Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust tumour tracking from 2D imaging using a population-based statistical motion model

This paper describes a method for tracking a tumour using the planar projections of fiducial markers as surrogates. The projections can originate from various sources such as a beam-eye view X-ray, a portal imager or a fluoroscope. The two-dimensional position of the fiducial markers in the planar image in conjunction with a population-based statistical motion model is used to accurately predict and track the motion of a target volume during treatment. The basic assumption is that the projected surrogate locations contain valuable information about the in-plane motion of the lesion whereas the statistical motion model helps to describe the unobserved out-of-plane motion of the target volume. We analysed the accuracy with regard to varying the camera position and uncertainty in the measurement of the surrogate positions to simulate image noise and camera registration errors. The experiments showed that the tumour motion can be robustly predicted with an accuracy of 2.6 mm over a wide range of target volumes and treatment field directions despite a measurement error of σ = 2 mm for the fiducials.
SPOTLIGHT : Personal Natural Resource Consumption Profiler

The impending energy and natural resource crisis forces us to research innovative ways of optimizing our resource consumption. Recent studies have shown that a better understanding of an individual’s energy consumption helps people to lower their energy footprint significantly. We propose SPOTLIGHT, a system that profiles an individual's natural resource consumption pattern in real time using wireless sensor network technology. The current SPOTLIGHT prototype consists of power measurement, activity monitoring and energy resource management subsystems. We explore challenges and issues of each subsystem and discuss lessons we have learnt from the prototype deployment. Additionally, we will provide an outlook of extensions of SPOTLIGHT for water and gas management.
Azospirillum brasilense Enhances Recycling of Fish Effluent to Support Growth of Tomato Seedlings

Increasing environmental concerns and growing demand for safer and sustainable food production presents significant challenges for agricultural production. One potential technique, which could help improve crop productivity without adverse impact on the environment, is the use of beneficial microbes in crop production systems. This study evaluated the effects of three Azospirillum brasilense strains on tomato seedlings fertilized with effluent from freshwater fish aquaculture. Seeds were inoculated with A. brasilense strains Sp7, Sp7-S and Sp245 before sowing and after transplanting. Seedlings were raised under controlled greenhouse conditions with natural light. Inoculated seedlings produced longer roots (67%), bigger leaves (22%), higher seedling biomass (>33%), and greater protein (15%) and endogenous plant IAA (94%) contents. Inoculation with Sp7 and Sp245 increased the number of leaves and stem diameter by 8 and 10%, respectively. Seedling height was also increased by inoculation, but only with Sp7. In addition, seedlings inoculated with strains Sp7-S and Sp245 had higher total phosphorus content, while inoculation with Sp245 increased the activity of the enzyme peroxidase, which suggests that plant defense responses had been triggered. The result demonstrates the potential of the applied A. brasilense strains to enhance the usefulness of fish effluent as fertilizer for tomato seedling production.
Patterns of Risk Seeking and Aversion Among Pre-Service Teachers: Mathematical Decisions, Preference, Efficacy, and Participation

A constructivist approach to education demands that students engage in problems that elicit disequilibrium. In disequilibrium, it is believed, students will seek out meaningful new ways to integrate content-related information. It is also believed that willingness to engage disequilibrium is necessary for both students and teachers if constructivist approaches are to work effectively in the classroom. Using a risk-eliciting investment game, a survey of preferences, and a data-blind evaluation of participation in class discussion, we investigated the hypothesis that there are risk-seeking and risk-averse preservice teachers and that this risk is conserved across activities. We found that there are strong correlations between risky behavior, risk preference, and willingness to engage in constructivist activities, both in class discussions and open-ended problems in general in science or mathematics. Approximately 65% of pre-service teachers only engaged in discussions when directly asked a question and these teachers also strongly preferred non-constructivist mathematics and engaged in ‘safe’ behavior in the investment game. Risk-seeking students in the game were more likely to engage in discussion and preferred open-ended and confusing activities. Gender was not associated with student’s risk preference except males were more prone to seek open-ended science activities. In general, the results strongly suggest that risky behavior is associated with constructivisttype activities and that there are general metrics for risk that carry over across activities. “There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ” Anais Nin “Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. ” German Proverb
Phase Retrieval with Application to Optical Imaging

This review article provides a contemporary overview of phase retrieval in optical imaging, linking the relevant optical physics to the signal processing methods and algorithms. Our goal is to describe the current state of the art in this area, identify challenges, and suggest future directions and areas where signal processing methods can have a large impact on optical imaging and on the world of imaging at large with applications in a variety of fields ranging from biology and chemistry to physics and engineering.
Additive Promotion of Viral Internal Ribosome Entry Site-Mediated Translation by Far Upstream Element-Binding Protein 1 and an Enterovirus 71-Induced Cleavage Product

