Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deformable Templates for Face Recognition

We describe an approach for extracting facial features from images and for determining the spatial organization between these features using the concept of a deformable template. This is a parameterized geometric model of the object to be recognized together with a measure of how well it fits the image data. Variations in the parameters correspond to allowable deformations of the object and can be specified by a probabilistic model. After the extraction stage the parameters of the deformable template can be used for object description and recognition.
Detecting Converted Speech and Natural Speech for anti-Spoofing Attack in Speaker Recognition

Voice conversion techniques present a threat to speaker verification systems. To enhance the security of speaker verification systems, We study how to automatically distinguish natural speech and synthetic/converted speech. Motivated by the research on phase spectrum in speech perception, in this study, we propose to use features derived from phase spectrum to detect converted speech. The features are tested under three different training situations of the converted speech detector: a) only Gaussian mixture model (GMM) based converted speech data are available; b) only unit-selection based converted speech data are available; c) no converted speech data are available for training converted speech model. Experiments conducted on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 2006 speaker recognition evaluation (SRE) corpus show that the performance of the features derived from phase spectrum outperform the melfrequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) tremendously: even without converted speech for training, the equal error rate (EER) is reduced from 20.20% of MFCCs to 2.35%.
Representing SNOMED CT Concept Evolutions using Process Profiles

SNOMED CT is a very large biomedical terminology supported by a concept-based ontology. In recent years it has been distributed under the new release format ‘RF2’. RF2 provides a more consistent and coherent mechanism for keeping track of changes over versions, even to the extent that – in theory at least – any release will contain enough information to allow reconstruction of all previous versions. In this paper, using the January 2016 release of SNOMED CT, we explore various ways to transform change-assertions in RF2 into a more uniform representation with the goal of assessing how faithful these changes are with respect to biomedical reality. Key elements in our approach are (1) recent proposals for the Information Artifact Ontology that provide a realism-based perspective on what it means for a representation to be about something, and (2) the expectation that the theory of what we call ‘process profiles’ can be applied not merely to quantitative information artifacts but also to other sorts of symbolic representations of processes.
An improved image matting tool

Image matting is a technique to extract the foreground from an image. A Web-based image matting tool, NIM 3.1, is presented in this paper. To extract the foreground, the user paints roughly the boundary between the foreground and background. The computation begins when painting begins, and a partial result can be shown immediately. The tool uses new techniques and incorporates new functions to perform better than earlier versions of NIM. It can extract quality, competitive foregrounds and is faster than non-online, well-known Adobe Photoshop.
A Murine Viral Outgrowth Assay to Detect Residual HIV Type 1 in Patients With Undetectable Viral Loads.

BACKGROUND Sensitive assays are needed for detection of residual human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in patients with undetectable plasma viral loads to determine whether eradication strategies are effective. The gold standard quantitative viral outgrowth assay (QVOA) underestimates the magnitude of the viral reservoir. We sought to determine whether xenograft of leukocytes from HIV type 1 (HIV)-infected patients with undetectable plasma viral loads into immunocompromised mice would result in viral amplification. METHODS Peripheral blood mononuclear cells or purified CD4(+) T cells from HIV or simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-infected subjects with undetectable plasma viral loads were adoptively transferred into NOD.Cg-Prkdc(scid)Il2rg(tm1Wjl)/SzJ (NSG) mice. The mice were monitored for viremia following depletion of human CD8(+) T cells to minimize antiviral activity. In some cases, humanized mice were also treated with activating anti-CD3 antibody. RESULTS With this murine viral outgrowth assay (MVOA), we successfully amplified replication-competent HIV or SIV from all subjects tested, including 5 HIV-positive patients receiving suppressive antiretroviral therapy (ART) and 6 elite controllers or suppressors who were maintaining undetectable viral loads without ART, including an elite suppressor from whom we were unable to recover virus by QVOA. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that the MVOA has the potential to serve as a powerful tool to identify residual HIV in patients with undetectable viral loads.
Thermal Models and Electrical Machine Performance Improvement Using Encapsulation Material

This paper presents thermal finite-element analysis and experiments to demonstrate improvement of electrical machine performance using end-turn encapsulation materials with high thermal conductivity. The thermal performance of electric machines is an extremely important factor for power density and operating life. Forced air and liquid cooling are used to achieve required thermal management and high power density in many modern applications, but addition of high thermal conductivity materials can be adopted and used to reduce temperature rise and increase the machine's output capabilities as well. Thermal finite-element models are developed and evaluated to compare different encapsulation materials under various operating points in this paper. Finally, experimental validation is performed for each case to prove the thermal analysis and to demonstrate the improved machine output capabilities when thermally conductive encapsulants are used.
Cluster Ellipticities as a Cosmological Probe

