Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Computer Vision to Play Super Hexagon

We present work towards an end-to-end system for playing the game Super Hexagon1 on a mobile phone. Unlike previous methods, our approach captures real-time video from a webcam observing the device screen, rather than from low-level operating system display buffers. Because it uses only visual observations of the game device, our system does not assume anything about the device itself such as its operating system, screen size, or resolution. The video processing pipeline is split into two stages: First, it isolates the phone screen from video using a combination of thresholding, RANSAC and perspective transformations. Second, it extracts game features from a single frame using adaptive thresholding, convolutional blob detection, and ray casting. This process is reliably able to locate the phone on a uniform white background. To correct for perspective distortion of the screen image, we assume the phone is in landscape orientation relative to the camera. Additionally, we are able to locate the player character and the closest obstacles very reliably. Although the game runs at 60 frames per second, our maximum processing speed is around 20 frames per second, with a latency of 2-3 frames. The latency of the system comes primarily from video encoding in the webcam and decoding on the computer. Using the extracted game features, we use a rule-based AI to move the player in the optimal direction to avoid the nearest obstacle.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Technical Note: Implementation of Prescribed (offlem), Calculated (onlem), and Pseudo-emissions (tnudge) of Chemical Species in the Modular Earth Submodel System (messy)

We present the submodels OFFLEM, ONLEM, and TNUDGE for the Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy). Prescribed emissions from input files are handled by OFFLEM. ONLEM deals with online-calculated emissions , i.e., emissions that are calculated during the simulation. The submodel TNUDGE uses the " tracer nudging " technique for pseudo-sources and-sinks. For species with highly uncertain emission fluxes and/or with sufficiently long lifetimes, e.g., CH 4 , it is common to create such pseudo-fluxes by prescribing the observed mixing ratio of the species at a given boundary (e.g., the mixing ratio of methane at the surface, or the ozone mixing ratio at the tropopause). All three submodels substantially simplify the inclusion of emissions into a model. Specific emissions can easily be switched on or off. New prescribed emissions can be included without rewriting any code. New online emissions only require one additional subroutine containing the new parameterization. A major advantage is that input fields at arbitrary resolution can be used. The problem of incompatible grids between emission data and model is overcome by utilizing the MESSy data import interface. To further simplify the creation of new offline emission data, the preprocessing program EDGAR2NC is provided. EDGAR2NC transforms files from the EDGAR format into the netCDF format which is required by OFFLEM. The presented routines are a part of the community modeling project MESSy and can be made available for use to the atmospheric modeling community.
Schizophrenia and Criminal Responsibility: A Systematic Review

Abstract The significant progress of psychiatry in the 20th century provided a sophisticated theoretical framework to analyze the complex relationships between crime and mental illness. Schizophrenia has been traditionally associated with severe cognitive and affective deficits that heavily influence empathy, judgment capacities, but also control of impulsiveness. Although there is an association between psychotic disorders and absence or decrease of legal responsibility, their relationship is also determined by sociodemographic, developmental, and clinical factors. These disorders are associated not only with abolished criminal responsibility but also with diminished responsibility. We conduct a systematic literature review to examine the relation between schizophrenia and criminal responsibility. We have found that this clinical entity is often associated with diminished or abolished criminal liability. We discuss these findings, focusing on the specific deficits found in patients with schizophrenia and examining how this problem affects their behavior and eventually their accountability for their crimes.
Characterization of a Novel Arabidopsis Protein Family AtMAPR Homologous to 25-Dx/IZAg/Hpr6.6 Proteins

