transform and at the coarse scales like the monogenic wavelet transform. In particular, the new transform is highly anisotropic at the fine scales and yields a well-interpretable amplitude/phase decomposition of the transform coefficients over all scales. We illustrate the advantage of this new directional multiscale amplitude/phase decomposition for the estimation of directional regularity.
Metaheuristics: review and application

The area of metaheuristics has grown immensely in the past two decades as a solution to real-world optimisation problems. They are able to perform well in situations where exact optimisation techniques fail to deliver satisfactory results. For complex optimisation problems (Nondeterministic polynomial time-hard problems), metaheuristic techniques are able to generate good quality solution in relatively much less time than traditional optimisation techniques. Metaheuristics find applications in a wide range of areas including finance, planning, scheduling and engineering design. This paper presents a review of various metaheuristic algorithms, their methodology, recent trends and applications.
Chapter 13: Learning to Rank Biomedical Documents with only Positive and Unlabeled Examples: A Case Study

In the text mining field, obtaining training data requires human experts' labeling efforts, which is often time consuming and expensive. Supervised learning with only a small number of positive examples and a large amount of unlabeled data, which is easy to get, has attracted booming interests in the field. A recently proposed relabeling method, which assumes unlabeled data as negative data for text classification, has been shown successful in identifying relevant biomedical documents on a specific topic. However, it's not known whether and how feature selection affects the performance of the method. In addition, no extensive research has been conducted to evaluate how the performance of the method changes when the proportion of positive 374 M. Zhu examples in the unlabeled dataset varies. Following the relabeling method, we train Support Vector Machines using positive and unlabeled data to rank incoming documents based on their probability values of being predicted as positive. Using an RNA-protein binding (RNAPB) dataset collected from PubMed, we conduct a series of experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed text ranking algorithm. Our experimental results show that 1) feature selection is helpful in improving the performance of the algorithm; 2) the increase of the proportion of the positive examples in the unlabeled dataset decreases the performance of the algorithm, but when no reliable negative training data is available, the classifiers, built based on the unlabeled data that contains a small proportion of positive examples, may have comparable performance with the classifiers built based on pure negative data.
A monoclonal antibody to a differentiation antigen present on mature human macrophages and absent from monocytes.

A monoclonal antibody is described that has been generated in the mouse against cultured human blood monocytes/macrophages. The antibody, designated 25F9, belongs to the IgG1 subclass, detects antigens of m.w. 86,000, and does not react with freshly isolated blood monocytes but reacts with monocytes after 3 days of culture. The expression of the 25F9 antigen on macrophages increases with culture time. Furthermore, the antibody is negative on platelets, granulocytes, lymphocytes, and a large number of human cell lines except the two melanoma lines MeWo and Mel 57. In cryostat sections of normal human tissue (skin, lung, liver, thymus) and of inflammatory or neoplastic tissue (cutaneous lymphoma, eczema, BCG-granuloma, and melanoma), the antibody reacts with scattered macrophages in the dermis but not with epidermal Langerhans cells, with alveolar macrophages, with liver Kupffer cells, and with scattered macrophages in the cortex and medulla of thymus. In eczema, BCG-granuloma, and cutaneous lymphoma, only a few infiltrating macrophages were stained. On the other hand, a large number of macrophages and melanophages reacted positively in melanoma. In some cases melanoma cells also stained weakly positive. Thus, the antibody detects a differentiation antigen preferentially expressed on mature, tissue-fixed macrophages and absent from blood monocytes.
PV arc-fault detection using spread spectrum time domain reflectometry (SSTDR)

A PV arc-fault detection technique using spread spectrum time domain reflectometry (SSTDR) method has been introduced in this paper. SSTDR is a reflectometry method that has been commercially used for detecting aircraft wiring faults although SSTDR could be potentially used for many other applications. We have used SSTDR for detection of both ground and arc faults in a PV array. It has been demonstrated that SSTDR can be used for detection of both series and parallel arcs, and it has the potential to predict the presence of future arc faults by detecting the change in impedance - even in absence of light or at very low solar irradiance. This method does not require frequency domain analysis of voltage or current signal and can detect the presence of arc regardless of the operating state of the inverter.
Two atypical mobilization proteins are involved in plasmid CloDF13 relaxation

