Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automated VOI analysis in 18F-FDDNP PET using structural warping: Validation through classification of Alzheimer's disease patients

In the field of quantitative imaging, the creation of accurate volumes of interest (VOIs) is often of central importance. However, the process of creating these VOIS for multiple subjects can be time-intensive and there are many chances to introduce variability on inter- and intra-investigator levels. Although pre­vious work has shown that image normalization through cortical surface mapping can be helpful in VOI analysis, the process is complicated and labor-intensive. In this paper we present a method to eliminate this variability by warping structural and functional images to a common space in which valid VOIs already exist. We apply this method to a study of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 2-(1-{6-[(2-[18F]fluoroethyl)(methyl)amino]-2-naphthyl}ethylidene)malononitrile (FDDNP), which is known to co-localize with amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. We normalize the MRIs of control subjects and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD patients, to a common space. The same normalization is applied to FDDNP PET images. The normalization technique reduces average voxel-to-voxel variance in MRIs by 54% as compared to linear normalization alone. Biologically important structures, such as the segmentation between white and gray matter, are maintained after normalization. Discriminant analysis shows that data extracted from VOIs in the common space out-performs data extracted from unnormalized PET images in classifying subjects as control, MCI, or AD. This suggests that image normalization may be useful in eliminating inter- and intra-investigator variability and increasing the predic­tive capability of data extracted from imaging modalities. Further study will examine the applicability of this method to predicting longitudinal changes in cognitive ability from functional imaging data.
Prevalence of Diseases and Health Care Utilization ofthe Self-Employed Artists and TheirEmpirical Determinants: Evidence From a Slovenian Survey

Empirical studies on precarious work are still at their beginnings, even more so when the health of precarious workers is under concern. Commonly, precarious workers are assumed to have the inferior health to the employees and even to the population in general, although some recent studiesfound counter evidence to this claim. In particular, studies on the labor market of artists have so far almost completely neglected the question of the health of the artists,and this study tries to fill in this large and important void. In the study, we employ a survey of Slovenian self-employed artists, undertaken in 2015, to study the determinants of the prevalence of diseases and health utilization of self-employed artists in Slovenia using econometric modelling and network analysis. We study and find the determinants, influencing the prevalence of each type of the most common disease among the self-employed artists, determine the most common groupings/multiple diseases among this population, and, finally, study the determinants of health care utilization of self-employed artists and model the heterogeneity in the observed sample. Aninteresting result lies in determining two differentgroups according to their health care utilization and providingtheir interpretation which fits into the existing literature on artist labor markets.
Luminosity Function of Gamma-Ray Bursts Derived without Benefit of Redshifts

We show that the Euclidean value of for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) selected on a timescale of 1024 ms is correlated with spectral hardness. The value of ranges from ~0.42 for soft bursts to ~0.26 for the hardest bursts. Given that the Euclidean value of for cosmological objects in a well-defined sample is a distance indicator, the hard bursts must reside at larger redshifts and therefore be more luminous than the soft bursts. The resulting luminosity-hardness correlation cannot be shown explicitly as a result of the small number of observed GRB redshifts at the present time. Based on the -hardness correlation, we derive the luminosity function of GRBs without using any redshifts, but we have to make an assumption how the comoving GRB rate varies with redshift. We present luminosity functions for three models of the GRB rate as a function of redshift, based on star formation rates. The peak luminosity functions are approximately broken power laws with an isotropic-equivalent break luminosity of ~1051.5 ergs s-1 in the 50-300 keV range and total local rate densities of ~0.5 Gpc-3 yr-1. Predicted GRB counts as a function of flux and redshift are presented. Based on the GRB luminosity function, we carry out a simulation to produce the luminosity-hardness correlation, which shows that the hardest GRBs are ~20 times more luminous than the softest ones.
onlinear MPC for fed-batch multiple stages ugar crystallization uis

This paper addresses the issue of developing feasible advanced control strategies for the operation of industrial fedbatch multi-stage sugar crystallization processes. The operation of such processes poses very challenging problems mainly those inherent to its batch nature and also those due to the difficulties in measuring key process variables. Inadequate control policies lead to out-of-spec batches, with consequent losses resulting from the need of product recycling. In order to address these problems, a modification of the general Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) is proposed in this paper, where the NMPC is executed only when the tracking error is outside a pre-specified bound ̨. Once the error converges towards the ̨-strip, the NMPC is switched off and the control action is kept constant. In order to further reduce the complexity of the control system, the proposed modification, termed Error Tolerant MPC (ETMPC), is provided with a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) predictive model. The ETMPC + RNN control scheme was extensively tested on a crystallizer dynamic simulator, tuned with data from two industrial units, and compared with the classical NMPC and PI strategy. The results demonstrate that both NMPC and ETMPC controllers lead to improved end point process specifications, when compared with the PI controller. The explicit introduction of the error tolerance in the optimization relaxes the computational burden and can complement several other suggestions in the literature for feasible industrial real time control. © 2010 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
SOFIA: An Image Database with Image Retrieval by Image Content

