Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DART: Distribution Aware Retinal Transform for Event-Based Cameras

We introduce a generic visual descriptor, termed as distribution aware retinal transform (DART), that encodes the structural context using log-polar grids for event cameras. The DART descriptor is applied to four different problems, namely object classification, tracking, detection and feature matching: (1) The DART features are directly employed as local descriptors in a bag-of-words classification framework and testing is carried out on four standard event-based object datasets (N-MNIST, MNIST-DVS, CIFAR10-DVS, NCaltech-101); (2) Extending the classification system, tracking is demonstrated using two key novelties: (i) Statistical bootstrapping is leveraged with online learning for overcoming the low-sample problem during the one-shot learning of the tracker, (ii) Cyclical shifts are induced in the log-polar domain of the DART descriptor to achieve robustness to object scale and rotation variations; (3) To solve the long-term object tracking problem, an object detector is designed using the principle of cluster majority voting. The detection scheme is then combined with the tracker to result in a high intersection-over-union score with augmented ground truth annotations on the publicly available event camera dataset; (4) Finally, the event context encoded by DART greatly simplifies the feature correspondence problem, especially for spatio-temporal slices far apart in time, which has not been explicitly tackled in the event-based vision domain.
Key technologies of active power filter for aircraft: a review

Active Power Filter (APF) is not only an advanced technology to improve power quality and purify power system pollution but also a good approach to solve electrical problems of an advanced aircraft such as harmonic, reactive power and unbalanced load. However, there are still some specific problems for the application of aeronautic APF in practice. Based on current research on aeronautic APF, this paper reviews three key technologies where APF can be used in aircraft AC power supply system, including the acquisition method of reference current, the strategy of APF current control and the main circuit topology. Consecutively, the features of current aeronautic APF research are summarized, and the future research directions are also suggested.
Towards the Design of a Smartphone-Based Biofeedback Breathing Training: Indentifying Diaphragmatic Breathing Patterns From a Smartphones' Microphone

Asthma, diabetes, hypertension, or major depression are non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and impose a major burden on global health. Stress is linked to both the causes and consequences of NCDs and it has been shown that biofeedback-based breathing trainings (BBTs) are effective in coping with stress. Here, diaphragmatic breathing, i.e. deep abdominal breathing, belongs to the most distinguished breathing techniques. However, high costs and low scalability of state-of-the-art BBTs that require expensive medical hardware and health professionals, represent a significant barrier for their widespread adoption. Health information technology has the potential to address this important practical problem. Particularly, it has been shown that a smartphone microphone has the ability to record audio signals from exhalation in a quality that can be compared to professional respiratory devices. As this finding is highly relevant for low-cost and scalable smartphone-based BBTs (SBBT) and – to the best of our knowledge - because it has not been investigated so far, we aim to design and evaluate the efficacy of such a SBBT. As a very first step, we apply design-science research and investigate in this research-in-progress the relationship of diaphragmatic breathing and its acoustic components by just using a smartphone’s microphone. For that purpose, we review related work and develop our hypotheses based on justificatory knowledge from physiology, physics and acoustics. We finally describe a laboratory study that is used to test our hypotheses. We conclude with a brief outlook on future work.
Quantifying the Carboxylation of Pyruvate in Pancreatic Islets (*)

Pyruvate has been estimated to enter the citric acid cycle in islets by carboxylation to the same extent or more than by decarboxylation. Those estimates were made assuming the dimethyl esters of [1,4-14C]succinate and [2-3-14C]succinate, incubated with islets at a concentration of 10 mM, gave the same ratio of 14CO yields as if [1-14C]acetate and [2-14C]acetate had been incubated. The labeled succinates, at 10 mM, but not 1 mM, are now shown to give ratios higher than the labeled acetates at those concentrations and therefore higher estimates when related to yields from [2-14C]glucose and [6-14C]glucose. Using the labeled acetate ratios in paired incubations, the rate of pyruvate carboxylation is still estimated to be about two-thirds the rate of pyruvate decarboxylation. Participation of the malic enzyme-catalyzed reaction explains the greater ratio of yields of 14CO from the succinates at 10 mM than 1 mM and increases in those ratios on glucose addition and can account for the removal from the citric acid cycle of oxaloacetate carbon formed in the carboxylation.
An overview on the exploitation of time in collaborative filtering

