Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hybrid Depression Classification and Estimation from Audio Video and Text Information

In this paper, we design a hybrid depression classification and depression estimation framework from audio, video and text descriptors. It contains three main components: 1) Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) and Deep Neural Network (DNN) based audio visual multi-modal depression recognition frameworks, trained with depressed and not-depressed participants, respectively; 2) Paragraph Vector (PV), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest based depression classification framework from the interview transcripts; 3) A multivariate regression model fusing the audio visual PHQ-8 estimations from the depressed and not-depressed DCNN-DNN models, and the depression classification result from the text information. In the DCNN-DNN based depression estimation framework, audio/video feature descriptors are first input into a DCNN to learn high-level features, which are then fed to a DNN to predict the PHQ-8 score. Initial predictions from the two modalities are fused via a DNN model. In the PV-SVM and Random Forest based depression classification framework, we explore semantic-related text features using PV, as well as global text-features. Experiments have been carried out on the Distress Analysis Interview Corpus - Wizard of Oz (DAIC-WOZ) dataset for the Depression Sub-challenge at the 2017 Audio-Visual Emotion Challenge (AVEC), results show that the proposed depression recognition framework obtains very promising results, with root mean square error (RMSE) as 3.088, mean absolute error (MAE) as 2.477 on the development set, and RMSE as 5.400, MAE as 4.359 on the test set, which are all lower than the baseline results.
A comparison of nanoparticullate CpG immunotherapy with and without allergens in spontaneously equine asthma‐affected horses, an animal model

New therapeutic strategies to modulate the immune response of human and equine allergic asthma are still under extensive investigation. Immunomodulating agents stimulating T‐regulatory cells offer new treatment options beyond conventional symptomatic treatment or specific immunotherapy for human and equine allergic airway diseases, with the goal of a homoeostatic T‐helper cell balance. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of a nebulized gelatin nanoparticle‐CpG formulation (CpG‐GNP) with and without specific allergens for the treatment of spontaneous allergic equine asthma as a model for human asthma.
A multi-tool recipe to identify regions of protein-DNA binding and their influence on associated gene expression

One commonly performed bioinformatics task is to infer functional regulation of transcription factors by observing differential expression under a knockout, and integrating DNA binding information of that transcription factor. However, until now, this task has required dedicated bioinformatics support to perform the necessary data integration. GenomeSpace provides a protocol, or “recipe”, and a user interface with inter-operating software tools to identify protein occupancies along the genome from a ChIP-seq experiment and associated differentially regulated genes from a RNA-Seq experiment. By integrating RNA-Seq and ChIP-seq analyses, a user is easily able to associate differing expression phenotypes with changing epigenetic landscapes.
Prolonged darkness reduces liver fibrosis in a mouse model of primary sclerosing cholangitis by miR‐200b down‐regulation

Melatonin therapy or prolonged exposure to complete darkness reduces biliary hyperplasia and liver fibrosis in bile‐duct–ligated (BDL) rats; however, no information exists in primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). Thus, we aimed to determine the therapeutic effects of prolonged dark therapy or melatonin administration on hepatic fibrosis in the multidrug resistance gene 2–knockout (Mdr2−/−) mouse model of PSC. Melatonin levels, biliary mass, liver fibrosis, angiogenesis and miR‐200b expression were evaluated in wild‐type and Mdr2−/− mice exposed to darkness or melatonin treatment or in male patients with PSC and healthy controls. Mdr2−/− mice were also treated with miR‐200b inhibitor or control before evaluating biliary mass, liver fibrosis, and angiogenesis. After overexpression of arylalkylamine N‐acetyltransferase (AANAT; the enzyme regulating melatonin synthesis) or inhibition of miR‐200b in cholangiocytes and hepatic stellate cells in vitro, we evaluated angiogenesis and fibrosis gene expression. After exposure to darkness or administration of melatonin, Mdr2−/− mice show elevated serum melatonin levels and inhibition of biliary mass, along with reduction of liver fibrosis and angiogenesis. MicroRNA PCR analysis demonstrated that miR‐200b expression increased in Mdr2−/− mice and patients with PSC compared with controls and decreased in Mdr2−/− mice subjected to dark exposure or melatonin treatment. Inhibition of miR‐200b in Mdr2−/− ablates biliary proliferation, liver fibrosis, and angiogenesis. In vitro, overexpression of AANAT or inhibition of miR‐200b in cholangiocytes and hepatic stellate cells decreased the expression of miR‐200b, angiogenesis, and fibrosis genes. Dark therapy or targeting melatonin/miR‐200b axis may be important in the management of biliary damage and liver fibrosis in cholangiopathies including PSC. —Wu, N. , Meng, F. , Zhou, T. , Han, Y. , Kennedy, L. , Venter, J., Francis, H. , DeMorrow, S. , Onori, P., Invernizzi, P., Bernuzzi, F. , Mancinelli, R. , Gaudio, E. , Franchitto, A. , Glaser, S. , Alpini G. Prolonged darkness reduces liver fibrosis in a mouse model of primary sclerosing cholangitis by miR‐200b down‐regulation. FASEB J. 31, 4305–4324 (2017). www.fasebj. org
Application of Low Melt Alloys as Compliant Thermal Interface Materials: A Study of Performance and Degradation under Thermal Duress