In the paper an image database system (named SOFIA) with a powerful image retrieval by image features and image content is described. A set of novel image indexing mechanism is proposed. A query by colour, shape, image description and image element description is developed. The SOFIA system is been implemented on IBM PC using Borland C++ under Windows 3.1.
Interactive dancing game with real-time recognition of continuous dance moves from 3D human motion capture

We have implemented an interactive dancing game using optical 3D motion capture technology. We propose a Progressive Block Matching algorithm to recognize the dance moves performed by the player in real-time. This makes a virtual partner be able to recognize and respond to the player's movement without a noticeable delay. The completion progress of a move is tracked progressively and the virtual partner's move is rendered in synchronization with the player's current action. Our interactive dancing game contains moves with various difficulty levels that suits for both novices and skillful players. Through animating the virtual partner in response to the player's movements, the player gets immersed into the virtual environment. A user test is performed to have a subjective evaluation of our game and the feedbacks from the subjects are positive.
CDK-regulated dimerization of M18BP1 on a Mis18 hexamer is necessary for CENP-A loading

Centromeres are unique chromosomal loci that promote the assembly of kinetochores, macromolecular complexes that bind spindle microtubules during mitosis. In most organisms, centromeres lack defined genetic features. Rather, they are specified epigenetically by a centromere-specific histone H3 variant, CENP-A. The Mis18 complex, comprising the Mis18α:Mis18β subcomplex and M18BP1, is crucial for CENP-A homeostasis. It recruits the CENP-A-specific chaperone HJURP to centromeres and primes it for CENP-A loading. We report here that a specific arrangement of Yippee domains in a human Mis18α:Mis18β 4:2 hexamer binds two copies of M18BP1 through M18BP1’s 140 N-terminal residues. Phosphorylation by Cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (CDK1) at two conserved sites in this region destabilizes binding to Mis18α:Mis18β, limiting complex formation to the G1 phase of the cell cycle. Using an improved viral 2A peptide co-expression strategy, we demonstrate that CDK1 controls Mis18 complex recruitment to centromeres by regulating oligomerization of M18BP1 through the Mis18α:Mis18β scaffold. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.23352. 001
Integrating Perspectives on Affective Neuroscience: Introduction to the Special Section on the Brain and Emotion

In this special section, three target articles present three different perspectives on emotion and how it is implemented in the human brain. Fundamental issues are discussed such as the nature and organization of emotion’s representation in the brain and the best approaches for elucidating emotion’s neural basis. Comments and author replies further discuss these issues and explore their interconnections. A common theme of the target articles and commentaries is that multiple approaches and perspectives must be integrated across all levels of analysis to understand the neural basis of emotion.
Rethinking the sociology of stigma

Stigma is not a self-evident phenomenon but like all concepts has a history. The conceptual understanding of stigma which underpins most sociological research has its roots in the ground-breaking account penned by Erving Goffman in his best-selling book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963). In the 50 years since its publication, Goffman’s account of stigma has proved a productive concept, in terms of furthering research on social stigma and its effects, on widening public understandings of stigma, and in the development of anti-stigma campaigns. However, this introductory article argues that the conceptual understanding of stigma inherited from Goffman, along with the use of micro-sociological and/or psychological research methods in stigma research, often side-lines questions about where stigma is produced, by whom and for what purposes. As Simon Parker and Robert Aggleton argue, what is frequently missing is social and political questions, such as ‘how stigma is used by individuals, communities and the state to produce and reproduce social inequality’. This article expands on Parker and Aggleton’s critique of the limitations of existing conceptual understandings of stigma, through an examination of the anti-stigma campaign Heads Together. This high-profile campaign launched in 2016 seeks to ‘end the stigma around mental health’ and is fronted by members of the British Royal Family. By thinking critically with and about this campaign, this article seeks to both delineate the limitations of existing conceptual understandings of stigma and to begin to develop a supplementary account of how stigma functions as a form of power. We argue that in order to grasp the role and function of stigma in society, scholarship must develop a richer and fuller understanding of stigma as a cultural and political economy. The final part of this introduction details the articles to follow, and the contribution they collectively make to the project of rethinking the sociology of stigma. This collection has been specifically motivated by: (1) how reconceptualising stigma might assist in developing better understandings of pressing contemporary problems of social decomposition, inequality and injustice; (2) a concern to decolonise the discipline of sociology by interrogating its major theorists and concepts; and (3) a desire to put class struggle and racism at the centre of understandings of stigma as a classificatory form of power.
Unwrap mosaics: a new representation for video editing