Four Arabidopsis genes homologous to the membrane-associated progesterone binding protein (MAPR) were identified. MAPRs have previously been isolated from membrane preparations of porcine liver as proteins binding to progesterone. According to sequence alignment, each of the AtMAPRs, except AtMAPR2, was predicted to contain three domains; the N-terminal domain, except that of AtMAPR2, was predicted to accommodate a single transmembrane alpha-helix. A potentially interesting helical wheel motif SPX10FX2Y was found in the transmembrane domain. Proteins that may interact with AtMAPRs were found using the yeast two-hybrid system. AtMAPR2 and AtMAPR5△TM were found to associate with ubiquitin, where ubiquitination was involved in Aux/IAA modification. Sequence alignment indicated that AtMAPRs are distantly related to the Aux/IAA proteins. AtMAPR2 was also found to bind Myb3, a transcription factor that controls the expression of genes for the biosynthesis of phenylpropanoid. These results imply that AtMAPR may be a part of a plant hormone signaling pathway.
Face Detection and Tracking Control with Omni Car

We present a combination of frontal and side face detection approach, using deep learning with Nvidia TX1 platform and an embedded GPU, providing the Omni robot with an efficient deep model of face detection with low computation and a provable detection accuracy for the robot’s motion planning. The similar pipeline and framework is general and can also be applied to other object detection system for the robot usage. In addition, we also provide a new method to control the Omni robot equipped with four Mecanum wheels. By using orientation feedback and face’s position estimation, the robot is able to follow and point to human’s frontal face in any direction.
Automatically Exploiting Potential Component Leaks in Android Applications

We present PCLeaks, a tool based on inter-component communication (ICC) vulnerabilities to perform data-flow analysis on Android applications to find potential component leaks that could potentially be exploited by other components. To evaluate our approach, we run PCLeaks on 2000 apps randomly selected from the Google Play store. PCLeaks reports 986 potential component leaks in 185 apps. For each leak reported by PCLeaks, PCLeaksValidator automatically generates an Android app which tries to exploit the leak. By manually running a subset of the generated apps, we find that 75% of the reported leaks are exploitable leaks.
Social Interaction Needs and Entertainment Approaches to Pregnancy Well-Being in mHealth Technology Design for Low-Income Transmigrant Women: Qualitative Codesign Study

Background Low-income Caribbean transmigrant women face unique health challenges during pregnancy that set forth multidimensional implications for the design of mobile health (mHealth). Acknowledgment of the unique health needs of low-income Caribbean immigrant women in the United States and what that entails regarding technology design remains rarely examined in the literature of mHealth technologies. Objective The goal of this study was to reveal the needs and gaps in mHealth interventions for pregnant immigrant women not yet realized in this field. These understandings reveal design opportunities for mHealth. Methods The use of the qualitative participatory action research approach of codesign workshops in this study resulted in design solutions by the participants after reflecting on their earlier focus group discussions. The highlights are not the resulting designs per se but rather the inferences derived from the researcher reflecting on these designs. Results The designs exposed two themes relevant to this paper. First, the participants desired the inclusion and rebuilding of social and organizational relationships in mHealth. The resulting designs formulate an understanding of the women’s health-related social support needs and how technology can facilitate them. Second, the participants wanted entertainment with an element of social participation incorporated in mHealth pregnancy management interventions. This brings attention to the role entertainment can add to the impact mHealth can deliver for pregnancy well-being. Conclusions The study concluded with an examination of social and entertainment design implications that reveal pregnant immigrant women’s virtual health-related sharing habits, choice of sharing interaction scenarios during pregnancy (eg, local, long distance, one-way, two-way, and many-many), and choice of sharing media (eg, text, voice, and video). Additionally, the study revealed exclusions to social sharing capabilities in health technologies for these women.
Reformulation of a clinical-dose system for carbon-ion radiotherapy treatment planning at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Japan

