Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Normalization-Cooperated Gradient Feature Extraction for Handwritten Character Recognition

The gradient direction histogram feature has shown superior performance in character recognition. To alleviate the effect of stroke direction distortion caused by shape normalization and provide higher recognition accuracies, we propose a new feature extraction approach, called normalization-cooperated gradient feature (NCGF) extraction, which maps the gradient direction elements of original image to direction planes without generating the normalized image and can be combined with various normalization methods. Experiments on handwritten Japanese and Chinese character databases show that, compared to normalization-based gradient feature, the NCGF reduces the recognition error rate by factors ranging from 8.63 percent to 14.97 percent with high confidence of significance when combined with pseudo-two-dimensional normalization.
Low complexity memory architectures based on LDPC codes: Benefits and disadvantages

In this paper we investigate the problem of information storage in inherently unreliable memory cells. In order to increase the memory reliability, information is stored in memory cells as a codeword of a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code, while the memory content is updated periodically by an error correction scheme. We first present an overview on the state-of-the memory architectures based on LDPC codes, and then asses the benefits of using the coded architectures expressed through the increased reliability. In addition, we provide upper bounds on the complexity of such memories.
Lung injury associated with electronic cigarettes inhalation diagnosed by transbronchial lung biopsy

A 46‐year‐old healthy man developed respiratory distress, night sweats, fever, and weight loss after using electronic cigarettes (e‐cigs) for approximately 1 month. He presented to the hospital when the symptoms worsened 2 months after onset. The findings of bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid examination and the following transbronchial lung biopsy examination led to the diagnosis of acute alveolitis: intra‐alveolar fibrosis accompanied with exudate containing abundant lipid‐laden macrophages, eosinophils, and neutrophils. Eventually, e‐cig–induced acute lung injury was diagnosed. The symptoms were rapidly alleviated upon e‐cig use termination and methylprednisolone pulse therapy, and no subsequent recurrence was observed. There have been only a few reported cases of e‐cig–induced lung injury. In e‐cig users presenting with atypical pneumonia, close examination by BAL and biopsy should be performed to verify the presence or absence of lipid‐laden macrophages.
Least-Squares Methods for Linear Elasticity

This paper develops least-squares methods for the solution of linear elastic problems in both two and three dimensions. Our main approach is defined by simply applying the L2 norm least-squares principle to a stress-displacement system: the constitutive and the equilibrium equations. It is shown that the homogeneous least-squares functional is elliptic and continuous in the $H({\rm div};\,\Omega)^d \times H^1(\Omega)^d$ norm. This immediately implies optimal error estimates for finite element subspaces of $H({\rm div};\,\Omega)^d \times H^1(\Omega)^d$. It admits optimal multigrid solution methods as well if Raviart--Thomas finite element spaces are used to approximate the stress tensor. Our method does not degrade when the material properties approach the incompressible limit. Least-squares methods that impose boundary conditions weakly and use an inverse norm are also considered. Numerical results for a benchmark test problem of planar elasticity are included in order to illustrate the robustness of our .
Respiratory Dysregulation in Anxiety, Functional Cardiac, and Pain Disorders

Respiration is a complex physiological system affecting a variety of physical processes that can act as a critical link between mind and body. This reviewdiscusses the evidence for dysregulated breathing playing a role in three clinical syndromes: panic disorder, functional cardiac disorder, and chronic pain. Recent technological advances allowing the ambulatory assessment of endtidal partial pressure of CO2 (PCO2) and respiratory patterns have opened up new avenues for investigation and treatment of these disorders. The latest evidence from laboratories indicates that subtle disturbances of breathing, such as tidal volume instability and sighing, contribute to the chronic hypocapnia often found in panic patients. Hypocapnia is also common in functional cardiac and chronic pain disorders, and studies indicate that it mediates some of their symptomatology. Consistent with the role of respiratory dysregulation in these disorders, initial evidence indicates efficacy of respiration-focused treatment.
Priming determinist beliefs diminishes implicit (but not explicit) components of self-agency

Weakening belief in the concept of free will yields pronounced effects upon social behavior, typically promoting selfish and aggressive over pro-social and helping tendencies. Belief manipulations have furthermore been shown to modulate basic and unconscious processes involved in motor control and self-regulation. Yet, to date, it remains unclear how high-level beliefs can impact such a wide range of behaviors. Here, we tested the hypothesis that priming disbelief in free will diminishes the sense of agency, i.e., the intrinsic sensation of being in control of one’s own actions. To this end, we measured participants’ implicit and explicit self-agency under both anti-free will and control conditions. Priming disbelief in free will reduced implicit but not explicit components of agency. These findings suggest that free will beliefs have a causal impact on the pre-reflective feeling of being in control of one’s actions, and solidify previous proposals that implicit and explicit agency components tap into distinct facets of action awareness.
Correlation of visceral adiposity index with chronic kidney disease in the People’s Republic of China: to rediscover the new clinical potential of an old indicator for visceral obesity