ii Acknowledgments. iii List of Tables . viii List of Figures . ix List of Abbreviations . xiii Chapter 1 : Introduction . 1 1.1 Thermal interface material . 1 1.2 Contact resistance . 2 1.3 Thermal resistance to heat conduction . 3 1.4 Performance of TIM . 4 1.5 Application of TIM in thermal management. 5 Chapter 2 : Literature Review . 7 2.1 Traditional TIMs . 7 2.1.1 Thermal grease . 7 2.1.2 Phase change material . 8 2.1.3 Thermal gel . 9
Activation of Human MutS Homologs by 8-Oxo-guanine DNA Damage*

The DNA lesion 8-oxo-guanine (8-oxo-G) is a highly mutagenic product of the interaction between reactive oxygen species and DNA. To maintain genomic integrity, cells have evolved mechanisms capable of removing this frequently arising oxidative lesion. Mismatch repair (MMR) appears to be one pathway associated with the repair of 8-oxo-G lesions (DeWeese, T. L., Shipman, J. M., Larrier, N. A., Buckley, N. M., Kidd, L. R., Groopman, J. D., Cutler, R. G., te Riele, H., and Nelson, W. G. (1998) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 95, 11915–11920; Ni, T. T. , Marsischky, G. T. , and Kolodner, R. D. (1999) Mol. Cell 4, 439–444). Here we report the effect of double-stranded DNA oligonucleotides containing a single 8-oxo-G on the DNA binding affinity, ATPase, and ADP → ATP exchange activities of hMSH2-hMSH6 and hMSH2-hMSH3. We found that hMSH2-hMSH6 binds the oligonucleotide DNA substrates with the following affinities: 8-oxo-G/T > 8-oxo-G/G > 8-oxo-G/A > 8-oxo-G/C ≈ G/C. A similar trend was observed for DNA-stimulated ATPase and ADP → ATP exchange activities of hMSH2-hMSH6. In contrast, hMSH2-hMSH3 did not appear to bind any of the 8-oxo-G containing DNA substrates nor was there enhanced ATPase or ADP → ATP exchange activities. These results suggest that only hMSH2-hMSH6 is activated by recognition of 8-oxo-G lesions. Our data are consistent with the notion that post-replication MMR only participates in the repair of mismatched 8-oxo-G lesions.
An Abstract Semantics of the Global View of Choreographies

We introduce an abstract semantics of the global view of choreographies. Our semantics is given in terms of pre-orders and can accommodate different lower level semantics. We discuss the adequacy of our model by considering its relation with communicating machines, that we use to formalise the local view. Interestingly, our framework seems to be more expressive than others where semantics of global views have been considered. This will be illustrated by discussing some interesting examples.
Real-time stereo rectification using compressed look-up table with variable breakpoint indexing

