Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pediatric Bone Age Assessment Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Skeletal bone age assessment is a common clinical practice to diagnose endocrine and metabolic disorders in child development. In this paper, we describe a fully automated deep learning approach to the problem of bone age assessment using data from the 2017 Pediatric Bone Age Challenge organized by the Radiological Society of North America. The dataset for this competition is consisted of 12.6k radiological images. Each radiograph in this dataset is an image of a left hand labeled by the bone age and the sex of a patient. Our approach utilizes several deep neural network architectures trained end-to-end. We use images of whole hands as well as specific parts of a hand for both training and inference. This approach allows us to measure the importance of specific hand bones for the automated bone age analysis. We further evaluate performance of the method in the context of skeletal development stages. Our approach outperforms other common methods for bone age assessment.
Boundary Element Inverse Analysis by Using Particle Swarm Optimization for Reinforced Concrete Corrosion Identification

Boundary element inverse analysis (BEIA) by using genetic algorithm (GA) to identify corrosion location has been introduced by many researchers. However, the BEIA using GA is more complex to be programmed since it involved with genetic operators such as crossover and mutation. Recently, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) already takes researcher’s attention because of its simplicity to be programmed and comparable accuracy. This study is conducted to develop BEIA by combining Boundary Element Method (BEM) and PSO to identify the corrosion location of the steels in concrete structure from some potential data on concrete surface. The potential in the concrete domain was modeled by Laplace’s equation. The anode and cathode are represented by each polarization curve. The inverse problem is carried out by means of minimizing a cost function i.e. a difference between the calculated and measured potentials on the concrete surface. The calculated values of potential are obtained by solving the Laplace’s equation using boundary element method (BEM). Numerical simulation results show that the developed BEIA has proven that it can identify the corrosion location on the surface of reinforcement steel precisely.
Coherent Electronic Energy Transfer and Organic Photovoltaics

One of the most surprising and significant advances in the study of the photosynthetic light-harvesting process is the discovery that the electronic energy transfer (ET) might involve long-lived electronic coherences, also at physiologically relevant conditions. This means that the transfer of energy among different chromophores does not follow the expected classical incoherent hopping mechanism, but that quantum-mechanical laws can steer the migration of energy. The implications of such quantum transport regime, although currently under debate, might have a tremendous impact in our way to think about natural and artificial light-harvesting and suggest new directions for the development of artificial devices for the efficient capture and re-use of solar energy. Central to these discoveries has been the development of new ultrafast spectroscopic techniques, in particular two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy, which is now the primary tool to obtain clear and definitive experimental proof of such effects.
Capillary electrophoresis-based heteroduplex analysis with a universal heteroduplex generator for detection of point mutations associated with rifampin resistance in tuberculosis.

BACKGROUND Slab gel heteroduplex analysis (HDA), a popular scanning method for genetic mutations, uses DNA fragments typically generated by PCR to create homo- and heteroduplex molecules with conformational differences and sequence-dependent electrophoretic profiles. Use of a universal heteroduplex generator (UHG) enhances the subtle variations caused by single-base substitutions. METHODS The HDA-UHG slab gel format was modified for an efficient capillary-based method. The effect of staining dyes TOPRO5 and YOPRO1 on the analysis of heteroduplexes was studied, as well as ultraviolet absorbance and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detection methods. In addition, the entangled polymers hydroxyethyl cellulose, methyl cellulose, and linear polyacrylamide were evaluated as separation matrices. RESULTS This assay was able to detect the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its rifampin susceptibility directly from clinical specimens in dramatically reduced analysis time (30 min vs 2.5 h). Optimized conditions included 0.3% methyl cellulose as the separation matrix, on-line staining using 1 micromol/L YOPRO1, and LIF detection for quantitative and reproducible analysis of single-base substitutions in the rifampin resistance-determining region of rpoB that give rise to the rifampin-resistant phenotype of M. tuberculosis. We generated 95% confidence limits using the wild-type sequence and used these limits to determine rifampin susceptibility in samples. CONCLUSIONS Capillary electrophoresis, combined with the HDA-UHG technique, may be of value for rapid and efficient clinical diagnosis of rifampin-resistant tuberculosis strains.
Power decoding Reed-Solomon codes up to the Johnson radius

