Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New and Efficient Method for Vehicle License Plate Detection

The Vehicle Licence plate Detection Method has many applications like cars parking in hotels, traffic signal violation, electronic toll collections and border crossing vehicle etc. Any detection method has some major challenges like Licences plates have arbitrary sizes, orientations, complex backgrounds and localization of licence plates. In this paper a new vehicle licence plate detection method is presented which is mainly based on localization of licence plate and recognition of characters. License Plate localization is the main challenge in the successful License plate recognition and an efficient method is employed for successful License plate extraction from the captured image. This paper presents the various steps of automatic plate localization of Cars License Plate Recognition system. In the proposed method recognition of character contains four parts which successfully recognize license plate. And finally, the proposed method is robust and efficient in all conditions.
Extended Object and Group Tracking: A Comparison of Random Matrices and Random Hypersurface Models

Intelligent Sensor-Actuator-Systems Laboratory (ISAS), Institute for Anthropomatics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany †Dept. Sensor Data and Information Fusion, Fraunhofer FKIE, Wachtberg, Germany ‡Data Fusion Algorithms & Software, EADS Deutschland GmbH, Ulm, Germany marcus.baum@kit.edu, {michael.feldmann |wolfgang.koch}@fkie.fraunhofer. de dietrich.fraenken@eads.com, uwe.hanebeck@ieee.org
Cap-assisted Endoscopic Mucosal Resection is Highly Effective for Nonpedunculated Colorectal Lesions

Goals: To assess the safety and efficacy of cap-assisted endoscopic mucosal resection (C-EMR) for nonpedunculated colorectal lesions. Background: There are little data supporting the safety and efficacy of C-EMR for colorectal polyps. Study: A retrospective review was conducted on the medical records of 97 consecutive patients who underwent C-EMR for nonpedunculated colorectal lesions in a tertiary center by a single gastroenterologist (L.H.J.). Reported outcomes were: overall eradication rate that included all attempted C-EMRs, endoscopist-reported eradication rate that included C-EMRs reported as a success, and complications rate. Results: A total of 134 C-EMRs were performed on 124 nonpedunculated colorectal lesions within a 55-month period, with a median follow-up of 4.2 (1.6 to 46.8) months. Among the polyps with available follow-up, the overall eradication rate was 91% (81/89); the endoscopist-reported eradication rate was 98.8% (81/82). The complications rate was 10.2%: perforation (3.9%), intraprocedural bleeding (3.9%), and delayed bleeding (2.4%); all but 2 perforation cases that required surgical interventions (both occurring early in the time period in which procedures were performed), were treated endoscopically or conservatively with complete recovery. Conclusions: C-EMR is highly effective in treating nonpedunculated colorectal lesions, which can be learned and practiced in the appropriate setting. Decline in the complications rate was observed as the endoscopist gained experience. Although perforation remains a relatively high risk, this may be decreased by increasing the fluid cushion, and decreasing suction pressure. Immediate recognition and endoscopic management of perforation can be highly successful. C-EMR is our suggested method in approaching nonpedunculated colon polyps, especially flat polyps that are not easily accessible by other endoscopic techniques.
Cardioprotective Effects of Essential Oil of Lavandula angustifolia on Isoproterenol-induced Acute Myocardial Infarction in Rat