The 5' untranslated region (5' UTR) of the enterovirus 71 (EV71) RNA genome contains an internal ribosome entry site (IRES) that is indispensable for viral protein translation. Due to the limited coding capacity of their RNA genomes, EV71 and other picornaviruses typically recruit host factors, known as IRES trans-acting factors (ITAFs), to mediate IRES-dependent translation. Here, we show that EV71 viral proteinase 2A is capable of cleaving far upstream element-binding protein 1 (FBP1), a positive ITAF that directly binds to the EV71 5' UTR linker region to promote viral IRES-driven translation. The cleavage occurs at the Gly-371 residue of FBP1 during the EV71 infection process, and this generates a functional cleavage product, FBP11-371. Interestingly, the cleavage product acts to promote viral IRES activity. Footprinting analysis and gel mobility shift assay results showed that FBP11-371 similarly binds to the EV71 5' UTR linker region, but at a different site from full-length FBP1; moreover, FBP1 and FBP11-371 were found to act additively to promote IRES-mediated translation and virus yield. Our findings expand the current understanding of virus-host interactions with regard to viral recruitment and modulation of ITAFs, and provide new insights into translational control during viral infection.
Principal workload: Components, determinants and coping strategies in an era of standardization and accountability

Purpose In order to fill the gap in theoretical and empirical knowledge about the characteristics of principal workload, the purpose of this paper is to explore the components of principal workload as well as its determinants and the coping strategies commonly used by principals to face this personal state. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 50 principals, all from the elementary and secondary educational systems of Israel. The analysis followed the principles of qualitative research. Findings Four subjectively held constructs of principal workload, main sources of this workload, and the key strategies used by principals to face this workload were found in this study. Practical implications It is recommended to strengthen school autonomy, increase the number of positions of middle management, prepare future principals for the heavy workload, and encourage supportive superiors who are sensitive to this issue. Originality/value This study fills the gap in theoretical knowledge concerning principal workload, assuming that the particular characteristics of the school organization have some unique impact on this personal state. It also enables us to identify the types of this personal state occurring in educational organizations from the subjective perspectives of school members and stakeholders, thereby broadening the understanding of employee workload in various settings, including educational arenas.
A Multi-Stage CUDA Kernel for Floyd-Warshall

We present a new implementation of the Floyd-Warshall All-Pairs Shortest Paths algorithm on CUDA. Our algorithm runs approximately 5 times faster than the previously best reported algorithm. In order to achieve this speedup, we applied a new technique to reduce usage of on-chip shared memory and allow the CUDA scheduler to more effectively hide instruction latency.
Improvement of accuracy based on multi-sample and multi-sensor in the gait-based authentication using trouser front-pocket sensors

Nowadays, smartphones are equipped with various personal authentication functions to prevent imposters from misusing. However, low utilization rate of personal authentication functions caused by the inconvenient operations becomes the problem. To reduce the inconvenience, authentication methods based on behavior characteristics have been studied. Gait-based authentication is one of them. This authentication method automatically identifies individuals based on walking motions measured by smartphone sensors. The purpose of this study is to find the appropriate methods in each authentication process and to improve the authentication accuracy. For these purpose, we tested the various distance calculation methods, and four fusion algorithms. As this result, we found the appropriate methods in each process. Furthermore, by applying these appropriate methods to the authentication system, the authentication accuracy was significantly improved in comparison with previous studies.
4 Component Models and Technology

The many definitions of what a component is—and what it is not—often try to define a component in opposition either to object-oriented programming languages or to architecture description languages (ADLs). This chapter does not intend to provide yet another definition, but tries to clarify the situation showing the models of the different component technologies currently available in the industry: JavaBeans [1] , COM+ [2], CCM [3, 4], . NET [5, 6], and the Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGI) [7]. A difficulty is that industrial component technologies focus on practical problems and are described in technical terms, thus providing many implementation details and making it difficult for users to understand concepts and principles. Available documentation is either oriented toward decision makers and provides mostly marketing arguments, or it is oriented toward programmers or tool implementers and includes pieces of code and complex API specifications. The ADL community, by contrast, has tried primarily to establish high-level concepts and principles and has produced many research papers. A large amount of work has been dedicated to the analysis and comparison of the different features proposed by the various ADLs [8].
Showing off, handicap signaling, and the evolution of men's work