Power decoding, or "decoding using virtual interleaving" is a technique for decoding Reed-Solomon codes up to the Sudan radius. Since the method's inception, it has been an open question if it is possible to use this approach to decode up to the Johnson radius-the decoding radius of the Guruswami-Sudan algorithm. In this paper we show that this can be done by incorporating a notion of multiplicities. As the original Power decoding, the proposed algorithm is a one-pass algorithm: decoding follows immediately from solving a shift-register type equation, which we show can be done in quasi-linear time. It is a "partial bounded-distance decoding algorithm" since it will fail to return a codeword for a few error patterns within its decoding radius; we investigate its failure behaviour theoretically as well as give simulation results.
Recent advances in SRI'S IraqComm™ Iraqi Arabic-English speech-to-speech translation system

We summarize recent progress on SRI's IraqComm™ Iraqi Arabic-English two-way speech-to-speech translation system. In the past year we made substantial developments in our speech recognition and machine translation technology, leading to significant improvements in both accuracy and speed of the IraqComm system. On the 2008 NIST-evaluation dataset our twoway speech-to-text (S2T) system achieved 6% to 8% absolute improvement in BLEU in both directions, compared to our previous year system [1].
Cell Death Independent of Caspases: A Review

Patterns of cell death have been divided into apoptosis, which is actively executed by specific proteases, the caspases, and accidental necrosis. However, there is now accumulating evidence indicating that cell death can occur in a programmed fashion but in complete absence and independent of caspase activation. Alternative models of programmed cell death (PCD) have therefore been proposed, including autophagy, paraptosis, mitotic catastrophe, and the descriptive model of apoptosis-like and necrosis-like PCD. Caspase-independent cell death pathways are important safeguard mechanisms to protect the organism against unwanted and potential harmful cells when caspase-mediated routes fail but can also be triggered in response to cytotoxic agents or other death stimuli. As in apoptosis, the mitochondrion can play a key role but also other organelles such as lysosomes and the endoplasmic reticulum have an important function in the release and activation of death factors such as cathepsins, calpains, and other proteases. Here we review the various models of PCD and their death pathways at molecular and organelle level and discuss the relevance of the growing knowledge of caspase-independent cell death pathways for cancer.
Electrokinetic Study and Surface Conductance of Carbon Nanotubes in Liquid Crystal Medium

The main objective of this study is to investigate the effect of dielectrophoresis and electrophoresis forces on charge and zeta potential values for colloidal carbon nanotubes in liquid crystal medium, which are investigated in homogeneously aligned in-plane field driven cell. It has been detected that carbon nanotubes suspended in liquid crystal medium oppose an applied electric field and behave like diaelectric material. The dielectrophoresis force, electrophoresis force, electrophoretic velocity, zeta potential, charges on carbon nanotubes, Dukhin number, and surface conductance of colloidal carbon nanotubes in liquid crystal medium have been evaluated. The significant effect of dielectrophoretic force is found to be present in colloidal system and the value of surface conductance of suspending particles was of the order of 10−17S.
The role of VTIQ as a new tissue strain analytics measurement technique in testicular lesions.