Myocardial infarction (MI) is a common presentation of the ischemic heart disease. Lavandula angustifolia is an herbaceous plant with antioxidative effects. This study was designed to investigate the cardioprotective effects of lavandula angustifolia essential oil against isoproterenol-induced MI in rats. The dried sample was subjected to hydrodistillation by using a Clevenger and the oils were dried over anhydrous Na2SO4. Male Wistar rats were assigned to 6 groups of control, sham, isoproterenol and treatment with 5, 10, 20 mg/Kg of the essential oil. MI was induced by subcutaneous injection of Isoproterenol (100 mg/Kg) for 3 consecutive days at an interval of 24 h. The essential oil was given intraperitoneally every 24 h started at MI induction. Following anesthesia, hemodynamic parameters were measured. After sacrificing the animals, the hearts were removed to measure the heart to body weight ratio and histopathological examination. Myeloperoxidase (MPO) and Malondialdehyde (MDA) were measured in heart tissues for evaluating the activity of neutrophils and lipid peroxidation, respectively. The essential oil amended ECG pattern by suppressing ST-segment elevation and increasing R-amplitude. 10 mg/Kg of the essential oil significantly decreased heart to body weight ratio (P<0.001) and the elevation of MDA and MPO in myocardium, it also increased dp/dtmax from 2793 ± 210 to 4488 ± 253 mmHg/sec (P<0.001), and 20 mg/Kg of it significantly lowered LVEDP from 14 ± 3.43 to 4.3 ± 0.83 mmHg (P<0.001). The results demonstrated that L. angustifolia protects myocardium against isoproterenol-induced MI that it could be related to its antioxidant properties.
A Public Reference Implementation of the RAP Anaphora Resolution Algorithm

This paper describes a standalone, publicly-available implementation of the Resolution of Anaphora Procedure (RAP) given by Lappin and Leass (1994). The RAP algorithm resolves third person pronouns, lexical anaphors, and identifies pleonastic pronouns. Our implementation, JavaRAP, fills a current need in anaphora resolution research by providing a reference implementation that can be benchmarked against current algorithms. The implementation uses the standard, publicly available Charniak (2000) parser as input, and generates a list of anaphora-antecedent pairs as output. Alternately, an in-place annotation or substitution of the anaphors with their antecedents can be produced. Evaluation on the MUC-6 co-reference task shows JavaRAP has an accuracy of 57.9%, similar to the performance given previously in the literature (e.g., Preiss 2002).
Asymptotic Behavior of the Density in a Parabolic SPDE

Consider the density of the solution X(t, x) of a stochastic heat equation with small noise at a fixed t∈[0, T], x∈[0, 1]. In this paper we study the asymptotics of this density as the noise vanishes. A kind of Taylor expansion in powers of the noise parameter is obtained. The coefficients and the residue of the expansion are explicitly calculated. In order to obtain this result some type of exponential estimates of tail probabilities of the difference between the approximating process and the limit one is proved. Also a suitable iterative local integration by parts formula is developed.
Association of Pulse Pressure With New-Onset Atrial Fibrillation in Patients With Hypertension and Left Ventricular Hypertrophy: The Losartan Intervention For Endpoint (LIFE) Reduction in Hypertension Study

Previous studies have found pulse pressure (PP), a marker of arterial stiffness, to be an independent predictor of atrial fibrillation (AF) in general and hypertensive populations. We examined whether PP predicted new-onset AF in comparison with other blood pressure components in the Losartan Intervention For Endpoint reduction in hypertension study, a double-blind, randomized (losartan versus atenolol), parallel-group study, including 9193 patients with hypertension and electrocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy. In 8810 patients with neither a history of AF nor AF at baseline, Minnesota coding of electrocardiograms confirmed new-onset AF in 353 patients (4.0%) during mean 4.9 years of follow-up. In multivariate Cox regression analyses, baseline and in-treatment PP and baseline and in-treatment systolic blood pressure predicted new-onset AF, independent of baseline age, height, weight, and Framingham Risk Score; sex, race, and treatment allocation; and in-treatment heart rate and Cornell product. PP was the strongest single blood pressure predictor of new-onset AF determined by the decrease in the −2 Log likelihood statistic, in comparison with systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and mean arterial pressure. When evaluated in the same model, the predictive effect of systolic and diastolic blood pressures together was similar to that of PP. In this population of patients with hypertension and left ventricular hypertrophy, PP was the strongest single blood pressure predictor of new-onset AF, independent of other risk factors.
The Human Plasma Proteome