Real-time rectification of stereo cameras is critical for stereoscopy in 3D vision and display. FPGA-based rectification has been suffering from the usage of large internal memory inside of the FPGA. The paper proposes a real-time stereo rectification approach using variable breakpoint indexing for enhanced compressed look-up table algorithm (E-CLUTR) in order to reduce the size of memory inside FPGA and to get a wider field-of-view (FoV) using high-distortion lenses. The proposed approach was successfully simulated using Altera ModelSim 10.4b. It is shown that the memory usage is reduced by 58~65% compared with previous approaches and it supports real-time rectification of stereo 1920×1080 high-definition video data in 50 fps for a high-distortion lens with 110 degrees FoV.
Growth, nutrient digestibility, ileal digesta viscosity, and energy metabolizability of growing turkeys fed diets containing malted sorghum sprouts supplemented with enzyme or yeast

Growth, apparent nutrient digestibility, ileal digesta viscosity, and energy metabolizability of growing turkeys fed diets containing malted sorghum sprouts (MSP) supplemented with enzyme or yeast were investigated using 120, 28-day-old male turkeys. Six treatments were laid out in a 3 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments with three dietary inclusion levels of MSP (0, 50, and 100 g/kg) and supplemented with 200 mg/kg yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) or 200 mg/kg of a commercial enzyme. The experiment lasted for the starter (day 28-56) and grower phases (day 57-84) of the birds. Each treatment group consisted of 20 turkeys replicated four times with five birds each. Data were analysed using analysis of variance while polynomial contrast was used to determine the trends (linear and quadratic) of MSP inclusion levels. Irrespective of dietary supplementation with enzyme or yeast, final body weight (BW), total BW gain, and feed intake for turkey poults from day 29-56 was reduced (p < 0.05) with increasing inclusion level of MSP. Dietary supplementation with yeast resulted in increased (p < 0.05) feed intake while enzyme supplementation improved (p < 0.05) feed conversion ratio of the poults. Turkeys fed enzyme-supplemented MSP diets had higher (p < 0.05) BW gain than their counterparts fed yeast-supplemented MSP diets. Apparent ash digestibility reduced linearly (p < 0.05) with increasing inclusion levels of MSP. Apparent metabolizable energy (AME) did not vary significantly (p > 0.05) with MSP inclusion levels. Enzyme supplementation reduced (p < 0.05) ileal viscosity but had no effect (p > 0.05) on AME. Inclusion of MSP resulted in poor growth performance. This confirms earlier studies that utilization of MSP by poultry is rather poor. Supplementation with enzyme or yeast did not lead to any appreciable improvement in performance of turkeys in this study.
A First Look: Using Linux Containers for Deceptive Honeypots

The ever-increasing sophistication of malware has made malicious binary collection and analysis an absolute necessity for proactive defenses. Meanwhile, malware authors seek to harden their binaries against analysis by incorporating environment detection techniques, in order to identify if the binary is executing within a virtual environment or in the presence of monitoring tools. For security researchers, it is still an open question regarding how to remove the artifacts from virtual machines to effectively build deceptive "honeypots" for malware collection and analysis. In this paper, we explore a completely different and yet promising approach by using Linux containers. Linux containers, in theory, have minimal virtualization artifacts and are easily deployable on low-power devices. Our work performs the first controlled experiments to compare Linux containers with bare metal and 5 major types of virtual machines. We seek to measure the deception capabilities offered by Linux containers to defeat mainstream virtual environment detection techniques. In addition, we empirically explore the potential weaknesses in Linux containers to help defenders to make more informed design decisions.
A Wi-Fi Union Mechanism for Internet Advertising Reciprocal Platform in Microenterprises