We investigate the dependence of the ellipticities of clusters of galaxies on cosmological parameters using large-scale cosmological simulations. We determine cluster ellipticities out to redshift unity for λCDM models with different mean densities Ωm and amplitudes of mass fluctuation σ8,0. The mean ellipticity increases monotonically with redshift for all models. Larger values of σ8,0, i.e., earlier cluster formation times, produce lower ellipticities. The dependence of ellipticity on Ωm is relatively weak in the range 0.2 ≤ Ωm ≤ 0.5 for high-mass clusters. The mean ellipticity (z) decreases linearly with the amplitude of mass fluctuations at the cluster redshift z, nearly independent of Ωm; on average, older clusters are more relaxed and are thus less elliptical. The distribution of ellipticities about the mean is approximated by a Gaussian, allowing a simple characterization of the evolution of ellipticity with redshift as a function of cosmological parameters. At z = 0, the mean ellipticity of high-mass clusters is approximated by (z = 0) = 0.245 - 0. 070σ8,0 + 0. 020Ωm,0. This relation opens up the possibility that, when compared with future observations of large cluster samples, the mean cluster ellipticity and its evolution could be used as a new, independent tool to constrain cosmological parameters, especially the amplitude of mass fluctuations, σ8,0.
A new definition of discrete quadratic time-frequency distributions

Discrete time-frequency distributions (DTFDs) of discrete signals differ from their continuous counterparts. The DTFD is usually aliased and lacks some desirable mathematical properties inherent to the continuous distribution. The DTFD should, ideally, be free from aliasing and conserve all desirable properties. Two existing DTFD definitions, namely the generalised DTFD (GDTFD) and the alias-free GDTFD (AF-GDTFD), approximate this ideal: the GDTFD does not satisfy all desirable properties but is alias free; the AF-GDTFD satisfies most properties but is not always alias free. We propose, in this article, a new DTFD definition which is alias free and satisfies all desirable properties.
Atrial Fibrillation Is Associated with a Marker of Endothelial Function and Oxidative Stress in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction

Background Atrial fibrillation (AF), whether silent or symptomatic, is a frequent and severe complication of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA), an endogenous eNOS inhibitor, is a risk factor for endothelial dysfunction. We addressed the relationship between ADMA plasma levels and AF occurrence in AMI. Methods 273 patients hospitalized for AMI were included. Continuous electrocardiographic monitoring (CEM) ≥48 hours was recorded and ADMA was measured by High Performance Liquid Chromatography on admission blood sample. Results The incidence of silent and symptomatic AF was 39(14%) and 29 (11%), respectively. AF patients were markedly older than patients without AF (≈ 20 y). There was a trend towards higher ADMA levels in patients with symptomatic AF than in patients with silent AF or no AF (0.53 vs 0.49 and 0.49 μmol/L, respectively, p = 0.18,). After matching on age, we found that patients with symptomatic AF had a higher heart rate on admission and a higher rate of patients with LV dysfunction (28% vs. 3%, p = 0.025). Patients who developed symptomatic AF had a higher ADMA level than patients without AF (0.53 vs. 0.43 μmol/L; p = 0.001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis to estimate symptomatic AF occurrence showed that ADMA was independently associated with symptomatic AF (OR: 2.46 [1.21–5.00], p = 0.013) beyond history of AF, LVEF<40% and elevated HR. Conclusion We show that high ADMA level is associated with the occurrence of AF. Although no causative role can be concluded from our observational study, our work further supports the hypothesis that endothelial dysfunction is involved in the pathogenesis of AF in AMI.
Distributing expressional faces in 2-D emotional space

Facial expressions are often classified into one of several basic emotion categories. This categorical approach seems improper to treat faces with blended emotion, as well as hard to measure the intensity of an emotion. In this paper facial expressions are evaluated with dimensional approach of affect that was originally introduced by psycho-physiologic study. An expressional face can be represented as a point in a two-dimensional (2-D) emotional space characterized by arousal and valence factors. To link low-level face features with emotional factors, we propose a simple method that builds an emotional mapping by a coarse labeling on Cohn-Kanade database and a linear fitting on the labeled data. Our preliminary experimental result shows that the proposed emotional mapping can be used to visualize the distribution of affective content in a large face set and further retrieval expressional face images or relevant video shots by specifying a region in the 2-D emotional space.
Beneficial Effects of Caloric Restriction on Chronic Kidney Disease in Rodent Models: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review