Aim To validate the association between visceral obesity and pathogenesis of chronic kidney disease (CKD) among individuals aged 40 years and above, and the potential of visceral adiposity index (VAI) to predict CKD. Methods This study was based on a cross-sectional epidemiologic study in the People’s Republic of China. A total of 1,581 residents aged over 40 years were included and divided into four groups based on VAI quartile intervals, namely, Groups I, II, III, and IV (eg, Group I included patients with their VAIs in the lowest quartile). Logistic regression analysis was performed. Results VAI is positively correlated with the albumin-to-creatinine ratio and the prevalence of CKD (P<0.001), and is inversely related to estimated glomerular filtration rate (P<0.001). Using Group I as control, odds ratios (ORs) were calculated to quantify the risk of developing CKD as VAI increased (Group II 1.08 [P>0.05], Group III 1.57 [P<0.05], Group IV 2.31 [P<0.001]). Related factors like age and sex were normalized in the logistic model before calculation. ORs became 1.16 (P>0.05), 1.59 (P<0.05), and 2.14 (P<0.05), respectively, for each group after further normalization considering smoking, drinking, physical activity, education, and the history of hypertension, coronary heart disease, and diabetes. The same results were not observed after fasting blood glucose and blood pressure levels were included in the normalization. There was no significant difference in the ORs for different groups: 0.94 (P>0.05), 1.11 (P<0.05), and 1.68 (P>0.05), respectively. Conclusion VAI is highly correlated with the prevalence of CKD in the population aged 40 years and above. It can be used to predict the pathogenesis of CKD, which is dependent on fasting blood glucose and blood pressure levels.
Color Image Segmentation Technique Using “ Natural Grouping ” of Pixels

This paper focuses on the problem Image Segmentation which aims at sub dividing a given image into its constituent objects. Here an unsupervised method for color image segmentation is proposed where we first perform a Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) based “natural grouping” of the image pixels to find out the clusters of the pixels having RGB values within a certain range present in the image. Then the pixels nearest to the centers of those clusters are found out and marked as the seeds. They are then used for region growing based image segmentation purpose. After that a region merging based segmentation method having a suitable threshold is performed to eliminate the effect of over segmentation that may still persist after the region growing method. This proposed method is unsupervised as it does not require any prior information about the number of regions present in a given image. The experimental results show that the proposed method can find homogeneous regions present in a given image efficiently.
Impaired Maturation and Function Belonging to the TNF Family Exhibit the Absence of B Cell-Activating Factor Cutting Edge: Germinal Centers Formed in

Germinal centers (GCs) form in B cell follicles and require specific signals for development and maintenance. B cell-activating factor belonging to the TNF family (BAFF) is a fundamental B cell survival factor and therefore may in-fluence GC reactions and subsequent Ab responses. To test this possibility, the effect of BAFF neutralization in immunized mice was assessed. Using B cell maturation Ag-Fc, we demonstrate that BAFF blockade does not inhibit GC formation or somatic hypermutation. However, GCs in B cell maturation Ag-Fc-treated mice dissipated more rapidly than those of control mice and did not form a mature follicular dendritic cell reticulum. Examination of immunized BAFF-null mice validated the BAFF-inde-pendent nature of GC formation. Furthermore, Ab responses, including high-affinity responses, were attenu-ated. This is the first evidence that BAFF is required for maintenance, but not initiation, of the GC reaction, and it further hints that somatic hypermutation within the GC and selection of Ag-specific high-affinity Ab could be uncoupled. The Journal of Immunology, 2003, 171: 547–551. BAFF-deficient GC environment impact the frequency of somatic hypermutation
Contextual Sentiment Topic Model for Adaptive Social Emotion Classification

Social emotion classification is important for numerous applications, such as public opinion measurement, corporate reputation estimation, and customer preference analysis. However, topics that evoke a certain emotion in the general public are often context-sensitive, making it difficult to train a universal classifier for all collections. A multilabeled sentiment topic model, namely, the contextual sentiment topic model (CSTM), can be used for adaptive social emotion classification. The CSTM distinguishes context-independent topics from both a background theme, which characterizes nondiscriminative information, and a contextual theme, which characterizes context-dependent information across different collections. Experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of this model for the adaptive classification of social emotions.
Emotion regulation before and after transcranial magnetic stimulation in obsessive compulsive disorder