We introduce a new representation for video which facilitates a number of common editing tasks. The representation has some of the power of a full reconstruction of 3D surface models from video, but is designed to be easy to recover from a priori unseen and uncalibrated footage. By modelling the image-formation process as a 2D-to-2D transformation from an object's texture map to the image, modulated by an object-space occlusion mask, we can recover a representation which we term the "unwrap mosaic". Many editing operations can be performed on the unwrap mosaic, and then re-composited into the original sequence, for example resizing objects, repainting textures, copying/cutting/pasting objects, and attaching effects layers to deforming objects.
Millimeter-Wave Low Power and Miniature CMOS Multicascode Low-Noise Amplifiers with Noise Reduction Topology

In this paper, the design and analysis of CMOS multicascode configuration with noise reduction topology are proposed. Two low power and miniature low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) were designed and fabricated for demonstration. One with cascode device was designed at V -band in 65-nm process, and the other with triple-cascode structure was fabricated at Q -band in 0.13-¿ m technology. To minimize the noise figure and maximize the small-signal gain, inductors are designed and placed between transistors of the cascode and triple-cascode configurations. Based on this approach, the Q-band LNA has a gain of 14.3 dB and a noise figure of 3.8 dB at 38 GHz, with a power consumption of 28.8 mW. The V-band LNA presents a gain of 14.4 dB and a noise figure of 4.5 dB at 54.5 GHz, with a power consumption of 10 mW. The chip size of the V- and Q-band LNAs are 0.55 × 0.45 mm2 and 0.42 × 0.6 mm2, including all the testing pads. Compared with the conventional cascode LNAs, the proposed cascode LNA shows better noise figure and lower power consumption whereas the triple-cascode LNA features higher gain performance.
Registration of depth maps based on IRLS-ICP-TPS

In the problem of three-dimensional reconstruction from depth maps, the objects may produce deformation; the camera calibration error may lead to slight deformation of depth images. We propose a new approach named IRLS-ICP-TPS(Iteratively Re-weighed Least Squares Iterative Closest Point Thin-Plate Splines) to align the depth images. It can be used to calibrate the slight deformation of the depth images and align the point sets of deformable objects. In the first step, we convert the depth images into point cloud, then, we use the Spin-image coarsely match the point sets. Thirdly, we make use of the IRLS-ICP(Iterative Closest Point) algorithm to register the point clouds on the basis of coarse matching. In the end, we deform the point cloud using TPS(Thin-Plate Splines) and joint the point sets. The experiments show that the proposed method can get better results in registration of depth maps, both for rigid and non-rigid objects, than original registration methods.
Yet Successful : A Position Paper for CHI 2011 Workshop on Crowdsourcing and Human Computation

THE WIKI MODEL OF COLLABORATION Over the past decade, a new model of collaborative knowledge synthesis and production has emerged: wikis, which invert the classical publishing model (review happens after publication, not before). Further, the wiki philosophy calls for extremely open access (anyone who can read the wiki can also edit it, and these edits are live to all readers immediately upon being saved) as well as transparency (anyone can see who made each change and exactly what was changed). 1
A comparison of titers of anti-Brucella antibodies of naturally infected and healthy vaccinated cattle by standard tube agglutination test, microtiter plate agglutination test, indirect hemagglutination assay, and indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

Aim: We determined the antibody response in cattle naturally infected with brucellosis and normal healthy adult cattle vaccinated during calf hood with strain 19. Materials and Methods: The antibody titers were measured by standard tube agglutination test (STAT), microtiter plate agglutination test (MAT), indirect hemagglutination assay (IHA), and indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (iELISA) as per standard protocols. Results: The mean STAT titers were 1.963±0.345 in infected cattle and 1.200±0.155 in healthy vaccinated cattle. The difference was extremely significant (p<0.0001). The mean MAT titers were 2.244±0.727 in infected cattle and 1.200±0.155 in healthy vaccinated cattle. The difference was very significant (p<0.005). The mean IHA titers in infected cattle were 2.284±0.574, and those in healthy vaccinated cattle were 1.200±0.155. The difference was extremely significant (p=0.0002). However, the difference in mean iELISA titers of infected cattle (1.3678±0.014) and healthy vaccinated cattle (1.367±0.014) was non-significant. The infected animals showed very high titers of agglutinating antibodies compared to the vaccinated animals. However, it cannot be ascertained whether these antibodies are due to vaccine or response to infection. Since the infected animals had been vaccinated earlier, the current infection may suggest that vaccination was unable to induce protective levels of antibody. The heightened antibody response after infection may also indicate a secondary immune response to the antigens common to the vaccine strain and wild Brucella organisms. Conclusion: The brucellosis infected animals showed very high titers of agglutinating antibodies compared to the vaccinated animals.
A Novel MAC Protocol for Cooperative Downloading in Vehicular Networks