The human plasma proteome holds the promise of a revolution in disease diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring provided that major challenges in proteomics and related disciplines can be addressed. Plasma is not only the primary clinical specimen but also represents the largest and deepest version of the human proteome present in any sample: in addition to the classical “plasma proteins,” it contains all tissue proteins (as leakage markers) plus very numerous distinct immunoglobulin sequences, and it has an extraordinary dynamic range in that more than 10 orders of magnitude in concentration separate albumin and the rarest proteins now measured clinically. Although the restricted dynamic range of conventional proteomic technology (two-dimensional gels and mass spectrometry) has limited its contribution to the list of 289 proteins (tabulated here) that have been reported in plasma to date, very recent advances in multidimensional survey techniques promise at least double this number in the near future. Abundant scientific evidence, from proteomics and other disciplines, suggests that among these are proteins whose abundances and structures change in ways indicative of many, if not most, human diseases. Nevertheless, only a handful of proteins are currently used in routine clinical diagnosis, and the rate of introduction of new protein tests approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has paradoxically declined over the last decade to less than one new protein diagnostic marker per year. We speculate on the reasons behind this large discrepancy between the expectations arising from proteomics and the realities of clinical diagnostics and suggest approaches by which protein-disease associations may be more effectively translated into diagnostic tools in the future.
What is a Good Model for Depth from Defocus?

Different models for estimating depth from defocused images have been proposed over the years. Typically two differently defocused images are used by these models. Many of them work on the principle of transforming one or both of the images so that the transformed images become equivalent. One of the most common models is to estimate the relative blur between a pair of defocused images and compute depth from it. Another model known as the Blur Equalization Technique (BET) works by blurring both images by an appropriate pair of blur kernels. The inverse approach is to deblur both images by an appropriate pair of blur kernels. In this paper we compare the performance of these models to find under what conditions they work best. We show that the common approach of using the Gaussian approximation of the relative blur kernel performs worse than a more general approximation of the relative blur kernel. Furthermore, we show that despite the reduction in signal content in BET, it works well in most circumstances. Finally, the performance of deconvolution based approaches depends on a large part on the shape of the blur kernel and is more appropriate for the coded aperture setup.
A New Approach to Blind Separation of Two Sources with Three Sensors

An exhaustive investigation of the overdetermined blind source separation (BSS) 3 times 2 problem is presented. We establish a new relationship between the column vectors of the channel matrix using second order statistics (SOS) only. This relationship is then exploited to factorize the separating matrix into a whitening term, whose expression depends on whether the observations are corrupted by noise or not, and a 2 times 2 orthogonal matrix that can be determined using high order statistics (HOS). Simulation results demonstrate that resorting to the new form of the whitening matrix, mainly in the case of noisy ill-conditioned BSS, results in improved performance compared to the common whitening-based techniques.
An experimental analysis for compressive sensing in wireless sensor networks

We design a kind of wireless sensor network node for collecting parameters about environments of farmland, and employ compressive sensing algorithm in wireless sensor networks. Temperature is picked out for compressing and reconstructing. Primary analyses show that the algorithm can effectively compress observations for transmitting fewer packets. The increase in computation brought by compressive sensing is within acceptable range, and the total energy cost of the network is reduced by a large ratio. By taking comparison between original and recovery, the results quantitatively show that, compressive sensing algorithm possesses significant performance and efficiency, and can meet requirements of accuracy on signal compression in some applications of wireless sensor network.
Multimodal Processing of Discourse Information; The Effect of Synchrony

This paper describes progress in the design of unobtrusive technology for the tracking of participant status and engagement in spoken conversations. The apparatus and algorithms have applications in human-computer interface design and will enable a better level of communication between an information providing system, or robot, and a human user by mimicking the nonverbal processes that are an essential part of human-human face-to-face spoken interactions.
Reproductive life events and Alzheimer’s disease in Italian women: a retrospective study

