Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Projective Estimators for Point/Tangent Representations of Planar Curves

Recognizing shapes in multiview imaging is still a challenging task, which usually relies on geometrical invariants estimations. However, very few geometric estimators that are projective invariant have been devised.This paper proposes projective length and projective curvature estimators for plane curves, when the curves are represented by points together with their tangent directions. In this context, the estimations can be performed with only the four point-tangent samples for the projective length and five for the projective curvature.The proposed length estimator is based on affine estimators and is proved to be convergent. The curvature estimator relies on the length to fit logarithmic spirals to the point-tangent samples. It is projective invariant and experiments indicate its convergence. Preliminary results using both estimators together are promising, although the estimators' lack of robustness would require additional work for noisy cases.
In Silico Structure Analysis of Type 2 Diabetes Associated Cysteine Protease Calpain-10 (CAPN10)

Calpain-10 (CAPN10) is a cysteine protease that is known to hydrolyze specific substrates significant for calcium-regulated signaling pathways and it's activated by intracellular calcium (Ca 2+ ). The calpain10 is known to be involved in the cellular degenerative processes that characterize several diseases such as cancer, stroke and heart attack. The role of calpain10 was recently identified and associated with diabetes mellitus type 2. In this paper, the homology modelling procedure was used to determine the 3D structure of human calpain10 (AAH07553). The μ-calpain (1QXP) of Rattus norvegicus was selected as a template for the construction of calpain10 model. Ramachandran plot of calpain10 (AAH07553) has only 55.9% residues in the most favored regions, while template μ-calpain (1QXP) has 69.3% residues in the most favored regions. The model was validated by using protein structure tools RAMPAGE and Prochek for reliability. 3D structure of calpain10 suggested its active site remains conserved among family members and the major interactions are similar to those observed for the template (1QXP).
Relating Cryptography and Polymorphism

Cryptography is information hiding. Polymorphism is also information hiding. So is cryptography polymorphic? Is polymorphism cryptographic? To investigate these questions, we define the cryptographic ‚-calculus, a simply typed ‚calculus with shared-key cryptographic primitives. Although this calculus is simply typed, it is powerful enough to encode recursive functions, recursive types, and dynamic typing. We then develop a theory of relational parametricity for our calculus as Reynolds did for the polymorphic ‚-calculus. This theory is useful for proving equivalences in our calculus; for instance, it implies a non-interference property: values encrypted by a key cannot be distinguished from one another by any function ignorant of the key. We close with an encoding of the polymorphic ‚-calculus into the cryptographic calculus that uses cryptography to protect type abstraction. Our results shed a new light upon the relationship between cryptography and polymorphism, and oer a first step toward extending programming idioms based on type abstraction (such as modules and packages) from the civilized world of polymorphism, where only well-typed programs are allowed, to the unstructured world of cryptography, where friendly programs must cohabit with malicious attackers.
In Vivo Validation of a Computationally Predicted Conserved Ath5 Target Gene Set

So far, the computational identification of transcription factor binding sites is hampered by the complexity of vertebrate genomes. Here we present an in silico procedure to predict target sites of a transcription factor in complex genomes using its binding site. In a first step sequence, comparison of closely related genomes identifies the binding sites in conserved cis-regulatory regions (phylogenetic footprinting). Subsequently, more remote genomes are introduced into the comparison to identify highly conserved and therefore putatively functional binding sites (phylogenetic filtering). When applied to the binding site of atonal homolog 5 (Ath5 or ATOH7), this procedure efficiently filters evolutionarily conserved binding sites out of more than 300,000 instances in a vertebrate genome. We validate a selection of the linked target genes by showing coexpression with and transcriptional regulation by Ath5. Finally, chromatin immunoprecipitation demonstrates the occupancy of the target gene promoters by Ath5. Thus, our procedure, applied to whole genomes, is a fast and predictive tool to in silico filter the target genes of a given transcription factor with defined binding site.
STUDIES OF ILLNESS IN THE AGED. THE INDEX OF ADL: A STANDARDIZED MEASURE OF BIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOSOCIAL FUNCTION.