PURPOSE Virtual touch tissue imaging quantification (VTIQ) is a newly developed technique for the sonographic quantification of tissue elasticity. It has been used in the assessment of breast lesions. The purpose of this study was to determine the diagnostic performance of VTIQ in indeterminate testicular lesions. METHODS Twenty patients with known testicular pathology underwent conventional B-mode sonography with additional VTIQ of the testicular lesions using a Siemens Acuson S2000™ and S3000™ (Siemens Medical Solutions, Mountain View, CA, USA) system. Tissue mechanical properties were analysed in the VTIQ examination. The pathologic diagnosis was established after surgery or in the follow-up examination for suspected benign lesions. RESULTS Over 36 months, 22 focal testicular lesions (median lesion size, 18 mm; range, 4-36 mm in 20 patients (median age, 43 years; range, 22-81 years) were examined. Lesions were hyperechoic (n = 1), hypoechoic (n = 14), isoechoic (n = 1), of mixed echogenicity (n = 3) or anechoic (n = 3). Histological examination showed one benign lesion (6.25%) with a mean size of 7 mm and 15 malignant lesions (93.75%) with a mean size of 20 mm. Mean shear wave velocity for normal testicular tissue was 1.17 m/s. No shear wave velocity could be measured in cystic lesions. The rest of the benign lesions showed a mean shear wave velocity of 2.37 m/s. The value of the shear wave velocity in germ cell tumours showed a mean shear wave velocity of 1.94 m/s and for seminoma it showed a mean shear wave velocity of 2.42 m/s. CONCLUSIONS VTIQ is a reliable new method for measuring qualitative and quantitative stiffness of testicular lesions and tissue. The qualitative shear-wave elastography features were highly reproducible and showed good diagnostic performance in unclear testicular lesions. The VTIQ technique is also useful in assessing small testicular nodules and pseudolesions.
Reading snow: A note on microwave remote sensing of snow cover

Monitoring of terrestrial snow on both local and global scales is a topic of ever-increasing interest due to the crucial role that the snow plays in the climate dynamics, water resource management, energy production, and risk prevention. In this framework, microwave remote sensing is an important tool for observing snow cover and retrieving snow depth (SD) and water equivalent (SWE). This paper summarizes the most important aspects of the microwave remote sensing of snow by highlighting major results and problems.
Out-of-autoclave processing and properties of bismaleimide composites

*This paper is declared a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. The emergence of bismaleimide composites has fulfilled some of the increasing demand for higher temperature performance aeronautics and space exploration vehicles. This study examines and evaluates three bismaleimide matrix resins and two bismaleimide adhesives and reports on the processing properties of these resins and composites by out-of-autoclave–vacuum-bag-only oven processing. Measurements were conducted under various cure cycles to characterize and correlate thermal and viscoelastic properties of the materials. Specimens of all three aged matrix resins exhibited an out-time life up to 30 days when stored at room temperature. Solid and sandwich panels were fabricated with the out-of-autoclave–vacuum-bag-only process. Because of tooling limitations in industry practices, composite fabrication of these bismaleimides was restricted to a maximum 177℃ curing, followed by a free-standing postcuring at elevated temperatures in an oven. The adhesive foaming characteristics, composite resin/void content, flat wise tensile strength, and fracture surface features were evaluated. Due to the unique temperature limitations of this work, the resulting panel properties were not necessarily representative of manufacturer specifications or recommendations.
Number Theory Meets Cache Locality – Efficient Implementation of a Small Prime FFT for the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library

When multiplying really large integer operands, the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library uses a method based on the Fast Fourier Transform. To make an algorithm execute quickly on a modern computer, data has to be available in the cache memory. If that is not the case, a large portion of the execution time will be spent accessing the main memory. It might pay off to perform much extra work to achieve good cache locality. In extreme cases, 500 primitive operations may be performed in the time of a single memory access. This report describes the implementation of a cache friendly variant of the Fast Fourier Transform and its application to integer multiplication. The variant uses arithmetic modulo primes near machine word-size. The multiplication method is shown to be competitive with its counterpart in version 4.1. 4 of the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library for interesting platforms. Talteori möter cachelokalitet Effektiv implementation av småprimtals-FFT för GNU:s multiprecisionsaritmetikbibliotek
Studies on the Preparation of Polystyrene Thermal Conductivity Composites