In this paper, we propose a novel protocol called VC-MAC that utilizes the concept of cooperative communication tailored for vehicular networks, especially for gateway downloading scenarios. VC-MAC leverages the broadcast nature of the wireless medium to maximize the system throughput. The spatial and user diversity are exploited by the concurrent cooperative relaying to overcome the unreliability of the wireless channel in vehicular networks. We theoretically analyze the selection of optimal relay set using weighted independent set (WIS) model, and then design a back-off mechanism to select the concurrent relays in a distributed manner. Extensive simulations in ns-2 are carried out to demonstrate that compared with existing strategies, VC-MAC effectively enhances cooperative information downloading and significantly increases the system throughput.
Reciprocal modulation and attenuation in the prefrontal cortex: An fMRI study on emotional–cognitive interaction

Everyday and clinical experience demonstrate strong interactions between emotions and cognitions. Nevertheless the neural correlates underlying emotional–cognitive interaction remain unclear. Using event‐related fMRI, we investigated BOLD‐signal increases and decreases in medial and lateral prefrontal cortical regions during emotional and non‐emotional judgment of photographs taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Emotional and non‐emotional judgment conditions were compared to each other as well as with baseline allowing for distinction between relative signal changes (comparison between conditions) and true signal changes (referring to baseline). We have found that: (1) both emotional and non‐emotional judgment of IAPS pictures were characterized by signal increases in ventrally and dorsally located lateral prefrontal cortical areas and concurrent signal decreases in ventro‐ and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex; (2) direct comparison between emotional and non‐emotional judgment showed relative signal increases in ventro‐ and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and in contrast, relative signal increases were detected in ventrally and dorsally located lateral prefrontal cortical areas when comparing non‐emotional to emotional judgment; and (3) as shown in separate comparisons with baseline, these relative signal changes were due to smaller signal decreases in ventro‐ and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and smaller signal increases in ventrally and dorsally located lateral prefrontal cortical areas during emotional judgment. Therefore, the emotional load of a cognitive task lead to both less deactivation of medial prefrontal regions and, at the same time, less activation of lateral prefrontal regions. Analogous patterns of reciprocal modulation and attenuation have previously been described for other cortical regions such as visual and auditory areas. Reciprocal modulation and attenuation in medial and lateral prefrontal cortex might constitute the neurophysiologic basis for emotional–cognitive interaction as observed in both healthy and psychiatric subjects. Hum. Brain Mapping 21:202–212, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Farnesyltransferase inhibitors block the neurofibromatosis type I (NF1) malignant phenotype.

Neurofibromatosis type I (NF1) is a hereditary tumor and developmental disorder whose defective gene was cloned previously. The protein product of the NF1 gene, neurofibromin, contains a domain that shows significant sequence homology to the known catalytic domains of mammalian Ras GTPase-activating proteins (GAP) and the yeast IRA1 and IRA2 proteins. This homologous region of neurofibromin has been shown to exhibit GAP activity toward Ras proteins. Malignant schwannoma cell lines from NF1 patients contain normal levels of GAP and nonmutated Ras proteins but barely detectable levels of neurofibromin, based on genetic mutations in the NF1 gene. Because these cells contain constitutively activated Ras.GTP, it has been proposed that neurofibromin may be the sole negative regulator of Ras in these cells. Overall, these results have implied an important role of the Ras signaling pathway in NF1 malignant schwannomas. Recently, several laboratories have developed small molecule inhibitors of Ras function that inhibit the enzyme farnesyltransferase (FT). FT-mediated post-translational farnesylation of Ras proteins is absolutely necessary for Ras function since this modification is required for the anchoring of Ras proteins to the plasma cell membrane. Although previous studies have shown that FT inhibitors can block the growth of tumor cells carrying mutant Ras proteins, it remained unclear how this class of inhibitors would affect tumor cells such as in NF1, whose malignant growth appears to be mediated by up-regulation of wild-type Ras activity. Thus, in the current study, we investigated whether BMS-186511, a bisubstrate analogue inhibitor of FT, would inhibit the malignant growth properties of a cell line established from malignant schwannoma of an NF1 patient. Our results indicate that the malignant growth properties of ST88-14 cells, the most malignant cell line among several well-characterized NF1 cells, are inhibited by BMS-186511 in a concentration-dependent manner. Following treatment with BMS-186511, ST88-14 cells became flat, nonrefractile, were contact-inhibited, and lost their ability to grow in soft agar. In the drug-exposed cells, Ras proteins were prevented from FT-mediated membrane association. BMS-186511 was found to specifically inhibit FT, but not geranylgeranyltransferase I, a closely related enzyme. Thus, it is conceivable that FT inhibitors may ultimately become the first generation of drugs against the malignant phenotype in NF1 based on rational insights into the mechanism of action of neurofibromin.