The aim of our study was to understand the complex relationship between the major reproductive life events in women with Alzheimer’s disease. In a retrospective, case-control study, 275 women with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and 276 control patients from a hospital population were enrolled from July 2007 to December 2010. The AD patients presented with later menopause (P < 0.01), lower occurrence of surgical menopause (P < 0.04), reduced hormone-replacement therapy intake (P < 0.0001), and a longer reproductive life span (P < 0.01), compared to controls. No significant differences were found with respect to age at puberty, number of pregnancies, previous abortions, or contraceptive therapy. A higher education level appeared to have a protective role against the risk of developing AD. In women, menopause and hormone-replacement therapy can differentially modulate the clinical manifestations of AD, but these factors do not play a predictive role in its development.
The Ste20 Kinase Misshapen Regulates Both Photoreceptor Axon Targeting and Dorsal Closure, Acting Downstream of Distinct Signals

ABSTRACT We have previously shown that the Ste20 kinase encoded bymisshapen (msn) functions upstream of the c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) mitogen-activated protein kinase module inDrosophila. msn is required to activate theDrosophila JNK, Basket (Bsk), to promote dorsal closure of the embryo. A mammalian homolog of Msn, Nck interacting kinase, interacts with the SH3 domains of the SH2-SH3 adapter protein Nck. We now show that Msn likewise interacts with Dreadlocks (Dock), theDrosophila homolog of Nck. dock is required for the correct targeting of photoreceptor axons. We have performed a structure-function analysis of Msn in vivo in Drosophila in order to elucidate the mechanism whereby Msn regulates JNK and to determine whether msn, like dock, is required for the correct targeting of photoreceptor axons. We show that Msn requires both a functional kinase and a C-terminal regulatory domain to activate JNK in vivo in Drosophila. A mutation in a PXXP motif on Msn that prevents it from binding to the SH3 domains of Dock does not affect its ability to rescue the dorsal closure defect inmsn embryos, suggesting that Dock is not an upstream regulator of msn in dorsal closure. Larvae with only this mutated form of Msn show a marked disruption in photoreceptor axon targeting, implicating an SH3 domain protein in this process; however, an activated form of Msn is not sufficient to rescue thedock mutant phenotype. Mosaic analysis reveals thatmsn expression is required in photoreceptors in order for their axons to project correctly. The data presented here genetically link msn to two distinct biological events, dorsal closure and photoreceptor axon pathfinding, and thus provide the first evidence that Ste20 kinases of the germinal center kinase family play a role in axonal pathfinding. The ability of Msn to interact with distinct classes of adapter molecules in dorsal closure and photoreceptor axon pathfinding may provide the flexibility that allows it to link to distinct upstream signaling systems.
Automatic Deployment of Specification-based Intrusion Detection in the BACnet Protocol

Specification-based intrusion detection (SB-ID) is a suitable approach to monitor Building Automation Systems (BASs) because the correct and non-compromised functioning of the system is well understood. Its main drawback is that the creation of specifications often require human intervention. We present the first fully automated approach to deploy SB-ID at network level. We do so in the domain of BASs, specifically, the BACnet protocol (ISO 16484-5). In this protocol, properly certified devices are demanded to have technical documentation stating their capabilities. We leverage on those documents to create specifications that represent the expected behavior of each device in the network. Automated specification extraction is crucial to effectively apply SB-ID in volatile environments such as BACnet networks, where new devices are often added, removed, or replaced. In our experiments, the proposed algorithm creates specifications with both precision and recall above 99.5%. Finally, we evaluate the capabilities of our detection approach using two months (80GB) of BACnet traffic from a real BAS. Additionally, we use synthetic traffic to demonstrate attack detection in a controlled environment. We show that our approach not only contributes to the practical feasibility of SB-ID in BASs, but also detects stealthy and dangerous attacks.
IBM Research Report SINCO - A Greedy Coordinate Ascent Method for Sparse Inverse Covariance Selection Problem