The mobilization region of plasmid CloDF13 was localized to a 3.6 kb DNA segment that was analysed by transposon mutagenesis and DNA sequencing. Analysis of the DNA sequence allowed us to identify two mobilization genes and the CloDF13 origin of conjugative transfer (oriT), which was localized to a 661 bp segment at one end of the mobilization (Mob) region. Thus, the overall organization was oriT–mobB–mobC. Plasmid CloDF13 DNA was isolated mainly as a relaxed form that contained a unique strand and site‐specific cleavage site (nic). The position of nic was mapped to the sequence 5′‐GGGTG/GTCGGG‐3′ by primer extension and sequencing reactions. Analysis of Mob− insertion mutants showed that mobC was essential for CloDF13 relaxation in vivo. The sequence of mobC predicts a protein (MobC) of 243 amino acids without significant similarity to previously reported relaxases. In addition to MobC, the product of mobB was also required for CloDF13 mobilization and for oriT relaxation in vivo. mobB codes for a protein (MobB) of 653 amino acids with three predicted transmembrane segments at the N‐terminus and the NTP‐binding motifs characteristic of the TraG family of conjugative coupling proteins. Membership of the TraG family was confirmed by the fact that CloDF13 mobilization by plasmid R388 was independent of TrwB and only required PILW. However, contrary to the activities found for other coupling proteins, MobB was required for efficient oriT cleavage in vivo, suggesting an additional role for this particular protein during oriT processing for mobilization. Additionally, the cleavage site produced by the joint activities of MobB and MobC was shown to contain unblocked ends, suggesting that no stable covalent intermediates between relaxase and DNA were formed during the nic cleavage reaction. This is the first report of a conjugative transfer system in which niccleavage results in a free nicked‐DNA intermediate.
A Combination Hardware-Software Debugging System

A scheme is proposed for automatically detecting many programming errors; in particular, those errors which can cause a program to misbehave in different ways, depending upon how the faulty program and its data are mapped into storage. Error detection is accomplished by simultaneously running two versions of a program which purport to be logically identical, with appropriate hardware checking between them.
An Ultra-Low-Power Energy-Efficient Dual-Mode Wake-Up Receiver

An ultra-low-power wake-up receiver is proposed to reduce the energy consumption through adoption of two wake-up modes of operation with different power dissipations and detection bandwidths. During the Monitoring (MO) mode, the start frame bits are received at a data rate of 10 kbps, while during the Identifier (ID) mode the remaining wake-up pattern is transmitted at 200 kbps. By lowering the gain of the front-end amplifier in the MO mode the power dissipation is reduced, which in turn causes an increase in the overall noise figure of the receiver. However, adequate sensitivity is maintained by intentionally lowering the data rate as well as the detection bandwidth of the receiver. The proposed wake-up receiver is designed and fabricated in IBM 130 nm technology with a core size of about 0.2 mm2 for the target frequency range of 902-928 MHz. The measured results show that the proposed dual-mode receiver achieves a sensitivity of -78.5 dBm and -75 dBm while dissipating an average power of 16.4 μW and 22.9 μW during MO and ID modes, respectively.
Towards Assessment of Indicators Influence on Innovativeness of Countries' Economies: Selected Soft Computing Approaches

— The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of several indicators determining innovativeness of countries' economies by applying selected soft computing methods. Such methods enable us to identify correlations between indicators for period 2006-2010. The main attention in the paper is focused on selecting proper computer tools for solving this problem. As a tool supporting identification, the X-means clustering algorithm, the Apriori rules generation algorithm as well as Self-Organizing Feature Maps (SOMs) have been selected. The paper has rather a rudimentary character. We briefly describe usefulness of the selected approaches and indicate some challenges for further research.
Co-regularizing character-based and word-based models for semi-supervised Chinese word segmentation

This paper presents a semi-supervised Chinese word segmentation (CWS) approach that co-regularizes character-based and word-based models. Similarly to multi-view learning, the “segmentation agreements” between the two different types of view are used to overcome the scarcity of the label information on unlabeled data. The proposed approach trains a character-based and word-based model on labeled data, respectively, as the initial models. Then, the two models are constantly updated using unlabeled examples, where the learning objective is maximizing their segmentation agreements. The agreements are regarded as a set of valuable constraints for regularizing the learning of both models on unlabeled data. The segmentation for an input sentence is decoded by using a joint scoring function combining the two induced models. The evaluation on the Chinese tree bank reveals that our model results in better gains over the state-of-the-art semi-supervised models reported in the literature.