The Index of ADL was developed to study results of treatment and prognosis in the elderly and chronically ill. Grades of the Index summarize over-all performance in bathing, dressing, going to toilet, transferring, continence, and feeding. More than 2,000 evaluations of 1,001 individuals demonstrated use of the Index as a survey instrument, as an objective guide to the course of chronic illness, as a tool for studying the aging process, and as an aid in rehabilitation teaching. Of theoretical interest is the observation that the order of recovery of Index functions in disabled patients is remarkably similar to the order of development of primary functions in children. This parallelism, and similarity to the behavior of primitive peoples, suggests that the Index is based on primary biological and psychosocial function, reflecting the adequacy of organized neurological and locomotor response.
Enabling reasoning on the web: Performing simulations of clinical situations

The transformation of a document-based medical guideline into a computer-based decision support is a time-consuming and error-prone activity. One way to alleviate this burden is by facilitating, as much as possible, the (semi)automatic implementation and further validation of the knowledge intensive tasks embedded within medical guidelines. This paper presents a bilingual (English and Spanish) “proof of concept” simulation framework and computational test-bed, called V.A. F. Framework, that takes advantages of both CommonKADS methodology and Semantic Web technologies (OWL, SWRL, and OWL-S) to enable experiments (simulations of clinical situations) that allow overcoming the main barriers to successfully express medical guidelines in an executable form compatible with Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). To demonstrate how higher integration between EMRs and evidence-based medicine can be accomplished, this paper focuses on the “Acute Red Eye”, a clinical ophthalmologic domain known by General Practitioners (GPs) that usually requires the intervention of ophthalmologists (specialised physicians), so medical referral guidelines as well as ophthalmology medical guidelines need to be codified and integrated with EMRs.
JAViR - Exploiting Instruction Level Parallelism for JAVA Machine by Using Virtual Registers

Java Virtual Machine architecture is a stack based architecture. Because most Java instructions can operate only on the top of the stack, it is difficult to exploit instruction level parallelism (ILP). In this paper, we introduce a new kind of storage, named virtual register (VR), working together with the stack, to provide a simultaneous access mechanism for a wide-issue high-performance JAViR (Java processor Architecture with Virtual Register) design. The VR is transparent to programmers and compilers. At runtime, the dependences of Java bytecode sequence are checked and VR is used for presenting the dependences. Instead of accessing the top of the stack, most arithmetic instructions can get source operands from VR, and write results to VR. Because of the wide accessibility of the VR, it is possible for JAViR to execute more instructions in parallel in a clock cycle than that of stack based Java processors. Simulations show that the new JAViR processor could achieve the performance of average 2.89 EIPC (effective instructions per cycle) with a 16-instruction scheduling window or 4.01 EIPC with a 64instruction window.
Tetrandrine suppresses lipopolysaccharide-induced microglial activation by inhibiting NF-κB pathway

AbstractAim:Microglial activation has been implicated in many neurological diseases. In this study, we examined the effects of tetrandrine (TET), a major pharmacologically-active compound of Chinese herb Stephania tetrandra S Moore on microglial activation.Methods:The microglia pretreated with or without TET were activated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in vitro. Nitric oxide (NO) release, superoxide anion (O2-) generation, as well as TNF-α and interleukin-6 (IL-6) production by microglia were measured afterwards. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay was performed to determine whether NF-κB activity in microglia was affected by TET treatment.Results:We found that TET inhibited the LPS-induced activation of microglia by decreasing the production of NO and O2-, consequently affecting the release of TNF-α and IL-6 in LPS-induced microglial activation. Such suppressive effect was accompanied by inhibiting transcription factor NF-κB activation.Conclusion:Our results suggest that TET might modulate LPS-induced microglial activation by inhibiting the NF-κB-mediated release of inflammatory factors.
Ambiguity Helps: Classification with Disagreements in Crowdsourced Annotations