Background Numerous studies have demonstrated the life-extending effect of caloric restriction. It is generally accepted that caloric restriction has health benefits, such as prolonging lifespan and delaying the onset and progression of CKD in various species, especially in rodent models. Although many studies have tested the efficacy of caloric restriction, no complete quantitative analysis of the potential beneficial effects of reducing caloric intake on the development and progression of CKD has been published. Methods All studies regarding the relationship between caloric restriction and chronic kidney diseases were searched in electronic databases, including PubMed/MEDLINE, EMBASE, Science Citation Index (SCI), OVID evidence-based medicine, Chinese Bio-medical Literature and Chinese science and technology periodicals (CNKI, VIP, and Wan Fang). The pooled odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated by using fixed- or random-effects models. Results The data from 27 of all the studies mentioned above was used in the Meta analysis. Through the meta-analysis, we found that the parameter of blood urea nitrogen, serum creatinine and urinary protein levels of the AL group was significant higher than that of the CR group, which are 4.11 mg/dl, 0.08mg/dl and 33.20mg/kg/24h, respectively. The incidence of the nephropathy in the caloric restriction (CR) group was significantly lower than that in the ad libitum—fed (AL) group. We further introduced the subgroup analysis and found that the effect of caloric restriction on the occurrence of kidney disease was only significant with prolonged intervention; the beneficial effects of CR on the 60%-caloric-restriction group were greater than on the less-than-60%-caloric-restriction group, and caloric restriction did not show obvious protective effects in genetically modified strains. Moreover, survival rate of the caloric restriction group is much higher than that of the ad libitum—fed (AL) group. Conclusions Our findings demonstrate for the first time that compared with the AL group, the caloric restriction indeed decreased urea nitrogen, creatinine, urine protein, incidence of kidney diseases and increased the survival rate on 700~800 days.
Measuring Globalization of Economy as a Tool for Designing Economic Policys’ Strategies

Measuring globalization of economy has become a challenge for academic profession, international governmental organizations and advisory institutions in the last fifteen years. Various indicators and methodologies are subject of polemics that often reflect viewpoints of institutions and individuals respectively. Most of these approaches have two common characteristics, namely, they measure globalization results and are mainly based only on a very general definition of globalization. This paper introduces the systemic approach towards measuring globalization of economy, which is based upon the theoretical comprehension of national competitiveness and economic growth. The main purpose of such approach is to emphasize the importance of holistic view on a globalized economy. Thus, the significance of measuring globalization of economy is to get the information not only on the position but also on the potentials of economy for international integration. In the empirical part of the paper, the composite indicator of globalized economy is developed by the principal components analysis. Then the ordinary least squares and panel regression analyses confirm the hypothesis that globalized economies achieve higher long-term cumulative economic growth.
Brain pathological image retrieval based on correlation of visual feature and report-assisted text

In the medical domain, digital images are produced in ever-increasing quantities and used for diagnostics and therapy. However, it is not sufficient to capture the semantic content of an image and difficult to provide good medical image retrieval results according to the predefined categories in the medical domain for less using the medical knowledge. This paper proposes a semantic approach by focusing on the medical image and report fusion. Firstly the feature vectors of color and texture are extracted by analyzing the image low-level features. Secondly, a set of disjoint semantic tokens with appearance in medical images is selected to define a visual and medical vocabulary. Here we use the diagnosis report from the doctor to represent each token in the medical domain. Finally the low-level features are used as input vector of SVM to training. And the semantic correlation from low-level features to high-level features is constructed according to the Visual and Medical vocabulary. This semantic correlation method has been used in retrieval experiment, which concerns the brain CT images. And the result demonstrates the improvement, effectiveness, and efficiency achieved by the proposed framework.
Mitochondrial proteomic approach reveals galectin-7 as a novel BCL-2 binding protein in human cells

Our results reveal a network of new potential Bcl-2 partners identified through the Bcl-2 immunocapture and mass spectrometry approach and analyzed by gene ontology mining. Importantly, we report for the first time the identification of galectin-7, a member of a family of β-galactoside-binding lectins, as a new mitochondrial Bcl-2 interacting partner.
Accurate Time-to-Digital Converter Based on Xilinx's Digital Clock Managers