Zahavi's 1 , 2 handicap principle makes “waste” a common outcome of signal selection because the cost of a signal guarantees its honesty. The capacity to bear the cost reveals the show‐off's hidden qualities. While displays take many forms, some also provide fitness‐related benefits to the audience in addition to information about the show‐off. Zahavi 3 has used the handicap principle to explain both merely wasteful displays and altruistic behavior. Here we focus on the distinction between these two kinds of display and the importance of benefits other than information in show‐off explanations of a particular puzzle in human evolution: men's work. Males of other primate species do not contribute any significant fraction of the food consumed by females and juveniles. Our own species is different. When people live on wild foods, hunting is usually a specialty of men, and meat is commonly a substantial component of everyone's diet. Here we explore the hypothesis that this unique male subsistence contribution may have evolved as hunting large animals became a focus of competitive display.
Shape Classification Using Local and Global Features

In this paper, we address the shape classification problem by proposing a new integrating approach for shape classification that gains both local and global image representation using Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG). In both local and global feature extraction steps, we use PCA to make this method invariant to shapes rotation. Moreover, by using a learning algorithm based on Adaboost we improve the global feature extraction by selecting a small number of more discriminative visual features through a large raw visual features set to increase the classification accuracy. Our local method is adopted from the popular bag of key points approach for shape classification. To integrate the classification results generated based on both local and global features, we use a combining classifier to perform the final classification for a new unknown image query. The experiment results show that this new method achieves the state-of-art accuracy for shape classification on the animal dataset in [8].
User association and load balancing for cellular massive MIMO

Massive MIMO is expected to play a key role in coping with the predicted mobile-data traffic explosion. Indeed, in combination with small cells and TDD operation, it promises large throughputs per unit area with low latency. In this paper we focus on the problem of balancing the load across networks with massive MIMO base-stations (BSs). The need for load balancing arises from variations in the user population density and is more pronounced in small cells due to the large variability in coverage area. We consider methods for load balancing over networks with small and large massive MIMO BSs. As we show, the distinct operation and properties of massive MIMO enable practical resource-efficient load-balancing methods with near-optimal performance.
Evaluation of a Database for Tracking Cases of Child Sexual Abuse

Administrative databases are used by criminal justice professionals to guide specialist responses to crimes of child sexual abuse. Assumptions might be made that the database will be accurate, contemporaneous, complete, and meaningful; however, this may not be the case. The main aim of the current study was to critically evaluate a database used by practitioners for tracking cases of child sexual abuse, in order to identify evidence that may justify investment in improved data gathering and centralised information management systems. Three data quality dimensions were examined: (1) completeness, measured as data that were not missing and were of adequate breadth and depth, (2) accuracy, namely that the data are correct, and (3) believability, where the data may be regarded as credible or plausible. Results indicated that data quality was of concern for all three dimensions, with missing and inaccurate data found across a range of variables, and issues with believability found on two variables. The implications of these results for development of new data documentation methods are discussed.
Visuomotor Dissociation in Cerebral Scaling of Size

Estimating size and distance is crucial in effective visuomotor control. The concept of an internal coordinate system implies that visual and motor size parameters are scaled onto a common template. To dissociate perceptual and motor components in such scaling, we performed an fMRI experiment in which 16 right-handed subjects copied geometric figures while the result of drawing remained out of sight. Either the size of the example figure varied while maintaining a constant size of drawing (visual incongruity) or the size of the examples remained constant while subjects were instructed to make changes in size (motor incongruity). These incongruent were compared to congruent conditions. Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM8) revealed brain activations related to size incongruity in the dorsolateral prefrontal and inferior parietal cortex, pre-SMA / anterior cingulate and anterior insula, dominant in the right hemisphere. This pattern represented simultaneous use of a ‘resized’ virtual template and actual picture information requiring spatial working memory, early-stage attention shifting and inhibitory control. Activations were strongest in motor incongruity while right pre-dorsal premotor activation specifically occurred in this condition. Visual incongruity additionally relied on a ventral visual pathway. Left ventral premotor activation occurred in all variably sized drawing while constant visuomotor size, compared to congruent size variation, uniquely activated the lateral occipital cortex additional to superior parietal regions. These results highlight size as a fundamental parameter in both general hand movement and movement guided by objects perceived in the context of surrounding 3D space.
Explorer Focal adhesion kinase contributes to proliferative potential of ErbB 2 mammary tumour cells but is dispensable for ErbB 2 mammary tumour induction in vivo