Various thermally conductive fillers including aluminum oxide(Al2O3), magnesium oxide(MgO), β-silicon carbide particle(β-SiCp) and β-silicon carbide whisker(β-SiCw) were used to prepare polystyrene thermal conductivity composites. Experimental results showed that, for given filler loading, the thermal conductivity of the composites was higher for PS flake than that of PS particle, and the thermal conductivity was optimal by powder blending method. The SiCw filler was more favorable to improve the thermal conductivity of the composites; a much higher thermal conductivity of 1.18 W/mK could be achieved for the composite with 40 vol% SiCw, about six times higher than that of native polystyrene. The experimental thermal conductivity values were in agreement with those predicted by lower bound of Maxwell-Eueken model. For given SiC loading, the thermal conductivity increased with the increasing shape parameter of n. The SiCw was much easier to form the thermal conductivity chains and network than that of SiCp.
Isolation, Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Phenylpropanoids from the Rhizomes of Alpania galanga

Bioactivity guided investigation of the DCM: MeOH (1:1) extract from the rhizomes of Alpinia galanga led to the isolation of phenylpropanoids (1–9) and their structures were established by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, IR and LC-MS/MS. These compounds have been evaluated for their in vitro anticancer activity against the human cancer cell lines A549 (lung cancer), Colo-205 (colon cancer), A431 (skin cancer), NCI H460 (lung cancer), PC-3 (prostate cancer), and HT-29 (colon cancer). Compounds 4 and 9 showed potent anticancer activity (ranging from 1.3–19.7 μg/mL) against all the tested cancer cell lines. In addition, an asymmetric synthesis of acetoxychavicol acetate (1) and trans-p-coumaryl alcohol (4) has been accomplished in six steps starting from readily available p-hydroxybenzaldehyde for the first time. Grignard reaction and Sharpless kinetic resolution reactions were utilized as the key steps to install the basic core.
Expanding the Language model in a low-resource hybrid MT system

The present article investigates the fusion of different language models to improve translation accuracy. A hybrid MT system, recentlydeveloped in the European Commissionfunded PRESEMT project that combines example-based MT and Statistical MT principles is used as a starting point. In this article, the syntactically-defined phrasal language models (NPs, VPs etc.) used by this MT system are supplemented by n-gram language models to improve translation accuracy. For specific structural patterns, n-gram statistics are consulted to determine whether the pattern instantiations are corroborated. Experiments indicate improvements in translation accuracy.
Signal Transduction and Intracellular Trafficking by the Interleukin 36 Receptor*

Background: Signaling by the IL-36 receptor is poorly characterized. Results: Activation of IL-36R signaling is coupled with its endocytosis to lysosomes. Tollip mediates IL-1 receptor turnover and increases the accumulation of IL-36R. Conclusion: IL-36R signaling has differences in signaling from the IL-1R. Significance: This work defines the requirements for IL-36R signaling and trafficking. Improper signaling of the IL-36 receptor (IL-36R), a member of the IL-1 receptor family, has been associated with various inflammation-associated diseases. However, the requirements for IL-36R signal transduction remain poorly characterized. This work seeks to define the requirements for IL-36R signaling and intracellular trafficking. In the absence of cognate agonists, IL-36R was endocytosed and recycled to the plasma membrane. In the presence of IL-36, IL-36R increased accumulation in LAMP1+ lysosomes. Endocytosis predominantly used a clathrin-mediated pathway, and the accumulation of the IL-36R in lysosomes did not result in increased receptor turnover. The ubiquitin-binding Tollip protein contributed to IL-36R signaling and increased the accumulation of both subunits of the IL-36R.
On the Mitigation of Long-Range Dependence in IEEE 802.11 Networks

Several fractal or scaling phenomena, such as self-similarity and long-range dependence, have been detected in network traffic, with important implications for network performance. In this paper we describe a detailed study that assesses how the characteristics of traffic change when it traverses IEEE 802.11 networks. Various scenarios, including the hidden node situation and the effect of relaying, have been simulated. The simpler scenario has also been replicated in a real testbed, in order to corroborate the results obtained in the simulations. The most significant results are the smoothing effect of the MAC mechanisms on the traffic at the highest frequencies, while at the lowest frequencies we find a mitigation of fractality that seems to be caused by packet loss induced by propagation impairments. The overall effect is a mitigation of fractal characteristics on the output traffic
Matisse: painting 2D regions for modeling free-form shapes