At the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS), more than 8,000 patients have been treated for various tumors with carbon-ion (C-ion) radiotherapy in the past 20 years based on a radiobiologically defined clinical-dose system. Through clinical experience, including extensive dose escalation studies, optimum dose-fractionation protocols have been established for respective tumors, which may be considered as the standards in C-ion radiotherapy. Although the therapeutic appropriateness of the clinical-dose system has been widely demonstrated by clinical results, the system incorporates several oversimplifications such as dose-independent relative biological effectiveness (RBE), empirical nuclear fragmentation model, and use of dose-averaged linear energy transfer to represent the spectrum of particles. We took the opportunity to update the clinical-dose system at the time we started clinical treatment with pencil beam scanning, a new beam delivery method, in 2011. The requirements for the updated system were to correct the oversimplifications made in the original system, while harmonizing with the original system to maintain the established dose-fractionation protocols. In the updated system, the radiation quality of the therapeutic C-ion beam was derived with Monte Carlo simulations, and its biological effectiveness was predicted with a theoretical model. We selected the most used C-ion beam with αr = 0.764 Gy−1 and β = 0.0615 Gy−2 as reference radiation for RBE. The C-equivalent biological dose distribution is designed to allow the prescribed survival of tumor cells of the human salivary gland (HSG) in entire spread-out Bragg peak (SOBP) region, with consideration to the dose dependence of the RBE. This C-equivalent biological dose distribution is scaled to a clinical dose distribution to harmonize with our clinical experiences with C-ion radiotherapy. Treatment plans were made with the original and the updated clinical-dose systems, and both physical and clinical dose distributions were compared with regard to the prescribed dose level, beam energy, and SOBP width. Both systems provided uniform clinical dose distributions within the targets consistent with the prescriptions. The mean physical doses delivered to targets by the updated system agreed with the doses by the original system within ±1.5% for all tested conditions. The updated system reflects the physical and biological characteristics of the therapeutic C-ion beam more accurately than the original system, while at the same time allowing the continued use of the dose-fractionation protocols established with the original system at NIRS.
Proline-Rich Tyrosine Kinase 2 (Pyk2) Regulates IGF-I-Induced Cell Motility and Invasion of Urothelial Carcinoma Cells

The insulin-like growth factor receptor I (IGF-IR) plays an essential role in transformation by promoting cell growth and protecting cancer cells from apoptosis. We have recently demonstrated that the IGF-IR is overexpressed in invasive bladder cancer tissues and promotes motility and invasion of urothelial carcinoma cells. These effects require IGF-I-induced Akt- and MAPK-dependent activation of paxillin. The latter co-localizes with focal adhesion kinases (FAK) at dynamic focal adhesions and is critical for promoting motility of urothelial cancer cells. FAK and its homolog Proline-rich tyrosine kinase 2 (Pyk2) modulate paxillin activation; however, their role in regulating IGF-IR-dependent signaling and motility in bladder cancer has not been established. In this study we demonstrate that FAK was not required for IGF-IR-dependent signaling and motility of invasive urothelial carcinoma cells. On the contrary, Pyk2, which was strongly activated by IGF-I, was critical for IGF-IR-dependent motility and invasion and regulated IGF-I-dependent activation of the Akt and MAPK pathways. Using immunofluorescence and AQUA analysis we further discovered that Pyk2 was overexpressed in bladder cancer tissues as compared to normal tissue controls. Significantly, in urothelial carcinoma tissues there was increased Pyk2 localization in the nuclei as compared to normal tissue controls. These results provide the first evidence of a specific Pyk2 activity in regulating IGF-IR-dependent motility and invasion of bladder cancer cells suggesting that Pyk2 and the IGF-IR may play a critical role in the invasive phenotype in urothelial neoplasia. In addition, Pyk2 and the IGF-IR may serve as novel biomarkers with diagnostic and prognostic significance in bladder cancer.
Charles Brockden Brown: Quantitative Analysis and Literary Interpretation

This study is a test case in the use of stylometric techniques to provide an entrance into questions of literary criticism and interpretation. The study applies multivariate analysis to two texts of Charles Brockden Brown, sometimes considered the first professional writer in the United States. Both a scatter graph of a principal components analysis and a cluster analysis show that individual chapters from each of two novels (Wieland and Carwin) group together, except for three chapters of Wieland that cluster with the Carwin chapters. One chapter of Wieland that clusters with the Carwin chapters is narrated by the same character who narrates all of Carwin, thus providing statistical evidence that Brown has created a narrator with a distinctive voice. Accounting for the clustering of the other two chapters calls for a consideration of several of the more crucial and problematic interpretative issues in the novel, and suggests that quantitative analysis can indeed provide background and evidence for literary critical discussion and understanding.
Interactively Discovering ery from Example and Explanation

