Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Category Discrimination Based Feature Selection Algorithm in Chinese Text Classification

How to improve the classification precision is a major issue in the field of Chinese text classification. The tf-idf algorithm is a classic and widely-used feature selection algorithm based on VSM. But the traditional tf-idf algorithm neglects the feature term’s distribution inside category and among categories, which causes many unreasonable selective results. This paper makes an improvement to the traditional tf-idf algorithm through the introduction of the concept of Category Discrimination. We evaluate our algorithm with experiments, and make comparisons with other algorithms. The experimental results show that the improved tf-idf algorithm consistently has a higher precision and recall compared with the traditional tf-idf algorithm, and is superior to other algorithm as a whole. Therefore, it is a more effective feature selection algorithm in text classification field.
ROI Detection & Tracking Visual Feature Extraction Visual Modelling ROI Detection & Tracking Visual Feature Extraction Visual Modelling ROI Detection & Tracking Visual Feature Extraction Visual Modelling

Visual information from a speaker’s mouth region is known to improve automatic speech recognition robustness, especially in the presence of acoustic noise. To date, the vast majority of work in this field has viewed these visual features in a holistic manner, which may not take into account the various changes that occur within articulation (process of changing the shape of the vocal tract using the articulators, i.e lips and jaw). Motivated by the work being conducted in fields of audio-visual automatic speech recognition (AVASR) and face recognition using articulatory features (AFs) and patches respectively, we present a proof of concept paper which represents the mouth region as a ensemble of image patches. Our experiments show that by dealing with the mouth region in this manner, we are able to extract more speech information from the visual domain. For the task of visual-only speaker-independent isolated digit recognition, we were able to improve the relative word error rate by more than 23% on the CUAVE audio-visual corpus.
Free‐shape 14C age–depth modelling of an intensively dated modern peat profile

The paper presents a new algorithm for finding the best‐fit age–depth model of a peat profile dated with 14C. This algorithm of free‐shape modelling is useful when the age–depth curve is wiggly and difficult to approximate by a simple mathematical function. The performance of the free‐shape algorithm is illustrated with the example of the MA2 peat profile from Mauntschas mire, using 29 radiocarbon dates spanning the last 1300 a, and where the age–depth curve revealed a relatively complicated shape.
Synergistic Activity of PARP Inhibition by Talazoparib (BMN 673) with Temozolomide in Pediatric Cancer Models in the Pediatric Preclinical Testing Program

Purpose: Inhibitors of PARP, an enzyme involved in base excision repair, have demonstrated single-agent activity against tumors deficient in homologous repair processes. Ewing sarcoma cells are also sensitive to PARP inhibitors, although the mechanism is not understood. Here, we evaluated the stereo-selective PARP inhibitor, talazoparib (BMN 673), combined with temozolomide or topotecan. Experimental Design: Talazoparib was tested in vitro in combination with temozolomide (0.3–1,000 μmol/L) or topotecan (0.03–100 nmol/L) and in vivo at a dose of 0.1 mg/kg administered twice daily for 5 days combined with temozolomide (30 mg/kg/daily x 5; combination A) or 0.25 mg/kg administered twice daily for 5 days combined with temozolomide (12 mg/kg/daily x 5; combination B). Pharmacodynamic studies were undertaken after 1 or 5 days of treatment. Results: In vitro talazoparib potentiated the toxicity of temozolomide up to 85-fold, with marked potentiation in Ewing sarcoma and leukemia lines (30–50-fold). There was less potentiation for topotecan. In vivo, talazoparib potentiated the toxicity of temozolomide, and combination A and combination B represent the MTDs when combined with low-dose or high-dose talazoparib, respectively. Both combinations demonstrated significant synergism against 5 of 10 Ewing sarcoma xenografts. The combination demonstrated modest activity against most other xenograft models. Pharmacodynamic studies showed a treatment-induced complete loss of PARP only in tumor models sensitive to either talazoparib alone or talazoparib plus temozolomide. Conclusions: The high level of activity observed for talazoparib plus temozolomide in Ewing sarcoma xenografts makes this an interesting combination to consider for pediatric evaluation. Clin Cancer Res; 21(4); 819–32. ©2014 AACR.
Transient glacier response with a higher-order numerical ice-flow model