This paper presents Matisse, an interactive modeling system aimed at providing the public with a very easy way to design free-form 3D shapes. The user progressively creates a model by painting 2D regions of arbitrary topology while freely changing the view-point and zoom factor. Each region is converted into a 3D shape, using a variant of implicit modeling that fits convolution surfaces to regions with no need of any optimization step. We use intuitive, automatic ways of inferring the thickness and position in depth of each implicit primitive, enabling the user to concentrate only on shape design. When he or she paints partly on top of an existing primitive, the shapes are blended in a local region around the intersection, avoiding some of the well known unwanted blending artifacts of implicit surfaces. The locality of the blend depends on the size of smallest feature, enabling the user to enhance large, smooth primitives with smaller details without blurring the latter away. As the results show, our system enables any unprepared user to create 3D geometry in a very intuitive way.
Can we subtype alcoholism? A latent class analysis of data from relatives of alcoholics in a multicenter family study of alcoholism.

We attempt to identify distinctive subtypes of alcoholics using latent class analysis with data from 2551 relatives of alcoholic probands, all participants in the Collaborative Study of the Genetics of Alcoholism. Latent class analysis is a multivariate technique using cross-classified data to identify unobserved ("latent") classes that explain the relationships among observed variables. Data on 37 life-time symptoms of alcohol dependence from 1360 female and 1191 male relatives were analyzed, with a 4 class solution selected as the best fitting among the 2 through 6 class solutions that were examined. We observed the following classes: class 1, nonproblem drinkers (39.6% male, 50% female); class 2, mild alcoholics (persistent desire to stop, tolerance, and blackouts) (31.8% male, 28.7% female); class 3, moderate alcoholics (social, health, and emotional problems) (18.9% male, 14.6% female); and class 4, severely affected alcoholics (withdrawal, inability to stop drinking, craving, health, and emotional problems) (9.7% male, 6.7% female). There was little evidence for the construct of alcohol abuse; endorsement probabilities for abuse symptoms (e.g., arrest and DWIs) were very low for all classes, whereas hazardous use was common among men in class 1. In addition to those in class 3 and class 4, a majority of men in class 2 qualified for DSM-III-R alcohol dependence, suggesting a biomodal distribution of drinkers and alcoholics, with little nondependent problem drinking among men in this high-risk sample. We conclude that, in this sample, alcoholism is not differentiated by symptom profiles but rather lies on a continuum of severity, with the possible exception of withdrawal, which characterized only class 4 individuals.
1,2-Bis[5-(4-cyanophenyl)-2-methyl-3-thienyl]-3,3,4,4,5,5-hexafluorocyclopent-1-ene: a photochromic diarylethene compound

The molecules of the title compound, C29H16F6N2S2, a photochromic dithienylethene with 4-cyanophenyl substituents, adopt an antiparallel arrangement that is reponsible for photoactivity. The molecule lies on a twofold rotation axis. The dihedral angle between the nearly planar cyclopentenyl and heteroaryl rings is 142.5 (3)°, and that between the heteroaryl and benzene rings is 22.4 (3)°. The distance between the heteroaryl rings of adjacent molecules is 3.601 (2) Å, indicating a π–π interaction.
Object Activation from Features in the Semantic System

The human brain is thought to elicit an object representation via co-activation of neural regions that encode various object features. The cortical regions and mechanisms involved in this process have never been elucidated for the semantic system. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate regions activated during a task designed to elicit object activation within the semantic system (e.g., presenting the words desert and humps with the task to determine if they combine to form an object, in this case a camel). There were signal changes in the thalamus for word pairs that activated an object, but not for pairs that (a) failed to activate an object, (b) were simply semantically associated, or (c) were members of the same category. These results suggest that the thalamus has a critical role in coordinating the cortical activity required for activating an object concept in the semantic system.