This paper presents an accurate and simple delay measurement method based on Xilinx's Digital Clock Managers. Particularly, variable phase shift is the modules’ capability exploited in our approach. This method enables the implementation of a time-to-digital converter that achieves a resolution of 200ps on a Xilinx's Virtex or Spartan-3 FPGA without requiring manual placement & routing, nor an external calibration process. This circuit can be used in any application that demands a precise measurement of a static delay.
The invisible fray: a critical analysis of the use of reflectometry for fray location

Significant international research and development efforts have been devoted to methods and equipment for locating wiring faults, particularly those on aging aircraft. Several reflectometry methods that send high frequency signals down the line and analyze the returned reflections have risen to the forefront of these technologies. While these methods are proving to be accurate for location of "hard" faults (open and short circuits), the location of "soft" faults such as frays and chafes remains elusive. This paper analyzes the impedance of several types of soft faults and their resultant reflectometry returns, which are shown to be smaller than returns from other sources of physical and electrical noise in the system. Through numerical simulations verified by measurement, it is shown that soft faults are virtually impossible to locate using today's reflectometry methods including time domain reflectometry, frequency domain reflectometry, and spread spectrum time domain reflectometry. The methods used in this analysis can be extended to other types of reflectometry as they emerge
Urgent protection versus chronic need: clarifying the dual mandate of child welfare services across Canada

This study analyzed data from the 1998, 2003 and 2008 Canadian Incidence Study of reported child abuse and neglect (CIS) and compared the profile of children who were reported for an urgent protection investigation versus any other investigation or assessment. As a proportion of all investigations, urgent protection cases have dropped from 28% of all investigations in 1998, to 19% in 2003, to 15% in 2008. Results from the CIS-2008 analysis revealed that 7% of cases involved neglect of a child under four, 4% of cases involved sexual abuse, 2% of cases involved physical abuse of a child under four and 1% of cases involved children who had sustained severe enough physical harm that medical treatment was required. The other 85% of cases of investigated maltreatment involved situations where concerns appear to focus less on immediate safety and more on the long-term effects of a range of family related problems. These findings underscore the importance of considering the dual mandate of child welfare mandates across Canada: intervening to assure the urgent protection and safety of the child versus intervening to promote the development and well-being of the child.
Nonsynonymous Substitution Rate Heterogeneity in the Peptide-Binding Region Among Different HLA-DRB1 Lineages in Humans

An extraordinary diversity of amino acid sequences in the peptide-binding region (PBR) of human leukocyte antigen [HLA; human major histocompatibility complex (MHC)] molecules has been maintained by balancing selection. The process of accumulation of amino acid diversity in the PBR for six HLA genes (HLA-A, B, C, DRB1, DQB1, and DPB1) shows that the number of amino acid substitutions in the PBR among alleles does not linearly correlate with the divergence time of alleles at the six HLA loci. At these loci, some pairs of alleles show significantly less nonsynonymous substitutions at the PBR than expected from the divergence time. The same phenomenon was observed not only in the HLA but also in the rat MHC. To identify the cause for this, DRB1 sequences, a representative case of a typical nonlinear pattern of substitutions, were examined. When the amino acid substitutions in the PBR were placed with maximum parsimony on a maximum likelihood tree based on the non-PBR substitutions, heterogeneous rates of nonsynonymous substitutions in the PBR were observed on several branches. A computer simulation supported the hypothesis that allelic pairs with low PBR substitution rates were responsible for the stagnation of accumulation of PBR nonsynonymous substitutions. From these observations, we conclude that the nonsynonymous substitution rate at the PBR sites is not constant among the allelic lineages. The deceleration of the rate may be caused by the coexistence of certain pathogens for a substantially long time during HLA evolution.
Thunderstorms Don ’ t Get Butterflies

One important limitation on the accuracy of weather forecasts is imposed by unavoidable errors in the specification of the atmosphere’s initial state. Much theoretical concern has been focused on the limits to predictability imposed by small-scale errors, potentially even those on the scale of a butterfly. Very modest errors at much larger scales may nevertheless pose a more important practical limitation. We demonstrate the importance of large-scale uncertainty by analyzing ensembles of idealized squall-line simulations. Our results imply that minimizing initial errors on scales around 100 km is more likely to extend the accuracy of forecasts at lead times longer than 3–4 hours than efforts to minimize initial errors on much smaller scales. These simulations also demonstrate that squall lines, triggered in a horizontally homogeneous environment with no initial background circulations, can generate a background mesoscale kinetic energy spectrum roughly similar to that observed in the atmosphere. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15