In this paper, a higher-order numerical flowline model is presented which is numerically stable and fast and can cope with very small horizontal grid sizes (<10 m). The model is compared with the results from Blatter and others (1998) on Haut Glacier d'Arolla, Switzerland, and with the European Ice-Sheet Modelling Initiative benchmarks (Huybrechts and others, 1996). Results demonstrate that the significant difference between calculated basal-drag and driving-stress profiles in a fixed geometry disappears when the glacier profile is allowed to react to the surface mass-balance conditions and reaches a steady state. Dynamic experiments show that the mass transfer in higher-order models occurs at a different speed in the accumulation and ablation areas and that the front position is more sensitive to migration compared to the shallow-ice approximation.
Multi-channel CMOS ASIC preamplifiers for APD and MSGC readouts

A 10-channel (Ch) and a 16-Ch application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) preamplifier chip with telescopic-cascode topology and gain-boosted folded-cascode topology respectively has been designed for avalanche photodiode (APD) and microstrip gas chamber (MSGC) readouts. These highly integrated and reliable chips can be used for individual readout from many channels to improve the spatial resolution and counting rate of such detectors over light sharing or charge division schemes. These chips were fabricated on a 2.4 mm times 2.4 mm die area using ROHM 0.35 mu CMOS technology. The chips were tested to have a low optimum equivalent noise charge (ENC) of about 880 e-. The gains of the 10-Ch and 16-Ch preamplifiers are (1.4-pF)-1 and (1.1-pF)-1 while the rise times are 15 s and 13 s respectively. The 16-Ch chip was used to readout GSO-APD detectors and an optimum energy resolution of 11.3% (551 keV peak of Na-22) was obtained while the coincidence time resolution with a BaF2 detector is about 11.5 ns. The energy resolution of Fe-55 with a 3 times 3 cm MSGC plate is about 20.5%.
Lip movement synthesis from speech based on hidden Markov models

Speech intelligibility can be improved by adding lip image and facial image to speech signal. Thus the lip image synthesis plays an important role to realize a natural human-like face of computer agents. Moreover the synthesized lip movement images can compensate lack of auditory information for hearing impaired people. We propose a novel lip movement synthesis method based on mapping from input speech based on Hidden Markov Model (HMM). This paper compares the HMM-based method and a conventional method using vector quantization (VQ). In the experiment, error and time differential error between synthesized lip movement images and original ones are used for evaluation. The result shows that the error of the HMM based method is 8.7% smaller than that of the VQ-based method. Moreover, the HMM-based method reduces time differential error by 32% than the VQ's. The result also shows that the errors are mostly caused by phoneme /h/ and /Q/. Since lip shapes of those phonemes are strongly dependent on succeeding phoneme, the context dependent synthesis on the HMM-based method is applied to reduce the error. The improved HMM-based method realizes reduction of the error (differential error) by 10.5% (11%) compared with the original HMM-based method.
Cell assemblies for query expansion in Information Retrieval

One of the main tasks in Information Retrieval is to match a user query to the documents that are relevant for it. This matching is challenging because in many cases the keywords the user chooses will be different from the words the authors of the relevant documents have used. Throughout the years, many approaches have been proposed to deal with this problem. One of the most popular consists in expanding the query with related terms with the goal of retrieving more relevant documents. In this paper, we propose a new method in which a Cell Assembly model is applied for query expansion. Cell Assemblies are reverberating circuits of neurons that can persist long beyond the initial stimulus has ceased. They learn through Hebbian Learning rules and have been used to simulate the formation and the usage of human concepts. We adapted the Cell Assembly model to learn relationships between the terms in a document collection. These relationships are then used to augment the original queries. Our experiments use standard Information Retrieval test collections and show that some queries significantly improved their results with our technique.
Microdialysis to investigate tissue amino acid kinetics