Imagine we show an image to a person and ask her/him to decide whether the scene in the image is warm or not warm, and whether it is easy or not to spot a squirrel in the image. For exactly the same image, the answers to those questions are likely to differ from person to person. This is because the task is inherently ambiguous. Such an ambiguous, therefore challenging, task is pushing the boundary of computer vision in showing what can and can not be learned from visual data. Crowdsourcing has been invaluable for collecting annotations. This is particularly so for a task that goes beyond a clear-cut dichotomy as multiple human judgments per image are needed to reach a consensus. This paper makes conceptual and technical contributions. On the conceptual side, we define disagreements among annotators as privileged information about the data instance. On the technical side, we propose a framework to incorporate annotation disagreements into the classifiers. The proposed framework is simple, relatively fast, and outperforms classifiers that do not take into account the disagreements, especially if tested on high confidence annotations.
Learning to Predict Rare Events in Event Sequences

Learning to predict rare events from sequences of events with categorical features is an important, real-world, problem that existing statistical and machine learning methods are not well suited to solve. This paper describes timeweaver, a genetic algorithm based machine learning system that predicts rare events by identifying predictive temporal and sequential patterns. Timeweaver is applied to the task of predicting telecommunication equipment failures from 110,000 alarm messages and is shown to outperform existing learning methods.
Variation in Habitat Choice and Delayed Reproduction: Adaptive Queuing Strategies or Individual Quality Differences?

In most species, some individuals delay reproduction or occupy inferior breeding positions. The queue hypothesis tries to explain both patterns by proposing that individuals strategically delay breeding (queue) to acquire better breeding or social positions. In 1995, Ens, Weissing, and Drent addressed evolutionarily stable queuing strategies in situations with habitat heterogeneity. However, their model did not consider the non–mutually exclusive individual quality hypothesis, which suggests that some individuals delay breeding or occupy inferior breeding positions because they are poor competitors. Here we extend their model with individual differences in competitive abilities, which are probably plentiful in nature. We show that including even the smallest competitive asymmetries will result in individuals using queuing strategies completely different from those in models that assume equal competitors. Subsequently, we investigate how well our models can explain settlement patterns in the wild, using a long‐term study on oystercatchers. This long‐lived shorebird exhibits strong variation in age of first reproduction and territory quality. We show that only models that include competitive asymmetries can explain why oystercatchers' settlement patterns depend on natal origin. We conclude that predictions from queuing models are very sensitive to assumptions about competitive asymmetries, while detecting such differences in the wild is often problematic.
Error rates of capacity-achieving codes are convex

Motivated by a wide-spread use of convex optimization techniques, convexity properties of bit error rate of the maximum likelihood detector operating in the AWGN channel are studied for arbitrary constellations and bit mappings, which also includes coding under maximum-likelihood decoding. Under this generic setting, the pairwise probability of error and bit error rate are shown to be convex functions of the SNR and noise power in the high SNR/low noise regime with explicitly-determined boundary. Any code, including capacity-achieving ones, whose decision regions include the hardened noise spheres (from the noise sphere hardening argument in the channel coding theorem) satisfies this high SNR requirement and thus has convex error rates in both SNR and noise power. We conjecture that all capacity-achieving codes have convex error rates.
Improvement of the direct kinematic model of a haptic device for medical application in real time using an extra sensor

This paper deals with a spherical parallel manipulator developed for a master device, used in a teleoperation system for surgical application. The aim is to improve the calculation of the direct kinematic model (DKM) even when the parallel manipulator is in a singular configuration by using an extra sensor for a passive joint. A new simple approach for the DKM calculation of the haptic device, in order to meet requirement of real time applications, is developed. The measure of a passive joint's angle reduces the calculation time and improves the accuracy of the direct model particularly in the vicinity of the singular positions. Experiments were conducted on tele-operation system despite of the presence of singularities in the master workspace. The obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of the approach.
Real life grasping using an under-actuated robot hand - Simulation and experiments