Background. Impaired emotion regulation may underlie exaggerated emotional reactivity in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), yet instructed emotion regulation has never been studied in the disorder. Method. This study aimed to assess the neural correlates of emotion processing and regulation in 43 medication-free OCD patients and 38 matched healthy controls, and additionally test if these can be modulated by stimulatory (patients) and inhibitory (controls) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Participants performed an emotion regulation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after a single session of randomly assigned real or sham rTMS. Effect of group and rTMS were assessed on self-reported distress ratings and brain activity in frontal-limbic regions of interest. Results. Patients had higher distress ratings than controls during emotion provocation, but similar rates of distress reduction after voluntary emotion regulation. OCD patients compared with controls showed altered amygdala responsiveness during symptom provocation and diminished left dlPFC activity and frontal-amygdala connectivity during emotion regulation. Real v. sham dlPFC stimulation differentially modulated frontal-amygdala connectivity during emotion regulation in OCD patients. Conclusions. We propose that the increased emotional reactivity in OCD may be due to a deficit in emotion regulation caused by a failure of cognitive control exerted by the dorsal frontal cortex. Modulatory rTMS over the left dlPFC may influence automatic emotion regulation capabilities by influencing frontal-limbic connectivity.
Cosine-modulated 2 dimensional FIR filter banks satisfying perfect reconstruction

Considers the theory of cosine-modulated 2 dimensional (2-D) perfect reconstruction (PR) filter banks. First, a 2-D digital filter design with half passband, obtained by the sampling matrix, is discussed. Next, 2-D analysis filter banks are realized by cosine-modulating this prototype 2-D digital filter. It is shown that the modulation in the 2-D frequency plane is equivalent to the 1-D modulation. A necessary and sufficient condition for 2-D perfect reconstruction filter banks is derived. If the polyphase filter pairs of the prototype filter have a double-complement, the resulting 2-D filter bank satisfies the condition of perfect reconstruction. <<ETX>>
Text learning for user profiling in e-commerce

Exploring digital collections to find information relevant to a user's interests is a challenging task. Algorithms designed to solve this relevant information problem base their relevance computations on user profiles in which representations of the users' interests are maintained. This article presents a new method, based on the classic Rocchio algorithm for text categorization, able to discover user preferences from the analysis of textual descriptions of items in online catalog of e-commerce Web sites. Experiments have been carried out on several data sets, and results have been compared with those obtained using an inductive logic programming (ILP) approach and a probabilistic one.
Unexpected lack of specificity of a rabbit polyclonal TAP-L (ABCB9) antibody

In this article, we describe the surprising non-specific reactivity in immunoblots of a rabbit polyclonal antibody (ref. Abcam 86222) expected to recognize the transporter associated with antigen processing like (TAP-L, ABCB9) protein. Although this antibody, according to company documentation, recognizes a band with the expected molecular weight of 84 kDa in HeLa, 293T and mouse NIH3T3 whole-cell lysates, we found that this band is also present in immunoblots of TAP-L deficient bone marrow-derived dendritic cell (BMDC) whole-cell lysates in three independent replicates. We performed extensive verification by multiple PCR tests to confirm the complete absence of the ABCB9 gene in our TAP-L deficient mice. We conclude that the antibody tested cross-reacts with an unidentified protein present in TAP-L knockout cells, which coincidentally runs at the same molecular weight as TAP-L. These findings underline the pitfalls of antibody specificity testing in the absence of cells lacking expression of the target protein.
Evaluation of Dendritic Cell Immunogenicity After Activation and Chemical Fixation: A Mixed Lymphocyte Reaction Model

Dendritic cells (DC) are central to the control of adaptive immunity. Their ability to activate antigen-specific T cells depends on their maturation state. Many microbial and inflammatory products have stimulated DC maturation. This in vitro study used assays of phenotype and function to examine the potential of bacillus Calmette-Guérin, muramyl dipeptide, and CpG-rich oligodeoxynucleotides to stimulate DC maturation. A chemical fixation method was developed to reliably assess the functional potential of stimulated DC within a mixed lymphocyte reaction model. Using this method, it was shown that bacillus Calmette-Guérin provides a maturation signal as effective as the prototype DC stimulant interleukin-1&bgr;. Furthermore, weaker stimuli such as muramyl dipeptide and CpG-rich oligodeoxynucleotides also are able to induce functional maturation of DC. Using chemical fixation, it was possible to generate stable DC in an immature or a mature state. These observations have importance for our understanding of the regulation of adaptive immunity and for the design of DC-based immunotherapeutic strategies.
D2D communications under LTE-U system: QoS and co-existence issues are incorporated