With the evolution of the Internet and smartphone devices, Internet advertising has become one of the most important methods for delivering promotional marketing messages to customers. However, the efficiency of Internet advertising for microenterprise is not very high, since Wi-Fi advertising—which is limited by a small router coverage area—is mainly used. Moreover, because of the lack of money, microenterprises have been using low-cost methods to promote their products. Thus, enhancing the effectiveness of Wi-Fi advertising, and solving the problem of cost and the range of the views are now an essential investigation in this study. In this paper, we propose a reciprocal model with Wi-Fi union mechanism for Internet advertising based on fog computing architecture to enhance the efficiency of advertisement, reduce the cost, and increase the range of the views for microenterprise by using the Internet. In particular, the system was built in advertisers’, publishers’, and consumers’ sides. In our system, we use contribution point (CP) as an exchange value among the participants. Advertisers and publishers can get CP by helping the others in the system to promote their advertisements, increasing their CP by one unit. Similarly, advertisers and publishers can use their CP to ask for assistance from the others, decreasing their CP by one unit. The result shows that the system in a Wi-Fi union is easy to use, and advertisements can be seen by all customers who are using free Wi-Fi from the stores of the union. This method can solve the problem of cost and fixed consumer groups.
The Cultural Meaning of Cardiac Illness and Self-Care Among Lebanese Patients With Coronary Artery Disease

Background: Cardiac disease is the leading cause of death in Lebanon, accounting for 22% to 26% of total deaths in the country. A thorough understanding of perceptions of cardiac illness and related self-care management is critical to the development of secondary prevention programs that are specific to the Lebanese culture. Purpose: To explore the cultural perceptions of cardiac illness and the associated meaning of self-care among Lebanese patients. Design: Using a qualitative descriptive method, semistructured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 15 Lebanese cardiac patients recruited from a medical center in Beirut, Lebanon. Findings: The qualitative descriptive analysis yielded one overarching and two other themes describing perceptions of cardiac illness and self-care within the Lebanese cultural context. The overarching cultural theme was, “Lebanese cardiac patients were unfamiliar with the term concept and meaning of self-care. ” Lebanese cardiac patients thanked God and accepted their fate (Theme I). The participants considered their cardiac incident a life or death warning (Theme II). Implications for Practice: Health care providers need to consider patients’ cultural perception of illness while planning and evaluating cardiac self-care programs.
On Trivial Solution and High Correlation Problems in Deep Supervised Hashing

Deep supervised hashing (DSH), which combines binary learning and convolutional neural network, has attracted considerable research interests and achieved promising performance for highly efficient image retrieval. In this paper, we show that the widely used loss functions, pair-wise loss and triplet loss, suffer from the trivial solution problem and usually lead to highly correlated bits in practice, limiting the performance of DSH. One important reason is that it is difficult to incorporate proper constraints into the loss functions under the mini-batch based optimization algorithm. To tackle these problems, we propose to adopt ensemble learning strategy for deep model training. We found out that this simple strategy is capable of effectively decorrelating different bits, making the hashcodes more informative. Moreover, it is very easy to parallelize the training and support incremental model learning, which are very useful for real-world applications but usually ignored by existing DSH approaches. Experiments on benchmarks demonstrate the proposed ensemble based DSH can improve the performance of DSH approaches significant.
The Role of Safety Culture in Influencing Provider Perceptions of Patient Safety

Objectives To determine how provider perceptions of safety culture influence their involvement in patient safety practices. Methods Health-care providers were surveyed in 2 tertiary hospitals located in Atlantic Canada, composed of 4 units in total. The partial least squares (PLS) approach to structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Latent variables provider PLS model encompassed the hypothesized relationships between provider characteristics, safety culture, perceptions of patient safety practices, and actual performance of patient safety practices, using the Health Belief Model (HBM) as a guide. Data analysis was conducted using SmartPLS. Results A total of 113 health-care providers completed a survey out of an eligible 318, representing a response rate of 35.5%. The final PLS model showed acceptable internal consistency with all four latent variables having a composite reliability score above the recommended 0.70 cutoff value (safety culture = 0.86, threat = 0.76, expectations = 0.83, PS practices = 0.75). Discriminant validity was established, and all path coefficients were found to be significant at the &agr; = 0.05 level using nonparametric bootstrapping. The survey results show that safety culture accounted for 34% of the variance in perceptions of threat and 42% of the variance in expectations. Conclusions This research supports the role that safety culture plays in the promotion and maintenance of patient safety activities for health-care providers. As such, it is recommended that the introduction of new patient safety strategies follow a thorough exploration of an organization’s safety culture.
CzAccent - Simple Tool for Restoring Accents in Czech Texts