Classic Collaborative Filtering (CF) algorithms rely on the assumption that data are static and we usually disregard the temporal effects in natural user‐generated data. These temporal effects include user preference drifts and shifts, seasonal effects, inclusion of new users, and items entering the system—and old ones leaving—user and item activity rate fluctuations and other similar time‐related phenomena. These phenomena continuously change the underlying relations between users and items that recommendation algorithms essentially try to capture. In the past few years, a new generation of CF algorithms has emerged, using the time dimension as a key factor to improve recommendation models. In this overview, we present a comprehensive analysis of these algorithms and identify important challenges to be faced in the near future. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2015, 5:195–215. doi: 10.1002/widm.1160
Effect of information source on Sabah destination image and non-visitors’ behavioral intention / Norliza Aminudin...[et al.]

This study investigates the image of Sabah, Malaysia held by the non-visitors, and how the image was formed and its influence towards their travel intention to Sabah. This study uses both quantitative and qualitative instruments to evaluate destination image: a quantitative approach for the identification of common characteristics and attributes and a qualitative approach for determining holistic and psychological impressions associated with the image of Sabah. The view of three hundred four people who never visited Sabah was obtained via an innovative open-ended research instrument. Findings indicate that the most frequent sources that were used by non-visitors in searching information are through social media, friends and/or family who had visited Sabah before and mass media. Moreover, Sabah has acquired a strongly positive appreciation by the non-visitors when it comes to evaluating its tourism destination image.
Statins, fibrates, and venous thromboembolism: a meta-analysis.

AIMS The aim is to make a systematic review of the literature to assess the effect of lipid-lowering drugs on venous thromboembolism (VTE) occurrence. METHODS AND RESULTS MEDLINE and EMBASE databases were searched to identify studies that evaluated the effect of lipid-lowering drugs, in particular statins and fibrates, on VTE risk until April 2009. A scoring system was used to divide studies into two quality categories. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were then calculated and pooled using a fixed and a random-effects model. Statistical heterogeneity was evaluated through the use of I(2) statistics. Three randomized controlled trials (RCTs), three cohort, and eight case-control studies were included in our systematic review, for a total of 863 805 patients. Statins use significantly reduced VTE risk [OR, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.66-0.99, random-effect model)]. There was a very high heterogeneity among the studies (I(2) > 80%). The use of fibrates was associated with a significant increase in the risk of VTE (OR, 1.58; 95% CI, 1.23-2.02), without heterogeneity (I(2) = 0%). Data on other lipid-lowering drugs were lacking. CONCLUSION This meta-analysis of available literature suggests that statins may lower the risk of VTE, whereas fibrates may increase this risk. Due to several methodological limitations, this conclusion should be considered with caution, and additional, specifically designed RCTs are warranted.
Stabilisation des systèmes non-linéaires par retour d'état estimé. Applications aux réseaux de cinétique chimique et au traitement des eaux usées