Database management systems are heavily used for storing structured data and retrieving relevant data as per user requirement. However, a large group of database users are not expert in query language and they lack knowledge about database schema. As a result, they struggle in cases where data retrieval requires them to formulate complex SQL queries with complete knowledge about database schema. Interestingly, the users are often aware of a few example tuples and the properties or concepts of the majority of the values present in those tuples that enable them to explain their information need. However, to the best of our knowledge, there exists no framework that can help the user to communicate those information to a database system. In this project, we propose QBEE Query by Example and Explanation framework, that takes a few example tuples and the associated concepts for each of the attribute values in those tuples, and nally translates those into a corresponding SQL query. The resultant SQL query can produce the result set desired by the user. In order to achieve this, the system interacts with the user to collect the explanations behind the user provided example tuples. So far, we have been successful to generate concepts given a single tuple, present those concepts to the user using a text-based interface, and nally construct the user’s intended query using her feedback on concepts on IMDB dataset.
Betaine attenuates chronic alcohol-induced fatty liver by broadly regulating hepatic lipid metabolism

Betaine has previously been demonstrated to protect the liver against alcohol-induced fat accumulation. However, the mechanism through which betaine affects alcohol-induced hepatic lipid metabolic disorders has not been extensively studied. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of betaine on alcoholic simple fatty liver and hepatic lipid metabolism disorders. A total of 36 rats were randomly divided into control, ethanol and ethanol + betaine groups. Liver function, morphological alterations, lipid content and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α levels were determined. Hepatic expression levels of diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT) 1, DGAT2, sterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP)-1c, SREBP-2, fatty acid synthase (FAS), 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl (HMG)-CoA reductase, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor λ coactivator (PGC)-1α, adiponectin receptor (AdipoR) 1 and AdipoR2 were quantified. Serum and adipose tissue adiponectin levels were assessed using an enzyme-linked immunoassay. The results demonstrated that alcohol-induced ultramicrostructural alterations in hepatocytes, including the presence of lipid droplets and swollen mitochondria, were attenuated by betaine. Hepatic triglyceride, free fatty acid, total cholesterol and cholesterol ester contents and the expression of DGAT1, DGAT2, SREBP-1c, SREBP-2, FAS and HMG-CoA reductase were increased following ethanol consumption, however were maintained at control levels following betaine supplementation. Alcohol-induced decreases in hepatic PGC-1α mRNA levels and serum and adipose tissue adiponectin concentrations were prevented by betaine. The downregulation of hepatic AdipoR1 which resulted from alcohol exposure was partially attenuated by betaine. No significant differences in liver function, TNF-α, phospholipid and AdipoR2 levels were observed among the control, ethanol and ethanol + betaine groups. Overall, these results indicated that betaine attenuated the alcoholic simple fatty liver by improving hepatic lipid metabolism via suppression of DGAT1, DGAT2, SREBP-1c, FAS, SREBP-2 and HMG-CoA reductase and upregulation of PGC-1α.
Knockdown of piRNA pathway proteins results in enhanced Semliki Forest virus production in mosquito cells

The exogenous siRNA pathway is important in restricting arbovirus infection in mosquitoes. Less is known about the role of the PIWI-interacting RNA pathway, or piRNA pathway, in antiviral responses. Viral piRNA-like molecules have recently been described following infection of mosquitoes and derived cell lines with several arboviruses. The piRNA pathway has thus been suggested to function as an additional small RNA-mediated antiviral response to the known infection-induced siRNA response. Here we show that piRNA-like molecules are produced following infection with the naturally mosquito-borne Semliki Forest virus in mosquito cell lines. We show that knockdown of piRNA pathway proteins enhances the replication of this arbovirus and defines the contribution of piRNA pathway effectors, thus characterizing the antiviral properties of the piRNA pathway. In conclusion, arbovirus infection can trigger the piRNA pathway in mosquito cells, and knockdown of piRNA proteins enhances virus production.
Heterodyne frequency-domain multispectral diffuse optical tomography of breast cancer in the parallel-plane transmission geometry.