There are many Czech text written without any accents. The paper describes a tool for fully automatic restoration of Czech accents. The system is based on a simple approach of big lexicon. The resulting accuracy of the system evaluated on large Czech corpora is quite high. The system is in regular use by hundreds of users from around the whole world.
Exploring and Extending Czech WordNet and VerbaLex

This paper presents usage of two major, linguist-made lexical resources of Czech language: WordNet and VerbaLex. First, a conversion to RDF was made. Afterwards, a Prolog program was used to analyse Czech language inputs. In the second part of the article an extension to current VerbaLex is proposed. Possible pitfalls are discussed. In the conclusion, we emphasize the side-effect of this work: an important feedback for authors and administrators of both lexical resources.
Occurrence of Harmful Cyanobacteria in Drinking Water from a Severely Drought-Impacted Semi-arid Region

Harmful cyanobacterial blooms have become increasingly common in freshwater ecosystems in recent decades, mainly due to eutrophication and climate change. Water becomes unreliable for human consumption. Here, we report a comprehensive study carried out to investigate the water quality of several Campina Grande reservoirs. Our approach included metagenomics, microbial abundance quantification, ELISA test for three cyanotoxins (microcystin, nodularins, and cylindrospermopsin), and in vivo ecotoxicological tests with zebrafish embryos. Cytometry analysis showed high cyanobacterial abundance, while metagenomics identified an average of 10.6% of cyanobacterial sequences, and demonstrated the presence of Microcystis, Cylindrospermopsis, and toxin coding genes in all ponds. Zebrafish embryos reared with pond water had high mortality and diverse malformations. Among the ponds analyzed, Araçagi showed the highest lethality (an average of 62.9 ± 0.8%), followed by Boqueirão (lethality average of 62.5 ± 0.8%). Here, we demonstrate that water from ponds undergoing extremely drought conditions have an abundance of potentially harmful cyanobacteria and their toxins. Our findings are consistent with a scenario in which polluted drinking water poses a great risk to human health.
Formulação volumétrica e desempenho de misturas betuminosas stone mastic asphalt

The SMA (Stone Mastic Asphalt) mixtures were developed in Germany in the 1960s. Their resistance to rutting and high durability has made their use spread first in Europe and, from the 1990’s, also in the USA. These mixtures have a gap graded gradation and high percentages of bitumen, when compared to typical dense asphalt concrete. For this reason it is necessary to use an additive to avoid the drainage of the binder. Because of these unique characteristics the design of SMA mixtures in Europe is done using recipe methods. The aim of this work is to correlate the volumetric properties of SMA mixtures and their performance in order to include volumetric parameters in the mix design process. Thus, SMA mixtures were formulated according to EN 13108-5 using current design methodologies. The mixtures were produced using granite aggregate, bitumen 35/50 (penetration grade) and cellulose fibers, as a stabilizer. The optimum content of bitumen was determined based on the porosity of Marshall compacted specimens and by the SUPERPAVE volumetric design method. The volumetric properties of the SMA mixtures were determined, specifically those that most influence their mechanical behavior. The values obtained show that the volumetric formulation of SMA mixtures using the gyratory compactor is an alternative to specimens with Marshall compaction. The values obtained for an Ndesign of 50 gyrations are close to those obtained by the traditional formulation. 1. Introducao As misturas SMA (Stone Mastic Asphalt) foram desenvolvidas na Alemanha na decada de 1960. As misturas SMA forneciam uma camada de desgaste com maior resistencia aos pneus de Inverno. Os pneus de Inverno utilizados na epoca tinham pitons em aco pelo que eram muito agressivos para o pavimento. Apesar do uso destes pneus ter sido proibido na Alemanha em 1975, a utilizacao do SMA manteve-se, apresentado a sua utilizacao uma difusao crescente. Nos EUA foram adoptadas apos uma visita patrocinada por diversas instituicoes ligadas a construcao e gestao de pavimentos em 1990 denominada European Asphalt Study Tour of 1990 tendo sido construidos diversos trechos para ensaio em 1991. As misturas SMA sao caracterizadas por apresentarem uma granulometria marcadamente descontinua com uma percentagem elevada de material da maior dimensao. Esse agregado forma um esqueleto resistente sendo os espacos entre