In this paper, we consider the sparse inverse covariance selection problem which is equivalent to structure recovery of a Markov Network over Gaussian variables. We introduce a simple but efficient greedy algorithm, called SINCO, for solving the Sparse INverse COvariance problem. Our approach is based on coordinate ascent method which naturally preserves the sparsity of the inverse covariance matrix. We compare our algorithm to the state-of-art method called glasso [5], evaluating both computational efficiency and structure-reconstruction accuracy of both methods. We show that the two methods are often comparable in speed and accuracy, however, in some regimes, our method can significantly outperform glasso in terms of both computational time and structure reconstruction error (particularly, false positive error). Our method has an additional advantage of being easily parallelizable. We also show that the greedy nature of the method is such that one can reproduce the regularization path behavior by applying the method to one instance of the regularization parameter only. Numerical experiments demonstrate advantages of our approach on simulated networks, both random and “structured” (scale-free) ones, where the ground-truth structure is available. We also report promising empirical results on real-life problems with unknown ground-truth structure, such as classification of mental states from fMRI data.
CS 224 W Project Report : SimRank Based Restaurant Recommendation System

This project aims to design a restaurant recommendation system by analyzing the link structure of the network constructed from a set of user to business rated reviews. In particular, we will use SimRank to calculate the similarity between a pair of users and a pair of businesses, and use the calculated similarity to predict the rating for user business pairs. We trained SimRank on the yelp academic dataset, evaluated our approach against collaborative filtering and achieved higher link and rating prediction accuracy than collaborative filtering.
In vivo mapping of substance P receptors in brains of laboratory animals by high‐resolution imaging systems

Neurotransmission mediated by substance P (SP) and NK1 receptor has been implicated in the pathophysiology of analgesia, emesis and diverse neuropsychiatric conditions including depression and anxiety disorder. Several lines of clinical trials using NK1 receptor antagonists have been conducted to date, and the efficiency of preclinical assessments for proof of concept and dose optimization could be greatly increased by configuring an in vivo analytical system that permits quantitative mapping of NK1 receptors in the brains of small‐size laboratory animals expressing “human‐like” NK1 receptors. Hence, we investigated the applicability of experimental animals, ranging from rodents to primates, to positron emission tomographic (PET) measurements with [18F]fluoroethyl‐SPA‐RQ, a modification of a recently established radioligand for NK1 receptors. A pharmacokinetic assay could be performed for a rhesus monkey in an awake condition, which allows the circumvention of influences of anesthesia on SP neurotransmission. Coregistration of PET and magnetic resonance images acquired by small‐animal‐dedicated devices enabled detailed localization of NK1 receptors in the gerbil and marmoset brains. The present study also revealed the potentials of SDZ NKT 343 as an antagonist for central NK1 receptors. In conjunction with additional in vitro and ex vivo autoradiographic observations, our in vivo results have demonstrated a similarity in the binding pattern among the animals examined, justifying cross‐species extrapolation of PET findings on the SP‐NK1 pathway. Synapse 61:205–215, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
On the Fading and Shadowing Effects for Wireless Sensor Networks

Most ad hoc and sensor network research assumes idealized radio propagation models without considering fading and shadowing effects. Experimental results have shown that many well-designed protocols will fail simply because of fading and shadowing experienced in a realistic wireless environment. While fading and shadowing for radio propagation are well understood in wireless communication community, they are rarely studied in network level research for wireless sensor networks. This paper studies the fading and shadowing effects on the performance of different MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks. We show that fading and shadowing can have a significant influence on network performance. We study and compare network performance for three different systems: 1) a multi-channel CDMA system; 2) a pure CDMA system; 3) a contention based system. Through discrete event simulation (using ns-2), we show that the multi-channel CDMA system outperforms the pure CDMA system as well as the contention based system under fading and shadowing environments
Precision Bits Can Be Reduced by One in Max-Log-MAP-Based Decoder

The addition and taking the maximum (max) operations, as well as all the quantized data involved in the max-log-MAP turbo decoding algorithm form a commutative max-sum semiring. In this paper performance degradation of turbo decoding caused by shift operations using fixed-point data representation and unified precision bits is solved when the distributive law is properly applied to this semiring, with a bonus of considerable computational saving and precision bit reduction from 3 to 2 for all the pertinent variables with negligible performance degradation.