Daily-life oriented applications and multimedia entertainments through smart devices are creating immense stress to the current cellular foundation. To overwhelm from this loopholes, both academia and industry are trying their best by incorporating different technologies with existing ones using licensed spectrum. On the other side, Device-to-Device (D2D) communications are also being used to improve the spectrum efficiency and user experience by reutilizing licensed cellular spectrum. But with insufficient licensed spectrum, it is impossible to meet the demand of users in the current scenario. So, peoples are thinking to utilize unlicensed spectrum with licensed one to alleviate this scarcity issue and provide guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) to the users. In this paper, we want to extend D2D communication and LTE-A network into the unlicensed spectrum. But this initiative will harm the performance of other technologies which are already working in the same unlicensed band. Moreover, if multiple mobile network operators (MNOs) use the same unlicensed band then they will diminish the benefits of each other. So this paper wants to maximize the sum-rate of LTE users and D2D pairs by allocating licensed and unlicensed subchannels considering their QoS requirements while protecting minimum requirements of WiFi Access Points (WAPs). Then we solve this problem with the help of Nash bargaining game (NBG) between Small Cell Base Stations (SBSs) and WAPs by the cooperative approach. Simulation results show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.
Web personalization based on static information and dynamic user behavior

The explosive growth of the web is at the basis of the great interest into web usage mining techniques in both commercial and research areas. In this paper, a web personalization strategy based on pattern recognition techniques is presented. This strategy takes into account both static information, by means of classical clustering algorithms, and dynamic behavior of a user, proposing a novel and effective re-classification algorithm. Experiments have been carried out in order to validate our approach and evaluate the proposed algorithm.
Solving capacitated vehicle routing problem using intelligent water drops algorithm

The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) is a well-known NP-hard problem of importance to real life applications such as transportation and logistics. The CVRP finds the best set of paths between a specific number of customers to deliver goods by a number of vehicles with a fixed capacity. In this paper, we apply a new nature inspired optimization algorithm called Intelligent Water Drops (IWD) inspired by water flow. The results of this IWD approach are compared against a classical approach and show that IWD algorithm gives optimal and near optimal solutions for some CVRP instances.
Effect of sleeping alone on sleep quality in female bed partners of snorers

The aim of the present study was to objectively measure the effect of sleeping alone for one night on sleep quality in female bed partners of male snorers. Females complaining of poor sleep due to snoring by their bed partner and having no known hearing loss or snoring were included in a prospective multicentre cross-sectional study. 23 females underwent one polysomnography recording while sleeping with their bed partner and another while sleeping alone. Their sleep parameters were compared between the two nights. We excluded seven couples because the female partner snored for >10% of the sleep time (n = 6) or had obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (n = 1). In the remaining 16 females, sleep time, sleep efficiency, arousal index and percentages of deep sleep (stages 3–4) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep were not significantly different between the two nights. Percentages of light sleep (non-REM stage 2) and awakening index were lower when sleeping alone (p = 0.023 and p = 0.046, respectively). Sleep quality was decreased and sleep fragmentation increased in females sleeping with male snorers. Some females had unrecognised snoring. However, our data do not suggest that objective sleep quality improves substantially in the female nonsnoring partner when she sleeps alone for one night.
CTC2 and Fast Algebraic Attacks on Block Ciphers Revisited

The cipher CTC (Courtois Toy Cipher) described in [4] has been designed to demonstrate that it is possible to break on a PC a block cipher with good diffusion and very small number of known (or chosen) plaintexts. It has however never been designed to withstand all known attacks on block ciphers and Dunkelman and Keller have shown [13] that a few bits of the key can be recovered by Linear Cryptanalysis (LC) – which cannot however compromise the security of a large key. This weakness can easily be avoided: in this paper we give a specification of CTC2, a tweaked version of CTC. The new cipher is MUCH more secure than CTC against LC and the key scheduling of CTC has been extended to use any key size, independently from the block size. Otherwise, there is little difference between CTC and CTC2. We will show that up to 10 rounds of CTC2 can be broken by simple algebraic attacks.
Four-Bit Wireless Link Estimation

We consider the problem of estimating link quality in an ad-hoc wireless mesh. We argue that estimating links well requires combining information from the network, link, and physical layers. We propose narrow, protocol-independent interfaces for the layers, which in total provide four bits of information: 1 from the physical layer, 1 from the link layer, and 2 from the network layer. We present a link estimator design with these interfaces that reduces packet delivery costs by up to 44% over current approaches and maintains a 99% delivery ratio over large, multihop testbeds.
Global Ranking Using Continuous Conditional Random Fields

This paper studies global ranking problem by learning to rank methods. Conventional learning to rank methods are usually designed for 'local ranking', in the sense that the ranking model is defined on a single object, for example, a document in information retrieval. For many applications, this is a very loose approximation. Relations always exist between objects and it is better to define the ranking model as a function on all the objects to be ranked (i.e., the relations are also included). This paper refers to the problem as global ranking and proposes employing a Continuous Conditional Random Fields (CRF) for conducting the learning task. The Continuous CRF model is defined as a conditional probability distribution over ranking scores of objects conditioned on the objects. It can naturally represent the content information of objects as well as the relation information between objects, necessary for global ranking. Taking two specific information retrieval tasks as examples, the paper shows how the Continuous CRF method can perform global ranking better than baselines.