Purpose of reviewThis review discusses recent developments in the utilization of microdialysis to assess tissue amino acid kinetics. Recent findingsThree questions regarding the use of microdialysis to assess amino acid kinetics have recently been addressed. Does glutamate measured in the interstitial fluid of the brain represent neurotransmission activity? Can local nitric oxide production be determined with the use of microdialysis? Finally, how can skeletal muscle amino acid metabolism be studied in more detail utilizing microdialysis? SummaryThe most appropriate way to assess tissue kinetics is by the use of tracers. The number of studies actually utilizing microdialysis in combination with tracers to assess amino acid kinetics is rather limited. However, these studies show exiting new insides into in-vivo amino acid kinetics.
A Cluster-based Algorithm for Anomaly Detection in Time Series Using Mahalanobis Distance

We propose an unsupervised learning algorithm for anomaly detection in time series data, based on clustering techniques, using the Mahalanobis distance function. After a brief review of the main and recent contributions made in this research field, a formal and detailed description of the algorithm is presented, followed by a discussion on how to set its parameters. In order to evaluate its effectiveness, it was applied to a real case, and its results were compared with another technique that targets the same problem. The obtained results suggest that this proposal can be successfully applied to detect anomaly in time series.
The Maize Single myb histone 1 Gene, Smh1, Belongs to a Novel Gene Family and Encodes a Protein That Binds Telomere DNA Repeats in Vitro1[w]

We screened maize (Zea mays) cDNAs for sequences similar to the single myb-like DNA-binding domain of known telomeric complex proteins. We identified, cloned, and sequenced five full-length cDNAs representing a novel gene family, and we describe the analysis of one of them, the gene Single myb histone 1 (Smh1). The Smh1 gene encodes a small, basic protein with a unique triple motif structure of (a) an N-terminal SANT/myb-like domain of the homeodomain-like superfamily of 3-helical-bundle-fold proteins, (b) a central region with homology to the conserved H1 globular domain found in the linker histones H1/H5, and (c) a coiled-coil domain near the C terminus. The Smh-type genes are plant specific and include a gene family in Arabidopsis and the PcMYB1 gene of parsley (Petroselinum crispum) but are distinct from those (AtTRP1, AtTBP1, and OsRTBP1) recently shown to encode in vitro telomere-repeat DNA-binding activity. The Smh1 gene is expressed in leaf tissue and maps to chromosome 8 (bin 8.05), with a duplicate locus on chromosome 3 (bin 3.09). A recombinant full-length SMH1, rSMH1, was found by band-shift assays to bind double-stranded oligonucleotide probes with at least two internal tandem copies of the maize telomere repeat, TTTAGGG. Point mutations in the telomere repeat residues reduced or abolished the binding, whereas rSMH1 bound nonspecifically to single-stranded DNA probes. The two DNA-binding motifs in SMH proteins may provide a link between sequence recognition and chromatin dynamics and may function at telomeres or other sites in the nucleus.
Spectral parameters for the ν6 region of HCOOH and its measurement in the infrared tropospheric spectrum

New spectral parameters (line positions and intensities) have been generated for the ν6 band of HCOOH, which agree well with 0.002 cm−1 resolution infrared laboratory spectra. The line positions were derived from previously published spectroscopic constants [Bumgarner et al., 1988]. New relative intensities were derived from the analysis of A type and B type transitions. The new line parameters allow improved quantitative analysis of atmospheric spectra from the 1105 cm−1 Q branch, provided that the previously neglected HDO strong tropospheric absorption in this region is taken into account.
Multi-spectral anisotropic diffusion

Abstract A new approach is proposed for the anisotropic diffusion of multispectral imagery. This new technique is called multi-spectral anisotropic diffusion (MSAD) and provides a decrease in computational cost as well as an increase in the signal-to-noise ratio, as compared to the original single-band algorithm. The MSAD algorithm is developed and three dissimilarity measures that allow multispectral diffusion are suggested. Results for standard anisotropic diffusion and for MSAD with each of the three dissimilarity measures are compared for noisy multi-spectral imagery.
On the lack of southern hemisphere polar mesosphere summer echoes