On se pose le probleme de commander une certaine classe de reacteurs (reacteurs fermes agites) dans le cas non isotherme, sieges de certaines reactions chimiques caracterisees entre autres par la notion de deficience. Les modeles de connaissance de ces systemes sont intrinsequement non-lineaires, du fait de l'utilisation des lois cinetiques (par exemple la loi d'Arrhenius. . . ), des bilans enthalpiques, etc. . Pour decrire les reactions chimiques. Certaines reactions peuvent etre exothermiques donnant lieu a des phenomenes dits d'emballement. Le but est, donc, de traiter la stabilite asymptotique globale de cette classe de reacteurs en utilisant une loi de commande geometrique par retour d'etat, assurant la poursuite de la sortie (temperature du reacteur) et la stabilite interne. L'implementation d'une loi de commande geometrique necessite la connaissance de l'etat. On montre pour certains exemples de ces systemes l'observabilite forte et que toute demi-trajectoire peut etre observee par un observateur grand gain a convergence exponentielle. * le traitement de l'eau au meme titre que celui des dechets est un enjeu majeur pour l'environnement. On se pose le probleme de neutralisation des eaux usees avant d'etre evacuees dans la nature : ramener la sortie a un pH donne et la maintenir a ce point, avec stabilite interne asymptotique au point d'equilibre correspondant. Cet objectif est atteint par feedback via une loi de commande geometrique dans un premier temps et par feedback dynamique de sortie via la synthese d'un observateur dans un deuxieme temps.
Performance Evaluation of SRI Funds: An Analysis of Fund Types

Socially responsible investing (SRI) continues to get the attention of both practitioners and academicians as the demands for these funds increased sharply during the last decade. This study provides additional evidence on performances of SRI in mutual funds. The empirical findings show that although SRI funds experience lower average returns relative to the non-SRI control sample and various benchmarks, they provide higher returns relative to the control group and benchmarks using various risk adjusted measures. Among the subgroups analyzed, SRI Fixed Income funds offer the highest risk adjusted returns to investors while SRI Global funds provide the lowest returns. Finally, using Jensen’s alpha for individual funds, we find that about half of the funds experience negative alphas and 20 percent of SRI funds have statistically significant negative alphas compared to 7 percent of funds with that of positive alphas. Overall, the findings show mixed results concerning SRIs performance.
Non-Newsworthy Message Removal for Efficient Credibility Assessment

Social media has received overwhelming interest globally from their functions to post users contents, some of which has not been validated and may contain false or misleading content. There have been several studies to assess the credibility of social media posts to tackle such problem. Most existing online assessment systems evaluated the credibility of every post. This practice may be suboptimal. Many contents are not newsworthy (e.g., selfies and personal opinions, which are irrelevant to credibility notion). Assigning credibility score to a non-newsworthy post may confuse users. In addition, a recent study has shown that the inclusion of such irrelevant non-newsworthy data deteriorates the quality of credibility assessment. Therefore, identification and exclusion of non-newsworthy posts are crucial to reliable credibility assessment. This article investigates how different types of post features are effective for automatic non-newsworthiness removal. Three post features, i.e., text, topic, and social features, were evaluated with two classification methods which were machine learning and cosine similarity. Our findings reveal the essence of social features and its combination for non-newsworthiness identification.
Clean relaying aided cognitive radio under the coexistence constraint

We consider the interference-mitigation based cognitive radio where the primary and secondary users can coexist at the same time and frequency bands, under the constraint that the rate of the primary user (PU) must remain the same with a single-user decoder. To meet such a coexistence constraint, the relaying from the secondary user (SU) can help the PU’s transmission under the interfere nce from the SU. However, the relayed signal in the known dirty paper coding (DPC) based scheme is interfered by the SU’s signal, and is not “clean”. In this paper, under the half-duplex constraints, we propose two new transmission schemes aided by the clean relaying from the SU’s transmitter and receiver without interference from th e SU. We name them as the clean transmitter relaying (CT) and clean transmitter-receiver relaying (CTR) aided cognitive radio, respectively. The rate and multiplexing gain performances of CT and CTR in fading channels with various availabilities of the channel state information at the transmitters (CSIT) are studied. Our CT generalizes the celebrated DPC based scheme proposed previously. With full CSIT, the multiplexing gain of the CTR is proved to be better (or no less) than that of the previous DPC based schemes. This is because the silent period for decoding the PU’s messages for the DPC may not be necessary in the CTR. With only the statistics of CSIT, we further prove that the CTR outperforms the rate performance of the previous scheme in fast Rayleigh fading channels. The numerical examples also show that in a large class of channels, the proposed CT and CTR provide significant rate ga ins over the previous scheme with small complexity penalties.
Valuation as Promise and Care: The Use of Accounting in the Entrepreneurial Economy