We present a system which includes an underactuated anthropomorphic hand and control algorithms for autonomous grasping of everyday objects. The system comprises a control framework for hybrid force/position control in simulation and reality, a grasp simulator, and an under-actuated robot hand equipped with tactile sensors. We start by presenting the robot hand, the simulation environment and the control framework that enable dynamic simulation of an under-actuated robot hand. We continue by presenting simulation results and also discuss and exemplify the use of simulation in relation to autonomous grasping. Finally, we use the very same controller in real world grasping experiments to validate the simulations and to exemplify system capabilities and limitations.
Analytical Approach of Multicasting-supported Inter-Domain Mobility Management in Sensor-based Fast Proxy Mobile IPv6 Networks

IP-based Wireless Sensor Networks (IP-WSNs) are gaining importance for their broad range of applications in health care, home automation, environmental monitoring, industrial control, vehicle telematics, and agricultural monitoring. In all these applications, a fundamental issue is the mobility in the sensor network, particularly with regards to energy efficiency. Because of the energy inefficiency of network-based mobility management protocols, they can be supported via IP-WSNs. In this paper, we propose a network-based mobility-supported IP-WSN protocol called mSFP, or the mSFP: “Multicasting-supported Inter-Domain Mobility Management Scheme in Sensor-based Fast Proxy Mobile IPv6 Networks”. Based on [8,20], we present its network architecture and evaluate its performance by considering the signaling and mobility cost. Our analysis shows that the proposed scheme reduces the signaling cost, total cost, and mobility cost. With respect to the number of IP-WSN nodes, the proposed scheme reduces the signaling cost by 7% and the total cost by 3%. With respect to the number of hops, the proposed scheme reduces the signaling cost by 6.9%, the total cost by 2.5%, and the mobility cost by 1.5%. With respect to the number of IP-WSN nodes, the proposed scheme reduces the mobility cost by 1.6%. Key words: Wireless Sensor Networks; mSFP; IP-WSN; 6LoWPAN; IEEE 802.15. 4
Impedance control and modulation for stable footing in locomotion of biped robots

Proposes an impedance control method with impedance modulation strategy for biped robot locomotion. The constrained leg as well as the free leg is controlled by the impedance control. To reduce the magnitude of an impact with the ground and guarantee a stable footing when a foot contacts with the ground, the paper proposes to increase the damping of the leg drastically and to modify the reference trajectory of the leg. Computer simulations with a 3-DOF environment model with a combination of a nonlinear and linear compliant contact model show that the proposed controller is superior to computed-torque controllers in the impact regulation and stability robustness in locomotion.
Inhibition of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Infections in Cell Cultures with Antisense Morpholino Oligomers

ABSTRACT Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral disease of cloven-hoofed ungulates that can lead to severe losses in the livestock production and export industries. Although vaccines have been extensively used to control FMD, there is no antiviral therapy available to treat ongoing infections with FMD virus (FMDV). Six peptide-conjugated morpholino oligomers (PPMOs) with sequences complementary to various 21-nucleotide segments of the 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions (UTRs) of the FMDV genome (strain A24 Cruzeiro/Brazil/1955 [A24Cru]) were evaluated in cell cultures. Three of the PPMOs, targeting domain 5 of the internal ribosome entry site (5D PPMO), and the two translation start codon regions (AUG1 and AUG2 PPMOs), showed high levels of anti-FMDV activity. A dose-dependent and sequence-specific reduction in viral titers of greater than 5 log10, with a concomitant reduction of viral protein and RNA expression, was achieved at low micromolar concentrations. Under identical conditions, three other PPMOs targeting the 5′-terminal region of the genome, the cis-acting replication element in the 5′ UTR, and the 3′ “ab” stem-loop showed less dramatic titer reductions of 1.5 log10 to 2 log10. Treatment with 5D PPMO reduced the titers of FMDV strains representing five different serotypes by 2 log10 to 4 log10 compared to those of the controls. A24Cru-infected BHK-21 cells treated repeatedly with 5D or AUG2 PPMO generated resistant viruses for which phenotypic and genotypic properties were defined. Notably, three passages with low concentrations of the AUG1 PPMO extinguished all traces of detectable virus. The results indicate that PPMOs have potential for treating FMDV infections and that they also represent useful tools for studying picornaviral translation and evolution.
Real-life emotion-related states detection in call centers: a cross-corpora study