We report VHF radar observations of the southern high-latitude mesopause region using wind profilers that were installed recently on King George Island, Antarctica, and Ushuaia, Argentina. Briefly, our observations, which were made during January and February 1993, show almost no evidence of so-called polar mesosphere summer echoes, or PMSE. Since these echoes are a predominant feature of the northern high-latitude mesosphere in summer, their absence in the southern hemisphere is both surprising and intriguing. In this paper we present evidence demonstrating the virtual absence of the echoes and demonstrate that our systems were capable of detecting them had they been present. We also outline some of the consequences of this intriguing result, which are supported by observed hemispheric differences in polar mesospheric clouds, mesospheric temperatures, upper atmospheric gravity wave activity, and mean circulation patterns.
A GIS-based method for defining snow zones: application to the western United States

This study maps the geographic extent of intermittent and seasonal snow cover in the western United States using thresholds of 2000–2010 average snow persistence derived from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer snow cover area data from 1 January to 3 July. Results show seasonal snow covers 13% of the region, and intermittent snow covers 25%. The lower elevation boundaries of intermittent and seasonal snow zones increase from north-west to south-east. Intermittent snow is primarily found where average winter land surface temperatures are above freezing, whereas seasonal snow is primarily where winter temperatures are below freezing. However, temperatures at the boundary between intermittent and seasonal snow exhibit high regional variability, with average winter seasonal snow zone temperatures above freezing in west coast mountain ranges. Snow cover extent at peak accumulation is most variable at the upper elevations of the intermittent snow zone, highlighting the sensitivity of this snow zone boundary to climate conditions.
Formalizing information security requirements

Risk analysis, concentrating on assets, threats and vulnerabilities, used to play a major role in helping to identify the most effective set of security controls to protect information technology resources. To successfully protect information, the security controls must not only protect the infrastructure, but also instill and enforce certain security properties in the information resources. To accomplish this, a more modern top‐down approach is called for today, where security requirements driven by business needs dictate the level of protection required.
Exploiting Gene‐Environment Independence for Analysis of Case–Control Studies: An Empirical Bayes‐Type Shrinkage Estimator to Trade‐Off between Bias and Efficiency

Summary Standard prospective logistic regression analysis of case–control data often leads to very imprecise estimates of gene‐environment interactions due to small numbers of cases or controls in cells of crossing genotype and exposure. In contrast, under the assumption of gene‐environment independence, modern “retrospective” methods, including the “case‐only” approach, can estimate the interaction parameters much more precisely, but they can be seriously biased when the underlying assumption of gene‐environment independence is violated. In this article, we propose a novel empirical Bayes‐type shrinkage estimator to analyze case–control data that can relax the gene‐environment independence assumption in a data‐adaptive fashion. In the special case, involving a binary gene and a binary exposure, the method leads to an estimator of the interaction log odds ratio parameter in a simple closed form that corresponds to an weighted average of the standard case‐only and case–control estimators. We also describe a general approach for deriving the new shrinkage estimator and its variance within the retrospective maximum‐likelihood framework developed by Chatterjee and Carroll (2005, Biometrika92, 399–418). Both simulated and real data examples suggest that the proposed estimator strikes a balance between bias and efficiency depending on the true nature of the gene‐environment association and the sample size for a given study.
Hepatic metastasis from uveal melanoma: angiographic pattern predictive of survival after hepatic arterial chemoembolization.