This is a study of analysts’ use of accounting information for valuation purposes in a venture capital setting. This setting is characterized in terms of the distinctive scouting and coaching work of venture capital funders, and the unproven and incomplete nature of the ventures and entrepreneurs, which seek funding to scale operations, pivot into new markets, internationalize, or undertake some other kind of fundamental change. Based on interviews with entrepreneurs (project-makers) and venture funders (analysts), a four phase model of valuation is proposed. The model illuminates that, in contrast with common assumptions in the existing literature, accounting is mobilized neither to reveal truth nor constitute knowledge about the objects of investment, but to promise and to care. This paper articulates these two concepts in the context of accounting. Promising is shown to be a means not to implement a predesigned business plan and a budgeted set of activities but to commit to a new and unclear future and agree high and sometimes unrealistic expectations. Caring is shown not to be a means to predict a final fate for the organization, but to give and take, interact and sometimes discipline in order to determine what is necessary to preserve and possible to change. Understanding that what is valued is not what exists but what is possible to create helps to resolve puzzles about accounting’s uncertain and ambiguous status and significance in the entrepreneurial economy. It also and more generally illustrates how accounting operates in relation to an unknowable object and future: not as a means to know or reveal but to write and rewrite a daring and ambitious narrative in which the protagonists (here the project-maker and venture) become something else (a manager and an organization).
Packing Performance of Helical Guglielmi Detachable Coil (GDC) 18 in Intracranial Aneurysms: A Comparison with Helical GDC 10 Coils and Complex Trufill/Orbit Coils

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to retrospectively compare the packing performance of helical Guglielmi detachable coil (GDC) 18 (thickness, 0.0135–0.015 inch) with the packing performance of both helical GDC 10 (thickness, 0.010 inch) and complex Trufill/Orbit coils (thickness, 0.012 inch). MATERIALS AND METHODS: From our data base, we selected aneurysms that were exclusively coiled with GDC 18 coils. For every aneurysm treated with GDC 18 coils, we tried to identify a volume-matched control aneurysm treated with exclusively GDC 10 coils or exclusively Trufill/Orbit coils. This process resulted in 32 aneurysm pairs treated with either GDC 18 or GDC 10 coils and 35 aneurysm pairs treated with either GDC 18 or Trufill/Orbit coils. RESULTS: The mean packing of 24.2% of aneurysms treated with GDC 18 was significantly higher than the mean packing of 18.3% of aneurysms treated with GDC 10 (P < .0001). The mean packing of 23.1% of GDC 18 coils was not different from the mean packing of 25.1% of Trufill/Orbit coils (P = .15). CONCLUSION: In aneurysms of 4 mm or larger, packing performance of helical GDC 18 coils is superior to that of helical GDC 10 coils and equal to that of complex Trufill/Orbit coils.
RATES OF FLORAL EVOLUTION: ADAPTATION TO BUMBLEBEE POLLINATION IN AN ALPINE WILDFLOWER, POLEMONIUM VISCOSUM

Animal pollinators are thought to shape floral evolution, yet the tempo of this process has seldom been measured. I used the prediction equation of quantitative genetics, R = h2S, to predict the rate at which a change in pollinator abundance may have caused divergence in floral morphology of the alpine skypilot, Polemonium viscosum. A selection experiment determined the rate at which such divergence can actually proceed. Corolla flare in this species increases by 12% from populations pollinated by a wide assemblage of insect visitors to those pollinated only by bumblebees. To simulate the evolutionary process giving rise to this change, I used a pollinator selection experiment. Plants with broad flowers set significantly more seeds than plants with narrow flowers under bumblebee pollination but had equivalent fecundity when visited by other insects or hand‐pollinated. Bumblebee‐mediated selection for broad corolla flare intensified from 0.07 at seed set to 0.17 at progeny establishment. Maternal parent‐offspring regression yielded a confidence interval of 0.22–1.00 for trait heritability. Given these parameter estimates, the prediction equation shows that broadly flared flowers of bumblebee‐pollinated P. viscosum could have evolved from narrower ones in a single generation. This prediction is matched by an observed 9% increase in offspring corolla flare after a single bout of bumblebee‐mediated selection, relative to offspring of unselected controls. Findings show that plant populations can adapt rapidly to abrupt changes in pollinator assemblages.
The influence of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status on end-of-life care in the ICU.