In this article, we describe experiments on the detection of three emotional states (Anger, Positive and Neutral) for two French corpora collected in call centers in different contexts (service complaints and medical emergency). These corpora have a high level of privacy. In order to be comparable with results obtained in the community we used the openEAR acoustic features extraction platform instead of our own library. One of our aims being the comparison of anger and positive emotions across corpora, we train models on one corpus and test it on the other to compare their similarities, then conversely. We will discuss the possible gain in generalization power.
Comparison of Prefabricated and Custom-Made Bars Used for Implant-Retained Mandibular Complete Overdentures

Purpose:To compare prefabricated and custom-made bars used for implant-retained mandibular complete overdentures. Materials:Ten completely edentulous patients were selected for replacement with dental implants. Each patient received 2 (press-fit) dental implants, 1 implant on each side in the canine regions of the mandible. The implants were left submerged (unloaded) for a healing osseointegration period of 4 months. The patients were divided into 2 groups, 5 patients in each. Group I patients received maxillary conventional dentures and a mandibular overdenture retained by a cast bar. Group II patients received a maxillary conventional denture and a mandibular overdenture retained by a prefabricated bar. All patients were evaluated clinically and radiographically immediately after overdenture delivery and after 6, 12, and 18 months. Results:There was more pronounced bone resorption in cast bar group more than the prefabricated bar group and minimal marginal bone loss in the group treated with prefabricated bar. Conclusion:The prefabricated bar overdentures showed less bone resorption distal to the implants in comparison with the cast bar implant-retained overdentures, Both the gingival index and the plaque index score were significantly higher in the group treated with the cast bar retained overdenture. The prefabricated bar implant-retained overdenture showed low significant reduction in the bone height after 1 year, and a very highly significant reduction after 18 months.
Striatal and Tegmental Neurons Code Critical Signals for Temporal-Difference Learning of State Value in Domestic Chicks

To ensure survival, animals must update the internal representations of their environment in a trial-and-error fashion. Psychological studies of associative learning and neurophysiological analyses of dopaminergic neurons have suggested that this updating process involves the temporal-difference (TD) method in the basal ganglia network. However, the way in which the component variables of the TD method are implemented at the neuronal level is unclear. To investigate the underlying neural mechanisms, we trained domestic chicks to associate color cues with food rewards. We recorded neuronal activities from the medial striatum or tegmentum in a freely behaving condition and examined how reward omission changed neuronal firing. To compare neuronal activities with the signals assumed in the TD method, we simulated the behavioral task in the form of a finite sequence composed of discrete steps of time. The three signals assumed in the simulated task were the prediction signal, the target signal for updating, and the TD-error signal. In both the medial striatum and tegmentum, the majority of recorded neurons were categorized into three types according to their fitness for three models, though these neurons tended to form a continuum spectrum without distinct differences in the firing rate. Specifically, two types of striatal neurons successfully mimicked the target signal and the prediction signal. A linear summation of these two types of striatum neurons was a good fit for the activity of one type of tegmental neurons mimicking the TD-error signal. The present study thus demonstrates that the striatum and tegmentum can convey the signals critically required for the TD method. Based on the theoretical and neurophysiological studies, together with tract-tracing data, we propose a novel model to explain how the convergence of signals represented in the striatum could lead to the computation of TD error in tegmental dopaminergic neurons.