Introduction: Activation of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) is hypothesized to play an important role in the pathogenesis of human breast cancer. Methods: To directly evaluate the role of FAK in mammary tumour progression, we have used a conditional FAK mouse model and mouse mammary tumour virus (MMTV)-driven Cre recombinase strain to inactivate FAK in the mammary epithelium of a transgenic mouse model of ErbB2 breast cancer. Results: Although mammary epithelial disruption of FAK in this model resulted in both a delay in onset and a decrease in the number of neoplastic lesions, mammary tumours occurred in 100% of virgin female mice. All of the tumours and derived metastases that developed were proficient for FAK due to the absence of Cre recombinase expression. The hyperplastic epithelia where Cre-mediated recombination of FAK could be detected exhibited a profound proliferative defect. Consistent with these observations, disruption of FAK in established tumour cells resulted in reduced tumour growth that was associated with impaired proliferation. To avoid the selection for FAK-proficient ErbB2 tumour epithelia through escape of Cre-mediated recombination, we next intercrossed the FAK conditional mice with a separate MMTV-driven ErbB2 strain that co-expressed ErbB2 and Cre recombinase on the same transcriptional unit. Conclusions: While a delay in tumour induction was noted, FAK-deficient tumours arose in 100% of female animals indicating that FAK is dispensable for ErbB2 tumour initiation. In addition, the FAK-null ErbB2 tumours retained their metastatic potential. We further demonstrated that the FAK-related Pyk2 kinase is still expressed in these tumours and is associated with its downstream regulator p130Cas. These observations indicate that Pyk2 can functionally substitute for FAK in ErbB2 mammary tumour progression.
Dynamics of Sun5 Localization during Spermatogenesis in Wild Type and Dpy19l2 Knock-Out Mice Indicates That Sun5 Is Not Involved in Acrosome Attachment to the Nuclear Envelope

The acrosome is an organelle that is central to sperm physiology and a defective acrosome biogenesis leads to globozoospermia, a severe male infertility. The identification of the actors involved in acrosome biogenesis is therefore particularly important to decipher the molecular pathogeny of globozoospermia. We recently showed that a defect in the DPY19L2 gene is present in more than 70% of globozoospermic men and demonstrated that Dpy19l2, located in the inner nuclear membrane, is the first protein involved in the attachment of the acrosome to the nuclear envelope (NE). SUN proteins serve to link the nuclear envelope to the cytoskeleton and are therefore good candidates to participate in acrosome-nucleus attachment, potentially by interacting with DPY19L2. In order to characterize new actors of acrosomal attachment, we focused on Sun5 (also called Spag4l), which is highly expressed in male germ cells, and investigated its localization during spermatogenesis. Using immunohistochemistry and Western blot experiments in mice, we showed that Sun5 transits through different cellular compartments during meiosis. In pachytene spermatocytes, it is located in a membranous compartment different to the reticulum. In round spermatids, it progresses to the Golgi and the NE before to be located to the tail/head junction in epididymal sperm. Interestingly, we demonstrate that Sun5 is not, as initially reported, facing the acrosome but is in fact excluded from this zone. Moreover, we show that in Dpy19l2 KO spermatids, upon the detachment of the acrosome, Sun5 relocalizes to the totality of the NE suggesting that the acrosome attachment excludes Sun5 from the NE facing the acrosome. Finally, Western-blot experiments demonstrate that Sun5 is glycosylated. Overall, our work, associated with other publications, strongly suggests that the attachment of the acrosome to the nucleus does not likely depend on the formation of SUN complexes.
Lifelogging and lifeblogging: Privacy issues and influencing factors in South Africa

Although blogging has been around for years, lifelogging and lifeblogging takes this technology and behaviour to the next level. Lifelogging is based on portable mini or even disguised devices which can capture and record everything the eye sees. This technology, coupled with the option of posting everything online, offers both benefits and privacy threats. Very few studies have been completed regarding this topic as it is a newly emerging technology, soon to reach South Africa. This study was therefore aimed at finding out if students were willing to accept this technology and behaviour, given both the benefits and disadvantages which it poses. A positivist stance was taken, and survey data was collected in order to test a number of hypotheses. From 232 respondents, a minority was eager to adopt this technology due to the performance and effort expectancy; however, privacy concerns play a major role in negating this decision.
Mining Financial News for Major Events and Their Impacts on the Market

In this paper we have proposed a stock market analysis system that analyzes financial news items to identify and characterize major events that impact the market. The events have been identified using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) based topic extraction mechanism. These topics have been thereafter analyzed in conjunction with actual market data to understand their impact on the market. A prediction system has been proposed which can predict whether the stock market will fall or rise, based on news items.