OBJECTIVE To identify clinical features associated with survival after hepatic arterial chemoembolization (HACE) for uveal melanoma metastasis. METHODS Retrospective case series including 11 men and 10 women with uveal melanoma metastasis. RESULTS The hepatic angiographic pattern of metastasis was infiltrative in 12 patients (57%) and nodular in 9 patients (43%). The infiltrative pattern was associated with ciliary body involvement by the primary tumor (Fisher exact test, P = .01) and extrascleral tumor extension (Fisher exact test, P = .01). Mean survival after the first HACE treatment was 7.6 months overall, 3.7 months for the patients with the infiltrative pattern, and 12.7 months for those with the nodular pattern. This difference was highly significant (Kaplan-Meier, P < .001). Chromosome 8p was found to be deleted in 4 patients with the infiltrative pattern and in no patients with the nodular pattern. CONCLUSIONS The hepatic metastasis pattern can be used to predict response to and survival after HACE. Loss of chromosome 8p may be a biomarker for the infiltrative metastasis pattern. Hepatic arterial chemoembolization may play an important role in the treatment of hepatic metastasis from uveal melanoma in patients with the nodular metastatic pattern. Regular screening for hepatic metastasis in patients with uveal melanoma may be beneficial in identifying those who would benefit from HACE.
Estimation of Potential Evapotranspiration at Botanga Irrigation Scheme in the Northern Region of Ghana

Climatic parameters such as temperature, rainfall, wind speed, relative humidity and sunshine hours were used to assess reference evapotranspiration and potential crop evapotranspiration of selected crops. The Penmann Monteith method for calculation of Reference Evapotranspiration, which has been incorporated in CROPWAT software, was used. Test crops included rice, tomato and pepper, which were part of the major crops cultivated in the Botanga irrigation scheme. Research findings indicated that temperature (r = 0.653) played a crucial role in assessing reference evapotranspiration and potential evapotranspiration. Temperature was lowest during the months from July to September due to lower solar radiation and higher rainfall. The potential crop evapotranspiration of rice, tomato and pepper were 697, 533 and 427 mm/season respectively. Rice growers will require more water for irrigation to ensure higher production due to its high evapotranspiration rate. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.5755/j01.erem. 70.4. 7752
Variable-step constant statistics algorithm for removing residual fixed pattern noise of infrared images as second non-uniformity correction

Regarding the appearance of fixed pattern noise (FPN) in the IR images of an IR observation system introduced by errors in assembly, environment, etc. Non-Uniformity Correction (NUC) is an important technique for IRFPA. Because the real radiation response of pixels in the given dynamic range is nonlinear and the existence of 1/f noise, especially the high temperature scaling point changes the thermal balance of the IR observation system, using the traditional linear approximate method (temperature scaling method) is hard to obtain the perfect corrective images. On the other hand, because of Scene-Based Non-Uniformity Correction (SBNUC) does not rely on specialized hardware, SBNUC is very attractive alternative to radiometric calibration for infrared sensors, thereinto, Constant Statistics (CS) is the best known approach, but it lies on the scene content and has intimate correlation with the sample quantity. So, in this paper, we present a novel approach which inherits the rapidity of temperature scaling method and also consider the astringency of CS, using variable-step constant statistics (VSCS) as second non-uniformity correction in the spatial and time domains of infrared images to eliminate the residual fixed pattern noise which resulted from the theoretical and methodological errors of temperature scaling method. The experimental result for the real infrared images data is a solution which effectively eliminates the residual fixed pattern noise, and at the same time, it proved the effectiveness of this algorithm.
Interleukin 6 induces human immunodeficiency virus expression in infected monocytic cells alone and in synergy with tumor necrosis factor alpha by transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms

The immunoregulatory cytokine interleukin 6 (IL-6) directly upregulates production of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in acutely as well as in chronically infected cells of monocytic lineage. In addition, IL-6 synergizes with tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) in the induction of latent HIV expression. Unlike TNF-alpha, upregulation of viral expression induced by IL-6 alone does not occur at the transcriptional level and it is not associated with accumulation of HIV RNA. However, when IL-6 and TNF-alpha synergistically stimulate HIV production, accumulation of HIV RNA and increased transcription are observed, indicating that IL-6 affects HIV expression at multiple (transcriptional and post-transcriptional) levels.