BACKGROUND There is conflicting evidence about the influence of race/ethnicity on the use of intensive care at the end of life, and little is known about the influence of socioeconomic status. METHODS We examined patients who died in the ICU in 15 hospitals. Race/ethnicity was assessed as white and nonwhite. Socioeconomic status included patient education, health insurance, and income by zip code. To explore differences in end-of-life care, we examined the use of (1) advance directives, (2) life-sustaining therapies, (3) symptom management, (4) communication, and (5) support services. RESULTS Medical charts were abstracted for 3,138/3,400 patients of whom 2,479 (79%) were white and 659 (21%) were nonwhite (or Hispanic). In logistic regressions adjusted for patient demographics, socioeconomic factors, and site, nonwhite patients were less likely to have living wills (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.32-0.54) and more likely to die with full support (OR, 1.59; 95% CI, 1.30-1.94). In documentation of family conferences, nonwhite patients were more likely to have documentation that prognosis was discussed (OR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.21-1.77) and that physicians recommended withdrawal of life support (OR, 1.57; 95% CI, 1.11-2.21). Nonwhite patients also were more likely to have discord documented among family members or with clinicians (OR, 1.49; 95% CI, 1.04-2.15). Socioeconomic status did not modify these associations and was not a consistent predictor of end-of-life care. CONCLUSIONS We found numerous racial/ethnic differences in end-of-life care in the ICU that were not influenced by socioeconomic status. These differences could be due to treatment preferences, disparities, or both. Improving ICU end-of-life care for all patients and families will require a better understanding of these issues. TRIAL REGISTRY ClinicalTrials.gov; No.: NCT00685893; URL: www.clinicaltrials. gov.
Inefficient Bubbles and Efficient Drawdowns in Financial Markets

At odds with the common “rational expectations” framework for bubbles, economists like Hyman Minsky, Charles Kindleberger and Robert Shiller have documented that irrational behavior, ambiguous information or certain limits to arbitrage are essential drivers for bubble phenomena and financial crises. Following this understanding that asset price bubbles are generated by market failures, we present a framework for explosive semimartingales that is based on the antagonistic combination of (i) an excessive, unstable pre-crash process and (ii) a drawdown starting at some random time. This unifying framework allows one to accommodate and compare many discrete and continuous time bubble models in the literature that feature such market inefficiencies. Moreover, it significantly extends the range of feasible asset price processes during times of financial speculation and frenzy and provides a strong theoretical background for future model design in financial and risk management problem settings. This conception of bubbles also allows us to elucidate the status of rational expectation bubbles, which, by design, suffer from the paradox that a rational market should not allow for misvaluation. While the discrete time case has been extensively discussed in the literature and is most criticized for its failure to comply with rational expectations equilibria, we argue that this carries over to the finite time “strict local martingale”-approach to bubbles.
Cathepsin L Functionally Cleaves the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Class I Fusion Protein Upstream of Rather than Adjacent to the Fusion Peptide

ABSTRACT Unlike other class I viral fusion proteins, spike proteins on severe acute respiratory sydrome coronavirus virions are uncleaved. As we and others have demonstrated, infection by this virus depends on cathepsin proteases present in endosomal compartments of the target cell, suggesting that the spike protein acquires its fusion competence by cleavage during cell entry rather than during virion biogenesis. Here we demonstrate that cathepsin L indeed activates the membrane fusion function of the spike protein. Moreover, cleavage was mapped to the same region where, in coronaviruses carrying furin-activated spikes, the receptor binding subunit of the protein is separated from the membrane-anchored fusion subunit.