PURPOSE The authors introduce a state-of-the-art all-optical clinical diffuse optical tomography (DOT) imaging instrument which collects spatially dense, multispectral, frequency-domain breast data in the parallel-plate geometry. METHODS The instrument utilizes a CCD-based heterodyne detection scheme that permits massively parallel detection of diffuse photon density wave amplitude and phase for a large number of source-detector pairs (10(6)). The stand-alone clinical DOT instrument thus offers high spatial resolution with reduced crosstalk between absorption and scattering. Other novel features include a fringe profilometry system for breast boundary segmentation, real-time data normalization, and a patient bed design which permits both axial and sagittal breast measurements. RESULTS The authors validated the instrument using tissue simulating phantoms with two different chromophore-containing targets and one scattering target. The authors also demonstrated the instrument in a case study breast cancer patient; the reconstructed 3D image of endogenous chromophores and scattering gave tumor localization in agreement with MRI. CONCLUSIONS Imaging with a novel parallel-plate DOT breast imager that employs highly parallel, high-resolution CCD detection in the frequency-domain was demonstrated.
Study on Influence of Micro-vibration During the Optical Aspheric Surface Ultra-precision Grinding on Forming Accuracy

In ultra-precision grinding process of the axial symmetric aspheric optical element,both imbalance of grinding wheel and micro-vibration of spindle would directly affect the forming accuracy and roughness.Analyzed the phenomenon of micro-vibration in grinding,a mathematical model of the aspheric surface's spherical radius deviation caused by the micro-vibration was established,and a dynamic high-precision micro-vibration measurement device with accuracy of 0.02 μm was developed.For the developed large-diameter ultra-precision aspheric grinding machine,the influence of the rotation speed of grinding wheel and spindle and the oil pressure of hydrostatic bearing on the radial and axial micro-vibration of grinding wheel and spindle was measured and analyzed.The parameters of the rotation speed of grinding wheel and the oil pressure of hydrostatic bearing and the rotation speed of spindle were determined to make the micro-vibrations of grinding wheel and spindle minimum.The machining results show that the error of aspheric surface of 500 mm in diameter can be less than 4 μm.
Factor V leiden and morbid obesity in fatal postoperative pulmonary embolism.

HYPOTHESIS Currently, the risk for postoperative acute pulmonary embolism (APE) is assessed clinically. We hypothesize that the expensive screening for the most common genetic thrombophilic clotting defect (factor V Leiden; R(506)Q) after exclusion of established clinical risk factors does not offer additional benefit to surgical patients. DESIGN We reviewed protocols and histories from 8249 consecutive autopsies performed at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. All patients who died of APE after routine surgery and who lacked any other clinical risk factors for APE were included and compared with matched controls. Genomic DNA was extracted from archival tissues and examined for R(506)Q by polymerase chain reaction amplification, restriction enzyme digestion, and direct sequencing. RESULTS Acute pulmonary embolism was the immediate cause of death in 454 patients (5.5%). Of those, 32 (7.0%) had undergone routine surgery. These patients represent less than 0.07% of all case-adjusted surgical procedures in the same period. The rate of postoperative death from APE was higher after neurosurgical procedures (0.3%) than all other procedures (0.04%). Sixteen patients (50.0%) were morbidly obese. Only 1 patient was heterozygous and none were homozygous for R(506)Q. CONCLUSIONS (1) Fatal APE is uncommon in surgical patients lacking clinically apparent risk factors for venous thromboembolism. (2) Neurosurgical patients are at increased risk for postoperative APE. (3) Morbid obesity is a major independent risk factor in cases of sudden death from APE postoperatively. (4) Routine preoperative screening for R(506)Q in the factor V gene does not appear to offer additional benefit in surgical patients without clinically recognizable thromboembolic risk factor(s).